Grant Farred on Soweto 1976

“From Prescription to Volition” by Peter Hallward

Peter Hallward, Politics & Society

I stand by the ‘politics of prescription’ that I outlined back in 2005, and that Timothy Kaposy has kindly taken the time to consider in his article above. I think the general emphasis on universalisable and egalitarian principle, on subjective commitment and resolve, on the logic of consequence and anticipation, on an engagement with the strategic constraints of a specific situation, etc., remain pertinent to any conception of emancipatory politics worthy of the name. If anything, the last few years (2011-2014) have shown that these themes deserve more systematic attention, and appreciation, both in the domain of practical politics and in the domains of philosophy and political theory.

“Politics in Pre-Political Times” by Alberto Toscano

Alberto Toscano, Politics & Culture

The philosophical injunction to grasp one’s time in thought is beset today by an oscillation between disorienting anxiety and a renascent enthusiasm. The anxiety is determined by the objective temporality of crisis, understood, in keeping with the medical derivation of the term from Hippocratic medicine, as that phase “in which a decision is due but has not yet been rendered” (Koselleck 361); when decisions are looking for their subjects. It is an anxiety that is also shadowed by a catastrophic tonality; in the absence of sublime visions of final collapse, there is a deep-seated sense that social stagnation or regression will continue to shadow any possible ‘recovery’, and that the only events punctuating an otherwise featureless future will be starkly negative.

“Badiou and Beyond: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation” by Bruno Bosteels

Bruno Bosteels, Politics & Culture

In “Politics in the Wake of Actually Existing Zeal,” after trying to explain some of the reasons for the urgency and necessity of Alain Badiou’s interventions in the current debate over philosophy and politics, Andrew Pendakis in his inimitable style—just look at the devastating sarcasm of the title alone—raises a set of “irritating questions” with which my book Badiou and Politics left him flush and unsettled. Though I may have provoked them, these questions seem less aimed at my work than at the thought of Badiou, so that it may seem presumptuous and out of place for me to try to answer them here. Badiou is certainly capable of speaking for himself, and I am less and less inclined to accept to be put in the position of having to defend or represent him. Nevertheless, insofar as several of the questions before us expand on doubts, criticisms, and polemical objections that I myself raise in Badiou and Politics, perhaps this is a good moment to reflect and comment on where I stand now and what I would do or am doing differently today.

Poetry and Communism

Alain Badiou

translated by Bruno Bosteels, Lana Turner

[from the forthcoming book by Alain Badiou, The Age of the Poets and Other Writings on Twentieth-Century Poetry and Prose, edited and translated by Bruno Bosteels with an introduction by Emily Apter and Bruno Bosteels (London-New York: Verso, 2014).]

In the last century, some truly great poets, in almost all languages on earth, have been communists. In an explicit or formal way, for example, the following poets were committed to communism: in Turkey, Nâzim Hikmet; in Chile, Pablo Neruda; in Spain, Rafael Alberti; in Italy, Eduardo Sanguinetti; in Greece, Yannis Ritsos; in China, Ai Qing; in Palestine, Mahmoud Darwish; in Peru, César Vallejo; and in Germany, the shining example is above all Bertolt Brecht. But we could cite a very large number of other names in other languages, throughout the world.

Thinking Political Emancipation and the Social Sciences in Africa: Some Critical Reflections

Thinking Political Emancipation and the Social Sciences in Africa: Some Critical Reflections by TigersEye99

'Unlearning' hegemony : an exploration of the applicability of Alain Badiou's theory of the event to informal learning through an examination of the life histories of South African social movement activists.

Anne Harley, 2012

This thesis argues that it is both necessary and possible to change the world. Changing the world requires engaging with, to try to understand it from the basis of lived reality, and then acting. Our ability to do this is, however, affected by hegemony, which attempts to convince us that the way things are is either normal and natural and the only possible way they could be, or that it is impossible to change them. Nevertheless, there is always resistance to this and I suggest that we might learn something useful by examining how this happens. The thesis thus explores Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, and its applicability to our current world; and also considers resistance to this. I argue that the nature of capitalism has shifted, and discuss how this shift has impacted on hegemony, identifying three current interlocking hegemonic ideologies. I consider current resistance to this hegemony, including the role of social movements. Much resistance, and many social movements, I argued, cannot properly be called counter-hegemonic in that, although it/they may critique the dominant economic system, it/they remain trapped within hegemonic logic. However, it is clear that there is existing truly counter-hegemonic resistance, including some social movements, and I argue that Abahlali baseMjondolo is one such counter-hegemonic movement. Thus it is possible that those who join/align themselves with this movement might be considered to have ‘unlearned’ hegemony and be useful subjects for this study. I thus consider the life stories of seven people who have aligned themselves to this movement, in order to determine whether they have indeed ‘unlearned’ hegemony, and if so, how.

Alain Badiou on Political Violence

And what experience shows is that, over the long term, neither antagonistic action, based on the military or police model, directed against enemies, nor Terror within your own camp can resolve the problems created by your own political existence...  Ultimately, every political problem boils down to a problem of the unity of orientation on an issue that is collectively defined as being the main issue of the moment or of the situation.  Even a victory over the enemy depends on the subjective unity that was the victors’.  Over the long run, the key to a victorious treatment  of antagonisms lies in the correct handling of contradictions among the people - which also happens to be the real definition of democracy ... There is a necessary slowness, both democratic and popular in nature, which is particular to the time of the correct handling of contradictions among the people... What ...[that paradoxical] violence especially destroys is the time of emancipation, which is on the scale of the life of humanity, not on that of the market’s profit cycle. (Badiou, 2013: 9-11)

From Zizek (Ed. The Idea of Communism Vol., 2, London, Verso 2013)

‘Another World is Possible’

Alain Badiou’s resolute commitment to communism and revolution placed him in the wilderness in the 1980s and ’90s.  Since the economic crisis, however, his ideas have become more germane as part of broader resurgence of interest in the concept of communism.  Samuel Grove interviewed Colin Wright, author of Badiou in Jamaica: The Politics of Conflict and Lecturer in Critical Theory at Nottingham University, about Badiou’s ideas. This is the first part of their discussion, the second will follow soon. New Left Project

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You describe Alain Badiou’s philosophy as revolving around three key questions: i) How does genuine novelty enter the world? ii) How is it distinct from mundane change? iii) And how can it be made to endure? And yet capitalism has become so hegemonic in recent years that it has become pretty difficult to even imagine an alternative to it. 

I think the problem you describe, of the commodification of the political imaginary by capitalism, is a very serious one, especially given that this extends to images of resistance to capitalism as well (I refer to this in Badiou in Jamaica a few times as 'rebel chic').  Zizek's reading of the epidemic of apocalyptic Hollywood disaster movies is relevant here.  He suggests that capitalism's hold on the collective imaginary is such that it is now far easier, particularly in the face of mounting evidence of environmental catastrophe, to picture the whole planet going up in flames, than it is to conceive of the end of capitalism.  So it's a serious problem.  I also think that part of addressing this problem does indeed have to take place on the level of the political imaginary itself.  For all its many problems, at least the motto of the World Social Forum that 'Another World is Possible' acknowledges the need for an imaginative space in which alternatives to capitalism can be elaborated.  But it certainly can't be addressed only at that level, since enormous amounts of energy can be wasted on building utopian visions, when significant change, at least from a Marxist perspective, never comes only from ideas.  

Conjunctural remarks on the political significance of ‘the local’

Richard Pithouse, Department of Political and International Studies, Rhodes University, PO Box 94, Grahamstown 6140, South Africa. 

Abstract

Popular protest is occurring on a remarkable scale in South Africa. Nonetheless, there is a significant degree to which it tends to be organized and articulated through the local. This contribution argues that while the political limitations of purely local modes of organization are clear, it should not be assumed that local struggles are some sort of misguided distraction from building a broader progressive movement. It is suggested that, on the contrary, the best prospects for the emergence of a broader popular struggle lie in building, sustaining and linking local struggles.

Philosophy for Militants

by Alain Badiou

Translated by Bruno Bosteels

A philosophical guidebook for the struggles to come

An urgent and provocative account of the modern ‘militant’, a transformative figure at the front line of emancipatory politics. Around the world, recent events have seen the creation of a radical phalanx comprising students, the young, workers and immigrants. It is Badiou’s contention that the politics of such militants should condition the tasks of philosophy, even as philosophy clarifies the truth of our political condition.

To resolve the conflicts between politics, philosophy and democracy, Badiou argues for a resurgent communism – returning to the original call for universal emancipation and organizing for militant struggle.

Alain Badiou: The Philosophical Concept of Change Within Politics (2012)

Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy

Peter Hallward-Think Again Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy-Continuum International Publishing Gro... by kabir_jaso

Are Those-Who-Do-Not-Count Capable of Reason? Thinking Political Subjectivity in the (Neo-)Colonial World and the Limits of History

By Michael Neocosmos, 2012

This article is concerned to show that the historical science of the (neo-)colonial world is unable to allow
for an analysis of the political subjectivities of ‘those-who-do-not-count’ or ‘subalterns’ as rational beings.
Rather, it can only think such subjectivities as the products of people who are merely bearers of their social
location, not thinking subjects. As a result, such history can only be a history of place, not a history of the
transcending of place; it therefore amounts to colonial or state history. Historical objectivity invariably
produces state history. The thought of the possibility of emancipatory politics, which always exceeds place,
is thus precluded. This is an unavoidable epistemic problem in history and the social sciences in their current
form. Following the work of Lazarus, I argue for an alternative historical methodology in Africa in terms of
an internal analysis of the idioms of politics as discontinuous subjective sequences.

Jasper Bernes and Joshua Clover on The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings

History and the Sphinx: Of Riots and Uprisings

The Los Angeles Review of Books, September 24th, 2012 

1.

Riots are the Sphinx of the left. Every soi disant radical intellectual feels compelled, it seems, to answer the riddle they hear posed by the riots of the present, in Bahrain or Asturias, Chile or Britain: Why now? Why here? Why riot? These answers generally come in a few simple varieties. First, if the riot seems to lack focus or present clears demands – that is, if it is illegible as “protest,” as in the case of the London riots of summer 2011 – the intellectual will paint them as a “meaningless outburst” (Slavoj Žižek), undertaken by “mindless rioters” (David Harvey). Invariably, attributions of unmeaning must find support in patronizing sociology, rendering the rioters mere side-effects of an unequal society, symptoms of neoliberalism, capitalist crisis and the ensuing austerity.

Alain Badiou: From Logic to Anthropology, or Affirmative Dialectics

"We Need a Popular Discipline": Contemporary Politics and the Crisis of the Negative

Alain Badiou, Interviewed by Filippo Del Lucchese and Jason Smith, 2008

I see my philosophy as an inheritor of the great contestatory movements of the sixties. In fact, my philosophy emerged out of these movements. It is a philosophy of commitment, of engagement, with a certain fidelity to Sartre, if you like, or to Marxism. What counts is that the intellectual is engaged in politics and commits to or takes the side of the people and the workers. I move in that tradition. Myphilosophy tries to keep alive, as best it can (it is not always easy), the idea that theris a real alternative to the dominant politics and that we are not obliged to rally around the consensus that ultimately consists in the unity of global capitalism and the representative, democratic state. I would say, then, that I work under the condition of the situation of political actuality, with the goal of keeping alive, philosophically, the idea of the possibility or opening of a politics I would call a politics of emancipation—but that could also be called a radical or revolutionary politics, terms that today are debatable but that represent all the same a possibility other than the dominant one.

Wherever a human collective is working in the direction of equality, the conditions are met for everyone to be a philosopher.

“Wherever a human collective is working in the direction of equality, the conditions are met for everyone to be a philosopher.” (Alain Badiou, Philosophy for Militants, 2012, p.37)

The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots & Uprisings

What is going on? Of what are we the half-fascinated, half-devastated witnesses? The continuation, at all costs, of a weary world? A salutary crisis of that world, racked by its victorious expansion? The end of that world? The advent of a different world? What is happening to us in the early years of the century - something that would appear not to have any clear name in any accepted language?

   

Let us consult our masters: discreet bankers; media stars; hesitant representatives of major commissions ; spokesmen of the ' international community ' ; busy presidents; new philosophers; factory and estate owners; stock market men and boards of directors; chattering opposition politicos; urban and provincial notables; economists of growth; sociologists of citizenship; experts on all sorts of crises; prophets of the 'clash of civilizations'; heads of the police, justice and 'penitentiary' systems; profit assessors; productivity calculators; the prim editorialists of serious newspapers; human resources directors; people who in their own view are of some account; people one would do well not to take for nobodies . What have they got to say about it, all these rulers, all these opinion-formers, all these leaders, all these thimble-rigging tyrants?

Sites, truths and the logics of worlds: Alain Badiou and human geography

by Ian Shaw, 2010

This paper argues for the political importance of Alain Badiou’s ‘site’ in human geography. A site is a place of radical politics capable of destroying old worlds and creating new ones. Badiou’s recently published Logics of Worlds (2009, Continuum, London) is an account of how worlds come to exist. Critical to understanding this work is Badiou’s critique of ‘democratic materialism’, an umbrella term used for Deleuzian and postmodern philosophies, defined by the phrase: ‘there are only bodies and languages’. Badiou counters this with his ‘materialist dialectic’, which emphasises the intervention truth can make in a world: ‘there are only bodies and languages, except that there are truths’. The subversion of the appearance of a world by the infinite potential of the site is cast as the emergence of a truth. Current theorisations of the site in human geography do not take into account truth as a political category. The paper is thus a defence of the site as an exceptional place of politics, where the materialist dialectic conviction: ‘except that there are truths’ is rendered visible.