Who hasn't had the frightening experience of stumbling around in the pitch dark? Alain Badiou experienced that primitive terror when he, with his young friends, made up a game called "The Stroke of Midnight.

Translator's note Childhood and youth Military black The Stroke of Midnight The black dog in the dark The inkwell Chalk and markers Confusions Early sexuality The dialectics of black Dialectical ambiguities Black souls Soulages' ultrablack Flags Red and black. And white. And violet. Stendhal: the red and the black The dark desire of/for darkness Clothing The black sign Black humor, or black vs. black Outward appearance Physics, biology, and anthropology The metaphorical black of the Cosmos The secret blackness of plants Animal black An invention of white people

“Badiou’s Black is a singular and remarkable book. This is not the Badiou of ontology, set theory and the theorization of subjectivity, nor the Badiou of incisive political intervention or philosophical-historical summation. Working through a series of ficto-critical vignettes, Black is composed of subtle and diverse meditations on black as a darkness that obscures at the same time as it discloses. Black at once hearkens back to a style of personal philosophy that seemed lost with Blanchot, while also looking forward to a new mode of singular meditation that is perhaps necessary for twenty-first-century thought.” Claire Colebrook, Penn State University"Alain Badiou's Black: The Brilliance of a Noncolor is a radical departure for the impenetrable thinker of Theory of the Subject and Being and Event. It's more in the tradition of Maurice Blanchot (or even Alexander Theroux, Mark Rothko) than Lacan or Althusser and casts an evocative pall over the way text, thought, and flesh have come to negotiate dark and light (black/white)."Minor Literatures