Mallarm: Rancire, Milner, Badiou

(Paperback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

From the post-War writings of Sartre and Blanchot to the post-structuralism of Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva, French philosophers have consistently debated the poetry of Stphane Mallarm, almost as a rite of passage. Alain Badiou, Jean-Claude Milner and Jacques Rancire three of the most important philosophers alive today are no exception, having written extensively about the poet since the 1960s and 70s up until today. This book contains a series of interviews with these three figures on Mallarm, as well as an extended introduction that places their thought on literature into dialogue. Speaking about their personal and philosophical relationships with each other, on methods of reading, on poetry and politics, and poetry and mathematics, each philosopher reflects on their life-long engagement with Mallarm, as well as on the different, often incommensurable, images of the poet their philosophies have generated. As Rancire, Milner and Badiou point to the past importance and future directions Mallarm gives to thought, these interviews lend credence to Barthes remark that all we can do is repeat Mallarm and it is good that we do so.

Reviews

Mallarm said it all: these conversations with three of Frances leading philosophers explore the complexity of the poets thought, moving from the broadly humanistic to the more overtly political. By tying each interpretation to the personal evolution of each thinker, the two editors enhance our understanding both of these readings of Mallarm and of the philosophers themselves. -- Rosemary Lloyd, Rudy Professor Emerita of French, Indiana University Bloomington
The interviews conducted by Robert Boncardo and Christian Gelder with Alain Badiou, Jean-Claude Milner and Jacques Rancire are invaluable, and for more than one reason. They confirm that Stphane Mallarm is an unsurpassable figure in the French literary and intellectual field for whoever reflects with even the slightest seriousness on the relations between literature, philosophy, science and politics. They provide a very illuminating overview of the mental universes of some of the greatest contemporary French intellectuals,and prove in passing that, no, they have not yet completely disappeared. And finally, they suffice to show that, in a period of academic regression in literary studies, it is possible to assign this discipline tasks far more exhilarating than what todays reigning neo-philology can imagine. -- Vincent Kaufmann, Director of MCM Institute, Univeristy of St. Gallen, Switzerland
When properly conscious of Mallarm at all, the Anglophone world has rarely if ever registered the astonishing variety of the thought he has provoked in modern France, and his crucial importance for a range of philosophical, linguistic, political, aesthetic and mathematical debates. With a long and well-informed introduction, these searching and absorbing interviews tell us much, not only about how Mallarm has mattered and continued to matter to his compatriots, but about why he should matter to ourselves. -- Andrew Gibson, former Research Professor of Modern Literature and Theory, Royal Holloway, University of London and member of the Conseil Scientifique of the Collge International de Philosophie in Paris
The interviews with Badiou, Rancire and Milner, as occasioned and recorded in this important new book restore Stphane Mallarm to the world of real artistic, political and scientific events and actions, and hopefully contribute towards further emancipating the great poets work from perceptions of inaccessibility and obscurity. * Sydney Review of Books, 20 April 2018 *
[Le livre] a le grand mrite, dabord, de rappeler que le pote est encore lorigine de penses abstraites, malgr la domination depuis une bonne dizaine dannes, dans un champ toujours en expansion, de lapproche socio-historique. * French Studies, 72/2 *

Author Bio

Robert Boncardo has completed a doctorate in French Studies at The University of Sydney and Aix-Marseille Universit. Christian R. Gelder has completed a Master of Arts in English Literature at The Centre for Modernism Studies in Australia, The University of New South Wales.