Five Lessons On Wagner Pa

For over a century, Richard Wagnerrs"s music has been the subject of intense debate among philosophers, many of whom have attacked its ideological-some say racist and reactionary-underpinnings. In this major new work, Alain Badiou, radical philosopher and keen Wagner enthusiast, offers a detailed reading of the critical responses to the composerrs"s work, which include Adornors"s writings on the composer and Wagnerrs"s recuperation by Nazism as well as more recent readings by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and others. Slavoj Zizek provides an afterword, and both philosophers make a passionate case for re-examining the relevance of Wagner to the contemporary world.

Alain Badiou is the author of Being and Event, Logics of Worlds, Ethics, Metapolitics, Polemics, The Communist Hypothesis, The Meaning of Sarkozy and Pocket Pantheon. He teaches philosophy at the cole Normale Suprieure.