Difficult Atheism: Post-Theological Thinking in Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy and Quentin Meillassoux. By Christopher Watkin. Pp. 281. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2011, $101.00.

Reseña de Después de la finitud, el primer libro publicado por Quentin Meillassoux (discípulo de Alain Badiou) y un ensayo que ha cobrado relevancia por ser la semilla del reciente movimiento filosófico llamado “realismo especulativo”.

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Speculative Fetishism

Konturen ◽

10.5399/uo/konturen.8.0.3709 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

pp. 99

Author(s):

Tracy McNulty

Keyword(s):

Unique Contribution ◽

Speculative Philosophy ◽

Alain Badiou ◽

Speculative Realism ◽

Negative Judgment ◽

The Absolute ◽

A Charge ◽

Quentin Meillassoux

Quentin Meillassoux, like his mentor Alain Badiou, is sometimes accused by his critics of “fetishizing mathematics.” Without embracing the negative judgment implied in such a charge, this essay asks: what might be gained by taking seriously the link between fetishism and speculative philosophy? The claim that Meillassoux “fetishizes” mathematics potentially reveals something fundamental not only about the formalism at the heart of his speculative realism (whose “glaciality,” inanimacy, or inhuman character might sustain a certain disavowal, namely of “finitude” or castration) but about fetishism itself, whose philosophical character is attested not only by its ideality or relation to the absolute, but by its concern with thought or construction. The aim of this essay is thus not to dwell at length on the work of Meillassoux, but rather to think about the “speculative realism” specific to fetishism itself, and its unique contribution to speculative philosophy.

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Mallarme and the Politics of Literature

10.3366/edinburgh/9781474429528.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Robert Boncardo

Keyword(s):

20Th Century ◽

English Language ◽

Julia Kristeva ◽

Politics And Literature ◽

Alain Badiou ◽

Jacques Ranciere ◽

Politics Of Literature ◽

Jean Paul ◽

Jacques Rancière ◽

Quentin Meillassoux

Mallarmé and the Politics of Literature: Sartre, Kristeva, Badiou, Rancière recounts the radical readings of Mallarmé’s seminal poems by some of France’s most important 20th century thinkers. The book attempts to answer the question of why Mallarmé — one of modernity’s most ingenious yet obscure poets — was so important to French philosophers. With in-depth studies of Jean-Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière, along with shorter analyses of Jean-Claude Milner and Quentin Meillassoux, Mallarmé and the Politics of Literature situates Mallarmé with these thinkers’ philosophical and political projects. As the first work of English-language scholarship on each of these thinker’s readings of Mallarmé, Mallarmé and the Politics of Literature is also the first to bring these thinkers into dialogue, locating the points of contact and difference between their readings of the great Symbolist poet. Mallarmé and the Politics of Literature also includes a sustained reflection on the various ways literature has been conceived of politically by 20th century French thinkers, and argues that these modalities of reading literature politically have today reached a point of exhaustion. Mallarmé and the Politics of Literature thus culminates in a plea for renewed formulations of the link between politics and literature.

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Dialectics and the Measure of the World

Environment and Planning A Economy and Space ◽

10.1068/a40273 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 40 (11) ◽

pp. 2641-2651 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Stuart Elden

Keyword(s):

Human Geography ◽

Alain Badiou ◽

Abstract Thought ◽

The World ◽

Key Issues ◽

Quentin Meillassoux

This ‘afterword’ to the papers on dialectics situates the debate in the ground between Marxism and poststructuralism. Rather than a wholesale rejection of the dialectic, these authors attempt to think how poststructuralism might force an encounter with it, retaining yet transforming it. Drawing on Deleuze's characterization of abstract thought as dealing with concepts that “like baggy clothes, are much too big”, and Bergson's complaint that dialectics are “too large … not tailored to the measurements of the reality in which we live”, the paper moves to thinking about the relation of dialectics, measure, and world. It does so through an interrogation of a nondialectical materialism, that of Alain Badiou and his ex-student Quentin Meillassoux, particularly Meillassoux's critique of correlationism. One of the key issues raised is the return of mathematics, and its embrace within some aspects of human geography. Raising the question of how this may reverse some of the gains of poststructuralism and Marxism in combating the reduction of the quantitative revolution, the paper concludes by asking if geography is really willing to accept mathematical ordering, not merely in terms of a way of understanding the world, but as a suggestion that this is how the world actually is.

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The necessity of multi-disciplinary scholarship for finance: On Ayache and Roffe

Finance and Society ◽

10.2218/finsoc.v2i2.1733 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 189-204 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Timothy C. Johnson

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Alain Badiou ◽

Radical Uncertainty ◽

And Mathematics ◽

Quentin Meillassoux

Ayache presents a view of markets and mathematics that attempts to conform to the philosophies of Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux. However, this attempt is unsuccessful because Ayache adopts a view of probability rooted in nineteenth-century conceptions that cannot accommodate the radical uncertainty of the markets. This is unfortunate as it is reasonable to believe that the ideas of Badiou and Meillassoux, when synthesised with contemporary ideas of probability, could offer interesting insights. Roffe presents a better argued synthesis of Deleuze and markets, however he makes similar assumptions about contemporary probability that undermine his conclusions.

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