Friday 12th April
Workshop at 2.15-3.45pm in the IVY Dance Studio
A reading group session on Alain Badiou’s In Praise of Love
Badiou_InPraiseOfLove.pdf
Facilitated by Melissa Blanco Borelli and Efrosini Protopapa
In his book In Praise of Love (2009), a title Alain Badiou borrows from the homonymous film by Jean-Luc Godard, the French philosopher discusses love as a concept that although rarely tackled by philosophers, deserves critical reflection in the context of our contemporary neoliberal and libertarian times. He speaks of love as a risky process. It may start as a contingent encounter taking on the appearance of destiny, but soon becomes a demanding journey that requires endurance and a re-invention of the subject as she or he experiences the world through difference.
As lovers of performance and its even lovelier risks, we would like to succumb to Badiou’s propositions in relation to performance. If the notion of encounter and fear (what Badiou describes as stage fright) are so crucial in his understanding of love, then how might we look at performance practice and scholarship through the lens of such love? How does our (contemporary) experience of love feed into our various practices of performance? If Badiou states that ‘philosophy requires its practitioners of either gender to assume the roles of savant, artist, activist and lover’, how can we understand the field of Performance Philosophy through the concepts of love he presents? In pursuing this enquiry we will talk, think, write and perhaps cry as we listen to a song or two, watch some film snippets, and bring into the conversation heartbreaks and choreography, Carla Bruni and Tina Turner.
