Alain Badiou: Sometimes, We Are Eternal
Contributors:
Alain Badiou, Nick Nesbitt, Kenneth Reinhard, Jana Ndiaye Berankova
Edited by Jana Ndiaye Berankova and Norma Hussey
Graphic design: Lukáš Kijonka and Michal Krůl, Kolektiv Studio
190 pages
24 EUR
ISBN: 978-2-9569056-0-8
“The affect of a truth is the immanence of something infinite within finitude. I agree with Benedictus de Spinoza that sometimes ‘we feel and know by experience that we are eternal’.”
Sometimes, We Are Eternal is a compelling introduction to Badiou’s thought and a rare glimpse into the monumental final volume of the Being and Event trilogy, The Immanence of Truths. Human beings can live as immortals; they can become eternal—sometimes. Philosophy helps us to orient our lives in the light of truths. In this collection of essays and interviews, Alain Badiou, in conversation with his disciples and attentive readers, explains his intellectual trajectory, the intricacies and problems that brought him to write the Being and Event trilogy, all while making rare self-critical remarks. He addresses a variety of topics ranging from his recent rethinking of the notion of the absolute, the universality of love, Toussaint Louverture, Marxism, the necessity of revolution, and the plurality of logics. The book includes an introduction by Nick Nesbitt, Kenneth Reinhard’s article “Alain Badiou’s Fundamental Philosophy,” and Jana Ndiaye Berankova’s postface on The Immanence of Truths, which discusses the attributes of the absolute and Badiou’s dialogue with Spinoza.
The book is published as a hardcover edition bound in a color-printed silver fabric and includes translucent graphic pages.
video: first presentation of the book at the workshop Dialectics Returns on September 12th, 2019
Authors:
Alain Badiou is a French philosopher and playwright. He is a professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Philosophy of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and one of the founding members of the Faculty of philosophy of the Université Paris VIII. His major works include Being and Event, Logics of Worlds, and The Immanence of Truths. His philosophical oeuvre connects continental and analytical philosophical traditions along with his reflections on set theory and contemporary mathematics.
Nick Nesbitt is a professor of French and Italian at Princeton University. He is the author of Caribbean Critique: Antillean Critical Theory from Toussaint to Glissant; Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment; and Voicing Memory: History and Subjectivity in French Caribbean Literature. He is also the editor of Toussaint Louverture: The Haitian Revolution and The Concept in Crisis, Reading Capital Today.
Kenneth Reinhard is a professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author, with Slavoj Žižek and Eric Santner of The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology, and with Julia Reinhard Lupton, of After Oedipus: Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis. Together with Susan Spitzer, he is currently working on the English translation of Alain Badiou’s seminars and his forthcoming book The Immanence of Truths.
Jana Ndiaye Berankova is a philosopher, writer, and architecture critic. She is a PhD Student at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. She received a graduate diploma from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and an M.A. at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Her research interests include the links between continental philosophy and architecture theory, social movements of 1968, and Central European architecture.
