Alain Badiou began the twenty-first century by considering the relationship between philosophy and notions of "the present." In this period of his ongoing annual lecture series, the acclaimed philosopher took up the existential problem of how to be contemporary with one's own time-that is, how to not simply inhabit a passing moment but bring a real present into existence.
Images of the Present Time presents nearly three years of Badiou's seminars, held from 2001 to 2004, partly against the backdrop of the war in Iraq. Given while Badiou was writing Logics of Worlds, the second of the three volumes of Being and Event, these lectures address some of the same questions of existence in a particular world in a more personal and conversational tone, with reference to literature, philosophy, and contemporary politics and culture. He proposes a new concept of living in a real present as the twisting together of something from the past and something of the future.
Featuring some of the philosopher's most inspiring and approachable work, Images of the Present Time is an important book for all readers interested in the practical as well as conceptual possibilities of Badiou's thought.
Alain Badiou began the twenty-first century by considering the relationship between philosophy and notions of "the present." In this period of his ongoing annual lecture series, the acclaimed philosopher took up the existential problem of how to be contemporary with one's own time-that is, how to not simply inhabit a passing moment but bring a real present into existence.
Images of the Present Time presents nearly three years of Badiou's seminars, held from 2001 to 2004, partly against the backdrop of the war in Iraq. Given while Badiou was writing Logics of Worlds, the second of the three volumes of Being and Event, these lectures address some of the same questions of existence in a particular world in a more personal and conversational tone, with reference to literature, philosophy, and contemporary politics and culture. He proposes a new concept of living in a real present as the twisting together of something from the past and something of the future.
Featuring some of the philosopher's most inspiring and approachable work, Images of the Present Time is an important book for all readers interested in the practical as well as conceptual possibilities of Badiou's thought.
Editors’ Introduction to the English Edition of the Seminars of
Alain Badiou
The Seminars of Alain Badiou (1983–2016): General Preface
Introduction to the Seminar Images of Present Time by Kenneth
Reinhard
About the 2001–2004 Seminar
Year 1: Contemporary Nihilism
1. Session 1
2. Session 2
3. Session 3
4. Session 4
5. Session 5
6. Session 6
7. Session 7
Year 2: Logic of Exceptions
8. Session 1
9. Session 2
10. Session 3
11. Session 4
12. Session 5
13. Session 6
14. Session 7
15. Session 8
Year 3: What Does it Mean to Live?
16. Session 1
17. Session 2
18. Session 3
19. Session 4
20. Session 5
Notes
Index
Alain Badiou is emeritus professor of philosophy at the École
normale supérieure in Paris. His seminars published by Columbia
University Press include Lacan (2018) and Malebranche (2019).
Kenneth Reinhard is research professor of comparative literature
and English at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Susan Spitzer is a frequent translator of Badiou’s works.
Thinking the present in, through, and against the image, Alain
Badiou proposes and enacts a comedic philosophy attuned to now's
urgent absurdities. It's a pleasure to move with the sharp curve
and fissure of his thinking. Badiou’s Seminars are a major event in
and for contemporary philosophy.
*Fred Moten, author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black
Radical Tradition*
'There are only bodies seized by languages, except there are also
truths.' Philosophy is famously incapable of dealing with the
present—except there is also Alain Badiou. Images of the Present
Time is a pure joy to read, even as it confronts some of the
saddest marvels of our commodified nonworld. A truly innovative
affirmation of the materialist dialectic.
*Sianne Ngai, author of Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic
Judgment and Capitalist Form*
Unlike sparkling wine, vivid thought never ceases to tickle our
established notions and sensibilities, bringing forth new concepts
while transforming the very concept of the 'new.' By conceiving of
the present as a matter of creation rather than mere presence,
Badiou engages us in a series of unexpected and truly fascinating,
powerful reflections.
*Alenka Zupančič, author of The Odd One In: On Comedy*
Alain Badiou is the most important contemporary French philosopher
and indeed one of the three or four most important philosophers in
the world today. This book, ranging widely across philosophy and
literature, with a fluency that only a writer and thinker as
simultaneously nimble and erudite as Badiou can summon, represents
Badiou the public intellectual at his passionate, engaging, lucid,
witty, and provocative best: it is a bracing diagnosis of the
obsessions that keep us attached to the way we live now, as well as
a fascinating reflection on what it would mean to live truly, in a
world not ruled by the insidiously captivating 'images of the
present time.'
*Joseph Litvak, author of The Un-Americans: Jews, the Blacklist,
and Stoolpigeon Culture*
Alain Badiou is undoubtedly among the greatest of living
philosophers.
*APN News*
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