UAH Humanities Center welcomes famed French Philosopher and Visiting Eminent Scholar Dr. Alain Badiou

Renowned French Philosopher Alain Badiou will visit UAH and give a rare lecture on Wednesday, Nov. 16, in Chan Auditorium.

Renowned French philosopher Alain Badiou will visit The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) as a visiting eminent scholar and give a rare keynote address on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at 8 p.m.

Badiou's talk "The Relationship Between Art and Politics, From the Point of View of Philosophy," at 8 p.m., in Chan Auditorium will culminate a two day event. The program is sponsored by the UAH Humanities Center. All events are free and open to the public, and will be held in the UAH Wilson Hall Auditorium and Chan Auditorium.

"Alain Badiou is without question one of the most eminent and significant humanities intellectuals ever to visit our campus. The Humanities Center is pleased to sponsor this rare and exciting event at UAH," said Dr. Eric D. Smith, Professor of English and Director of the UAH Humanities Center.

On Nov. 15, at 5:30 p.m., in Wilson Hall (room 001) Dr. Susan Spitzer, will give the presentation "Translating Badiou." Spitzer is a frequent translator of Badiou's works. She is currently translating and co-editing (with Dr. Kenneth Reinhard) a 20-volume series of Badiou's lectures for Columbia University Press. Spitzer holds a PhD in Philosophy and French Language and Literature from Brown University.

At 6:15 p.m., in Wilson Hall (room 001), Dr. Kenneth Reinhard will give the address "Truth, Knowledge, Opinion: From Democratic Materialism of the Materialistic Dialectic." Reinhard is Associate Professor of English and comparative literature at The University of California (Los Angeles), and the co-author of The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology and After Oedipus: Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis.

On Wednesday, Nov. 16, at 7 p.m., in Chan Auditorium, the talk "Greimas aver Lacan (avec Badou): The Event of the New Criticism and the Fate of The Republic," will be presented by Dr. Phillip E. Wegner, Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar and University Research Professor at The University of Florida. Wegner is the author of Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity; Life Between Two Deaths, 1989-2001: U.S. Culture in the Long Nineties; Periodizing Jameson: Dialectics, the University, and the Desire for Narrative; and Shockwaves of Possibility: Essays on Science Fiction, Globalization, and Utopia.

Dr. Alain Badiou is one of the most well-known philosophers of our time. Badiou is the Rene Descartes Chair and Professor of Philosophy at The European Graduate School. Badiou is Professor Emeritus at The École Normale Supérieure, the highest-ranked among the top ten universities in Paris. Additionally, he continues to teach seminars at the Collége International de Philosophia, and is the current president of the Global Center for Advanced Study.

His philosophy seeks to expose and make sense of the potential of radical innovation (revolution, invention transfiguration) in every situation. Trained as a mathematician, he is also a novelist, playwright and political activist. He is the author of numerous books, including his magnum opus Being and Event and its sequel Logics of Worlds. Badiou was one of the principle founders of the L'Organisation Politique, a French watchdog organization that was known for intervening on a number of political issues, including labor, immigration, and housing. Badiou's most recent publication is entitled Le Second Procés de Socrate.

A recent book Alain Badiou: Key Concepts by A. J. Bartlett and Justin Clements offers the full-range of Badiou's thinking, including essays focusing on Badiou's thought on truth, being, ontology, the subject and conditions — and on his engagement with a range of thinkers central to his philosophy, including Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Heidegger, and Deleuze.

For more information about Alain Badiou's visit to UAH, please contact Dr. Eric D. Smith, Professor of English and Director of the UAH Humanities Center at eds0001@uah.edu.