The Void and the Mark

Abstract

In this introductory chapter, MacKenzie makes his case for the alignment of Badiou’s thinking on art to that of the canonical modernists Eliot, Stevens, and Pound. For Badiou, that thinking has traditionally been anchored in the concept of the void, both the foreclosure and guarantee of coherent thought. Badiou’s more recent writing, however, exhibits a willingness to open and explore the void within his own discourse, a gesture away from his previously strict regime of metaphysics that echoes the aspirations of the modernist writers examined herein. Indeed MacKenzie argues that where Badiou hopes to go, the modernists have already been.