Human Rights Are the Rights of the Infinite: An Interview with Alain Badiou*
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Abstract
In seeking to found a ‘new political logic’, Badiou argues that we can only retrieve the political sense of concrete negation through its subordination to a prior field of affirmation: i.e. the opening of a new possibility inside a given historical situation, or ‘the event’, that may be politically realised through the creation of a ‘new subjective body’ consisting in the social affirmation of those new possibilities. Revolutionary politics is therefore said to rest on a synthesis of, on the one hand, democracy in the sense of spontaneous mass-political irruption, and, on the other, a prescriptive elaboration of the ramifications of the event. The discussion then turns to the question of strategy – outside and against the politically moribund State-form – and his reconfiguration of political universality vis-à-vis the formulations of classical Marxism.
Badiou counterposes capitalist ideology’s implicit anthropology of self-interested animals to his own of subjects embodied in a generic truth-procedure and its concomitant model of political rights, where what is ultimately at stake is ‘the complete transformation of the form of . . . difference, of the way the difference exists’ rather than a materialist dialectics of antagonistic contradiction. The interview concludes with Badiou clarifying his relationship to Lacanian psychoanalysis as an essential but by no means exhaustive conceptual armoury for understanding the relation between subject and event.
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Badiou Alain Théorie du sujet 1982 Paris Editions du Seuil
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Badiou Alain Peut-on penser la politique? 1985 Paris Editions du Seuil
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Badiou Alain Abrégé de métapolitique 1998 Paris Editions du Seuil
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Badiou Alain ‘La scène du deux’, 1999 in Badiou, Dragonetti, Grosrichard, Jaques, Méla and Roubaud 1999.
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Badiou Alain La Révolution culturelle. La dernière révolution? 2002 Paris Les Conférences du Rouge-Gorge
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Badiou Alain Brassier Ray St Paul: The Foundation of Universalism 2003a [1997], Stanford Stanford University Press
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Badiou Alain La Commune de Paris. Une déclaration politique sur la politique 2003b, Paris Les Conférences du Rouge-Gorge
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Badiou Alain Barker Jason Metapolitics 2005 [1998] London Verso
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Badiou Alain Logiques des mondes 2006 Paris Editions du Seuil
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Badiou Alain Bosteels Bruno Theory of the Subject 2009a [1982] London Continuum
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Badiou Alain Toscano Alberto Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II 2009b [2006] London Continuum
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Badiou Alain , Dragonetti Roger , Grosrichard Alain , Jaques Brigitte , Méla Charles & Roubaud Jacques De l’amour 1999 Paris Flammarion
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Bensaïd Daniel Peter Hallward ‘Alain Badiou and the Miracle of the Event’, Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy 2004 London Continuum
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Blechman Max , Chari Anita & Hasan Rafeeq ‘Democracy, Dissensus and the Aesthetics of Class Struggle: An Exchange with Jacques Rancière’, Historical Materialism 2005 13 4 285 301
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Simon Henri Perlman Lorraine Poland 1980–82: Class Struggle and the Crisis of Capital 1985 Detroit Black and Red
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1.
Blechman, Chari and Hasan 2005.
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2.
Badiou 2003a and 1985.
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3.
Badiou 2006; English translation 2009b.
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4.
Badiou 1998, pp. 89–108; Badiou 2005, pp. 78–95.
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5.
Badiou 2003b.
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7.
Bensaïd 2004.
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8.
Badiou 2002, p. 28: ‘In every respect Mao is the name of a paradox: a rebel in power, a dialectician who made himself subordinate to the needs of “development”, the emblem of the party-State apparatus that aimed for its transcendence, the military chief who advocated disobedience to all authority.’
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9.
Badiou 1999.
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10.
Badiou 1982; English translation Badiou 2009a.
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Human Rights Are the Rights of the Infinite: An Interview with Alain Badiou*
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Max Blechman in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Anita Chari in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Rafeeq Hasan in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
In seeking to found a ‘new political logic’, Badiou argues that we can only retrieve the political sense of concrete negation through its subordination to a prior field of affirmation: i.e. the opening of a new possibility inside a given historical situation, or ‘the event’, that may be politically realised through the creation of a ‘new subjective body’ consisting in the social affirmation of those new possibilities. Revolutionary politics is therefore said to rest on a synthesis of, on the one hand, democracy in the sense of spontaneous mass-political irruption, and, on the other, a prescriptive elaboration of the ramifications of the event. The discussion then turns to the question of strategy – outside and against the politically moribund State-form – and his reconfiguration of political universality vis-à-vis the formulations of classical Marxism.
Badiou counterposes capitalist ideology’s implicit anthropology of self-interested animals to his own of subjects embodied in a generic truth-procedure and its concomitant model of political rights, where what is ultimately at stake is ‘the complete transformation of the form of . . . difference, of the way the difference exists’ rather than a materialist dialectics of antagonistic contradiction. The interview concludes with Badiou clarifying his relationship to Lacanian psychoanalysis as an essential but by no means exhaustive conceptual armoury for understanding the relation between subject and event.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 908 | 189 | 11 |
| Full Text Views | 240 | 16 | 3 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 171 | 35 | 8 |
