Alain Badiou

Badiou's scathing critique of liberal democracy's smoke & shadow circus is some years old but as fresh as ever in the face of such obscene spectacles like this current one following the death of one uniquely privileged individual, in a caste-ridden country the majority of whose territory and resources are in the hands of a tiny minority. That not being enough for the tiny minority, who --including the dead monarch--secreted their riches in offshore accounts to avoid taxes.

As the new king too show more will avoid paying taxes on the almost 700 billion pounds he inherits from dear departed tax-dodging mama. (No, King Charles III won't pay any inheritance tax on his massive gain)

Adding yet another insult to who knows how many injuries, and buttressing further Badiou's pornographic metaphor, this new king has apparently allowed his minor-exploiting, sex-trafficking-friendly younger brother to be his "deputy"...

But I'm not interested in these debased, over-privileged idiots. The real tragedy lies in the servility of those who support them.

Badiou describes the middle class's mindless intoxication with words that have lost all meaning, the prime example being "democracy". For a long time we had to bear being bludgeoned by American propaganda about the US being "the greatest democracy"--never mind that it was a "democracy" founded on genocide, slavery, and a persistent (because carefully preserved) caste system which quite deliberately sets out to create an eternal underclass--a "democracy" where most often less than half of eligible population actually voted, and those who voted saw their choices routinely sabotaged, a "democracy" that nevertheless ruined other democratic systems and propped the worst tyrants as it saw fit, a "democracy" that abhors even the mildest progressive measures (and persecutes them all as "communist"), whereas its old sympathy for Nazism not just survives but THRIVES. Why wouldn't it--Nazism doesn't threaten capitalism, and as hackneyed as the statement is, capitalism is all that matters to America. A "democracy", finally, that just reached a sort of apocalyptic climax in STRIPPING AWAY freedom of half or even more than half its entire population.

This is why "American democracy" is accurately seen as fascism. But it's a fascism "done-up" with Madison Avenue glossy looks and lies. Besides, who's to care? The oppressed poor are too crazed by the sheer fight for survival, and the middle class...

Here I'll quote Badiou (my translation):

...the middle class individual, which we all are in some part of ourselves, desires to persevere in the world such as it is, provided that capitalism offers him a less despotic authority, more consensual, a corruption better regulated, in which he will be able to participate without even having to notice it. That's perhaps the best definition of today's middle class: to participate naively in capitalism's formidable inequitable corruption, without even having to know it.

Close your eyes all you want. A lot of us here are old enough that we'll just about make it to our graves without having to reckon with the consequences of the lies we sustained. But if there's anyone you care for you are leaving behind... get a fucking clue, demand the "impossible", demand revolution. show less

Badiou needs to learn not to talk big. There are some interesting moments here; leading us through idiosyncratic interpretations of the student protests in France in 1968, the Cultural Revolution, and the Paris Commune, he makes and reinforces a case that a thread runs through these episodes, making them the best starting place for learning the lessons about what communism needs to be for the future and how we need to start making it that. Communism has blossomed or advanced a million show more different ways since the Manifesto, he says, and all of them have ended in abject failure. What that means isn't that communism isn't possible. It just means that we haven't figured out how to do it yet. All the communisms we've tried have been impossible, so the question before us is, how to rescue the idea of communism from those failures? And the hypothesis is that there exists a possible communism that works. And the reason to test that hypothesis is that "all those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parlaimentary democracy--the form of state suited to capitalism--and to the inevitable and "natural" character of the most monstrous inequalities."


Now that's exciting jacket copy! And the book is that particular light communist red that's definitely not orange and definitely not pink, and the writing is gold, Little Red Book-style, and all the signs are there: this is a major new salvo in the communism of the future that is struggling to birth, the indeterminate object around which Zizek, and David Harvey's Enigma of Capital, and in a weird way even housing protests and LOHAS and op-eds hacking on the banks, are orbiting. Take us a step closer, Badiou!


Oh hell, it's later now, and I would really like to know what the fuck happened to the rest of my review and why this keeps happening on librarything. Anyway, he figures that the student protests' failure ushered in neoliberalism because we couldn't believe anymore (so Francecentric, I love it), and the Cultural Revolution is this amazing example of Mao channeling the people permanent revolution-style to combat the bourgeoisie within the party and that we should find a way to salvage that without the massive death (and that would be so much more convincing if he treated said massive death with the needed massive dignity and did not just kind of try to squirm through it with a serious, future-oriented look on his face), and that the Paris Commune's singularity consists in the fact that it was the first and only time the people took over and provided social programs instead of riots or pogroms and didn't sell the whole thing out to the parties of the left, who by their very nature are non-transformative--the left wing, the left leg, part of the greater repressive whole.


But Paris was working, until it was crushed by the army. Lenin danced in the snow when the Bolsheviks had been in power longer than the Communards, and it's a stinging sliver, that ambiguity as to whether he saw it as them beating the odds where their forebears had failed or whether he saw it as the vindication of the party model, the revolutionary-vanguard theory that's never meant anything but irrelevance or tyranny in practice.


So how does Badiou do on his big promises? Well, there is interest here, as I try to get across, and things to agree and (more often) disagree with, and a lot of conceptual meandering straight out of Being and Event about the nature of the Fact and the Idea that I could mostly do without, and a letter to Zizek that is adorable in the mutually striving, big-brains-on-the-bleeding-edge bromance it bespeaks but perplexingly defends Mao as kinder and gentler than the medieval Slavic brand of communism that Zizek grew up with because he didn't purge his rivals within the party (but whether the famine happened because Mao was so devoted to theory over evidence re economic voluntarism and home factories and such, or just because of endemic lies and asscovering at every level about how bad things actually were, at some-odd million deaths ignorance becomes guilt). But long story short on the getting us a step closer thing: he didn't. show less

French philosopher Alain Badiou, in some 100 pages, ventures to defend our current devolving notion of love as it collapses to consumerism and ennui. In this passionate piece, Badiou traces the philosophy of love from the ideas of Kierkegaard, Plato’s Republic, the poetry of Rimbaud, and asserts that we need to reinvent love. In fact, love reinvents us.

The advent of dating apps has been criticized as commercializing love - which is an organic process and a matter of chance. Emphasis is show more laid on the risk-averse behaviour that, plaguing most of us, remains a primary hindrance in our journey to love, as love is risky by construction.

By Badiou’s definition of love, we do not become one in love - we multiply. It is the process of expanding our world and vision into accommodating another human being, he calls it becoming Two. Love is selfless. Love isn’t a mutual exchange. This reminds me of the Auden poem “The More Loving One”:

"How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me."

Love, as per Badiou, is an expansion of ourselves, it is a reinvention of our identity and the world around us; it is the widening of our circle to accommodate another person. Love is not a mere meeting of someone; it is a unique trust we place on a chance encounter. It is a construction, it is a choice to live no longer from the perspective of one, but from the perspective of two.

"We could say that love is a tenacious adventure. The adventurous side is necessary, but equally so is the need for tenacity. To give up at the first hurdle, the first serious disagreement, the first quarrel, is only to distort love. Real love is one that triumphs enduringly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world."

The declaration of love is what converts this chance into destiny, a sense of fidelity that is an extended victory, essentially declaring that, “you know, I met you by chance but I will extract something eternal from this randomness.”

There is also further discourse around love and its interplay with politics, art and to some extent media. Badiou heralds Beckett’s depiction of love and marriage despite the general bleakness of his works - especially mentioning Happy Days and Enough; he juxtaposes this discourse with the Godard film from where this title is taken, In Praise of Love; he spoke of his perspective of Communism in relation to love.

The perspective presented in this book challenged my skepticism over the notion of love and the implicit “always” which perhaps exists due to the clash between the concept of love and the importance I place on independent identity - which Badiou critiques as one of the biggest challenges to love. Do I fully agree with everything? No. But, did it present me with a new way of thinking? Definitely. show less

Përse shën Pali? Përse ta kerkosh këtë "apostull", kur është dhe i dyshimtë e me sa duket edhe i vetëshpallur i tillë, madje që emrin ia lidhim rëndom përmasave më institucionale e më të mbyllura të krishtërimit: Kishës, disiplinës morale, konservatizmit shoqëror, dyshimit ndaj çifutëve? Si ta nënshkruajmë emrin e tij në realizimin e përpjekjes sonë: me ri-themelu një teori subjekti që ia nënvë ekzistencën e tij përmasës rastësore të ngjarjes si dhe show more kontingjencës së kulluar të qënies-së-shumëfishtë, ama pa sakrifikuar motivin e së vërtetës? Sipërmarrje e çuditshme. Prej shumë kohësh ky personazh më shoqëron me të tjerë, Mallarme, Cantor, Arkimed, Platon, Robespierre, Conrad... Pali eshtë për mua mendimtar-poeti i ngjarjes po aq sa ai që praktikon dhe shpreh trajtat invariante të asaj që mund të quhet gura militantë. Ai ngjiz lidhjen, integralisht njerëzore, fati i së cilës më mahnit, mes idesë së përgjithshme të një këputjeje, përmbysjeje, dhe idesë së një mendimi-praktik që është dhe materialiteti subjektiv i kësaj këputjeje. show less