Critchley at EGS 2010
What is the Generic: is what is indiscernible in any situation, is what punctures a whole in any situation, the generic procedure in politics is what punctures a whole in a situation in relation to a demand, the demand of radical equality.
Politics: punctures a whole in a situation of inequality with a maxim of equality. Is an act which declares itself, and happens LOCALLY. Here Badiou opposes the anti-globalization movment, its too global, politics as tourism. This is his Maoism, politics is about controlling the place where you live, work, think.
Paris Commune: On March 18, 1871, a group of Parisian workers who belonged to National Guard and defending Paris against Prussian troops, refused to give back their guns to authorities. A commune is established on March 25, they begin to give a series of declarations.
May’68. There is a moment of confrontation, and the police back down. An organized armed force is what is needed.
Maoism: Chinese Cultural Revolution, what Badiou is interested in is that moment when there are intense power struggles, Mao is losing power, he mobilizes the Red Guards against revisionism and bureaucratisation of regime. What that unleashes is the Shanghai commune which is brief. It is that moment of the Shanghai Commune which is the re-enactment of the Paris Commune. It’s that moment of commune that compels Badiou.
Has there been a political event since the Paris Commune?? Discuss.
Presentation over Representation: elected representatives no good, he likes Rousseau, theatrical representation, in the dark with actors, Rousseau doesn’t like this, the only true theatre is the presentation by the people, in the open air where people are engaged in lively activities. This is PRESENTATION. Badiou’s idea of politics is based on presentation, not representation.
What is politics on democratic model? There are humans who are citizens who through mechanism of vote, represent their will, translated into representative who represent that will in a legislative body, parliament or congress. It is bizarre, this is not a particularly good way of doing politics.
Dictatorship: Dictatorship is the natural form of organization of political will, Citizenry Discipline. This goes back to classical arguments, AGAMBEN, Eusticium, the moment when the law was suspended. There was always a clause in ROman law for suspension of law, and the dictator governs until danger is removed and normal course of things can resume. No republicanism without dictatorship.
Dictatorship is permitted in a state of Exception. In last century, do we exist in state of rule or state of exception? Normal politics is governance of polity by rule of law, for Carl Schmitt this is dreadful, the operation of state has to be subordinated to operation of law, subordinate to interpretation and philosophers, his concept of political overrides any legal authority, this means dictatorship. In Benjamin, state of exception has become the rule. All that Lenin is doing, think about implausibility of this, Feb 1917, there was almost revolution, between this and October Revolution he writes a book: studies the term dictatorship of proletariat in State and Revolution. Dictatorship is justified was legitimate.
Do we want to go down road of dictatorship. This makes Critchley nervous.
Politics for Badiou is the Commune. Subjective transformation, the rupture. This brief moment of politics without party and state. This is his understanding of 1968, what drives him, WHAT IS NOVELTY, WHAT IS CREATION.
Trinity of Concepts: EVENT FIDELITY TRUTH. Event is the moment of rupture. the 4 members of National Guard refuse to give guns back, Fidelity, is what persists in looking at things from standpoint of Event. Truth: is what Fidelity constructs in a situation, in relation to the event.
Event: retrospectively, something happens, fidelity constructs truths, which retrospectively articulates and names the Event. Something happens, persistance with it, constructs a Truth which retrospectively articulates the EVENT.
The event can have an obscure character, obscure moment, which fidelity and truth will retrospectively name and organize it.
Events are retroactively articulated, politics is thinking about the presence int erms of retroactive acts of intervention. The history of leftist politics since the Commune have been acts of re-interpretation of that Event.
After Paris and Shanghai Commune and 1968, politics does not happen. Politics is RARE, its infrequent, it is not continuity but the interruption of continuity. This is the PLATO in Badiou. What happens in the Republic, we have a political situation, 5th Century Athens, where 3 people leave the city and wonder down to the port and dream of another city and we have a record of that. But this is an impossible City, for Badiou the Impossible is something to be affirmed, but there is also something impossible about this impossibility (is it pessimissm?)
Evental Site: there is an evental site Paris, in the case of the commune, or Shanghai, but that evental site becomes the local space for the articulation of the general will, it is addressed to all. An event is addressed in principal to everyone, to all human beings.