Democracy and Disappointment: On the Politics of Resistance
Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley in Conversation
Directors: Slought Publications (http://slought.org)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Language: English
Studio: Microcinema
DVD Release Date: August 26, 2008
Run Time: 105 minutes
** no subtitles
Democracy and Disappointment features a conversation between Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley addressing the politics of resistance. During the 2007-2008 academic year, students in the RBSL Bergman Foundation Curatorial Seminar at the University of Pennsylvania collaboratively engaged in research spanning disciplines such as literature, visual culture, urbanism, geo-politics, and technology. One residue of these endeavors was this publication that attempts to construct an archive of the temporal—in particular, this site-specific conversation on November 15, 2007 at Slought Foundation in Philadelphia.
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Date: 30 October 2009 (Friday)
Time: 7:30 - 10:00pm
Venue: aco_books｜艺鵠_书（灣仔軒尼詩道365號富德樓1樓）
Enquiry: 2893 4808 / http://aco.hk
free, donation welcome, limited seating, registration required
費用全免，歡迎捐助；座位有限，請先訂座
In Hong Kong, we never seem to hear or say enough about democracy. The question of enfranchisement and autonomy looms over our political horizon, but none of us seem to know very much about what ‘democracy’ is supposed to mean. Does ‘democracy’ designate anything other than a certain configuration of state power? Can it embody a creative mode of being, a communal project that subtracts itself from the State? Can we conceive of democracy as a local, singular event, a rupture in the fabric of a technocratic world? It seems that the first task of activism today is to redefine its foundational terms, to formulate a new political grammar. This debate finds two contemporary philosophers engaging with questions of agency and finitude. Critchley probes the limits of activism today, while Badiou endeavors to retrieve the image of politics as an unlimited, subjective process. Both attempt to forge a radical ethics of commitment that is equal to the disorientation and cynicism of our time.
We invite thinking people across Hong Kong to attend this screening, which will be followed by an informal, collective discussion. Our intention is to cultivate a climate congenial to conversation, a non-hierarchical environment that welcomes all interested parties. We hope to initiate an ongoing dialogue with engaged men and women across the city, and it would be a pleasure to meet you at this humble gathering.
藉著觀賞當代兩位哲者Simon Critchley（英國）與Alain Badiou（巴廸歐，法國）於2007 關於民主、抗爭、當世的思辯，我們誠邀參與者來一起淺談當代我城的種種：政治、民族、文化、民生。
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伸延閱讀｜of related interest
Alain Badiou
Pocket Pantheon: Figures of Postwar Philosophy
Hardcover $160
ISBN: 9781844673575 Published July 2009
A journey through twentieth-century philosophy with the titan of French thought
In this accessible work, France’s leading radical thinker takes his readers on an incisive journey through twentieth-century philosophy. On the way he pays homage to great thinkers who have influenced him, whether as teachers, allies or opponents: from Althusser, Lacan and Sartre to Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault. Although Pocket Pantheon is at times critical, Badiou defends both his subjects and their work by setting them against the contemporary landscape of pop philosophers and media commentators.
http://www.versobooks.com/books/ab/b-titles/badiou_a_pocket_pantheon.shtml
Simon Critchley
The Book of Dead Philosophers
Paperback $140
ISBN: 9780307390431 Published February 2009
In this collection of brief lives (and deaths) of nearly two hundred of the world’s greatest thinkers, noted philosopher Simon Critchley creates a register of mortality that is tragic, amusing, absurd, and exemplary. From the self-mocking haikus of Zen masters on their deathbeds to the last words of Christian saints and modern-day sages, this irresistible book contains much to inspire both amusement and reflection.
Informed by Critchley’s acute insight, scholarly intelligence, and sprightly wit, each entry tells its own tale, but collected together they add up to a profound and moving investigation of meaning and the possibility of happiness for us all.
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307390431
Simon Critchley
Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity: Derrida, Levinas and Contemporary French Thought
Paperback $120
ISBN: 9781844673513 Published May 2009
In Ethics - Politics - Subjectivity, Simon Critchley takes up three questions at the centre of contemporary theoretical debate: What is ethical experience? What can be said of the subject who has this experience? What, if any, is the relation of ethical experience to politics?
These questions are approached by way of a critical confrontation with a number of major thinkers, including Lacan, Genet, Blanchot, Nancy, Rorty and, in particular, Levinas and Derrida. Critchley offers a critical reconstruction of Levinas’s notion of ethical experience and, questioning the religious pietism and political conservatism of the dominant interpretation of Levinas’s work, develops an ethics of finitude which, far from being tragic, opens on to an experience of humour and the comic. Using this reading of Levinas as a way of unlocking the rich ethical potential of Derrida’s work, Critchley outlines and defends the political possibilities of deconstruction. On the basis of Derrida’s recent work, Critchley attempts to rethink notions of friendship, democracy, economics and technology.
http://www.versobooks.com/books/cdef/c-titles/critchley_ethics.shtml