Phiosophy and the Event by Alain Badiou and Fabien Tarby [Book review]

Abstract

Philosophy and the Event is an excellent introduction to the thought of the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou, best known for his recent collaborations with Slavoj Žižek in defence of the ‘Idea of Communism’. This easily accessible text is a collection of interviews with Badiou conducted by Fabien Tarby, in which Badiou gives an overview of his ideas and summarises the trajectory of his major works: Theory of the Subject (1982), Being and Event (1988), Logics of Worlds (2006), and his forthcoming book, The Immanence of Truths.

The interviews are arranged according to the themes of politics, love, art and sciences, corresponding to the four ‘conditions’ or truth procedures that support Badiou’s conception of philosophy. The major focus of Badiou’s work is the subject of these truth procedures and its relation to the creation of new possibilities, which he denotes as the Event. On this basis, Badiou seeks to formulate the philosophical structure of the exceptional, that which breaks with the normal routines of existence, and to locate its consequences in the world. This process requires a subject that is faithful to the Event. The fidelity of this subject is to act in accordance with the Idea, the name of the perspective associated with the Event.