The Idea of Communism 2 The New York Conference [Paperback]

The first volume ofThe Idea of Communismfollowed the 2009 London conference called in response to Alain Badiou’s ‘communist hypothesis’, where an all-star cast of radical intellectuals put the idea of communism back on the map.

This volume brings together papers from the subsequent 2011 New York conference organized by Verso and continues this critical discussion, highlighting the philosophical and political importance of the communist idea, in a world of financial and social turmoil.

Contributors include Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar, Bruno Bosteels, Susan Buck-Morss, Jodi Dean, Adrian Johnston, François Nicolas, Frank Ruda, Emmanuel Terray and Slavoj Žižek.“Do not be afraid, join us, come back! You’ve had your anti-communist fun, and you are pardoned for it—time to get serious once again!”—Slavoj ŽižekSlavoj Žižekis a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books includeLiving in the End Times,First as Tragedy, Then as Farce,In Defense of Lost Causes, four volumes of the Essential Žižek, and many more.

Alain Badiouteaches philosophy at the E?cole normale supérieure and the Collège international de philosophie in Paris. In addition to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works, includingTheory of the Subject,Being and Event,Manifesto for Philosophy, andGilles Deleuze. His recent books includeThe Meaning of Sarkozy,Ethics,Metapolitics,Polemics,The Communist Hypothesis,Five Lessons on Wagner, andWittgenstein’s Anti-l-