From the philosophy of theatre to performance philosophy: Laruelle, Badiou and the equality of thought

This article draws from François Laruelle’s non-standard philosophy to locate gestures of philosophical ‘authority’ or ‘sufficiency’ within recent work in the philosophy of theatre – including material from contemporary Anglo-American philosophical aesthetics, and texts by Alain Badiou, such as In Praise of Theatre (2015). Whilst Badiou initially appears magnanimous in relation to theatre’s own thinking - famously describing theatre as ‘an event of thought’ that ‘directly produces ideas’ (Badiou 2005: 72) - I argue that this very benevolence, from a Laruellean perspective, constitutes another form of philosophical authoritarianism. In contrast, I indicate some affinities between Laruelle’s non-standard aesthetics and the emerging field of Performance Philosophy - one aim of which, as distinct from the philosophy of theatre, would be to allow performance to qualitatively extend our concepts of thinking and/or to be attentive to the ways in which performance has already provided new forms of philosophy