An impossible marriage? the (non-)rapport of art and politics in the philosophy of Alain Badiou

This article maps the complex trajectory of the rapport between art and politics in Alain Badiou’s work. While Badiou’s commitment to thinking through the significance of art and politics has not altered in the course of his career, the relationship he proposes between these conditions has been subject to revisions and vicissitudes. We will begin with a reading of Badiou’s first published philosophical work where, in opposition to other Marxist thinkers of his milieu, Badiou severs or desutures art from politics. Later on, however, he recognises that the truths produced by art and those produced by politics must be brought in dialogue and may indeed be seen as co-respondent or compossible. Finally, in his latest major work, Badiou revives the rapport between art and politics as a consequence of this compossibility, and goes on to even fuse the artistic with the political in his account of cinema.