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.
