Weaponized Joy

Badiou’s Handbook of Inaesthetics is now the 8th book I’ve read of Badiou’s since finishing his Being and Event back in October last year (2023). I’ve been looking forward to it because the topics it deals with are, on the face of it, on the farther reaches of what Badiou’s philosophy seems geared to engage. Mathematics and art: how to bring these together? Well, I read it, and, it’s probably the first book of Badiou’s that I’ve been somewhat disappointed by. So, as usual with things that bother me, I wrote something small about it. Here’s my mini-review of the book: Now three months deep into my dive into Badiou, his Handbook of Inaesthetics marks, for me, something of a test. Not one for me, mind you, but for Badiou (or better: for me yes, but for Badiou too!). After all, how does a philosopher for whom “philosophy is an insensate act” deal wth the thorny question of aesthetics? Aesthetics, the sensorial field par excellence . Can Badiou, arch-rationalist, ontologist of mathematic...

I like to write small reviews - recapitulations, really - of some of the books I've read. I'm putting a couple up here as part of my end of year 'round up' of books for 2022. Here's one for Badiou's Being and Event : Like all great works of philosophy, Badiou’s  Being and Event  is a wager. A wager on the possibility of Events, of ruptures in the weave of things, both personal and political, staking itself there where the possibility of a better world shines like a light through the crack in things. This much, I think, is known even by those with a passing familiarity of Badiou, whose association with the theme of the Event has been at the heart of the philosopher that he is. Nonetheless, what seems to go often unremarked in glosses on Badiou’s philosophy is the rigor to which devotes himself to the question of - not the break of the Event, but the continuum of Being. Indeed, what is utterly striking in  Being and Event  is the attention given to continuity, and...