Reflections on cinema and philosophy

First published in 2018, Alain Badiou's "Cinema and Philosophy" is doubtless one of the most lucid and accessible accounts of his own understanding of cinema and what it means for philosophy in general. Originally delivered as a keynote address at the University of New South Wales, Australia, the lecture itself constituted something of a culmination of his philosophical comprehension of film, an intellectual engagement that stretches back at least as far as 1957 with the publication of his remarkable (and remarkably prescient) article on "Cinematic Culture."1 The address moreover served as an occasion to respond to a number of potential issues concerning the somewhat uncertain and even conflicted position that cinema appears to hold in his own philosophical system, complications which arise in particular from its apparent status as an "inessential art."2 With this in mind, the purpose of this chapter is to provide some general considerations on the meaning of cinema and its relationship to both art and philosophy"”a relationship which is itself closely tied to a historically modernist ethos"”as well as offer some critical reflections on Badiou's responses. In doing so we see how cinema not only sheds crucial light on the other arts but also reveals Badiou's own approach to art as one that simultaneously reflects and repudiates certain core tenets of aesthetic modernism.