Black

Alain Badiou is a writer, philosopher, and an Emeritus Professor at the École n Normale Supérieure, Paris.

• Translator's noteChildhood and youthMilitary blackThe Stroke of MidnightThe black dog in the darkThe inkwellChalk and markersConfusionsEarly sexualityThe dialectics of blackDialectical ambiguitiesBlack soulsSoulages' ultrablackFlagsRed and black. And white. And violet.Stendhal: the red and the blackThe dark desire of/for darknessClothingThe black signBlack humor, or black vs. blackOutward appearancePhysics, biology, and anthropologyThe metaphorical black of the CosmosThe secret blackness of plantsAnimal blackAn invention of white people

“Badiou’s Black is a singular and remarkable book. This is not the Badiou of ontology, set theory and the theorization of subjectivity, nor the Badiou of incisive political intervention or philosophical-historical summation. Working through a series of ficto-critical vignettes, Black is composed of subtle and diverse meditations on black as a darkness that obscures at the same time as it discloses. Black at once hearkens back to a style of personal philosophy that seemed lost with Blanchot, while also looking forward to a new mode of singular meditation that is perhaps necessary for twenty-first-century thought.”Claire Colebrook, Penn State University"Alain Badiou's Black: The Brilliance of a Noncolor is a radical departure for the impenetrable thinker of Theory of the Subject and Being and Event. It's more in the tradition of Maurice Blanchot (or even Alexander Theroux, Mark Rothko) than Lacan or Althusser and casts an evocative pall over the way text, thought, and flesh have come to negotiate dark and light (black/white)."Minor Literatures