Reading Badiou’s Inaesthetics
With Gorica Orsholits
📅 SATURDAYS: bi-weekly, starting November 21, 2026.
⏱️ 13:00-14:30 Eastern US time / 19:00-20:30 Central European Time. See time zone converter if you’re in a different location to make sure you get the time right.
🔗 A Zoom link will be provided on registration.
📖 Readings will be provided on registration.
💰 $10 per month
GROUP DESCRIPTION
Is there any mutualism between art and philosophy? Can philosophy contribute to art and vice versa? Is anti-philosophy actually just one of many philosophies which is able to better comprehend artistic expression and lead to a mutual consensus?
Ever since Plato proclaimed all arts as inappropriate for life in Ancient Greek society and permitted only military or patriotic music and songs, art has gone through many phases of existence. For Badiou art belongs to the four truth procedures related to philosophy alongside love, politics and science. In his book Handbook of Inaesthetics he examined poetry, theatre, cinema, and dance in order to elucidate the relationship between philosophy and art. Badiou’s perception of this link can be summarised as follows:
“Historically, philosophy and art are paired up like Lacan’s Master and Hysteric. We know that the hysteric comes to the master and says: ‘Truth speaks through my mouth, I am here. You have knowledge, tell me who I am.’ […] In so doing, the hysteric takes charge of the master, ‘barring’ him from mastery and becoming his mistress. Likewise, art is always already there, addressing the thinker with the mute and scintillating question of its identity while through constant invention and metamorphosis it declares its disappointment about everything that the philosopher may have to say about it.” (translated by Alberto Toscano)
The aim of the reading group is to approach Badiou’s artistic configuration in Inaesthetics from a philosophical standpoint, as well as from an anti-philosophical ground specifically developed by the influence of his reading of Nietzsche, in his words the “prince of anti-philosophy.” Through Nietzschean anti-Platonism and his entire effort “to be cured of the sickness of Plato” we can ask if Badiou seeks to dance with Nietzsche in Plato’s Republic. What Badiou aims to accomplish by entering the realm of anti-philosophy is to allow philosophy to remain alive and active while creating a rapprochement with art. Does artistic expression as a sensory, intuitive and finite practice demonstrate the potential of rendering the truth of an event (a rupture of given orders of being and understanding) and what role can it play for “true life” to happen? And more generally, how can “the experience of the limit – philosophy as a limit experience” be overcome?
We can agree or disagree with Badiou’s propositions, but the goal of this reading group is to refine our own thoughts on this vicious entanglement between philosophy, anti-philosophy and art. All participants can also propose texts they consider relevant for this topic, and together through readings and discussions we can build a space for future Incite seminars.
GROUP MATERIALS
The main reading will be Handbook of Inaesthetics by Alain Badiou translated by Alberto Toscano as well as excerpts from the journal INAESTHETICS edited by Wilfried Dickhoff & Marcus Steinweg and Nietzsche: anti-philosophy 1 also by Badiou. All texts will be provided.
FACILITATOR
Gorica Orsholits (PhD) is an independent scholar, theoretician, artist, and musician (flautist). She studied and taught at the University of Toronto and the European Graduate School from which she received her PhD under the supervision of the French poet Philippe Beck. She has lectured extensively and participated in numerous international conferences. Dr. Orsholits is on the Advisory Board of Inscriptions and was board member and convenor of the seminar at the Ereignis Center for Philosophy and the Arts. Her research interests are in continental philosophy, poetry and poetics, literary theory, film, music, and theatre. Her chapter “Event and its Compossibility with Truths and Subject in Badiou’s Thought” will appear in the forthcoming volume Contributions to Continental Event-philosophy (Mohr Siebeck). She resides in Geneva, Switzerland.
REGISTRATION
