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The Theatre of Alain Badiou

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2009

MARTIN PUCHNER
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Abstract

This article examines the relation between philosophy and theatre in the work of French philosopher Alain Badiou. First, it focuses on Badiou's central categories, such as event and character, that resonate with the theatre. Second, Badiou's own engagement with the theatre, the place theatre occupies in his philosophical world, is identified. Finally, the article argues that Badiou's thought must be understood as a return to Plato. Plato here is understood not as an enemy of theatre, but as a philosopher who invented philosophy through a constant, if often critical, engagement with the theatre. Dramatic Platonism is the name proposed for this tradition of philosophy of which Alain Badiou is the most significant current representative.

Type
Focus on Performance/Theatre and Philosophy
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , October 2009 , pp. 256 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2009

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References

NOTES

1 Plato, Republic, books VI–X, 514 ff., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), pp. 119 ff.

2 Barish, Jonas, The Anti-theatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

3 Goehr, Alexander, Shadowplay, op. 30 (Mainz: Schott, 1970)Google Scholar.

4 Brenton, Howard, Bloody Poetry (London: French, 1985), p. 41Google Scholar.

5 The Truman Show, dir. Peter Weir, Paramount Pictures, 1998.

6 Kenneth Burke uses this term in A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945). For an elaboration of Burke's dramatic philosophy see my article ‘Kenneth Burke: Theater, Philosophy, and the Limits of Performance’, in Krasner, David and Saltz, David, eds., Staging Philosophy: Intersections of Theater, Performance and Philosophy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), pp. 41–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 For an elaboration of this understanding of philosophy see Hadot, Pierre, Philosophy as a Way of Life, ed. and with an introduction by Davison, Arnold I. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995)Google Scholar. Foucault was Hadot's sponsor for a chair at the Collège de France.

8 Michel Foucault, Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres (1982–3), ed. Frédéric Gros under the direction of François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana (Paris: Gallimard, 2008); idem, Le Courage de la Vérité: Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres II, ed. Frédéric Gros under the direction of François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana (Paris: Gallimard, 2009). Selections from these last lectures were published in English as Michel Foucault, Frearless Speech, ed. Joseph Pearson (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001).

9 Foucault, Le Gouvernement, pp. 59 ff. Foucault's interest in philosophy as a way of life was recognized by Alexander Nehamas in his book The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

10 These Socrates plays, which range across many genres including tragedy, comedy, educational dialogue, opera and closet drama, include Amyas Bushe, Esq., Socrates: A Dramatic Poem (London, 1758); Francis Foster Barham, Esq., Socrates: A Tragedy in Five Acts (London: William Edward Painter, 1842); Henry Montague Grover, Esq., Socrates; A Dramatic Poem (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1828); Jacques-Henri-Bernadin de Saint-Pierre, La Mort de Socrate. Œuvres Complètes, Vol. 12, arranged and with a Life of the author by L. Aimé-Martin (Paris: Chez Méquignon-Marvis, Librarie, 1818); Andrew Becket, Socrates; A dramatic poem written on the model of the ancient Greek tragedy. New edition with (now first printed) an advertisement, containing an apology for the author and the work (London: Longman, Hurst, 1811; original publication 1806); M. de Sauvigny, La Mort de Socrates, Tragédie en trois actes, et en vers (Paris: Prault le jeune, 1763); Louis-Sebastian Mercier, La Maison de Socrate le sage, comédie in cinq actes, en prose (Paris, 1809).

11 For a reading of the Symposium as an encounter between the philosopher Socrates and the two playwrights Agathon and Aristophanes, see Freddie Rokem's ‘The Philosopher and the Two Playwrights: Socrates, Agathon, and Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium’, Theatre Survey, 49, 2 (November 2008), pp. 239–52.

12 One of the first, and few, theatre scholars to be interested in Badiou was Janelle Reinelt, with a piece called ‘Theatre and Politics: Encountering Badiou’, Performance Research Special Issue on Civility, 9, 4 (2004), pp. 87–94.

13 Badiou, Conditions, with a preface by François Wahl (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1992), p. 103, n15.

14 Badiou, Conditions, p. 77.

15 Ibid., p. 307.

16 Ibid., p. 75.

17 Ibid., p. 77.

18 Badiou, Alain, Deleuze: Le Clamour de l'être (Paris: Hachette, 1997), 18, 26Google Scholar. All translations from this text are mine.

19 Deleuze, Gilles, Difference and Repetition, trans. Patton, Paul (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

20 Foucault, Michel, ‘Theatrum Philosophicum’, in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, ed. Bouchard, Donald F., trans. Bouchard, Donald F. and Simon, Sherry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 165–97Google Scholar.

21 Badiou, Clamour, p. 83.

22 Badiou, Alain, Logiques des mondes (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2006)Google Scholar. For my review of this book, ‘Nothing but the Truths’, see Bookforum, April–May 2009.

23 Badiou, Conditions, p. 318.

24 Badiou, Logiques des mondes, p. 12.

25 Badiou, Conditions, p. 163.

26 Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, trans. Alberto Toscano (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 20.

27 Badiou, Conditions, p. 108.

28 Badiou, Being and Event (London: Continuum, 2005), p. 191.

29 Puchner, Martin, Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-theatricality and Drama (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002)Google Scholar. Indeed, it has been one of the pleasures of encountering Badiou's work to see his reading of theatre, from Mallarmé via Brecht to Beckett, dovetail with my own (anti-)theatrical history of a Platonist theatre. In Handbook of Inaesthetics, for example, he identifies, in passing, Brecht's anti-Aristotelian theater as ‘ultimately Platonic’, noting that Brecht ‘theatrically reactivated Plato's anti-theatrical measures’ (p. 6). Beckett is cited as having achieved another reactivation of Plato.

30 Badiou, The Century (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), p. 40.

31 Badiou, Handbook, p. 72.

32 Badiou, Alain, Rhapsody for the Theatre, trans. Bruno Bosteels, Theatre Survey, 49, 2 (November 2008), pp. 187–238CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Ibid., p. 206.

34 Ibid., p. 225.