Here is a report on Alain Badiou’s appearance in a bookstore in New York City:

… [Alain Badiou] eschewed the political in favor of an explication of the philosophical work in Being and Event. But when the conversation was opened up to the audience, sparks flew about the implications of Mr. Badiou’s work for politics and religion.
In response to one question, asking him to link his philosophy to contemporary politics, Mr. Badiou noted that “names in politics are impoverished. … The weakness of politics today is a weakness of poetry.”
The fall of communism, he continued, influenced that impoverishment. “Marxism,” he said, “had a constellation of names” for political concepts. “It was a sky of names. We lost the sky.”

Original posting Arts and Letters Daily.

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