Unthinking subjects: Alain Badiou and the event of thought in thinking politics

Abstract

The paper introduces Alain Badiou's philosophy as a powerful resource for social science in rethinking the link between philosophy and politics. It argues the political imperative to unthink the subject as the key conceptual debate from which to array and define an alternative political agenda around which social science can effect and judge other potential points of transformative application upon the world. It highlights the spatiality of the event and the materialisation of counting politics in what Badiou calls the 'situation', situating these within geography's recent concerns over the ethics of anti-foundational thought and the manifesto of thinking politics aside from structural normatives. © 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2007.