I want you to read and mentally digest a second essay this week from this 'little red book'. The essay is easily found on the web as long as you search for Alain Badiou This Crisis Is the Spectacle: Where Is the Real? It's one of those modest pieces of writing that could blow your socks off. Often Badiou, whilst frighteningly clever, is a bit dense, but this piece is written for a newspaper, hence is more readable. (see below for first essay).
Also, please each of you set up your own individual Theory 1 blogs via blogspot.com
Discussion: It's difficult to gain a perspective on Badiou at this stage. His introduction at this point was to highlight our necessary confrontation with the question 'What is the Real?' This of course implies we are 'living in a lie', as evidenced by our highly theatrical (and highly nuanced) media and politics where vested interests, not the benefit of all, are paraded before us in a clear period of global crisis. If you are wondering what this global crisis might be, four corners of the discussion might be: Climate Change, Increased National and Global Inequality, Financial Iniquity and the challenges of the Bio-technological.
The text I'd like you to read for next week's session (5th Nov) is 'At Home in the Neon', the first essay in this invaluable collection of essays by art and rock critic Dave Hickey. This will absolutely lighten the tone of our debates so far. Meanwhile, as we often define our friends by what we love reading, I've never met anybody in our business (who was any good) who doesn't love this writer.
