Politics, perhaps? Philosophical authority in the works of Badiou and Žižek

Abstract

Postmodern philosophy has recently been critiqued for its purported indecisiveness and limited capacity to think radical political change. This thesis engages with key contemporary critics of postmodernism such as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek in order to reaffirm postmodern philosophy’s significance and political import. In doing so, phenomena such as excess, laziness, and pessimism, are explored as potential sites of resistance to late-capitalist hegemony, which reveal the significance of postmodern thought against its detractors.