Rituals of Contingency. Essay on Badiou, Wagner, Cage.

Theory & Event has published my essay "Rituals of Contingency" in its most recent issue. The text can also be found on academia.edu, by following this link. The abstract:

Badiou’s politics stresses the need for new fictions dissociated from the Great Names of history. By contrast, his views on art remain largely historical, focusing on names, schools and oeuvres, rather than on the artistic process itself. His views on Wagner, and his ideal of a non-transcendent ritual, are contrasted with the more process-oriented, open, immanent rituals of John Cage. Intersecting the poetics of the communist philosopher with those of the anarchist composer opens the possibility of a new interpretation of the immanent ritual and new values of freedom through the notion of a contingent form of discipline.