Alain Badiou interview 1/3

[EclecticSceptic]

Alain Badiou is great! He is one of my heroes on the left: Noam Chomsky, David Harvey, George Orwell, Alain Badiou, Karl Marx, etc.

[mit181]

faith underlies any political/economic system

[Schniddo]

@mit181 thanks for that banal statement

[mit181]

@Schniddo It was in response to ~5:35. Irks me when anyone uses the 'faith' argument. As much faith in the next boom after bust, volatile markets and capitalist institutions than there is in the Communist project. Next time I'll throw in a few -isms, make reference to a few theorists, and write it in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet, professing my sweet sweet love to all things profound.

[chrish12345]

Doesn't this interview(er) show the flaws of the British mindset - reluctance to stop and think abstractly and imaginatively even for one moment. Everything must be tied to the ongoing rush into oblivion. One dare not pause and consider the 'whats' and 'whys' of life in case it breaks the precious trend of vicious money-making, American ass-licking and misery. The very notion of philosophy is alien to us, and look at the state of the nation compared to a reasonably civilised nation like France.

[LondonTheatreBlog]

Such a shame that Badiou couldn't get his ideas across with greater complexity here. The language barrier was undeniably problematic and the interviewer is able to capitalise (no pun intended) on that imbalance. If you're a French speaker you should check out the video 'un penseur au plus juste' for a very similar topical debate centering around his publication 'The Communist Hypothesis'. Saw Badiou and Zizek speak at Birkbeck in London. Tremendous fever for a new approach to social organisation

[Krelianx]

Some interesting moments towards the end when Badiou was accused of resting ona mere 'faith' to legitimize communism as the correct idea for communitarian emancipation. Badiou appeals to the proper vision of a society 'without classes' but struggles to make this more substantial than the proverbial ideological cliché of democracy 'equal rights for everybody, irrespective of race, religion and cultural background'. Clearly, everyone wants general wellbeing, without tyranny...

[Krelianx]

... and clearly through communism we know oppression can be thought of in terms of classes; just as we now know the importance of opposing racism, sexism and ethnocentrism. The critique Badiou brings forth against the democractic tenets of freedom of culture, individual expression and human rights do not, by themselves, tell us how to move beyond communism qua the expression of a class.

[Krelianx]

Popular emancipation remains to banal a concept, too empty, to warrant the maintenance of the name 'communism'; no substantial content is offered. The desire to keep this name in circulation seems to me to require the leftist nostalgia Badiou must inevitably must feel to his intimate political/theoretical activity, his involvement through the events of may 68, and the political alliegances of his mentors. I see no intuitive content in assigning this name for emancipatory politics in general.

[Krelianx]

On the other hand, I find myself close to Badiou on this topic in that clearly something new has to be built; a new world. But this new logic and new world can be something entirely new, something without a name, or making the name of communism something like an eternal name, an indisplaceable truth, a normativized political generic procedure. It would positivize communism as the only path towards political novelty. Here the dialog with Heidegger and the technological problem can be retaken...

[Krelianx]

Perhaps we have to build the bedrock of the conflict beyond the very equation of revolutionary politics within the scope of emmancipation. For all his acute insight into the scope of the technological question for Heidegger, Badiou's quick dismissal of the issue (as provincialist nostalgia) is disatisfying. Perhaps the real necessary change is already quite impossible for reasons we refuse to recognize in these pools. I'm recently incliced to see in Vom Ereignis a more tragic and profound sign.

[filmsnoirs]

There are two more parts, it was a 25 minute interview

[Krelianx]

After seeing them the point remains though. The impase is not knowing what this 'new framework' will look like, which struggles it will address directly, and what can supplant its ongoing course. I agree with Badiou in that this remains a task for thought, but I am more cautious about remaining within the scope of Marxism simply because it seems rather trivial to appeal to popular emancipation as being proper to Marxism. If its just a 'name' then I don't see any strategic advantage either.

[HandsAndPockets]

That we should engage in political discourse presupposes a kind of communitarian emancipation, I think.

The political is over the nature of "wellbeing," and the respective natures of "wellbeing" are often presupposed in respective political arguments.

The communal thing to do is to understand human-wellbeing before being political, but is non-political understanding possible? -Given our inherited styles of interpretation?

Does being communitarian mean being non-political?

[Krelianx]

Well, revolutionary politics certainly entails distance from the State, and the construction of a new truth (a new generic procedure). Even if we must pressupose communitarian emancipation, the point is that without anything else it is quite impossible to distinguish that tenet as proper to communism; it can also be said to be the idea behind human rights' generalized freedom from oppression or tyranny (communism does for class what liberalism does for race and ethnicity). We still need more.