The MFA and MA program at the Art Center College of Design

presents a lecture by

Alain Badiou

Nomad Poetry in the 20th Century: Anabasis

Tuesday Feb. 28 th at 7:30

The lecture will take place in the “Los Angeles Time Theater” at the Hillside Campus of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena (directions below).

The subject of Professor Badiou's lecture will be two poems from the twentieth cenutry that share a common title: Saint-John Perse's 1924 poem "Anabasis" and the poem by the same name written by Paul Celan some 40 years later. The Greek writer Xenophon's "Anabasis" describes the wandering of 10,000 Greek mercenaries through the interior of an unknown country, deprived of all orientation and local support, with no plotted destination or certain way out. If this figure of a collective movement without orientation or prescribed end is deployed by both Perse and Celan, Professor Badiou's lecture will show that this same name nevertheless harbors two radically different modes of collective existence. The uncertain survival of this figure across the caesura at the heart of the century will bear witness to a profound mutation in the structure of the "we": from the violence of fraternal "we" whose greatness is measured by the pure errance of its movement to Celan's tracing of an alterity and the holding together of an "immanent disparity."

Alain Badiou taught philosophy at the Ecole normale superieure and the College international de philosophie in Paris. In addition to several novels, plays, and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works. Several of his books have recently appeared in English, including his most important work to date, Being and Event (Continuum 2006), Handbook of Inaesthetics (Stanford 2005), Metapolitics (Verso, 2005), Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (Verso, 2001), Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford 2003), Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy (Continuum 2005). Badiou is rapidly emerging as one of the most radical and influential philosophers of our time, a peer of Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan. Badiou opposes the contemporary reduction of philosophy to nothing but a matter of language and premature announcements of the end of philosophy and thus sets himself against both analytic and continental modes of philosophy. Setting the traditional Platonic concerns of philosophy, truth, and being against the modern sophists of postmodernism, Badiou has articulated a powerful systematic philosophy with profound ethical and political consequences. Badiou's enormously original work has made major contributions not only to philosophy and political theory, but also to psychoanalysis, film theory, and aesthetics.

Please feel free to distribute this announcement.

For any questions, write Jason Smith at lazzarone10@gmail.com

DIRECTIONS:

Art Center Hillside Campus: 1700 Lida St. Pasadena, CA 91103:

1. From Downtown Los Angeles and Orange County:

- Take the 110 North/Pasadena Freeway

- Exit Orange Grove Avenue, turn left on Orange Grove

- Proceed for 1-2 miles and take a left on Holly Street (after you pass Colorado Blvd.)

- Follow Holly St. as it heads down a hill and over a bridge. When you get to the first traffic light, turn right onto Linda Vista Avenue.

2. From Hollywood/mid-city

- Take the 134 Freeway East

- Exit at Linda Vista/ San Rafael Avenues.

- At the top of the exit ramp, turn right and take your immediate left.

There is a sign pointing left towards Art Center.

- Bear to the right at the next fork in the road, towards the Rose Bowl.

This will turn into Linda Vista Street.

- Follow Linda Vista for about 3 minutes; you will pass a fire station on your right and an elementary school on your left.

- Turn left at the first light you encounter after these two landmarks: this traffic light is Lida Street.

- Follow Lida Street up a steep, curving hill. Turn left into the Art Center campus - it is marked by a large black illuminated sign.

- Follow the school's driveway as it winds around under the building; continue up a slight hill until you reach the parking lot at the end of the driveway.

- You may park anywhere in the lot, but I would suggest avoiding the carpool spots.

- You will want to enter the building from the upper south wing, it's the closest and most convenient entrance (you will likely see students exiting this area). To enter the building you need to descend a flight of stairs outdoors, pass through a set of glass doors, and directly in front of you there will be another set of stairs leading to the lower level of the building. Go down this stairway, and immediately to your right you will see a pair of double doors marked " Los Angeles Times Media Center".