Distant Immediacy

Badiou and Rancière on May ’68 and its Consequences

Bibliographic Data

ID12418190
AuthorsRok Benčin (0000-0002-6457-3815, Karst Research Institute, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume29
Issue6
Pages714-724
Publication date2020-06-16
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1062-7987 • E-ISSN: 1474-0575
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1062798720000824
OpenAlexW3036986069
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited2

This article on the French May ’68 addresses the gap between the immediacy of the event and the series of consequences that are supposed to have followed from it. In the eyes of the critics of May ’68 from all sides of the political spectrum, the events in France have been considered as having no consequence at all, as having no political but merely cultural consequences, or as producing political consequences that were opposite to the intentions of their actors. To these interpretations, which all account for the distance between the event and its consequences by means of completely disjointing the latter from the former, the article opposes two reflections on May ’68 – those by Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière – that attempt to examine the consequences of the very immediacy of the politics practised by the actors of the events, a politics that operates at a distance from mediation, representation and postponement. Badiou and Rancière propose some similar conclusions, but also two very different ways of reading the immediacy of the event

Epistemology · Event (particle physics · Immediacy · Linguistics · Mediation · Physics · Political science · Politics · Reading (process · Representation (politics · Social science · Sociology · Critical Theory and Political Philosophy · Law · Marxism and Critical Theory · Philosophy

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