Engaging an infinity in actuality: exposing political space in the authority of experience itself

Abstract

In this short response piece, I use the distinction, following Claude Lefort, between the political (le politique) and politics (la politique) to frame an evaluation of the retreating of the concept of authority as presented in this special edition. The piece takes up Jean-Luc Nancy’s presentation of a different regime of thought for politics that takes the actuality of singular experience as that which keeps open the constitution of any political act, event or space in its infinite potential. Arguing that the concept of the event plays to the heart of our questioning of politics, I spotlight the disruptive and unpredictable space at the cusp of the (as yet) inconceivable threshold of conscious awareness which points towards the space of politics attuned to the molecular beat of habit, affect and plasticity.

Keywords:

• Nancy
• event
• habit
• the singular
• post-foundational politics

Notes

1. Equally, we see Badiou argue that ‘(O)ur task concerns politics (la politique) to the extent that it positions occurrences of un-tying in the order of the irrepresentatable’ (1985, p. 17).