A quote from an article by E. Paquette Philosophy Today (Fall 2018)
For example, recent legislation in the U.S. (and elsewhere) states that same-sex couples can attain a legally recognized marriage in any state in the U.S. The right to be married has been extended to those for whom it had previously been denied. This is an example of an additive theory of politics because it maintains the power of the State and just extends it to include more/other individuals, i.e., not only different-sex couples can marry but also (additionally) opposite-sex couples can now too! Badiou’s subtractive politics, in contrast, is possible insofar as his emancipatory politics calls for new principles according to which the State can be organized, i.e., a new logic, law, or index (Badiou 2003: 27). His subtractive politics is based upon his theory of the event.
An event is the appearing of what inexists in a State. Recalling the description of the State provided above, an event is what surges forth and yet does not adhere to or belong in the transcendental index that orders the world in which it appears. Badiou tells us that “an event [is] something that doesn’t enter into the immediate order to things” (Badiou 2012a: 28). An event cannot be determined in advance and cannot appear within the logic of a world because it exceeds the logic of what can be thought in that series of relations. As a result, events are initially unintelligible and illegal, i.e., existing outside of the law and language of the State. It exceeds what appears (with coherence) in a State. In addition, as noted above, because the event exceeds the logic of the State, it is not produced out of the State, and instead is manifest as a radical break. Events can reveal the way in which States are structured, making evident the transcendental index that orders the State in which the event takes place. Such a revealing can make it possible to re-evaluate the foundations guiding that world or State. In every instance, an event is dependent upon a faithful subject to bring it about. The faithful subject is productive and serves to bring about the appearance of the truth such as justice that emanates from the event. The faithful subject must force the truth of justice against the force of the logic of the State that seeks to maintain itself. Badiou’s use of “subject” in this instance ought not to be equated with an individual person. He makes explicit that he is intending to move away from a conception of the conscious subject when discussing politics. It is more appropriate, especially given some more contemporary writings by Badiou, to conceive of the subject as “the people,” or more accurately as “the will of the people.” In “Twenty-Four Notes on the Uses of the Word ‘People’” (2016) Badiou provides various examples of his intended use of “the people” as well as divergent uses of it. For instance, generally speaking, “we distrust the word ‘people’ when it is accompanied by an adjective of identity or nationality” (ibid.: 22). In other words, the conception of the people (and similarly the subject of the event) must be divorced from any particular conception of the people. There is one exception to this rule, namely when the adjective denotes a position of revolt against an oppressive structure (such as colonial rule) whereby the adjective (such as Algerian, for example) becomes the name around which a revolution is organized.
The emergence of the event is predicated on the fidelity of this event by the subject. For Badiou, the subject comes into existence through the event. This means that the subject in-exists prior to the event, or was not counted by the State prior to the event. Let us recall our previous discussion of Jenny and her family of which not all persons who live in her house are counted by the state, namely, Uncle Ian who is undocumented. Ian’s inexistence is confirmed, for instance, by the lack of rights that are afforded to citizens. While he inexists in the State, or has a minimal existence, in the case of an event he could gain appearance through the event. For Badiou what inexists or has minimal existence in the State can appear through an event. Similarly, according to Badiou, “We shall then say that a change of world is real when an inexistent of the world starts to exist in this same world with maximum intensity” (Badiou 2012b: 56). An event is thus what makes possible the “restitution of the existence of the inexistent” (ibid.). At the same time, Badiou’s theory of emancipation is located in what he calls a politics of indifference. He states, “a truth procedure [cannot] take root in the element of identity. For it is true that every truth erupts as singular, its singularity is immediately universalizable. Universalizable singularity necessarily breaks with identitarian singularity” (Badiou 2003: 11). There is thus an inconsistency between truth, which is universal, and identity, which is singular. Notably, he states that “a truth, political or otherwise, recognizes itself in [the] fact that the principle of which it is a particular instance does not, as far as the principle is concerned, have anything particular about it. It is something that holds absolutely, for whomever [sic] enters into the situation about which this instance is stated” (Badiou 2011a: 107). As a result, identity can never be the site or the source of truth, or justice for his political theory, because the categories of identity and truth are necessarily opposed. It is for this reason that he states the following: “It is a question of knowing what identitarian and communitarian categories have to do with truth procedures, with political procedures for example. We reply: these categories must be absented from the process, failing which no truth has the slightest chance of establishing its persistence and accruing its immanent infinity” (Badiou 2003: 11). As such, it is not the case that we are to do away with identity entirely. Rather, for Badiou, identity ought to be subtracted from truth procedures and political procedures, in order to ensure that truth (and politics, insofar as they are intertwined) is universal, or for all. For example, as noted by Medhavi Menon, “the specific difference of negritude [sic] can rise to the level of the universal by demanding universal human rights for all. In doing so, negritude [sic] would tap into the disenfranchisement experienced by women, homosexuals, and other minorities, and stand in for them all” (Menon 2015: 5). The subtractive move is thus one that passes from a position of particularity to one of universality. Badiou is quite clear that his theory of emancipation must subtract any kind of particularity or identity, thus rejecting any kind of identity politics.