Alain Badiou's Politics and the Problem of Social History

Bibliographic Data

ID12643117
AuthorsDavid Wild (Department of Philosophy Macquarie University, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume10
Issue3
Pages391-411
Publication date2009-12-30
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Horizons (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1440-9917 • E-ISSN: 1568-5160
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1558/crit.v10i3.391
OpenAlexW2056970130
LanguageEN
References cited4

This paper explores the plausibility of Alain Badiou's ahistorical theory of politics. By insisting that the events of egalitarian politics are radically subtracted from social and historical conditions Badiou imagines a form of political action that effectively comes out of nothing. However, in order to establish the very prospect of an event's occurrence Badiou is forced to ground the possibility of political intervention in his theory of "evental recurrence", which effectively enables the subjects of political action to draw on the consequences of a preceding event in order to act in the here and now. The paper argues that by introducing the social dimensions of evental recurrence it is possible to construct an alternative account of political action that resolves a number of inconsistencies in Badiou's otherwise miraculous vision of politics. Consequently, rather than a militant activist that comes out of nowhere, evental recurrence implies that the militants of political action are saturated in their immediate social and political circumstances and in the memory of past struggles

Action (physics · Construct (python library · Economics · Epistemology · Event (particle physics · Militant · Nothing · Order (exchange · Political action · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Computer Science · Critical Theory and Political Philosophy · Law · Marxism and Critical Theory · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics

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