Badiou and Zizek on Mallarme: the critique of object-art

Badiou and Zizek on Mallarme: the critique of object-art

This paper examines the differences between Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek's articulations of 'impossibility' in their readings of the French experimental symbolist poet Stephane Mallarme. The discussion will focus on how Badiou and Zizek diverge in their respective understandings of
impossibility as a hallmark of the Lacanian Real in Mallarme's oeuvre. This difference is framed in light of the way that Badiou and Zizek consonantly turn to the modernist poet Mallarme to understand the conditions under which the subject can attempt to access this imperative/idea. Herein it will be shown that two relations become apparent: 'subtraction' and 'purification'; 'subtraction' as the removal of the imaginary contents from the subject's self-relation in an attempt to access the future anterieur and 'purification' as the attempt to purify the pure idea by locating the opaque core of the aesthetic object as the point of failure in the relation with the object.

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