{"id":12468,"date":"2014-02-04T22:58:28","date_gmt":"2014-02-05T03:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=12468"},"modified":"2014-02-04T23:43:10","modified_gmt":"2014-02-05T04:43:10","slug":"12468","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2014\/02\/04\/12468\/","title":{"rendered":"Badiou on truth and the event and politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

“A Discussion of and around Incident at Antioch: An Interview with Alain Badiou<\/a>.” by Ward Blanton and Susan Spitzer Art and Research A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods<\/em>. Vol 3. No. 2 Summer 2010.<\/p>\n

This interview took place at the Western Infirmary Lecture Theatre, University of Glasgow on 13 February 2009 and was conducted as part of \u2018Paul, Political Fidelity and the Philosophy of Alain Badiou: a Discussion of Incident at Antioch\u2019 a conference at the University of Glasgow, 13 – 14 February 2009.<\/p>\n

The conference was organized in response to the forthcoming translation by Susan Spitzer of Badiou\u2019s Incident at Antioch, a play completed in the mid-1980s and described by the conference organizers as \u2018a work of political theatre which stages the \u201cturn\u201d of an ancient apostle in the context of haunting contemporary questions about revolutionary creativity and political violence\u2019.<\/p>\n

The interview was immediately preceded by the first public reading of scenes of the play in English.<\/p>\n

What I say is that we can find in Paul a very complete theory of the construction of a new truth<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Allors! Why so, the theory of the construction of a new truth<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The beginning of the truth<\/span><\/strong> is not the structure of a fact but it\u2019s an event. So something which is not predictable, something without calculation, something which is not reducible to specificity. At the beginning of all new creation we have something like that that I name an event<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

After that we have a subjective process<\/strong>, the process of creation, of construction, which is defined by faithfulness to the event<\/span> <\/strong>itself. Or, if you want, the subjective construction is to organise consequences of the event<\/span> <\/strong>in the world, the concept world.<\/p>\n

The event<\/span><\/strong> is like a rupture and after that we must organise consequences of this rupture, and that is the subjective process of the creation of a new truth<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

And finally the result is a new form of universality<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

So we can summarise that arrangement in a very simple manner: The beginning of the construction of a new truth<\/span><\/strong> is an event<\/span><\/strong>. The subjective process of that sort of construction is the organisation of consequences of the event<\/span><\/strong>. And the production, the final production is something which is universal<\/strong> in a precise sense that I won\u2019t explain exactly but we can define really in what sense the result is universa<\/strong>l.<\/p>\n

The three points are explained in a very pure manner by Paul. First an event<\/span><\/strong>: the resurrection of Christ. After that a subjective process: faith, faith in that sort of event<\/span><\/strong>. And organisation of the consequences of the event, which is a subjective construction that is a debate, maybe an objective one in the form of the Church.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s all a bit deficient in the field of Christianty. And universality<\/strong> of the results, very fundamental in Paul, that is the new faith is for everybody: it\u2019s not for Jews, it\u2019s not for Romans, it\u2019s not for Greeks, it\u2019s not for males, it\u2019s not for females, it\u2019s really for everybody<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The very famous advance that: \u2018There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female\u2019 (Gal. 3.28).<\/p>\n

All categories, social differences are dissolved from the point of view of the construction of the truth. So we can understand this theory as a particular new religious thought, certainly we can. But we also can understand this theory as an abstract formalisation of what is the process of the truth, with religious words naturally, but the general formalisation is good enough for any truth. […]<\/p>\n

And so the same idea, the same abstract or formal idea concerning what is the new truth. And it is not the opposition between Catholic interpretation and Protestant interpretation, it\u2019s a difference between an interpretation which assumes the signification of the words themselves, the iteration \u2018God\u2019, \u2018the son\u2019, and so on, and an interpretation which is a purely formal label and we say that Paul is not only the apostle of a new religion but is also the philosopher of the new formal construction of what is a universal truth.<\/p>\n

*****
\nSo for the readers of this text, or for the audience of this text\u2019s future performance, what do you hope the performance of Paulinism can incite today?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a political question, directly: What is the new grouping of today? I\u2019ll tell you something about that concerning maybe the situation in France, of the political situation. You know I think that in our societies, the societies of the Western word, the rich societies – they become poor today, more and more. They are exposed to disaster. But in their general existence, I think there exist four groups – I don\u2019t use the word class because it\u2019s too classical now – four components<\/strong>, if you want, of power societies, which can support some possibilities of revolt.<\/p>\n

There exist four groups which are able in some circumstances which are able to play a role in the direction of real change, the form of a movement of revolt.<\/p>\n

First, the educated youth of today in universities, in campuses, in high schools and so on.<\/p>\n

Two, the popular youth in the banlieues in French, the popular suburbs.<\/p>\n

Third what I shall name the ordinary workers, the big mass of people which are not absolutely poor, not at all rich, with hard work, precarity sometimes, and so on.<\/p>\n

And four the workers coming from other countries, immigrants, including undocumented workers and so on.<\/p>\n

In France we can say that there exist different movements concerning these four groups, for example mainly demonstrations of students concerning many points, riots in the banlieues of the popular youths, with many cars burned and so on, a sort of violent revolt without community, we have the big demonstrations of ordinary workers, in France in December 1995, for example, with millions of people during many weeks.<\/p>\n

And we have also organisations and important demonstrations of immigrants in the workforce. So all these four groups are capable of revolt. But the point is that that sort of revolt is always practically the revolt of one of these four components. And so I can say something like that is your idea of a new grouping.<\/p>\n

I name revolt of movement simply when we have demonstrations, riots and so on, of one of these groups. And politics begins when we have something which is not reducible to revolt of movement because there are two, three or four components engaged in the movement.<\/p>\n

So politics<\/strong> is really the construction of the new grouping which is not reducible to the four groups. And politics is always to create a passage, a passage between one group and another group. So \u2018surprising grouping\u2019 is a mixture of two, three or four because that involves components of our society.<\/p>\n

One-by-one we have only revolt of movements when we have beyond one-by-one we are in a political possibility. And a very important part of the action of the state is to create the impossibility of something like that, to create impossibility of union between two or more components of the social organisation.<\/p>\n

On this point I have a proof. I have the proof that many laws, many decisions of the state, many activities of the police and so on are entirely organised not only by the possibility to escape movement and so on but more, it\u2019s much more important to create the impossibility of politics, if we name politics the creation of the passage between two different groups.<\/strong> And so the situation today is again that sort of activity of the state.<\/p>\n

Sometimes politics engaging two components exists. For example a union, limited but real, between some students and some workers coming from other countries. The movement of undocumented workers in France, which is a significant movement, with normal difficulty, is really a movement which is a mixture, a union between some intellectuals, some young students and some workers coming from Africa and it is something which has existed now for practically more than ten years, it\u2019s not something which vanished.<\/p>\n

You know also sometimes the relationship between a part of the students and ordinary workers, that being the case during the strike last year. So the relationship between two groups, which is the beginning of a new grouping, so the beginning of politics, exists in the limited sense. The union of four groups would be the revolution<\/span><\/strong>, which is why the state is the absolute impossibility of union.<\/p>\n

And I don\u2019t know any circumstances which is really the union of the four components. And maybe it\u2019s only in extraordinary circumstance that something like that is possible I think, for example war. For example war.<\/p>\n

And in any case it\u2019s also a lesson of the last century, because the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the movement of liberation of people and so on, have all been in the form of a war. So the question is also, what is revolutionary politics when it\u2019s not war but peace? And we don\u2019t know, really. We do not have an example of a complete union of the different popular components of the situation without that sort of terrible circumstances, exceptional circumstance like war.<\/p>\n

So the political problem of today is really first, I agree with you, one of a new grouping, and is probably the problem to pass from two to three, something like that. Because two exists in some limited manner, but then the passage from two to three, and three creates maybe the possibility of four, the possibility of global change.<\/p>\n

So my answer, my complete answer, we can define precisely not only what is the beginning of politics<\/strong> which is always to create maybe a small passage from a group to another group, and so a small, real novelty in the organisation of politics.<\/p>\n

But we know also what is the present stage of all that, which is in my position the passage from two to three. Four is an event. Four is the number of an event. And three, the number of new forms of organisation. One is nothing, movement and revolt. Two is the beginning of politics. Three is beginning of new forms of organisation. And four is change.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

So we can hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“A Discussion of and around Incident at Antioch: An Interview with Alain Badiou.” by Ward Blanton and Susan Spitzer Art and Research A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods. Vol 3. No. 2 Summer 2010. This interview took place at the Western Infirmary Lecture Theatre, University of Glasgow on 13 February 2009 and was conducted … Continue reading “Badiou on truth and the event and politics”<\/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":[45,65,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-badiou","category-dia-mat","category-event"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12468","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=12468"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12473,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12468\/revisions\/12473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}