20th Century: A unique period, short or long, totalitarian or liberal, terrorist or combative, utopian or illusory, full of genocides and avant-gardes.
"How many years is a century? A hundred years? (...) If even a single moment can end it, what is a hundred years, what is a thousand years? (...) What is the exceptional moment that brought the 20th century to an end? The Berlin Wall "The collapse? The sequencing of the genome? The birth of the Euro?"
Alain Badiou takes photographs of the 20th century that we have passed by. He proceeds by making use of philosophical fragments, poems, political ideas and theater plays, and puts passions and dramas into words. Sometimes it questions how the century is perceived, sometimes it examines its dialectics and humanism.
Brecht, Mallarmé, Valery, Pessoa, Celan, Perse, Mandelstam, Breton, Malevich, et al. While contributing to Badiou's analysis with his works; Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger, Freud and Lacan form the basis of his thoughts with their theories.
This work, published by Sel Publishing and written by Alain Badiou, is now on Books in the World.