Offering a piercing indictment of what we have let ourselves become this short critical work is a damning critique of the current age and of the democratic systems that characterize it Alain Badiou argues that any truly radical politics must begin with dismantling the obscene or pornographic qualities of neoliberal capitalism In The Pornographic Age he asks us to hold up a mirror to ourselves and confront the debasement of the political realities in which we live the shock of which must galvanize us into action It is only through this realization this crucial confrontation with the perversity with which we conduct our daily lives that we can prompt true revolution Including an afterword from international Badiou scholars A J Bartlett and Justin Clemens and a commentary by William Watkin this book is a philosophical call to arms Badiou s radical indictment of the current age is an exciting no holds barred exploration of both how we live and how we might live The Pornographic Age
Alain Badiou Ph. born in Rabat Morocco in 1937 holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School EGS Alain Badiou was a student at the cole Normale Sup rieure in the 1950s He taught at the University of Paris VIII Vincennes Saint Denis from 1969 until 1999 when he returned to ENS as the Chair of the philosophy department He continues to teach a popular seminar at the Coll ge International de Philosophie on topics ranging from the great antiphilosophers Saint Paul Nietzsche Wittgenstein Lacan to the major conceptual innovations of the twentieth century Much of Badious life has been shaped by his dedication to the consequences of the May 1968 revolt in Paris Long a leading member of Union des jeunesses com Alain Badiou Ph. born in Rabat Morocco in 1937 holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School EGS Alain Badiou was a student at the cole Normale Sup rieure in the 1950s He taught at the University of Paris VIII Vincennes Saint Denis from 1969 until 1999 when he returned to ENS as the Chair of the philosophy department He continues to teach a popular seminar at the Coll ge International de Philosophie on topics ranging from the great antiphilosophers Saint Paul Nietzsche Wittgenstein Lacan to the major conceptual innovations of the twentieth century Much of Badiou s life has been shaped by his dedication to the consequences of the May 1968 revolt in Paris Long a leading member of Union des jeunesses communistes de France marxistes l ninistes he remains with Sylvain Lazarus and Natacha Michel at the center of L Organisation Politique a post party organization concerned with direct popular intervention in a wide range of issues including immigration labor and housing He is the author of several successful novels and plays as well as than a dozen philosophical works. Trained as a mathematician Alain Badiou is one of the most original French philosophers today Influenced by Plato Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze he is an outspoken critic of both the analytic as well as the postmodern schools of thoughts His philosophy seeks to expose and make sense of the potential of radical innovation revolution invention transfiguration in every situation site_link Provocative but perhaps insipid in it s content 9781350014800 An intellectual fraud doing his best to apply the christian guilt to the modern society 9781350014800 Appreciative approach 9781350014800 Badiou starts with Genet s The Balcony as the center of the limits of political democracy but seems to use his terminology in a loose and alienating way However while interesting the majority of the book is interpretation essays of varying quality and does make the text feel like it is an exercise in categories than the polemic it clearly is 9781350014800 brothel 9781350014800 84% of this book is an attempt to explain badiou s 20 page essay on neoliberal capitalism but with even vagueness 9781350014800 Post modern Foucaltian critique of Democracy via the imagery of Jane Genet s play the Balcony and the mathematical concept of Category Theory 9781350014800 A short essay by Badiou on the radical critique of political democracy followed by two interesting exegeses Badiou uses Genet s The Balcony as the center for his discussion In every tragedy we see the dark melancholy of power In every comedy we see the farcical semblant 9781350014800 For most of history and all of prehistory homo sapiens lived in participation with nature which allowed people to live in a vital present within whose intimate linkage people actually noticed what was around them Since then Badiou says our vital present has largely disappeared. Fast forward to now where ordinary consciousness is chopped up into clouds of images planted there for the profit of the power holders We think of ourselves as living in democracies but power is held by money an abstract god playing a shallow tune that keeps everyone great or small dancing until nature finally cuts it with physical death that part hasn t changed. Badiou s pornography is not just sexual images but the whole cloudscape of images that keep us dancing images of houses cars vacation trips success We know the game because we ve been successfully bought off to be or less satisfied But our real life our vital present he says has mostly leached away We sense a puzzling loss. This or less is Badiou s bleak vision What are we supposed to do about it Badiou tries for a rhetorical response but can really only wave his hands 9781350014800
., First came agriculture which vastly increased our numbers established social hierarchies and began disengagement from nature: Along came capitalism which bought people s lives and paid them with barest necessities and cheap goods.D.D
