Alain Badiou: fiction, theory and literature

• Grant number: 24/04304-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: August 01, 2024
• End date: February 28, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Literature Theory
• Principal Investigator: Fabio Akcelrud Durão
• Grantee: Lucas Rodrigues Negri
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research investigates Alain Badiou's philosophical work, with three main goals: to improve dialogues between such work and literary studies; to investigate the idea of fictionality that is mobilized by his definition of philosophy as a type of fiction; and to formalize some instrumental contributions to literary theory. These three goals will also involve: determining a more accurate way of reading Badiou's texts on literary works, investigating his new-platonic concept of representation (which is related to the concept of mimesis), and formulating a concept of theory that may contribute to some self evaluations of the field of literary studies. In order to do it, we will begin considering the central books of Badiou's philosophical system (the trilogy "L'être et l'événement," the collection "Conditions," and the manifests for philosophy), and we will arrive at both his texts on literary works (those included in the precedent books and those collected in "Petit manuel d'inesthétique" and "Que pense le poème?", the books "Beckett, lincrevable désir" and "Radar poésie" and his "Manifesto of affirmationism") and to a proposal for including his ideas in Brazilian debates concerning institutional form and meaning of dedicating oneself to literature nowadays.