Buddhism After Badiou Talk at Middlesex Philosophy Dept. March 1

I’ll be giving a talk in London at the Middlesex U. Philosophy Department on Tuesday, March 1.  Details here.  This is one of the most progressive philosophy departments around and it’s a real honor to speak there, even more so since the department is under threat of being shut down and the site of a major struggle between faculty/students/supporters worldwide and the administration. I’ll be discussing some of my post-IPOC ideas about Buddhism and what the meaning of the word practice is, within Buddhism, but also more broadly in contemporary life.  More specifically I’ll be reading the work of French philosopher Alain Badiou from a Buddhist perspective, which if you know Badiou’s post-Maoist, rigorously materialist philosophy at all, might sound like a highly improbable thing to do.  The work involves rethinking Buddhism (or at least my own relation to Buddhism) as much as rethinking Badiou.  I’ll save the details, which involve German Marxists Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin, Tibetan modernist Gedun Choephel, Chairman Mao, Cantor’s set theory amongst others, for the talk.

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