Alain Badiou interview 1/3

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Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Marxism
• Communism
• politics
• philosophy
• anti-capitalism

[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...

[filmsnoirs]

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

[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.

[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.

[Schniddo]

@mit181 thanks for that banal statement

[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

[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]

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.

[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.

[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?