{"id":10039,"date":"2012-12-06T19:18:15","date_gmt":"2012-12-07T00:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=10039"},"modified":"2012-12-06T19:20:25","modified_gmt":"2012-12-07T00:20:25","slug":"badiou-the-subject","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2012\/12\/06\/badiou-the-subject\/","title":{"rendered":"badiou the subject"},"content":{"rendered":"

Badiou, Alain. Infinite Thought.<\/em> Justin Clemens (Editor), Oliver Feltham (Editor) Continuum, 2004.<\/p>\n

How can a modern doctrine of the subject be reconciled\u00a0with an ontology?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When poststructuralists do engage with the problemof agency they again meet with difficulties, and again precisely because they merge their theory of the subject with their general ontology.\u00a0 For example, in his middleperiod Foucault argued that networks of disciplinary power not only reach into the most intimate spaces of the subject, but actually produce what we call subjects. However, Foucault also said that power produces resistance. His problem then became that of accounting for the source of such resistance.<\/span><\/p>\n

If the subject – right down to its most intimate desires, actions and thoughts – is constituted by power, then how can it be the source of independent resistance?<\/span> For such a point of agency to exist, Foucault needs some space which has not been completely constituted by power, or a complex doctrine on the relationship between resistance and independence. However, he has neither. In his later works he deals withthis problem by assigning agency to those subjects who resist powerbymeans of anaesthetic project of self-authoring.\u00a0 Again, the source of such privileged agency \u2014 why do some subjects shape themselves against the grain and not others? \u2014 is not explained.\u00a0 5-6<\/p>\n

For Badiou<\/span>, the question of agency is not so much a question of how a subject can INITIATE an action in an autonomous manner but rather how a subject EMERGES through an autonomous chain of actions within a changing situation.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is, it is not everyday actions or decisions that provide evidence of agency for Badiou. It is rather those extraordinary decisions and actions which ISOLATE an actor from their context, those actions which show that a human can actually be a free agent that supports new chains of actions and reactions. For this reason, not every human being is always a subject, yet some human beings BECOME subjects; those who act in FIDELITY to a chance encounter with an EVENT which disrupts the SITUATION they find themselves in.<\/span> 6<\/p>\n

The consequence of such a definition of the subject seems to be that only brilliant scientists, modern masters, seasoned militants and committed lovers are admitted into the fold. A little unfair perhaps? Is Badiou’s definition of the subject exclusive or elitist? <\/span> On the one side, you have human beings, nothing much distinguishing them from animals in their pursuit of their interests, and then, on the other side, you have the new elect, the new elite of faithful subjects. This has a dangerous ring, and one could be forgiven for comparing it at first glance to Mormon doctrine.\u00a0 7<\/p>\n

However \u2014 and this is crucial \u2014 there is no predestination in Badiou’s account. There is nothing other than chance encounters between particular humans and particular events;<\/span> and subjects MAY be born out of such encounters. There is no higher order which prescribes who will encounter an event and decide to act in relation to it. Thereis only chance. Furthermore, there is no simple distinction between subjects and humans. Some humans become subjects, but only some of the time, and often they break their fidelity to an event and thus lose their subjecthood.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, Badiou displaces the problem of agency from the level of the human to the level of being. That is, his problem is no longer that of how an individual subject initiates a new chain of actions, since for him the subject only emerges in the course of such a chain of actions.<\/span><\/p>\n

His problem is accounting for how an existing situation \u2014 given that BEING, for Badiou, is nothing other than multiple situations \u2014 can be disrupted and transformed by such a chain of actions.<\/span> This displacement of the problem of agency allows Badiou to avoid positing some mysterious autonomous agent within each human such as ‘free will’. However, the direct and unavoidable consequence of the displacement is that the problem of agency becomes the ancient philosophical problem of how the new occurs in being. 8<\/p>\n

In L’Etre et l’\u00e9v\u00e9nement, Badiou’s solution IS SIMPLY TO ASSERT THAT ‘EVENTS HAPPEN’<\/strong>, events without directly assignable causes which disrupt the order of established situations. IF decisions are taken by subjects to work out the consequences of such events, NEW SITUATIONS emerge as the result of their work<\/strong>. 9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Badiou, Alain. Infinite Thought. Justin Clemens (Editor), Oliver Feltham (Editor) Continuum, 2004. How can a modern doctrine of the subject be reconciled\u00a0with an ontology? When poststructuralists do engage with the problemof agency they again meet with difficulties, and again precisely because they merge their theory of the subject with their general ontology.\u00a0 For example, in … Continue reading “badiou the subject”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83,45,16,90,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agency","category-badiou","category-ontology","category-resistance","category-subjectivity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10039"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10043,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10039\/revisions\/10043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}