Alain Badiou: Manifesto of Philosophy.

Alain Badiou (1937-  ) is a French philosopher who has engaged readers for several decades. Many say he is one of the most provocative and most important thinkers living today. Reading Badiou is like opening a window after living years in a small cell. The fresh air can provoke many to close the window in order to keep everything as it is. Others may feel the refreshing air he represents as an invitation to find the door and take a walk. Two of his most famous books are nothing less than manifestos, and that’s what he has called them. Manifesto for Philosophy was published in 1992 and the Second Manifesto for Philosophy in 2011. Many relate the concept of manifesto with the Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel and published in 1848. I also relate manifesto with Søren Kierkegaards Works of Love, published in 1847. Kierkegaard doesn’t use the word manifesto, but I have no doubt that Works of Love is just as revolutionary (if not more) than the Communist Manifesto. 

Why does Badiou call his books manifestos? Because he her is making a statement. He is reminding us all that life is more than survival, radically more. His first Manifesto was written in a time when philosophy was of little interest for individuals and society. Philosophy was considered by many as dead. His Second Manifesto was written in a completely different atmosphere. Now everything is philosophy and we find it everywhere. Philosophy sells very good and everyone can be his or her own philosopher. His first book was written to revitalize philosophy while is second book was written to take philosophy back again. Philosophy, says Badiou, has become its own greatest enemy, conservative ethics. He has written in his Second Manifesto a wounderful book where he demoralizes philosophy and separates from servile and ubiquitous thinking. He brings back certain eternal truths in order to cast light on action. Let me give an example:

“When all this is said and done, this second Manifesto is the result of our confused and detestable present time forcing us to declare that there are eternal truths in politics, art, science and love. And that if we understand that to participate, point by point, in the process of creation of subjectivizable bodies is what renders life more powerful than survival, we will possess what Rimbaud, at the end of A Season in Hell, desired above all alse: “Truth, in a soul and a body”. Then shall we be stronger than Time” (p. 129-130 in the second Manifesto).

Thankyou Alain Badiou!

Kaare T. Pettersen

References:

Badiou, Alain. 1992. Manifesto for Philosophy. New York: State University of New York Press

Badiou, Alain. 2011. Second Manifesto for Philosophy. Cambridge: Polity Press.   

Slavoj Zizek. Violence

I've just finished a marvelous book written by Slavoj Zizek called Violence (2009). He asks if capitalism causes more violence than it prevents. His analysis of capitalist democracies is interesting reading and pleas for my awareness. He does this by exploring the bloody totalitarian regimes of the last century and the violence which is named "divined".

I'm amazed by the way Zizek is able combine philosophers as Kant and Lacan together with contemporary cinema. And he always has a joke up his sleeve. He writes of globalization, capitalism, fundamentalism, and language.I have not before read a book about violence in this provoking way before. The book has made me reflect on violence in a new way.

The subtitle of the book is "six sideways reflections", which is related to the books six chapters. They are as follows:
1. SOS Violence
2. Fear thy neighbour as thyself!
3. A blood-dimmed tide is loosed
4. Antimonies of tolerant reason
5. Tolerence as an ideological category
6. Divine violence

He also offers a bibliography at the end of the book, something most philosophers do not have in their books. This is a book I will be reading several times, and I'm reflecting on using it also in my classes on domestic violence.  

Kaare T. Pettersen

Reference: Zizek, Slavoj, 2009. Violence. Six Sideways Reflections.  London: Profile Books

Slavoj Zizek: Less than nothing

Just started to read Slavoj Zizeks' book Less Than Nothing (2012). A book about Hegel and dialectical materialism and consists of 1000 pages. Who is this Slavoj Zizek? The coverpage says that he "was born, writes books, and will die". That didn't help much. My first question as I read the title is if it is possible to be a Hegelian today? I see that Zizek has offered a whole chapter for this question. Zizek not only believes we should not only return to Hegel and read his works, but "repeat and exceed his triumphs, overcoming his limitations by being even more Hegelian than the master himself" (coverpage). I must say that I have a major emotional and ideological resistance when I open this hugh book. Maybe it will give me an intellectual struggle more than I can take? I open the book, put my nose between page 594 and 595 and smell the pages. The book smells good. That's a good start. I love the smell of new books. OK, now I can start reading. I'm ready Zizek. Ready for "less than nothing".

 Kaare T. Pettersen

Reference:
Zizek, Slavoj (2012). Less Than Nothing. Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London: Verso.

Brazil and inequality

Brazil is renowned for  being the world champion in overall income inequality. This inequality is the root of nearly all of Brazil's major social problems, including its poverty, poor health and education systems, high rates of crime, and the lack of social and political integration of the majority of the population. The fact that black and brown men earn 40 to 50 percent of white men in Brazil, while black men earn 75 percent of white men in the USA, reflects the great income inequality.

The top 10 percent of Brazilians earn incomes worth 52 percent of total income of all Brazilians. South Africa has the second most unequal structure among large countries, in which the top 10 percent of South African earners control 47 percent of the country's total income. In the USA, the top 10 percent control 25 percent of the country's total income. This high rate of poverty, coupled with a sizable number of persons in the top rung, reflects the status of Brazil and South Africa as the two most unequal large countries in the world.

In Brazil, South Africa and the USA, whites tend to be concentrated near the top and blacks near the bottom, although the differences in racial distribution vary. Racial inequality in Brazil derives mostly from the near absence of nonwhites in the middle class and above, rather that the absence of whites among the poor.

In a study carried out by Lopes in 1989, he found out that 50 percent of all black and brown households in Brazil are poor in 1989, compared to only 22 percent of white households. Poverty is here understood as the minimum income needed to satisfy all of the basic need of an individual, including food, access to schools, health services, water, and sanitation.

By 1980, Brazil has become the seventh-largest economy in the capitalist world. Brazil's high income is largely the result of the top 5 or 10 percent earning much more than the rest. Since the 1950's, Brazil has experienced termendous economic growth, making it one of the worlds largest industrial economies in the world. Brazil has grown from a rural to an urban society.

Kaare T. Pettersen

Reference:
Telles, Edward E. (2004) Race in Another America. The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Foto taken by Kaare T. Pettersen during a visit to Rio de Janeiro in 2012