Reading Badiou's "Theory of the Subject"

GCAS Winter 2020 Seminar

“Theory of the Subject”

Instructors: 

Creston Davis, PhD

Nina Power, PhD

Daniel Tutt, PhD

The French Philosopher, Alain Badiou is widely considered to be the greatest living philosopher in the world today. Badiou was a leader of the May 1968 revolts in Paris in the wake of which his seminars delivered six to seven years later formed the bases of what would become, Theorie du Sujet published in 1982. This text stands as one of the more significant works theoretically and also politically. It is theoretically seminal because it represents the first sustained and rigorous analytical work that merges the psychoanalytic (Lacanian) notion of ‘subjectivity’ with a mathematical-philosophical ontology. It is politically important because it articulates the thrust of a revolutionary political approach (birthed in the 1960s) within the philosophical register that overcomes the edge that divides philosophy from the political. In the wake of Theorie du Suject philosophy and the political are forever redefined.

Seminar Introduction: Nina Power

We will read this text chapter by chapter meeting once for each chapter. Creston Davis will guide the conversation and discussion.

For Credit: (5 credits) The cost for for-credit is 250€

GCAS College awards 5 credits for successfully completing this seminar. 

Requirements (for Credit option):

• You must complete a 2,500 word research paper due no later than 1 May. 

• You must either attend the seminars live, or, if you cannot make the live seminar, you must write a 250 word response that reflects content that you have engaged the lecture recording.

Required Text:

Alain Badiou, Theory of the Subject Continuum, London, 2009

Meeting Time:

Sundays at 1PM New York Time

Dates:

Sunday February 16: Part 1, Introduction by Nina Power “The Place of the Subject”

Sunday February 23: Part 2, “The Subject under the Signifiers of the Exception”

Sunday March 1: Part 3: “Lack and Destruction”

Sunday March 8: Part 4: “A Materialist Revival of Materialism”

Sunday March 15: Part 5: “Subjectivization and the Subjective Process” a guest lecture from Daniel Tutt

Sunday March 22: Part 6: “Topics of Ethics”

Meetings Place:

On the GCAS Farm in France and Live Online via the GCAS Platform