Alain Badiou, the Maoist Investigation, and the Party-Form
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Marcelo Hoffman in
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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.
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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
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Badiou Alain Théorie de la Contradiction 1975 Paris François Maspero
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Badiou Alain Hallward Peter Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil 2001a [1998] London Verso
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Badiou Alain ‘Politics and Philosophy: An Interview with Alain Badiou’ 2001b Badiou 2001a.
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Badiou Alain Peut-on penser la politique? 2008 [1985] Paris Seuil
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Badiou Alain Macey David & Corcoran Steve The Communist Hypothesis 2010 London Verso
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Badiou Alain Bosteels Bruno Theory of the Subject 2013 London Bloomsbury Academic
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Bosteels Bruno ‘Post-Maoism: Badiou and Politics’ Positions 2005 13 1 575 634
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Bosteels Bruno ‘Translator’s Introduction’ 2013 [2009] Badiou 2013
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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
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Fanon Frantz Philcox Richard The Wretched of the Earth 2004 [1961] New York Grove Press
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Fields A. Belden Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practice in France and the United States 1988 New York Autonomedia
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Guha Ranajit Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India 1999 [1983] Durham, NC. Duke University Press
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Hallward Peter Badiou: A Subject to Truth 2003 Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press
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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
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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
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Lenin Vladimir Ilyich What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement 1999 [1902] New York International Publishers
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Lenin Vladimir Ilyich State and Revolution 2002 [1917] New York International Publishers
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Lih Lars T. Lenin 2011 London Reaktion Books
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Manceaux Michèle Les maos en France 1972 Paris Gallimard
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Mao Tsetung ‘Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan’ Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung 1971 [1927] Peking Foreign Language Press
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Marx Karl Carver Terrell ‘The Civil War in France’ Marx: Later Political Writings 1996 [1871] Cambridge Cambridge University Press
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Marx Karl ‘A Workers’ Inquiry’ 1997 [1880] available at: <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/04/20.htm>.
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Rigaudias-Weiss Hilde Les Enquêtes Ouvrières en France entre 1830 et 1848 1975 [1936] New York Arno Press
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Robcis Camille ‘“China in Our Heads”: Althusser, Maoism, and Structuralism’ Social Text 2012 30 1 51 69
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Ross Kristin May ’68 and its Afterlives 2002 Chicago University of Chicago Press
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Smith Jason E. ‘From Établissement to Lip: On the Turns Taken by French Maoism’ Viewpoint Magazine 2013 3 available at: <https://viewpointmag.com/2013/09/25/from-etablissement-to-lip-on-the-turns-taken-by-french-maoism/>.
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Toscano Alberto Bidet Jacques & Kouvelakis Stathis ‘Marxism Expatriated: Alain Badiou’s Turn’ Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism 2008 Leiden Brill Historical Materialism Book Series
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ucfml [L’Union des communistes de France marxiste-léniniste] Le Livre des paysans pauvres: 5 années de travail maoïste dans une campagne française 1976 Paris François Maspero
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Walker Gavin ‘On Marxism’s Field of Operation: Badiou and the Critique of Political Economy’ Historical Materialism 2012 20 2 39 74
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Wolin Richard The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution and the Legacy of the 1960s 2010 Princeton Princeton University Press
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Wright Steve Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism 2002 London Pluto Press
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3
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.
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7
Badiou 2010, pp. 52–4.
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8
Bosteels 2005, pp. 629–30, n. 50.
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9
Fields 1988, p. 98.
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10
Bosteels 2005, p. 585.
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21
Bosteels 2005, p. 579.
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22
Mao 1971, pp. 23–39.
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23
Marx 1997.
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25
Rigaudias-Weiss 1975, pp. 158–70.
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26
Wright 2002, pp. 24–5.
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27
Wolin 2010, pp. 330–1.
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28
Hoffman 2015.
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29
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.
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31
Artières 2011, pp. 53–4.
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56
Badiou 2001b, pp. 95–6.
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57
Toscano 2008, p. 535.
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59
Hallward 2003, p. 41.
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60
Hallward 2003, p. 43.
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61
Badiou 2008, pp. 85–6.
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62
Badiou 2008, p. 15.
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63
Badiou 2008, p. 12.
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64
Badiou 2008, p. 87.
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65
Badiou 2008, p. 67.
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66
Badiou 2008, p. 108.
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67
Badiou 2008, p. 109.
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68
Badiou 2010, pp. 181–2.
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69
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.
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70
Badiou 2010, p. 182.
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71
Badiou 2010, pp. 113–4, 155–6.
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73
Badiou 2001a, p. 67; my italics.
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74
Hallward 2003, p. 126.
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75
Badiou 1975, p. 110.
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Alain Badiou, the Maoist Investigation, and the Party-Form
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Marcelo Hoffman in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
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 | 1592 | 166 | 8 |
| Full Text Views | 394 | 9 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 238 | 25 | 0 |
