Alain Badiou
After studying philosophy, Alain Badiou becomes a secondary school teacher, then a university professor in Vincennes, before joining the École Normale Supérieure Ulm. As a political activist, he is a member of the Unified Socialist Party, before creating in 1969 the Maoist Union of Communists of France Marxist-Leninist (UCFML). From 1985 to 2007, he serves as the secretary to the Organisation politique, which supports illegal immigrants. His love for the theatre leads him to work with Antoine Vitez, before writing a series of plays on his own: Ahmed le subtil (Ahmed the Subtle, 1984), Ahmed philosophe (Ahmed the Philosopher, 1995), Les Citrouilles (The Pumpkins, 1996). He has written essays about the theatre -Beckett, l'increvable désir or Éloge du théâtre—and is also a novelist and a polemicist, active in the political life of France and the world. Recognising Plato as one of his masters, he publishes in 2012 his version of Plato's Republic, the result of several years of an almost-daily work of re-reading and rewriting.
