Badiou, Zizek, and Political Transformations: The Cadence of Change

by Adrian Johnston

Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek together have emerged as two of Europe’s most significant living philosophers. In a shared spirit of resistance to global capitalism, both are committed to bringing philosophical reflection to bear upon present-day political circumstances. These thinkers are especially interested in asking what consequences the supposed twentieth-century demise of communism entails for leftist political theory in the early twenty-first century. Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations examines Badiouian and Žižekian depictions of change, particularly as deployed at the intersection of philosophy and politics. The book details the origins of Badiou’s concept of the event and Žižek’s concept of the act as related theoretical visions of revolutionary happenings, delineating a number of difficulties arising from these similar concepts. Johnston finds that Badiou and Žižek tend to favor models of transformation that risk discouraging in advance precisely the efforts at changing the world of today that these uncompromising leftists so ardently desire. Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations will surely join Johnston’s Žižek’s Ontology as an instant classic in its field.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

American philosopher. He is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and a faculty member at the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute in Atlanta. Johnston’s books are guided by his “transcendental materialism,” which in sum calls for a materialist ontology that nevertheless does not reduce away the gap or figure that is human subjectivity.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

although i do not always agree with Johnston's conclusions, and i think that Johnston's problematic in this book is based on a fundamental misreading of Badiou (one he shares with Zizek), there can be no doubt that Johnston is one of the most perspicuous and well-informed readers of these two thinkers around. Johnston's greatness is his ability to synthesize and summarize the two thinkers' arguments--not just on the basis of a close reading of their own texts, but also with a comprehensive knowledge of their sources (Lacan, the German idealists, Marx and Althusser, among others). in particular, Johnston's summary of the development of the notion of the act in Zizek's work--taking into account it's genealogy and development in Lacan's thinking--is a philosophical tour de force that really ties together Zizek's often inconsistent references to the notion. even if one does not necessarily agree with the conclusions that Johnston draws from his reading of Badiou and Zizek, one must agree that he provides ample material and a fresh perspective on both that enables one to draw new conclusions of one's own.