As scholarly interest in the experience of French Maoism has been undergoing something of a renaissance, it is unsurprising that the Maoist practice of investigations has elicited varying degrees of attention in recent years. But this attention has tended to be subsumed within, if not overshadowed by, much broader historical and exegetical undertakings. This paper seeks to redress this limitation in the literature by focusing on the lengthiest and most detailed summary of Maoist investigations among peasants in the French countryside, The Book of Poor Peasants, published by Alain Badiou’s Group for the Foundation of the Union of Communists of France Marxist-Leninist (ucfml) in 1976. This book vividly demonstrates the difficulties and limitations associated with the practice of investigations. It thus affords a more critical appreciation of this practice. The book also casts Badiou’s shift toward a ‘politics without party’ in a new light.
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Artières Philippe Artières Philippe, Bert Jean-François, Gros Frédéric & Revel Judith ‘Militer ensemble: Entretien avec Danielle Rancière’ Michel Foucault 2011 Paris Éditions de l’Herne
Badiou Alain Théorie de la Contradiction 1975 Paris François Maspero
Badiou Alain Hallward Peter Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil 2001a [1998] London Verso
Badiou Alain ‘Politics and Philosophy: An Interview with Alain Badiou’ 2001b Badiou 2001a.
Badiou Alain Peut-on penser la politique? 2008 [1985] Paris Seuil
Badiou Alain Macey David & Corcoran Steve The Communist Hypothesis 2010 London Verso
Badiou Alain Bosteels Bruno Theory of the Subject 2013 London Bloomsbury Academic
Bosteels Bruno ‘Post-Maoism: Badiou and Politics’ Positions 2005 13 1 575 634
Bosteels Bruno ‘Translator’s Introduction’ 2013 [2009] Badiou 2013
Bourg Julian Cook Alexander C. ‘Principally Contradiction: The Flourishing of French Maoism’ Mao’s Little Red Book: A Global History 2014 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Fanon Frantz Philcox Richard The Wretched of the Earth 2004 [1961] New York Grove Press
Fields A. Belden Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practice in France and the United States 1988 New York Autonomedia
Guha Ranajit Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India 1999 [1983] Durham, NC. Duke University Press
Hallward Peter Badiou: A Subject to Truth 2003 Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press
Hoffman Marcelo Zurn Perry & Dilts Andrew ‘Investigations from Marx to Foucault’ Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition 2015 Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan
Karlsen Mads Peter & Villadsen Kaspar ‘Foucault, Maoism, Genealogy: The Influence of Political Militancy in Michel Foucault’s Thought’ New Political Science 2015 37 1 91 117
Lenin Vladimir Ilyich What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement 1999 [1902] New York International Publishers
Lenin Vladimir Ilyich State and Revolution 2002 [1917] New York International Publishers
Lih Lars T. Lenin 2011 London Reaktion Books
Manceaux Michèle Les maos en France 1972 Paris Gallimard
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Bosteels 2005, pp. 580–1; Ross 2002, pp. 109–13; Wolin 2010, pp. 18, 131–2, 138, 159, 303, 305–7, 323, 330, 338. Ross offers a synopsis of crucial aspects of the investigation in her analysis of social amnesia about May 1968 in France. Bosteels dwells briefly on the investigation in his dialectical interpretation of the later Badiou. Wolin devotes a few pages of his lengthy book to the popularity of investigations among organisations concerned with the struggles of traditionally marginalised groups, such as prisoners, gays and women.
Badiou 2010, pp. 52–4.
Bosteels 2005, pp. 629–30, n. 50.
Fields 1988, p. 98.
Bosteels 2005, p. 585.
Bosteels 2005, p. 579.
Mao 1971, pp. 23–39.
Marx 1997.
Rigaudias-Weiss 1975, pp. 158–70.
Wright 2002, pp. 24–5.
Wolin 2010, pp. 330–1.
Hoffman 2015.
Smith 2013. For the recollections of a ujcml militant who conducted investigations among peasants in the Vosges region of northeastern France only to then take up a position in a factory, see Manceaux 1972, pp. 54–7.
Artières 2011, pp. 53–4.
Badiou 2001b, pp. 95–6.
Toscano 2008, p. 535.
Hallward 2003, p. 41.
Hallward 2003, p. 43.
Badiou 2008, pp. 85–6.
Badiou 2008, p. 15.
Badiou 2008, p. 12.
Badiou 2008, p. 87.
Badiou 2008, p. 67.
Badiou 2008, p. 108.
Badiou 2008, p. 109.
Badiou 2010, pp. 181–2.
Badiou 2010, pp. 179–80. Marx criticised the Communards for failing to attack the government of Adolphe Thiers in Versailles at its moment of greatest vulnerability (Marx 1996, p. 178). V.I. Lenin echoed a more general variation of this criticism in Lenin 2002, p. 37.
Badiou 2010, p. 182.
Badiou 2010, pp. 113–4, 155–6.
Badiou 2001a, p. 67; my italics.
Hallward 2003, p. 126.
Badiou 1975, p. 110.
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As scholarly interest in the experience of French Maoism has been undergoing something of a renaissance, it is unsurprising that the Maoist practice of investigations has elicited varying degrees of attention in recent years. But this attention has tended to be subsumed within, if not overshadowed by, much broader historical and exegetical undertakings. This paper seeks to redress this limitation in the literature by focusing on the lengthiest and most detailed summary of Maoist investigations among peasants in the French countryside, The Book of Poor Peasants, published by Alain Badiou’s Group for the Foundation of the Union of Communists of France Marxist-Leninist (ucfml) in 1976. This book vividly demonstrates the difficulties and limitations associated with the practice of investigations. It thus affords a more critical appreciation of this practice. The book also casts Badiou’s shift toward a ‘politics without party’ in a new light.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 1584 | 170 | 13 |
Full Text Views | 394 | 9 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 238 | 25 | 0 |