The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! 😌
h2oetry's review against another edition
3.0
A decent, quick read that might serve well (sort of) as an introduction to Badiou.
piccoline's review against another edition
3.0
[EDITED]
I love the conceit of this book, but the execution falters as it goes along. Book versions of speeches that Badiou has been delivering to the young around France? Helping them to think about how to imagine a new, different, better future than this dismal present? I love that idea.
And it starts strong. The first chapter, which is the first half of the book, is great. Very accessible, readable, perceptive about the ways that our current situation is distorted and unjust and with some important insights about how we might move forward. I'm not even necessarily opposed to the idea of using the second and third chapters to address Boys, then Girls (though there could have been fruitful additional work beyond that (false) binary -- though in fairness to AB, he's here responding to a World System that still does all it can to funnel all children into those two (cis) categories, and you see in his analysis that the different world he is encouraging the youth to imagine/build does indeed open up space to avoid those old binaries). But as he moves into the latter chapters/speeches, his commitment to brevity does not combine well with his use of more technical language. Now, maybe in France there's some undercurrent of Lacanian thinking that renders phrases like "Name-of-the-Father" legible even to high school students... but I guess I doubt it? There's still some good stuff in those last two chapters, but the brevity also works against the overarching argument. Where in the first chapter we get a good diagnosis, the prescriptions for treatment in these latter two chapters seem like only a first draft. AB is at least open about this. He is suggesting some ideas, but he's also (and this is to his credit) putting the burden on these youth. He emphasizes his own limitations and talks about the differences between the society in which he grew up and the society they inhabit now. (This also provides a good window on the fact that it is not the case that EVERYTHING IS WORSE, which I feel like is sometimes the lazy dismissal of reactionary thinkers for the more egalitarian thinkers.)
[EDITED TO ADD THIS:] Though I'm not sure it's unique to him, I did find provocative the ideas, teased out in the last two chapters, that the breakdown of initiation rituals under Late Capital has had the twin effect of trapping boys as boys, in a perpetual adolescence that serves capital by their devotion to acquisition of more and more toys forever, and the flip-side, which is that girls are rendered as girl-woman from the start, already freighted with the responsibilities of even before they have crossed into the age where historically they would have been more formally transitioned to adulthood. (Badiou, to his credit, carries out this analysis without ever glorifying or calling for a return to the old and outmoded forms of initiation and ways-of-being.) But this analysis was presented in a way that was really only a gesture at a beginning. It strikes me as a possible fruitful beginning (and, again, could be made even more fruitful by fully engaging beyond these old binaries and their supposed fixedness) but is only a beginning here. He passes this task along to the youth, which again is a gesture I actually appreciate. [END ADDITIONAL MATERIAL.]
Worth a look, and it's a quick read, but it's unfortunate that a book that made me think, for its first half, "I'm going to buy copies of this and give it to some young people I know!" had mostly dissipated that impulse in me by the end. I may still give away a few copies, but they might also come with the comment, "You can get away with just reading the first chapter. If you read the rest... well, let's use it to start a conversation."
I love the conceit of this book, but the execution falters as it goes along. Book versions of speeches that Badiou has been delivering to the young around France? Helping them to think about how to imagine a new, different, better future than this dismal present? I love that idea.
And it starts strong. The first chapter, which is the first half of the book, is great. Very accessible, readable, perceptive about the ways that our current situation is distorted and unjust and with some important insights about how we might move forward. I'm not even necessarily opposed to the idea of using the second and third chapters to address Boys, then Girls (though there could have been fruitful additional work beyond that (false) binary -- though in fairness to AB, he's here responding to a World System that still does all it can to funnel all children into those two (cis) categories, and you see in his analysis that the different world he is encouraging the youth to imagine/build does indeed open up space to avoid those old binaries). But as he moves into the latter chapters/speeches, his commitment to brevity does not combine well with his use of more technical language. Now, maybe in France there's some undercurrent of Lacanian thinking that renders phrases like "Name-of-the-Father" legible even to high school students... but I guess I doubt it? There's still some good stuff in those last two chapters, but the brevity also works against the overarching argument. Where in the first chapter we get a good diagnosis, the prescriptions for treatment in these latter two chapters seem like only a first draft. AB is at least open about this. He is suggesting some ideas, but he's also (and this is to his credit) putting the burden on these youth. He emphasizes his own limitations and talks about the differences between the society in which he grew up and the society they inhabit now. (This also provides a good window on the fact that it is not the case that EVERYTHING IS WORSE, which I feel like is sometimes the lazy dismissal of reactionary thinkers for the more egalitarian thinkers.)
[EDITED TO ADD THIS:] Though I'm not sure it's unique to him, I did find provocative the ideas, teased out in the last two chapters, that the breakdown of initiation rituals under Late Capital has had the twin effect of trapping boys as boys, in a perpetual adolescence that serves capital by their devotion to acquisition of more and more toys forever, and the flip-side, which is that girls are rendered as girl-woman from the start, already freighted with the responsibilities of even before they have crossed into the age where historically they would have been more formally transitioned to adulthood. (Badiou, to his credit, carries out this analysis without ever glorifying or calling for a return to the old and outmoded forms of initiation and ways-of-being.) But this analysis was presented in a way that was really only a gesture at a beginning. It strikes me as a possible fruitful beginning (and, again, could be made even more fruitful by fully engaging beyond these old binaries and their supposed fixedness) but is only a beginning here. He passes this task along to the youth, which again is a gesture I actually appreciate. [END ADDITIONAL MATERIAL.]
Worth a look, and it's a quick read, but it's unfortunate that a book that made me think, for its first half, "I'm going to buy copies of this and give it to some young people I know!" had mostly dissipated that impulse in me by the end. I may still give away a few copies, but they might also come with the comment, "You can get away with just reading the first chapter. If you read the rest... well, let's use it to start a conversation."
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