interview by OLIVIER ZAHM photography by GIASCO BERTOLI In 2004 the French philosopher Alain Badiou described the young writer and thinker MEHDI BELHAJ KACEM as a pirate, “a solitary and ferocious bandit … who gives no mercy and works solely for his own benefit,” pillaging philosophy as he creates a new anti-philosophy for his generation. For the last decade MBK was Badiou’s most enthusiastic supporter, and was deeply influenced by Badiou’s ontology and radical politics. But, in his latest book, After Badiou, MBK surprisingly turned on his idol. We thought we should talk to MBK, a long-time collaborator of Purple, to find out about this sudden change of heart, this intellectual parricide. OLIVIER ZAHM — Your first two novels, Cancer and 1993, were published one right after another, when you were still a teenager. MEHDI BELHAJ KACEM — Yes, they came out about four months apart. Cancer was published in 1994. I wrote…