Bruno Bosteels: What is an Event? 02 Jul 2012
32:30 Two examples: are ability to think specific events as they unfold, in art or politics
Badiou: preface to B&E, philsophers are presenting concepts, event, singularity, as tools to think event as its unfolding in the moment. Applying taking these tools at their word.
Derrida: these problems turn into aporia, not so self-evident that we can ever think an event, if that is even possible to think the EVENT.
Badiou; THINK AN EVENT
Work of Art: A poem by Mallarme (Meditation 17 in the book B&E)
M’s poem, offers an absolute symbol of the EVENT, of the very nature of the event, a dice throw on the waves of the ocean, the hand is vanishing on the flow of the waves.
Explifying illustration of what he understands by an event?
NOT is this work of art an event. But interpret the nature of an event through the reading of works of ART. An event is like the sinking of ship in the flow of the sea. It leaves behing a constellation, the effect it leaves behind after the vanishing. A poetic summary of what the event consists of. M is a poet thinker of the evental nature of the event.
The relation between events that happen in art and the way philosophers appropriate it to study the event-like nature of an event.
M. is an event in 19th century french poetry. it is almost as though the philosophers work cannot avoid folding the artwork into his own philosophical system. One reads M and Beckett, but really we’re reading theories of the event though the art of M and Beckett. Badiou dedicates a section to Valery, a marine cemetery is perfect symbol of the pure event, it is not a poem as event, but poetic theory as an event, what it means to see an event take place through poetry.
Boundless confidence of philosopher to formally think the nature of event.
Derrida: The event is aporetic impossibility. Is 9/11 a major event? Derrida hesitates, he seems to want to agree with general impression that there will be before and after of 9/11, but at same time he hesitates in more systematic manner he says: we have to know what it is to think the nature of an event? If we know that this and that is required to know an event, isn’t that a horizon of expectations so that very unpredictability is ruled out. Is there a concept of the event, if event escapes conceptual generality. IF we know what is a true event, then we can’t say x or y is an event, because it would then be generalizable in advance. But if there is a HORIZON OF EXPECTATION there will be no event. We need a horizon of non-knowledge.
Derrida sees a paradox in the event, but not Badiou. Derrida says, a major event, if all events have to be unpredictable then a major event has to be more so, it has to disturb the horizon of concepts. This moment marks the point of breakdown of philosophy as such in its ability to think What is an EVENT.
What is thinking runs aground on thinking What is An Event? If I walk in a room and point to a painting and say this is an ‘event’ What does that mean? Does it add to our understanding of the work of art in question? Does it add something to our capacity in thinking place of art in contemporary society.
Thinking the event means one is always doing philosophy. Own weight, situatedness, does thinking require one does philosophy, are there alternatives to the philosophical systemitization, What is an Event? slippery slopt to philosophical systemitization of events, that loses specificity of event
49:00 singularity of events exceeds capacity of thought to … instantiation. One of the traits of the events is unpredictable, it is singular, the thinking of the event, what is an event, misses apriori of the singularity of the event, because it comes afterwards
Discipline of philosophy will never be on par with singularity of Event.
Find ways of thinking the event, that will hold a middle ground between practical events taking place … and ways they are being thought, conceptualized. This space is THEORY. THEORY unlike philosophy does not have a Disciplinary status, like in the University system.
Events as so many illustrations, as rehashing of philosophers apparatus, “in the sense of Foucault, Spinoza etc” doesn’t teach us anything of the occurence but just philosophers particular apparatus.
CRITICAL THEORY: not simply be euphemism for Marxism, not ancillary position to philosophy, but proper articulation of criticism and theory. To do so, may require that we betray the systematic work of the philosopher. That we take them at their word, use their tools to think, but resist the temptation to put it back into circulation of the philosopher’s proper name, Brand name.
In the end this plea for Critical Theory, historical unfolding of eternal Truths, to THINK under condition of certain historical events, the truth that may be eternal.
processes, becomings events, fluxes flows, singularity, randomness, contingency and chance, not fatality of same logic, radical transformation rather than perpetuation of status quo. But this could also be seen as a PRODUCT of late capitalism. Capitalism: Event Planners, major corporations have techniques of controlling predicting events and happenings, isn’t this what drives Logic of Capital. Emphasis on events rather stable identities might be complicitous of status quo.
Capitalism breaks down all idyllic bonds an hierarchies, capitalism self-revolutionizing Event. Is difference/multiplicty, primacy of events and becomings, actually defines our given state of affairs and its attendant cultural logic.
70:00 CONCEPT OF EVENT can not be so easily DE-LINKED from Logic of Capital.
What does it mean to think about events? What place do events have in the domain of corporate culture?
82:00 Question asks regarding Heidegger if all of Being is event, then there is no exceptionality that would escape the event. Bosteels says we should historicize, it is no longer visible that being is event, there has been a break within the history of being, Left Heideggerians, as part of history of metaphysics, capitalism is closure, and we need a new beginning, of thinking of being as event. But this still asks question of relation of OUR epoch to the other beginning. Whether we projected back onto pre-Socratic times. What is it about obsession with events- radically transformative singular etc, but they’re happening all over the place, ? The presence of numerous events within corporate culture, the re-functionalization of capitalism within crisis can not be de-linked from question of EVENT.
Question: co-opted by capitalism but that does not exhaust the total experience. This desire to theorize the event, is desire to create a space that is not then produced by capitalism.
Bosteels: I’m not trying to take away such openings, rather than keeping them suspended, but there is a dead-end within the theorizing going on w/r/t events in politics and art: i.e., autonomy/heteronomy, distance from gap. We are discussing same concepts we talked about in 1960s. There was no less over-coding happening then than now.
Let’s suspend even the talk about the EVENT, the desire to theorize the event, is desire to keep open the possibilities, but we know the logics, how they are being formulated, I wanted to insinuate a bit of discomfort in that, maybe its not the event that will open up new possibilities, what about the MECHANISMS, capitalism is capable of extra-ordinary creativity including in catastrophically destructive sense, WARS, are wars not events. The limitation of our ways of framing events, and how they have become philosophized in our contemporary constellation.
The Left Turn: Periodizing the 1990s, the basic opposition of being/becoming , identity/flux, is a hangover from the 1960s, a conceptual hangover. This has been re-captured, re-coded, re-territorialized from corporate culture to Israeli military forces since they are using 1000 Plateaus.
Have we figured out the valence of those conceptual categories, multiplicity, becoming, flux, event … I want to go a bit against the grain about the valence of these categories.