Article
Slavery In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, and the Militant Intellectual from the Global South.
Theatre Survey
(2017)
Abstract
In this article I reinterpret Plato’s allegory of the cave as dramatizing democracy’s dependency on slave labor. Doing so, I argue that Plato allegorizes not the birth of the philosopher, as in the dominant readings of the allegory, but of the militant intellectual, one invested in the axiom of equality and the problem of emancipation. Equality, emancipation, intellectual militancy, and the meaning of Plato’s dramatic allegories are the main attributes of Alain Badiou’s and Jacques Rancière’s long investments in Plato’s Socratic plays, which explains why they are my main interlocutors in this article. However, in this article I argue that a decolonial interpretation of the allegory shows ways in which Rancière and Badiou’s interpretations of Plato ultimately undermine their own commitments to the axiom of equality by radicalizing the axiom in a different geopolitical location.
Keywords
- Plato,
- Allegory of the Cave,
- Alain Badiou,
- Jacques Rancière,
- Global South
Disciplines
Publication Date
Winter 2017
Citation Information
Andrés Fabián Henao Castro. "Slavery In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, and the Militant Intellectual from the Global South." Theatre Survey Vol. 58 Iss. 1 (2017) p. 86 - 107 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/andres_fabian_henao_castro/51/