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ALAIN BADIOU
AC ritical Introduction
Jason Barker
Alain Badiou
Modern European Thinkers
Series Editor: Professor Keith Reader,
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
The Modern European Thinkers series offers low-priced
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John Marks
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Benjamin Nays
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Julia Kristeva
Anne-Marie Smith
Alain Badiou
A Critical Introduction
Jason Barker
4~
Pluto Press
LONDON
First published 2002 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Jason Barker 2002
The right of Jason Barker to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 18004 paperback
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barker, Jason.
Alain Badiou : a critical introduction / Jason Barker.
p. cm. - (Modern European thinkers)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7453-1801-1 (hard) - ISBN 978-0-7453-1800-4 (pbk.)
1. Badiou, Alain. 2. Political scientists-Biography. 3. Political
science-Philosophy. 4. Philosophy, French-20th century. 1. Title.
II. Series.
JC229.B33 B37 2002
320'.092-dc21
2001003499
11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth EX 10 9QG
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
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Contents
Acknowledegments vii
Abbreviations viii
Introduction 1
1. Maoist Beginnings 13
2. The Science of Being 39
3. The Event of Non-Being S9
4. The Politics of Truth 83
S. The Cult of Deleuze 111
6. The Ethics of Philosophy 130
Appendix - Some Basic Principles of Set Theory 149
Notes and References IS6
Bibliography 171
Index 179
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Christopher Norris for his expert comments
and guidance throughout the researching and writing of this book,
particularly the many discussions which were a regular source of
inspiration. My sincerest thanks are also due to Martin Jenkins for
his support and belief in this project right from the very beginning.
Special thanks to Jean-Jacques Lecercle for kindly agreeing to read
one of several draft versions of the manuscript, and to Peter Hallward
for sending me extracts of his own work in progress. I am grateful to
Andy Goffey and the equally talented Benoit Letourneau for - quite
unbeknown to them I'm sure - setting my thoughts on the right
track. I should also like to thank Alain Badiou for his generous invi
tation to partiCipate in the colloquium on his work, held at Bordeaux
in October 1999, and for providing me with the appropriate
biographical details. I must express my appreciation to the staff and
acknowledge the excellent facilities at Cardiff University, and thank
Gary Winterbottom for his first-rate hospitality on my numerous
visits to Cardiff. Thanks to the staff at Pluto Press, particularly
Melanie Patrick, Robert Webb and Anne Beech, and to Veronique
Serafinowicz for her editorial comments. Needless to say any
lingering inconsistencies in my use of Badiou's terminology are
solely down to me.
Abbreviations
I refer the reader to my bibliography for full details of the following
works. All references relate solely to the French editions with one
exception. * In this case corresponding page numbers of the English
edition are provided in italics.
CM The Concept of Model
TC Theory of Contradiction
I Of Ideology
NR The Rational Kernel of the Hegelian Dialectic
TS Theory of the Subject
PP Can Politics Be Thought?
EE Being and the Event
MP Manifesto for Philosophy
C Conditions
E Ethics
o *Deleuze. The Clamour of Being
AM Summary of Metapolitics
CT Short Treatise on Transitional Ontology
PMI Light Inaesthetic Manual
DO An Obscure Disaster
Introduction: The Unnameable
It is 5 a.m. Paris awakens to barricades, trees strewn in the streets.
The protest is, according to General de Gaulle, difficult to grasp.
Unforeseeable, it profoundly shakes the government. A radical
protest is sweeping France and provoking the most important
social movement the country has ever known: ten million
strikers. A shock. 1
The philosophy of Alain Badiou is an impossible wager. Arguably the
most ambitious speculative thinker since Hegel and the most materi
alist since Lucretius, Badiou defies the liberal diplomacy of the
linguistic turn and the crisis of Western metaphysics in a heroic
effort to rescue philosophy from its time in exile. His intervention in
philosophy today forces us to interrogate most if not all of our post
modern beliefs: from the death of Marxism and the deconstruction
of the subject to the revival of neo-Kantianism and scientific prag
matism, Badiou pierces the common sense of each and everyone in
order to reveal, against a backdrop of conventional wisdom, philos
ophy as a militant discourse on truth.
But who is Badiou? And what are we to make of a 'militant'
philosopher so conspicuously deprived of latter-day philosophical
allies?
Born in Rabat, Morocco in 1937, Badiou studied at the Ecole
Normale Superieure in Paris between 1956 and 1961, obtaining his
licence and maftrise from the Sorbonne. In 1958 he helped to found
the PSU (United Socialist Party), an offshoot of the French Socialist
Party strongly opposed to the French Algerian War. Like many
young political activists of his generation, Badiou's anti-imperialist
consciousness would prove paramount in dictating the future path
of his intellectual life. He wrote the first of several novels -
Almagestes (1964) - and in 1967 began participating in a Spinoza
research group created by the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser.
The same year he was invited to join Althusser's 'Philosophy Course
