The Meaning of Sarkozy by Alain Badiou‏

THE MEANING OF SARKOZY
BY ALAIN BADIOU
Published 02 February 2009
“Sartre and Plato with a dash of Derrida…those are the key ingredients of Alain Badiou’s philosophical cocktail, which is shaking the foundations of Western liberal democracy.”
Times Higher Education Supplement
“A figure like Plato or Hegel walks here among us!”Slavoj Žižek
“One of the most important philosophers writing today”Joan Copjec
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Alain Badiou, France’s leading philosopher and radical commentator, assesses the politics of the French President in The Meaning of Sarkozy. This book argues that to understand Sarkozy’s significance we have to look behind his vulgarity to what he represents; a reactionary tradition in French politics, based on fear. Badiou provides a detailed reading of the election of this right-wing demagogue, whom he calls the ‘Rat Man’ at a time when the President has assumed the role of international peace-maker – despite being renowned for his aggressive domestic politics. The Meaning of Sarkozy, to be published on the first anniversary of Sarkozy’s celebrity marriage to Carla Bruni, is a trenchant and witty dissection of the French political scene, as Badiou takes on a society dominated by ‘parliamentary fetishism’, proposing a return to the idea of communism. ALAIN BADIOU teaches philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure and the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris. In additional to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works, including Theory of the Subject (1982), Being and Event (1988), Manifesto for Philosophy (1989), Conditions (1992) and Gilles Deleuze: The Clamour of Being (1997). His Ethics, Metapolitics and Polemics are also available from Verso. ------------------------------------------