Badiou Alain - The incident at Antioch: a tragedy in three acts = Lincident dantioche: trag edie en trois actes

The Incident at Antioch is a key play marking Alain Badious transition from classical Marxism to a politics of subtraction far removed from party and state. Written with striking eloquence and extraordinary poetic richness, and shifting from highly serious emotional and intellectual drama to surreal comic interlude, the work features statesmen, workers, and revolutionaries struggling to reconcile the nature and practice of politics.

This bilingual edition presents LIncident dAntioche in its original French and, in the perfect bound edition on facing pages, an expertly executed English translation. Badiou adds a special preface, and an introduction by the scholar Kenneth Reinhard connects the play to Paul Claudels The City, Saint Paul and the early history of the Church, and the innovative mathematical thinking of Paul Cohen. The translation includes Susan Spitzers extensive notes clarifying allusions and quotations and hinting at Badious intentions. An interview with Badiou encompasses the plays settings, themes, and events, as well as his ongoing literary and conceptual experimentation on stage and off.

Badiou resembles Sartre in the versatility, creativity, and energy that make them major literary authors as well as philosophers. It is a measure of Spitzers talent as a translator that she manages to preserve the literariness of Badious language -- its difficulty, strangeness, and beauty -- while making it vivid and fluid and consistent with the syntactical and grammatical demands of English.

(Joseph Litvak, Tufts University )

Badiou is one of very few writers for the theater to reflect explicitly on the contemporary possibilities and limits of political theater.

(Peter Hallward, Kingston University )