Alain Badiou: Philosophy and Its Conditions

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philosophy and its conditions

gabriel nera

AL A IN B AD I O U

SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory Rodolphe Gasche, editor

ALAIN BADIOU Philosophy and Its Conditions

Edited by Gab riel Riera

State University of New York Press

Published by State Universit y of New York Press, Albany

© 2005 State Universit y of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

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Alain Badiou : philosophy and its conditions / edited by Gabriel Riera. p. cm - (SUNY series, Intersections : Philosophy and Critical Theor y) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0·7914·6503·9 (hardcover / alk. paper) - ISBN 0·7914·6504·7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Badiou, Alain.

l. Riera, Gabriel.

II. Series: Intersections (Albany, N.Y.)

B2430.B274A63 2005 19�c22 2004018837 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Abbreviations

ix

Introduction. Alain Badiou: The Event of Thinking

1

Gabriel Riera PART ONE. MATH EMATICS 1.

=

ONTOLOGY

On Alain Badiou's Treatment of Category Theory in View of a Transitory Ontology

21

23

Norman Madarasz 2.

The Ontological Dispute: Badiou, Heidegger, and Deleuze

45

Miguel de Beistegui PART TWO. TH E PO EM 3.

59

For an "Ethics of Mystery": Philosophy and the Poem

61

Gabriel Riera

4.

Unbreakable B's: From Beckett and Badiou to the Bitter End of Affirmative Ethics

87

Jean. Michel Rabate 5.

The Mallarme of Alain Badiou

109

Pierre Machere, PART THREE. LOVE (Philosophy and Psychoanalysis) 6.

Gai Satloir Sera: The Science of Love and the Insolence of Chance

117 119

Joan Copjec 7.

Alain Badiou: Philosophical Outlaw

137

Juliet Flower MacCannell v

vi

8.

CONTENTS

Feminine Love and the Pauline Universal

185

Tracy McNulty PART FOUR. POLITICS AND ETHICS

213

On the Ethics of Alain Badiou

215

9.

Simon Critchley 10.

Can Change Be Thought?: A Dialogue with Alain Badiou

237

Bruno Bosteels

Bibliography

263

Contributors

269

Index

273

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Rodolphe Gasche, the editor of the SUNY series Intersec­ tions: Philosophy and Critical Theory, who was enthusiastic about the project from the start, as well as James Peltz, my editor at SUNY, who steered the book to completion. I am also grateful to Juliet Flower MacCannell and Joan Copjec for their enthusiasm, support, and extraordinary intellectual range. Charles Ramond of the Universite Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3 and Patrice Ver­ meren from I:Harmattan generously authorized the translation of Pierre Macherey's chapter, which was originally published in Alain Badiou, Penser le Multiple. I would also like to thank Tracy McNulty and the Department of Romance Languages at Cornell University, which provided a venue for present­ ing part of my work on Badiou. Finally, thanks to Marilyn Gaddis Rose and Ray Brassier for their help with various translations.

VII

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Abbreviations

AMP

Abrege de metapolitique (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1 998).

AP

" rAge de Poetes," in La Politique des poetes: Pourquoi des poetes en temps de detresse? ed. Jacques Ranciere (Paris: Bibliotheque du Col· lege International de Philosophie, Rue Descartes, 1 992).

B

Beckett: I:increvable desir (Paris: Hachette, 1 995).

BE

Being and Event, in Umbr{a} 1 (I996): 1 3-53.

C

Conditions (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1 992).

CP

Categories pour philosophes (Unpublished, 1 992).

CTOT

Court traite d'ontologie transitoire (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1 998).

D

Deleuze: "La clameur de l'etre" (Paris: Hachette, 1 997).

E

I:Ethique: Essai sur la conscience du Mal (Paris: Hatier, 1 983). Trans·

lated by Peter Hallward as Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (London: Verso, 2001). EE

L'etre et l'evenement (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1 998).

L&P

"Logic and Philosophy" (lecture, University of California-Irvine, April 2002, handout).

MPh

Manifesto for Philosophy, trans. Norman Madarasz (Albany: State

University of New York Press, 1 999). MPP

Manifeste pour la philosophie (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1 989).

NN

Le nombre et les nombres (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1 990).

IX

x

ABBREVIATIONS

ODT

"One Divides into Two," trans. Alberto Toscano, in Lacanian Ink 21 (2003): 245-53.

P&P

"Politics and Philosophy: An Interview with Alain Badiou," Angelaki 3, no. 3 (1 998).

PI

" Poesie au point de l' innomable," Po&sie 64 (1 994).

PMI

Petit Manuel d'inesthetique (Paris: Seuil, 1 988).

PPP

Peut·on penser la politique? (Paris: Seuil, 1 982).

Psy & Ph

" Psycho-analysis and Philosophy" {lecture, University of Califor­ nia-Irvine, April 2002, handout}.

QP

"Qu'est-ce qu'un poeme et qu'en pense la philosophie?" in Petit Manuel d'inesthetique (Paris, Seuil, 1 998).

QPP

"Que pense Ie poeme?" in L'art est·il une connaissance? (Paris: Le Monde Editions, 1 993).

QQA

"Qu'est-ce que l'amour?" in Conditions (Paris: Seuil, 1 992).

RPP

"Le Recours philosophique au poeme," in Con ditions (Paris: Seuil,

1 992). SD

La Scene du Deux, in De l'Amour, sous la direction de l'Ecole de la Cause Freudienne (Paris: Champs F1ammarion, 1 999).

SP

Saint Paul; La Fondation de l'universalisme (Paris: PUF, 1 997).

TS

Theorie du sujet (Paris: Seuil, 1 982).

WL

"What Is Love?" trans. Justin Clemens, in Umbr(a} 1 (1 996).

WTTC

"What Do You Think of the Twentieth Century?" {lecture, Uni­ versity of California-Irvine, April 2002, handout}.

Introduction

Alain Badiou: The Event of Thinking Gabriel Riera

There is little doubt that Alain Badiou is one of the most challenging and contro­ versial contemporary philosophical figures. Published over the course of three decades, his numerous and extensive texts include several books on ontology, mathematics, aesthetics, literature, politics, ethics, and sexual difference. Yet Ba­ diou is a thinker whose exact place in the intellectual landscape of our time is dif­ ficult to determine. He approaches philosophy with the recalcitrant rigor of a mathematician and the economy of means of a modern poet, but also with the passion of a militant of truth. Knotting together philosophical and mathematical discourses, his writing renews their traditional alliance and asks fundamental questions of each, while also dramatizing the incommensurability that sets the two discourses apart. In his writing, then, Badiou transforms the terms in which it is henceforth possible to think about the question of philosophy, of its possibil­ ity and future, and also to think, beyond the double constraint of the One and of Totality, about the immanent multiplicity in which we are immersed. Badiou's contributions bring a new perspective to some of the most pressing issues currently being debated in philosophy and the social sciences. Among them are the conditions of political intervention, the possibility of philosophy, the ethics of sexual difference, and the formulation of a subject who is at the same time singular and universal and an ensuing critique of cultural relativism. A seri­ ous assessment of Badiou's philosophy forces us to reevaluate these topics, as well as to reexamine some of the tenets of contemporary philosophy. Alain Badiou (b. 1 937) belongs to the generation of philosophers who entered the Ecole Normale at the end of 1 950s. Like Etienne Balibar, Pierre Macherey, and Jacques Ranciere, he was attracted to Marxism, as well as to psychoanalysis, logic, the history of science, and structuralism. He is professor of philosophy at the University of Paris VIII, editor of the prestigious collection "rOrdre Philosophique" at Les Edi­ tions du Seuil, and program director at the College International de Philosophie.

1

2

GABRIEL RIERA

Badiou was influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre early in his career, but in the 1 960s was drawn to the work of Luis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, George Canguilhem, and Jean Hyppolite_ As a student at the Ecole Normale, Badiou attended Jacques Lacan's sem­ inars and took part in the activities of the Epistemological Circle responsible for the publication ofCahiers pour l'Analyse. The research conducted by the Epistemological Circle incorporated developments in logic, mathematics, topology, and linguistics. The names Jean Cavailles and Albert Lautmann are also important points of refer­ ence in Badiou's formation since they represent an important tradition of mathe­ matical philosophy in France. It is not by accident, therefore, that Badiou's work crosses a wide range of dis­ ciplines, including ontology, mathematics, topology, modern poetry, theater, film, psychoanalysis, and politics. His is a systematic philosophy that can be situated in the rational tradition inaugurated by Descartes and that responds to Plato's deci­ sion of "interrupting the poem," that is, of founding philosophy in mathematical conceptuality and reestablishing a free circulation between the nonphilosophical conditions: science, poetry, politics, and love. However, Badiou pushes this tradi­ tion to its limits, since he aims to link what exceeds the means of rational presen­ tation, the event, to what is singular par excellence, the subject, and therefore to articulate the generic procedures through which universal truths are produced. Badiou's philosophy is difficult to classify among the currents that have dominated the second half of the twentieth century. In spite of his conceptual in­ novations and its unique style of presentation, as well as its attunement to the signs of the time in the fields of art, mathematics, politics, and psychoanalysis (love), there is something untimely in Badiou's philosophy: his systematic drive_ The grafting of post-Marxist (Althusserian, Maoist) philosophy to Lacanian topo­ logical insights and the combinatory rules of set theory and, more recently, cate­ gory theory, as well as Mallarme's poetic writing give Badiou's philosophy a rather unique appearance.\ Badiou's marginality in the academic curriculum is not only due in part to his public image as a militant philosopher who still believes in the possibility of forms of the collective that defy neoliberal market logic. His nondi­ alectical understanding of the universal as "the trajectory of a distance with regard to a particularity that subtends" (WL 2 1 ) generates resistance within a context dominated by cultural relativism_ But, most importantly, Badiou's marginality lies in the complexity of its ontology, grounded as it is in the axioms derived from post-Cantorean mathematical set theory_ Philosophy is neither a constructive nor a deconstructive practice for Badiou but the site where thinking seizes the truths or generic procedures of an epoch. These truths constitute the conditions that enable philosophy to accomplish its act: to pro­ vide those truths with an articulation to exhibit their compossibility (C 65, 79)_ Phi­ losophy thus disposes the generic procedures of an epoch in a unique configuration

I NTRODUCTION

3

and, for this reason, does not constitute itself as the Truth of such procedures, but rather as "incomplete lLacunairel thinking" (C 47) of the multiple coming after its conditions. As a configuration of thought, philosophy derives a series of directives with which to approach the teeming of things, and it does so by means of an analytic procedure that equates mathematics with ontology. Badiou develops his systematic ontology in Vetre et l'evenement, where being refers to the order of the presentation of the pure multiple and event to the dimension of non-being: the real that becomes possible when forced by means of a "discipline of time" and a "fidelity" to its incal­ culable irruption. The crux of Badiou's philosophy is to propose an ethics of the event whose main prescription is a nondogmatic imperative: "Decide from the point of view of what is undecidable"; a decision whose final goal is to stipulate the effects that the new brings upon a given structure. Badiou's is a pure multiplicity composed of multiple elements. Contempo­ rary mathematics, especially post-Cantorean set theory, provides for Badiou the only rigorous articulation of such a pure multiplicity. All beings in their being are infinite by prescription-infinite in the secularized sense introduced by Cantor's revolution. The axiom of infinity constitutes Badiou's point of departure; it asserts a radical infinity beyond all possible proofs of construction. Inasmuch as it is not a number that one can arrive at by counting, the infinite is unattainable. However, in its secularized version, infinity ceases to be the limit of human finitude in order to become the very medium of existence. The axiom of the void also plays a crucial role in Badiou's ontology. The void is a universally included set that belongs to no one in particular. Although ontology presents the multiple, the being of this pre­ sentation is empty and subtracts itself from the dialectic of the one and the mul­ tiple {EE 70. The void is "that from which there is presentation" (EE 68) but without being included (counted or represented) in it. Badiou calls situation any multiplicity structured by a particular count or by a particular criteria of belonging and inclusion (two founding relations of the mul­ tiple). The result of counting is a metastructure that designates the situation as One, or as the state of a situation. Badiou plays with the political connotation of the word state, since it is the principle that intervenes to control excess, to estab­ lish the set of the parts or subsets of a set. Knowledge or the language of the situa­ tion furnishes virtually infinite ways of arranging a situation's part, but cannot provide a global, enabling unity to these arrangements. The state (of the situation) prohibits the presentation of the void, which is the fundamental element for any particularization. The objective order that the state of the situation thus guaran­ tees accomplishes a violent inclusion whose effect is "the disjunction between pre­ sentation and representation," between "structure and meta-structure" (EE 1 49). Ontology must describe the conditions that will allow moving beyond the state of a presentation toward a situation of pure presentation.

4

GABRIEL RIERA

It is the contingent, unpredictable dimension of the event that interrupts the order of knowledge by attaching itself to the void of every situation. The event called "French Revolution" is, for example, the occurrence that allows us to read the inconsistencies of the ancien regime. It is the truth of the ancien regime, but a truth that cannot be named by the state of the situation called "ancien regime." An event is not a fact; it is a nonempirical, ephemeral, and insubstantial passage that cannot be assigned to any stable element of the situation in which it takes place. The event is the supernumerary excess of the order of being that makes possible the production of a truth. Further, it demands an actof nomination ("Christ's Res­ urrection," in the case of Saint Paul; "October Revolution," for Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries) from its operator or belated supplement: the subject. It is through the intervention of a subject (a subject who is the aftereffect of the event) on be­ half of this truth that an event can be discerned and named as such. Clearly, for Badiou a truth is neither the correspondence between a subject and an object (homoiosis, ad