Dewsbury, J-D. (2009) Performative, Non-representational, and Affect-Based Research: Seven Injunctions. In: DeLyser, D., Atkin, S., Crang, M., Herbert, S. & McDowell, L. (eds.) Handbook of Qualitative Research in Human Geography. London: Sage. Ch. 18

This is a very welcome paper to find in a handbook of research methods within human geography, advocating resolute experimentalism through the series of seven bold injunctions. Striking in its opening, the chapter is built around four key qualifications that are outlined early on. Firstly, there are few references to qualitative research in geography. Secondly, the emphasis is on the generation of problems rather than solutions. Thirdly, and perhaps unsurprisingly given Dewsbury’s other publications, there is an emphasis on the non-representational. Lastly, the paper attempts to stage the danger of scientism, the view that natural sciences have authority over all interpretations of life. As part of this ethos of disrupting, Dewsbury calls for us to strive to think the unthought and contends that this must take place at every step of the research because “[m]ethodology is far from dull: it is extremely political” (p. 323).

Following a lengthy (though necessary) introduction, the chapter opens out to explore some key agendas within performative research: thinking, sensing and presenting. Arguing that methodologies have always been somewhat improvised, Dewsbury suggests that approaches which fall broadly under the banner of the performative question why only some ways of knowing count. Put differently, performative research embraces the failures as much as the successes of research. This of course raises the thorny question of what might be considered a failure, and who might be able to decide whether or not something is a failure, an issue which is perhaps not adequately addressed. Running throughout the piece is the aforementioned series of injunctions, which are compared to proscriptions rather than prescriptions; proscriptions do not “suggest a formula or a known or better way to proceed to in performative methodological endeavour” (p. 322). This term reminded me of Whitehead’s (and more recently Isabelle Stengers’ and Erin Manning’s) use of propositions. Neither judgements nor necessarily true, propositions are theories-in-the-making, generative constraints for the opening of a relational process (Manning, 2009). Dewsbury’s injunctions-proscriptions-propositions encourage the reader to: embrace experimentation (rather than fret about the risks), have conviction in your experiments, not fear the judgement that tethers social science to scientific values (such as efficacy and rigour), remember you are producing an understanding of the world because it is not given, concentrate on experience, and to be more acute and cute in the research stories told.

The chapter is sharp, witty and eminently readable. It might even be described as a manifesto for doing non-representational geography. Witness:

“The idea is to get embroiled in the site and allow ourselves to be infected by the effort, investment, and craze of the particular practice or experience being investigated. Some might call this participation, but it is a mode of participation that is more artistic and, as with most artistic practices, it comes with the side-effect of making us more vulnerable and self-reflexive. It is not however an argument for losing ourselves in the activity and deterritorializing ourselves completely from our academic remit, but nor does it mean sitting on the sidelines and judging. Rather the move, in immersing ourselves in the space, is to gather a portfolio of ethnographic ‘exposures’ that can act as lightening rods for thought. It is then in those key ‘times out’ as we set upon generating inventive ways of addressing and intervening in that which is happening, and has happened, as an academic, that such a method produces its data: a series of testimonies to practice. This is of course the flipping over of ‘participant observation’ to ‘observant participation’ that Thrift made (2000) to emphasise the serious empirical involvement involved in non-representational theory’s engagement with practices, embodiment and materiality.” (p. 326-327)

It is not however, Dewsbury reminds us, a question of ‘anything goes’. Embracing uncertainty through experimentation and employing an extended notion of the empirical – where encounters might include readings of philosophy, material sites or even research problematics – might allow for alternative methodological strategies (see also Adkins & Lury, 2009). Therefore, alongside an ethos of disrupting, there is also an “ethos of stretching the means by which research is done and striving to continue as experiments fail or always come short in the attempt” (p. 323). Here, research is treated as an ongoing process, where data – or rather materials (see Whatmore, 2003) – could, and perhaps should, include “the feelings, the codes, the awkward intensities, the architected space, the architecture of time, to name but a few” (p. 326). The attempt at the articulation of these empirical experiences or events is more important than its success; indeed, the very attempt to articulate is part of a project which takes materials seriously, allowing them to work-with, and against, initial research questions. Approaches need to be adapted to each singular situation; there is no one-size-fits-all methodology which can be used and re-used again and again. To combat this methodological conservatism we are encouraged to engage with resolute experimentalism, at once productive, proliferative and interfering.

References

Adkins, L. & Lury, C. (2009) Introduction: What Is the Empirical? European Journal of Social Theory, 12(1): 5-20

Manning, E. (2009) Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Whatmore, S. (2003) Generating materials. In: Pryke, M., Rose, G. & Whatmore, S. (eds.) Using Social Theory: Thinking Through Research. London: Sage

Harvie, J. (2009) theatre & the city / Ridout, M. (2009) theatre & ethics. Palgrave MacMillan: Basingstoke

A new series of books simply called ‘theatre & …’ has been launched, with the series’ editors – Jen Harvie and Dan Rebellato – looking to explore the “restless interdisciplinary energy of theatre and performance” and yet be short enough to be read in one sitting. The collection includes audience, the city, politics, education, human rights, globalization and ethics, with more forthcoming: museums, sexuality, nation, feeling, interculturalism, Ireland and architecture¹. This review looks at just two books in the series, the city and ethics, and how they speak both to each other and some of the work which is on-going in cultural geography. Both books are short: even with a section on ‘further reading’ and a useful index, they are around 80 pages and are small enough to fit in your back pocket. Necessarily selective (as is this review), the structure of both books is straightforward and the arguments are maintained throughout. Nicholas Ridout explores theatre as a practice through which we experiment with ethical action and Jen Harvie investigates the relationships between theatre, performance and the city. Whilst both are eminently readable and very informative, this review tries to open up new lines of enquiry which are neglected.

Ridout’s volume is split into three sections – ancient, modern and post-modern – and attends to theatre as an ethical practice; put differently, what is theatre for, and how do audiences interact with it? He begins by opening up the space of ethics (12)², by asking the reader what ethics is: ‘how shall I act?’ (1). Early on, we are alerted that theatre and performance are valued for their ethical stance, or the ethical responses it can generate from audiences, and an argument takes shape: is there a risk that performances are only valued for what they might offer ethics?  Do we instead need an unethical or anti-ethical theatre (9)? Theatre dramatises ethical situations; the role of the spectator is one of observer and participant. Ethical dilemmas are deployed to resonate, or perhaps produce, ethico-political concerns of a public. As with Bertold Brecht’s (1898-1956) plays – one of Ridout’s examples – they serve to provoke discussion, for the issues to be debated. Here, the theatrical text resembles a musical score, with its focus on “processes of improvisation, rewriting and discussion”; the practice of theatre becomes “a collective labour of political and ethical exploration” (48).

The relationship between theatre and ethics, Ridout notes, is one of form rather than content: how you make theatre and the relationships you establish in the making of it. This focus on form and processes “goes hand in hand with an openness to the future and the unpredictable rather than a closure around a specific ethical position” and establishes a “space for the unknown, the unpredictable … typical of a reorientation of ethical thought which started to take shape in the middle of the twentieth century” (49). Here, performance can be understood as an ethical practice (54). Drawing on the work of Hans-Thies Lehmann, Ridout highlights the concept of ‘response-ability’, a capacity to respond which is ethical and political, or ethico-political. This foregrounds how in the act of responding to something, we are also taking responsibility for it (59). The performance group Goat Island are a useful example through which to think this concept: their “work is an always open process, and performances are instances of a further opening of the process towards a public rather than moments of conclusion or accomplishment” (61-62). The performances call upon “its audience to think about their own engagements and responsibilities” (65) and although Ridout is not making a call for shock tactics, he does advocate the “possibility of surprise, challenge or affront” (70).

Jen Harvie’s contribution to the series is equally adroit in her attempt to work together material conditions and performative practices. The book opens with a foreword (following the Series Editors’ Preface) from Tim Etchells, with a refrain of ‘why city?’ This style somewhat clashed with the rest of the text but worked well, as a means of drawing the reader in. By exploring the relationship between theatre and the city, the book looks to redistribute “some of cultural materialism’s caution and performativity’s hope” (69). Cultural materialism has been influential in theatre analysis, Harvie argues, and understands cultural practices as inseparable from the conditions of their production and reception in history, as well as involved in the production of cultural meaning which is always political. These cultural practices include “play texts and theatre events, but also working in the theatre, funding it, situating it in the city” (24). She makes a case for cultural materialism being a useful approach as it investigates the political and social consequences of our cultural practices. For all the mention of space and place, it is thus disappointing to read that space is understood as a material condition, space as a container or already made. This tendency to treat space, or geography, as a ‘factor’ comes in for similar criticism from Steven Shapin when talking about work done in science studies ³. Further, there is a tendency to deconstruct: ““some meaning is immediately readable in a theatre’s urban location” (26). Looking for a meaning; imposing meaning? Harvie does, however, offer some critique, noting that this approach “focuses on material conditions, perhaps to the exclusion of other relevant conditions such as how theatre makes us feel and behave” (43).  It is perhaps for these reasons that Harvie is keen to draw attention to performative writings and practices.

Performative analysis “concentrates overwhelmingly on the ways people can and do act with freedom to self-author, exercising agency, control and power through everyday acts of self-articulation and self-creation” (45). But what might this mean? Harvie provides many examples, both historical and contemporary and these help to investigate the utopian potentials for challenging hegemonic oppression (48); some of this work resonates with recent papers on psychogeography⁴. The flâneur of Paris in the 1930s confounded “dominant uses of the city by casually strolling through it” making his or her own pathways, his or her own version of it through this performance (49).  The dérive, or drifting, would follow the walker’s desire paths and can be understood as a sort of intervention: “acts meant to be seen and to see things differently – aimed at transforming capitalist society” (50). The ‘happenings’ of 1960s “eschewed theatrical and fine art conventions, avoided linear plotting and realistic characterisation, could appear illogical and collage-like, and usually involved a handful of performers, as themselves, executing a variety of tasks derived from the everyday and not intended to appear fictional” (54). This notion of a happening is both performance and event, situation and art, and arguably opens up the prospect of surprise, as mentioned in Ridout’s book. These happenings challenged audience and performer separation and were not restricted to set texts, tended to be temporary and were difficult to commodify. More recent examples of performances include site-specific artists’ walks⁵, urban protest, Critical Mass and ‘highly visible performative interventions’ which are all parts of alternative culture. Although restricted for space, it is a shame that there is no link made between these guerrilla activities and the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, specifically on micropolitics⁶.

Harvie’s argument to hybridise cultural materialist and performative analytic strategies and use them to think across theatre and performance practices together comes late on in the book and is perhaps not as strong as the rest of the text. Along with her call for us to redistribute caution (cultural materialism) and hope (performative analysis), she argues that theatre and performance practices are part of the same ‘ecology’, that instead of looking at different practices separately we should consider how they relate to each other. So far, so good. Yet she goes on to claim that a hybrid approach provides “complexity to understand the complex cultural effects of contemporary urban life” (70). Harvie admits that the “[t]he story told by this book so far is one of ambivalence” (70) but the conclusion does not seem to alter this.

Although a somewhat arbitrary selection of theatre studies and everything else, these seem to be productive encounters. The books provide a good overview of key debates and concepts and develop an argument. Geography’s interest in thinking the event, performance and performativity, as well as its continued concern with ethics means that these books are certainly of much interest to geographers.

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Guattari, F. (2008) The Three Ecologies. London: Continuum

Although Genesko (2002: 1) argues that “…Guattari remains unknown, unless it is through his problematic subsumption as partner of Gilles Deleuze”, his work has undergone a recent revival of sorts. There has been a conference discussing Guattari’s ideas¹, a special issue (called ‘l’effet-guattari’) of the French journal Multitudes which was the partial result of that conference² and there have been books written by Franco Berradi (2008) and Gary Genesko (2009), as well as a new version of the collection of texts and interviews called Chaosophy (2008). Taking this renaissance as a point of departure, this review is primarily of one of the translated texts written by Guattari. The Three Ecologies (TE) was finished in 1989, only appearing in English a decade or so afterwards³. Now, twenty years on, this particular edition includes not only Guattari’s short essay but a comprehensive introduction and a marvellous chapter on his life and work, through his own concept of transversality.

The TE is a deceptively short essay, only 32 pages long, sandwiched between the introduction and an article by Genesko. Guattari seeks to extend the definition of ecology to encompass social relations and human subjectivity as well as environmental concerns and argues that a new ecosophical approach must be found. As much a manifesto for a new way of thinking as a critique of capitalism (or IWC, more on this later), Guattari presents a view of our Earth “on the brink of ecocide” (TE: 2). This ecosophical approach, broadening our views to include the three ecologies, is the only way we will be able to affect any enduring changes in our environment. The three ecologies of the title – natural ecology, the social ecologies of relations and cultures, and the mental ecology of individual subjectivity – are the focus of the essay, in which he discusses the problems of neoliberal capital as a combination of mental dulling, social homogenisation and conformity, and ecological destruction and crisis. There is a need, he argues, to recover intensities through a process of developing heterogeneity and dissensus (see TE: 9), though at the same time constructing a unified social movement against neoliberalism. People need to reclaim their subjectivities and build existential territories of their own.

Guattari’s target of condemnation is what he calls ‘Integrated World Capitalism’ (IWC) – akin to globalisation (see Jones, 2002) – that, through a series of techno-scientific transformations, has brought us to the brink of ecological disaster, causing a so-called disequilibrium of the world natural environment from which the Earth will take many generations to recover, if at all. IWC is “delocalized and deterritorialized to such an extent that it is impossible to locate its sources of power” (TE: 6). Part of Guattari’s thesis is that the expansion in communications technology, and, in particular, the development of world telecommunications, has served to shape a new type of passive subjectivity, saturating the unconscious in conformity with global market forces. IWC therefore poses a direct threat to the environment in ways that are now all too familiar to us: pollution of all forms, extinction and depletion of species with the consequent reduction of biodiversity. As we find ourselves in this nightmarish historical period, Guattari contends that the traditional means of political mobilization and resistance are not merely inappropriate; they are becoming impossible. In their place, we must address and connect our threatened ecologies through a “logic of intensities” whose articulative principle is not rational and scientific but “ethico-aesthetic” (see TE: 45).

There are a few points of conflict, however. It is rather surprising that Guattari speaks of a global environmental crisis; this is the sort of meta-narrative which post-structuralism normally takes issue with (Jones, 2002: 357). Perhaps more problematic is the manner in which Guattari writes of technology. Whilst his psychological and social perspectives remain as radical as ever, Guattari tends to naturalise such phenomena as technological development and population growth. This does not sit comfortably with the radicality of his critique of other taken-for-granted phenomena.

Gary Genesko’s essay ‘The Life and Work of Félix Guattari: From Transversality to Ecosophy’⁴ is excellent, providing a study of Guattari’s scholastic career through his shifting sense of ‘transversality’. Genesko has a long-standing interest (see also: Genesko, 1996; 2002; 2009) and here he provides a wide-ranging, and engagingly written, introduction to Guattari’s work. By examining Guattari’s influences – from Sartre to Freud and Lacan – Genosko situates him in the field of psychoanalytic theory, usefully revitalizing many of Lacan’s and Freud’s ideas by coupling them with Sartre’s existential sociology. “[N]ature cannot be separated from culture” (TE: 29); indeed, Guattari conceives of ecology as a realm encompassing the environmental, the social and the mental. His ecosophical perspective of subjectivity, in large part, is a product of his Lacanian training, his experience as a working psychoanalyst and his attempt to reorient Freudianism towards the future (see TE: 156). Guattari understands subjectivity according to his concept of ‘transversality’, a concept that dates from the mid-1960s and which Guattari developed over his lifetime. This transversalist conception of subjectivity “escapes the individual-social distinction as well as the givenness or preformedness of the subject either as a person or individual; subjectivity is both collective and auto-producing” (TE: 145-146).

Wolf-Meyer (2003) argues that the translators/editors’ notes do not connect Guattari with the larger world of contemporary theory and aesthetics – that they only entrench him further in the insular world of Deleuze and Guattari’s scholarship – but this reader would argue that the notes are always a pleasure to follow-up. There is a great deal of detail and many points of interest, as well as suggestions for further readings (see TE: 79-106). Highlights include the translation of the French word ritournelle (TE: 87n.25), a discussion of Guattari’s reading of Sartre (TE: 84n.10) and his reference to one of Kafka’s characters (TE: 90n.32).

This book is a useful introduction and outline of Félix Guattari’s ideas. The translators/editors, Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton provide an opening which helps to situate the TE within a broader field, both of Guattari’s work and also ecological struggle. Like much of Guattari’s earlier work, without Deleuze, this work has overt political importance. Although the language deployed can at times be rather obscure, his terms ‘ecosophy’ and ‘transversality’ are full of potential. On to Chaosmosis⁵ next…

Berradi, F. (2008) Félix Guattari: Thought, Friendship, and Visionary Cartography. London: Palgrave

Genesko, G. (1996) Guattari Reader. Oxford : Blackwells

Genesko, G. (2002) Félix Guattari: An Abberrant Introduction. London: Continuum

Genesko, G. (2009) Felix Guattari: A Critical Introduction. London: Pluto Press

Guattari, F. (1995[1992]) Chaosmosis. Sydney: Power Publications

Guattari, F. (2008) Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972-1977. New York: Semiotext(e)

Jones, O. (2002) The three ecologies: Félix Guattari [Book Review]. Journal of Rural Studies, 18(3): 357-358

Wolf-Meyer (2003) Guattari, Felix: The Three Ecologies (2000) [Review]. Reconstruction, 3(1)

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Badiou, A. (2005) Infinite Thought. London: Continuum

It has only been in the last decade or so that Alain Badiou’s work has been translated into English; since then his (radical) ideas have percolated into various disparate areas of study. Within geography, two recent papers explicitly draw on Badiou’s work (see Bassett, 2008; and Dewsbury, 2007) and have provided very thorough commentaries on his innovative philosophy. As part of this on-going venture of translation, Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens have collated what they describe as a representative selection of Badiou’s work: Infinite Thought (IT). In this collection of essays, Alain Badiou addresses the problem of the current end-state of philosophy and attempts to re-invigorate the discipline. He identifies the source of disquiet in the major branches of modern philosophy and pleads for an interruption to these practices in order to take a different position and find a way to allow a notion of truth to re-emerge as a legitimate philosophical concern. Rupture, or interruption as Hewson (2006) remarks, is a key word here, suggesting a radical shift towards truth and not meaning, things and not words.

Arguably the highlights of this collection are to be found at the beginning and the end of the book: Feltham and Clemens provide not only an excellent introduction to Badiou and his philosophical project but also include an interview with the man himself (‘Ontology and Politics’), which serves to query the nature of truth, situations and events. Following the introduction there are eight chapters which are entitled ‘Philosophy and …’; these topics include: desire, truth, politics, psychoanalysis, art, cinema, the ‘death of communism’ and the ‘war against terrorism’. It is only in the penultimate chapter that Badiou, albeit briefly, describes his definition of philosophy. It is perhaps worth noting that the translators\\editors have adapted the previous titles of the papers to create thematic chapter headings. The origins of these papers are in fact rather varied: three were presented at conferences in Australia in 1999 (1, 2 & 4), two are from Badiou’s book Conditions¹ (5 & 9) and the others are from journals (3 & 6), a book (7) and a talk in Paris (8). The last chapter, the interview, or rather a discussion, took place in Australia (10).

Truth is the central notion of Badiou’s philosophy: truth is what disturbs\\ destroys\\ interrupts the order of knowledge or politics. What is true forces us to commit ourselves to some new idea or new world of ideas. Truth occurs in an event to a subject, and it cannot fold itself into preformed or known categories. It proceeds in the subject in an act of faith on the one hand, but (being unknown and therefore unsayable) proceeds by chance and adhering to the lessons of the event. What is unnameable thereby becomes a kind of clean slate upon which the singular event and subject force their existence, generating something new in the face of the unknown. Hold on(!), I hear you say: what about Badiou’s ontology? And what does he mean by ‘event’?

Badiou understands mathematics as ontology²: maths speaks of or writes being (IT: 10). From this point of departure, he is able to draw on set theory which he argues makes no “claims concerning the nature of being, nor concerning the adequation of its categories to being” (IT: 13). Indeed, Badiou’s ontology is subtractive; it speaks of beings without reference to their attributes or identities. In effect, all qualities are subtracted. Already it is clear that there is a disconnect between ontology proper, the formal language of set theory, and meta-ontology, Badiou’s translation of set theory’s axioms and theorems into philosophical terms. This review does not dwell on set theory however, and is instead more interested in the notion of event which recurs throughout the book.

Badiou has a dramatic view of the event. For him, an event is a “major historical turning point, or moment of rupture in time and space, which brings something new into the world” (Bassett, 2008: 895). This is not the same as an ordinary event, such as a birthday, a sporting event or even death³; it is a totally disruptive occurrence (IT: 20) which is rare and unpredictable. Interestingly, although he employs the notion of rupture, Badiou is keen to stress that events cannot easily be recognised within a given state of affairs and thus have no well-defined location. Badiou suggests a certain fidelity to the event whereby it is named and believed to exist. He argues that “not every human being is always a subject, yet some human beings become subjects; those who act in fidelity to a chance encounter with an event which disrupts the situation they find themselves in” (IT: 5). Thus, an occurrence becomes an event to the extent that it is injected with subjective significance. Put differently: the singular truth, arising in an event, happens to (or calls into being) a subject.

Badiou argues that the nonlocation of an event and its relation to truth avoids a monolithic politics yet retains militancy: ‘truth’ emerges in the naming and militant fidelity. In other words, “someone must recognise and name that event as an event whose implications concern the nature of the entire situation” (IT: 20-21). It is quite possible that an event occurs in a situation but that nothing changes, simply because nobody recognises the event’s importance for the situation. Indeed, as Feltham & Clemens remark, they were required to create the neologism ‘evental-site’ (see IT: 28n.26), as ‘event-site’ would not be an appropriate translation for site événementiel, as it suggests that the site is defined by the occurrence of an event.

Although fidelity, event and situation are all technical terms of Badiou’s ontology, Feltham & Clemens remark that the “reader’s intuitive sense of these words can be trusted to provide an initial approximation” (IT: 26n.10). One way of thinking the event is through love. When two people fall in love, their ‘meeting’ (whether that meeting be a matter of hours\\days\\years\\life) forms an event for a couple in relation to which they change their lives; love changes their relation to the world irrevocably (IT: 5). The duration of the relationship depends, Badiou would argue, upon the couple’s “fidelity to that event and how they change according to what they discover through love” (ibid.). Although this hints at predestination, Badiou counters that there is “nothing other than chance encounters between particular humans and particular events; and subjects may be born out of such encounters” (IT: 6).

Here readers may begin to accuse Badiou of decisionism, an accusation he refutes wholeheartedly in the last chapter. To reiterate, the “crucial question is the event and the event is not the result of a decision [which he had claimed in his hefty tome ‘Being and Event’]”; the decision is to uniquely be faithful to the transformation of the logic of the situation (IT: 129-130). Philosophy, therefore, is “required to ensure that thought can receive and accept the drama of the event” (IT: 41), as well as “seize the event of truths, their newness, and their precarious trajectory” (IT: 57). Badiou writes that truth begins with an axiom of truth, a groundless decision: that the event has taken place (IT: 46). The truth is not, it occurs (IT: 125). If that’s hard enough to understand, there’s more: although a “a truth commences by an event, … this event has always disappeared or been abolished; there will never be any knowledge of it. The event thus forms the real and absent cause of truth” (IT: 65). Truth is something new⁴ (IT: 45), a commitment and an openness. Truth is something to which we commit ourselves, but it and we always must also remain open, because a new truth may strike at any time (Sartwell, 2005). Thus for Badiou, the event is a notion, “a sort of illumination” (IT: 140), although the consequences of an event within a situation are always very different.

There are, of course problems with Badiou’s work, some of them serious. Although Badiou no longer describes himself as a ‘Maoist’⁵, it can be rather disturbing to find Mao quoted as a political, or even philosophical, authority (see IT: 60, 102-103) which is rather ironic. This suggests that there is perhaps a totalitarian undercurrent even as he critiques totalitarianism. As it is, there are traces of Badiou’s movement towards a kind of anarchism, or at least a critique of the state (and its various machinations). Another awkward argument can be found in ‘Philosophy and politics’, where Badiou describes thought as the “specific mode by which a human animal is traversed and overcome by truth” (IT: 53, 55). This thinking seems to embrace a mind\\body separation which this reader, perhaps naively, had hoped was no longer.

Infinite Thought aims to “provide a brief, accessible introduction to the diversity and power of Badiou’s thought” (IT: 1) and it does not fail. As Hewson (2006: 376) notes, the “brevity and directness of the texts makes the book … a very useful introductory volume”. That the book is so concise is perhaps both the strength and the weakness of this collection: whilst the reader discovers many of Badiou’s arguments and interests, it can at times be difficult to follow the threads through the very focused yet discontinuous chapters. To be sure, Infinite Thought explores many themes and the discussions are at times frustratingly brief. Further, the editors\\translators do not reference the texts Badiou mentions, instead preferring to leave it to the reader to explore his oeuvre themselves. Although this rather ‘abrupt gesture’ (their description, not mine) is a shame, it does not dull the eagerness to read more of his work.

Basset, K. (2008) Thinking the event: Badiou’s philosophy of the event and the example of the Paris Commune. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26: 895-910

Dewsbury, J-D. (2007) Unthinking Subjectivities: the location of thought in thinking politics after the Badiouian event. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 32(4): 443-459

Hewson, M. (2006) A fixed point, a point of interruption. Cosmos and History, 2(1-2): 376-379

Sartwell, C. (2005) http://www.crispinsartwell.com/badiou.htm (last accessed: 19/01/09)

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