The Name of a Problem. Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek and the Actuality of Communism

Abstract

The present paper looks into the new perspectives on communism. Basically, its aim is to explore the theoretical and political actuality of the latter. It mainly attends to the works of Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, but also deals with the ideas of other contemporary authors. Firstly, the paper discusses the difference between communism and socialism. After that, it reconstructs the Badiouian conception of the Idea and the hypothesis of communism. Later, it explains how Žižek’s work links together with Badiou’s arguments, and presents Žižek’s main critiques and modifications.  Finally, after a brief excursus on art and the utopian signs of the future included in it, the paper goes back to the intuition outlined at the beginning: communism is not an answer to nowadays questions; it represents the name of a problem that has to be thought over and over again.