References
- Émile Zola, Germinal, trans. L. Tancock (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2004), 144.
- Cf.Alain Badiou, Infinite Thought, trans. O. Feltham and J. Clemens (London: Continuum, 2005), p.35–37. Hereafter this work will be cited as IT.
- See Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. P. Hallward, (London: Verso, 2001), p.10. Hereafter this work will be cited as EE.
- Cf.Badiou, Being and Event, trans. O Feltham (London: Continuum, 2005), pp.327–347. Hereafter this work will be cited as BE.
- Void is the absolute point of truth. Jason Barker elucidates this point well when he draws attention to a similar point. He describes Badiou's relation to Marx in relation to the idea of the eternal: ‘To the question what is the eternal? Marx responds: ‘There is nothing immutable but the abstraction of the movement—mors immortalis.’ In the fullness of time capitalism annihilates everything, every last vestige of social stability, including its own productive efficiency. The void—death—is the only objective certainty in the universe, a certainty which there is no possibility of transcending.” Jason Barker, Alain Badiou: A Critical Introduction, (London: Pluto Press, 2002), p.68.
- Cf.Peter Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p.126. Hereafter this text will be referred to as BST.
- Badiou, The Meaning of Sarkozy, trans. D. Fernbach (London: Verso, 2008), p.116. Hereafter this text will be cited as MS.
- Across Badiou's literature there are many different examples of the Event, and it is something that is evident in many instances of human experiences. The most obvious is the political events of the French and Russian revolution, May 1968, the Chinese Cultural revolution, but also Cantorian set theory, Greek tragedy, the music of Hayden, the invention of modern physics with Galileo, and even the amorous experience of two people falling in love.
- Peter Hallward makes this point in dialogue with Bruno Bosteels. Cf. Hallward, BST, 287.
- In The Meaning of Sarkozy Badiou makes a very telling point. He suggests that despite the plurality of worlds there is only one world. The philosophical consequence of this for the relationship between same and other identities is that: “The principle of the existence of a single world does not contradict the endless play of identities and differences. It simply means, when it becomes an axiom of collective action, that these identities subordinate their negative dimension (opposition to others) to their assertive dimensions (development of the same). Badiou, MS, 68. If it is a matter of a simple twist of identity, where negative differences are kept in play while our infinite and generic being is kept in play, then the same conceptual problematic remains, either antagonistic and negative differences delimit the operation of the same or they do not.
- The animal is symptomatic of human suffering and mortal impoverishment. The real target for Badiou here is the philosophy of finitude. Badiou wants to ‘have done with the finite’. SeeAlain Badiou, ‘Philosophy and Mathematics: Infinity and the End of Romanticism’, in Alain Badiou: Theoretical Writings, eds.R. Brassier and A. Toscano (Continuum: London, 2004), p.25.
- Nina Power and Alberto Toscano, ‘The Philosophy of Restoration: Alain Badiou and the Enemies of May,’ in Boundary, 2(2009), p. 32.
- Terry Eagleton draws attention to this tension in Badiou arguing that: “Badiou's thought is a curious mélange of Enlightenment rationalism and a Romantic faith in truth as sublime revelation.” Terry Eagleton, The Trouble with Strangers (Oxford, Blackwell, 2008), p.268.
- George Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: In Front of Your Nose 1945–1950, eds.S. Orwell and I. Angus (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968.), p.125.
- Plato “Laches,” Meno and Other Dialogues, trans. R Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2005), 190d–192e.
- Cf. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. J. Macquarie (Oxford, Blackwell, 1962), pp.179–182.