After The Event: Rationality and the Politics of Invention - An Interview

AFTER THE EVENT:

RATIONALITY AND THE POLITICS OF INVENTION AN INTERVIEW WITH ALAIN BADIOU 1

by Radical Politics1 RADICAL POLITICS: Let us begin the interview with a question on the nature of the event in your work. You have vehemently denounced in your work anti-philosophy and its main thesis: the “impenetrability of God’s design”, and the fundamental “inaccessibility that opens the way to an infinite hermeneutics”.2 On the contrary, a philosophical project needs to be anchored within the intelligible. However, you maintain in your Saint Paul that “The Resurrection … is not of the historical order, is not demonstrable; it is a pure event, an opening of an epoch, a change in the relations between the possible and the impossible.”3; in Ethics you declare that what interests you in the figure of Saint Paul, “is the idea that the becoming of a truth, the becoming of a subject, depend entirely on a pure event, which is itself beyond all the predictions and calculations that our understanding is capable of”.4 Could we not say that the event, because it lies beyond our understanding, beyond the order of the demonstrable, is unintelligible? And that our commitment to it, because it requires a “certain kind of special passivity” and a “total abandonment”, is, dare we say, religious?

1The Radical Politics is a group of students in political theory, based at the University of Essex, UK, whose aim is to carve out a space and a forum in which to talk about politics. It serves as a space defined by a relation of “equality”, and is predicated upon a commitment to the creation of this space. It is also a way of coming to terms with contemporary political thought, and of building up an archive of texts and responses produced by students and then disseminated.

2 Quoted in Peter Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003, p.28.

3 Badiou, Saint Paul: La fondation de l’universalisme, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999, p.49.

4 Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward, London: Verson, 2001, p.123.

ALAIN BADIOU:It is imperative to understand that an event is always relative to a situation; it is an event for the situation, and not above or outside it.

Consequently, when I say that an event is beyond calculation, beyond prediction, this is naturally beyond prediction within the situation of which the event is the supplement, or the added singularity. As such, the event is not in itself unintelligible: it is unintelligible in regard to the means of prediction, of forecast, or of continuity that are those of the situation. But the intelligibility of the event is created in the fidelity to the event. Obviously for the revolutionaries, in the end, the event of “revolution” is intelligible. It is neither a mystery nor is it impenetrable. It is impenetrable only for the conservatism of the previous situation.

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What needs to be said, to be more precise on this point, is that an event creates the conditions of intelligibility of its situation, and these new conditions of intelligibility are applied, in particular, to itself. Hence, the intelligibility of the event is neither prospective nor calculative; it is rather retroactive. Therefore, even if I sometimes compare the event to a miracle, a grace, etc., these are only metaphors.

Undoubtedly, I remain rationalist in my appreciation of the event, and convinced that it is intelligible. Yet, precisely because it is an event, it is only intelligible afterwards, its conditions of intelligibility can never be anticipated.

Consequently, one cannot say that an event is religious, because “religious” always means that something remains unintelligible, that something is definitely mysterious: there is something in God’s design that remains forever inaccessible.

This is not the case of the event. There is an intelligibility of the event, but one that is created, and in many ways this constitutes one of the definitions of fidelity: fidelity is the creation in the future tense of the intelligibility of the event. This is the reason why thinking the intelligibility of the event takes a lot of time and is done in successive sequences. For instance, everybody knows that the true understanding of the Revolution of 1917 took much time – perhaps it is still not complete – but this does not imply that it is a mystery. In sum, when events are constituted, they were not calculable, predictable, and were not part of the previous rationality. One must understand that an event is also the creation of new instruments of rationality.

RP:In this same line of thought, does the event of conversion, itself the product of a certain revelation – even if this should be the revelation of the truthfulness of an event – retain a religious dimension? Is it not, in its essence, somewhat mysterious?

AB: There is certainly a mysterious element that remains present as long as the new conditions of rationality have not been completely deployed. However, this deployment is, in a certain way, infinite. Hence, one can always say that the deployment of these new conditions of rationality is never absolutely complete, and that there subsists in the event, and in our rallying to it, something that is never quite reducible to rationality. This, however, is not de jure, but de facto. To put it otherwise, de jure, nothing is unintelligible; de facto, the creation of the rationality can be long and complicated. Especially considering that one does not know the paths of fidelity.

Thus building the rationality of an event is itself often obscure and complex.

RP: How unique is the event? We ask this, because there seems to be a tension between the historical examples which you give of evental sequences (1871, 1917, 1968), and your apparent call for a more localized, interventionist politics.

AB: There is indeed a tension here. I think the problem is the following: what goes on when we are in the saturation or the end of a clearly determined political sequence? For instance, I think that the political sequence opened up by the Bolshevik Revolution is now saturated, and that we are not faithful to this event anymore, even though we still refer to it and that we do not reject it. What is going on here? I believe

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there are two orientations. The first way is that we remain faithful in an abstract, general way, since the event no longer has a generic reality. In sum, we seek to maintain its principle, which leads to some sort of dogmatic nostalgia.

The other way is to seek a new activation in a way that is extraordinarily local, in extremely precise circumstances, hoping that this filter, that this localisation will allow us to work much more acutely within the perspective of novelty. We will not create novelty, but we will nevertheless disturb things by working locally. In other words, I truly believe that when we are short of events, when we are short of what the events provide us with – during intermediary situations such as we are experiencing nowadays – it is necessary to focus our thoughts and efforts on local experiences, because really, at a global level, we have only lifeless, obsolete ideas; we have ideas that are not sufficiently activated.

RP:So on the one hand, we can think the event through its uniqueness; but this would suggest that we cannot be political all the time – that, in following Jacques Ranci~re, politics only happens occasionally. On the other, we may say that events are everywhere (as you have sometimes suggested). But does this second option not mean that the exceptionality of our militancy is undermined? Is there not a risk in advancing the idea that we can be militant all the time?

AB:This is also a tension, this is also a problem. On the one hand, I think that a political sequence is a sequence that creates its rationality from an event, and once this sequence is unable to create this rationality – either because it doesn’t know how or because it simply cannot do it – it is empty. We can thus say that when the political fidelity is exhausted, there isn’t really a militant figure anymore. On the other hand, when and how do we decide that it is over? For in a way, because the process is infinite, it is therefore never over! Thus it can be over, generally over, but not absolutely over. So it is true that on the one hand there is something exceptional in a political commitment; but on the other, there is also a demand to continue; and, granted, this is a tension.

In the end, this is a matter of personal decision, a matter of ethics (as I define it in my book Ethics). If I take for example my generation, the complete renunciation to politics always carried with it reactionary consequences. It was not only the cessation of politics, but also the rallying to another politics, the rallying to the politics of the State. This is why I do not want to stop, because I know that if I do this I will be like the others. Now the problem for you is much different. The problem is the following: what experience are you committing yourselves to? What is your experience? This leads to a new form of the creation of rationality.

This is typically an ethical problem in the proper sense of the word. Between the imperative to “keep going!”, which is the only categorical imperative of truth, and the conviction that something might truly be over or destitute, there is really a contradiction, and one must decide within this contradiction. There is no general formula. One cannot say: “We can always militate”, nor can it be said: “We must always stop when it is over”. This is a contradiction that needs to be dealt with in concrete situations, and so there is no general answer to this question.

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SIMON CRITCHLEY: It would be interesting to highlight the differences between your thought and that of Ranci~re.

AB: It seems to me that Ranci~re’s thought is much more historical than mine.

He suggests that there are political and historical moments, and moments that aren’t.

In the end, he does not determine what the subjects of these moments really are. There is the moment, and the historical analysis of this moment; there is the militant possibility of the moment, and the disappearance of it. All this leads back to a historical objectivity. My conception is quite different since it is subjective, not historical. The important question is that of the creation of a political subject. However, what interests my good friend Ranci~re, with whom I always discuss actively but amicably, is the historical conditions of equality. I, on the other hand, ask myself: what is a political truth? So the point of entry into the problem is quite different. Obviously, we sometimes agree. We agree on the central character of the notion of equality, for instance. But the way of treating the issue is not the same. Deep down, the link between history and politics is much more tightly knit in Ranci~re than in my own thought.

RP: Is there not a suggestion of an “initial baptism” – that our first experience of an evental irruption, which forces us radically to reconfigure our whole way of being, remains primary? And if so, would this not compromise the unique and singular character of any subsequent evental sequence? In sum, is not the force of one’s later “subjectivations” subordinate to one’s original encounter with an event?

AB:This refers to what I have called, in a recent development of my thought, the bodies (les corps). I call “bodies” the possible supports of a procedure. Until now I have not developed a theory of bodies, but I am in the process of doing so. This notion of bodies is fairly complicated; it is not only a biological body (a body can be biological, collective, etc.); it is, rather, a set of possibilities. The question is the following: can a single body support many sequences? Can it be the support of many sequences? Perhaps of many sequences within the same procedure? Surely it is possible for a body to commit itself to both love and politics, but it is not the same body that does so. The bodies are different according to the procedures, so there is no true problem of supporting many procedures simultaneously. But can a body uphold many political events or sequences?

You ask whether there is a first mark, a “birthmark”, and if the body is then fixed in this mark. I have no answer to this either, no dogmatic answer at least. I would say however that this is linked to the fact that there is a variability of bodies, that is, all bodies are not identical. To put this in another way, specific political sequences correspond to specific bodies. Let us give an example. In the post-Bolshevik sequence, the fundamental body is the body of the Party. However the body of the Party is not the same body that exists in other political sequences. If we take the French Revolution, the bodies are individual bodies; there are no “Party bodies”. This is why it is precisely these individual bodies that we kill, that we execute. The execution symbolises the fact that the political agent – the support – is truly a body.

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The question of a body being capable of supporting many sequences is a very complicated one. Personally, I have no demonstration to this effect, although I would tend to answer negatively. In sum, a body can support a determined procedure of truth, and once the body abandons this procedure, it comes undone.

Hence, if he begins a new experience, it will be under a new form and with a new body, if I may say so. But the same body is, I believe, profoundly marked by the baptism of his first event.

RP:Saint Paul tried to “win people over” to the event. But if we have understood you correctly, he was not engaging in what Ernesto Laclau calls a “hegemonic operation”. Rather his only aim is to convince people that he speaks in the name of the universality of the event. However, can we say that there is any difference at all between his subjectivation by the event, and the subjectivation of those who hear his words and convert subsequently?

AB: In principle, there should not be any difference. This is precisely what Saint Paul himself says. Granted that from time to time he claims to be “exceptional”. I mention this in my book on Saint Paul. But this is not the true logic. The true logic is: whoever disposes of his body in the new conviction becomes similar, in a certain sense, to everyone else. This is actually the reason why Saint Paul immediately contests hierarchies: he does not go to see the historical apostles, he declares that each and everyone is equal before God, and for him there are no chieftains. In terms of bodies, this means that if a body enters the procedure it is not qualitatively different from others. It is because of this fundamental reason that the operation cannot be described as hegemonic.

There truly is an effort made for other bodies to be disposed within the procedure. This is what is sought.

Of course, hierarchies and organisations inevitably follow, but this is the empirical destiny of things. Destiny, in principle, is new bodies having to submit themselves to the procedure in such a way that their submission makes them all the same. We work with this “sameness”. If Saint Paul gives much importance to saying that in the end, there are no men or women, no Jews or Greeks, it is for this reason.

It is to say: no one, no predicate, no characteristic determines in a differentiated fashion which bodies must enter the procedure. Thus Paul’s words have no privilege in reality (there are no privileges in terms of “right”), and this is what I have myself expressed when I say: there is no hero of the event. Obviously, in the imaginary construct, in the narrative, we do encounter a hero of the event. But this is the imaginary, it is not the procedure.

RP: You seem to be saying that: “There is no super subject (…). There is a particularity of the situation and the subject is a particular subject”. Is this the necessary particularity of the generic? Or can there be more than one subject in a genre? And if so, will we have to prioritise our various intra-generic subjectivities (for example, the tension between one’s fidelity to 1917 and 1968)?

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AB: The problem is perhaps the following: fidelity is a sequence, but it also always refers back to representations of previous sequences. So the example you give is very good. There is certainly a very important tension between fidelity to May “68 and fidelity to the Bolshevik Revolution, and perhaps even also to Spartacus and the slave revolt or whatever. So every sequence is recalled from within a determined sequence. Thus you have a tension because the sequence needs to invent its own rationality, it cannot literally copy the previous one. At the same time, it evokes the previous situations and uses them precisely to create its own rationality.

Hence, one cannot be a body for two different sequences, but we are still always using the representations of previous situations. This path is always complicated. In particular, in politics, it is absolutely clear that any new sequence is also, in the creation of its rationality, giving a new meaning to previous sequences.

This is practically inevitable. All political sequences simultaneously give a new meaning to previous ones. The most typical example is of course Lenin who, during the Bolshevik Revolution, gives an entirely new meaning to the Paris Commune. The meaning of the Commune was somewhat wavering, so to speak, and at this moment there is a break which opens the possibility for a new meaning. The true contradiction is between the impossibility of being a body for two completely different sequences and the need to use other sequences.

RP: Can we ask how we are to think the relation between set theory and language? There seem to be three logical possibilities here: i) that set theoretical categories can be directly expressed in language, ii) that set theoretical categories can be expressed in language, but always only imperfectly so, or iii) that set theoretical categories cannot be expressed in language in any way. We presume that you would reject the last option, but which of the first two is the most accurate, from your perspective? And how does this help us to understand the category of the obscure event?

AB: I think that the practical hypothesis is the second one. That is to say, it is certainly possible to use or make appear the categories of set theory in virtual language.

I think that an indirect use – a use that is metaphorical, natural, but in the end undoubtedly useful and appropriate – is possible. So without a doubt, the second hypothesis. Does this have anything to do with the notion of the obscure event?

Absolutely! The question of the obscure event is that of an event that, in a certain way, has yet to have really deployed its retroactive rationality. An obscure event is an event that occurs, that has a sequence, but whose sequence is, for whatever reason, stopped prematurely, saturated too early, or that has been the victim of imperfections of language: the system of names, of “nominating”, was not truly efficient. Hence the event remains obscure, and this is certainly linked to the fact that the ontology of the event was never truly realised.

RP:What is the status of Capitalism in your project? Can we speak of it in terms of an imaginary formation, or do you see it as, in Slavoj @i`ek’s terms, the real?

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That is to say, is there any connection between what you call, in Saint Paul, the “general equivalent of capitalism” and what you elsewhere call “animality”?

AB:Capitalism is a situation. It is therefore a situation in the double sense of being a certain type of multiplicity, and also a certain type of appearance and of relation, a certain “being-there”. In the end, I do not apply to the notion of situation Lacan’s fundamental distinctions between the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real. I think they are inadequate. One might say that a situation is imaginary because it contains representations; that it is real because it is a “multiplicity” (in the end, actually, it has a true ontology); you can say that it is symbolic because there is always a state of the situation that presides over the laws of this situation.

So a situation does not fall as such in one of Lacan’s categories. I would not say that capitalism is imaginary nor would I say that it is real, and finally, I also would not say that it is symbolic, which could also be a hypothesis. (Capitalism could be the symbolic regime of circulation; this is, after all, a hypothesis that has been advanced.) Rather, I would say that it is a situation, and that from the interior of that situation you can have relations to capitalism that are either in the realm of the imaginary, of the real, or of the symbolic.

This situation, at the moment, is more and more considered to be a natural one. This is a very important point, one that Marx had already noticed: although it is a situation, capitalism has a tendency to present itself as natural. This is the connection with the problem of animality: what is the naturality of capitalism? Why does capitalism present itself as natural? In my opinion, it presents itself as natural in a logic that, finally, is the logic of Darwin, that is, the logic of the species. There is no other naturality in capitalism than the naturality of the species, that is to say the logic of competition, of the struggle for life, of accumulation, of power, etc. Hence if capitalism says that it is natural, very well, but what nature is this? Capitalism’s nature is, evidently, nature in the sense of competition, concentration, of the fact that the weak must disappear, and that they have no particular rights.

It is true that I say that certain capitalistic subjectivities can be animal subjectivities, simply because they present themselves as natural in this sense.

What is natural is the fact of exploitation, and that one is the cause of his own weakness. This is not a biological animality; it is an animality in the sense of a certain conception of nature that, in my opinion, is the conception of the struggle for life and unbarred competition. Actually, capitalists agree on this point. When they say that it is natural, they say that, finally, human beings naturally seek profit, competitiveness, rivalry, etc. This is not even polemical. If capitalism is a natural situation, then it is, in the end, a situation that does not truly distinguish between humanity and animality. This is actually one of the reasons why there is extensive discussion, not only on the rights of man, but on the rights of the animal, and that in the end they are equated: we will all be in the same legal space, and this space is in reality the right of exploitation. This space is the right to live, but this right to live is taken in itself in a competitive sense. So you are correct: there is a link between the naturality of capitalism as a situation and the question of animality.

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RP: Would you not accept that there is a capitulation, even in your selfconsciously anti-capitalistic project, to Jameson’s “cultural logic” of late capitalism? This is not simply a question about, for example, one’s ontological assumptions, but also about the nature of one’s political commitments, embodied, for example, in your prescriptions against, rather than the overthrowing of, the State. (It would be the question that Peter Hallward sometimes refers to, in relation to maintaining the State apparatus in order to make prescriptions against it rather than overthrowing it.)

AB:This question seems to pertain to the withering away of the State; it is thus a question of situation. What can we do today? What must we do today? This is not an ontological question. Fundamentally, I remain convinced, ideally and strategically, that the existence of the State is a limitation of human existence. More precisely, we are speaking of the State in a political sense. There will always be the state of the situation: “state” in the true sense of the situation is not necessarily a State in the sense of “State bureaucracy” – here, I refer to the State in terms of State bureaucracy, in the sense of the monopoly of the police, the army, etc. I continue to think (and so remain a Marxist on this issue) that the State is a limitation of human existence; it is not a positive production – it is perhaps necessary, but it is not positive. At the moment, this idea has no political efficiency because its efficiency in the previous sequence was entirely linked to the idea of revolution. It was the couplet “State and revolution” that mattered. Revolution was a clear concept; it was the concentration of the political forces on the problem of power, on the problem of the State.

Thus you have a coherent set: State, revolution, class; state of class, the organisation of the struggle – especially around the question of the power –, the destruction of the State in power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and, finally, moving towards the disappearance of the State. It is this set of elements that is saturated. None of the elements of this set is really clear today: neither class in the political sense of the term (class in the social sense certainly remains obvious), nor dictatorship of the proletariat, class, party, etc. Thus the problem is that we cannot think the end of the State. I am all for its disappearance, but we have no political avenues leading us to this outcome because this set is not clear anymore.

Consequently, we must work at a distance from the State. We must make politics independent from it. Basically, this is to emphasise that we cannot work within the logic of the State anymore. With this in mind, we will see what new relations can be thought of in regard to the State itself, its destiny, its disappearance, etc. It truly is a question of situation. I do not believe that the theme of the end of the State is politically active today. I am favourable to such an outcome, but it is an ideology. The most difficult point is to already be in a political subjective independence towards the State. This can be accomplished through local, singular experiences. It cannot be done in a global way anymore.

RP:By distancing ourselves from the State, are we not conceding to the right a space that they may appropriate for themselves?

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AB: Right? Left? Is this distinction still relevant? The first question is what is the Left? Blair? Jospin? Mitterand? When you have to create something political that is not in the space of the State, it is purely a question of the existence of new politics; it is not a question of left or right. In my opinion there is today no politics at all, generally speaking. So it is a question of creation, of invention. And we have to start at the beginning, and the beginning is not within the old politics. What is the old politics? It is a politics about the State, “within” the State, and so on. Left? Right? If we have to struggle against something like the extreme right, we do it naturally. So for the space you speak of, you need to fight. But not within the State itself, because within the State itself there are rules, the rules of the old politics. We know perfectly well that France has a long tradition of treason by the Left. Not only now but for a very long time now. The question is to find a new political axiomatic, not only in abstract terms but as concrete experimentation.

RP:What is so interesting about your work, is your tireless struggle against the State apparatus(es). Indeed, you have remarked that one of your main aims has been to “outline in the world an imperative that is able to subtract us from the grip of the State.” With this in mind, can we connect this to the contradictions constitutive of the “Anti-globalisation” movement? We mention this because the issue of the “State” has been displaced. No longer is it the case that the State is the site of an irreducible antagonism between the “masses” and the “ruling order”. Instead, one will often speak of a weak State that either needs to be fully transcended (such is the case with left liberal cosmopolitans, who talk about a “global civil society’), or to be strengthened (pertaining to some nostalgia for “social welfarism’). In light of these remarks, what are your views of existing global struggles against the logic of late capitalism framed under this banner of Anti-globalisation? These discussions are duplicated at the political level. You have reformist groups who would say that there is a need for the restructuring of the IMF and the World Bank. You also have some political demonstrators who are vehemently opposed to globalisation and the prescription, for them, would be to strengthen the State.

AB: Indeed. We have such movements in France as well. One that seeks to strengthen the State, the national State against globalisation, against European apparatuses and so forth. It is a very old politics; there is nothing new with that. It is very difficult to distinguish between that and LePen, for instance. LePen is also against globalisation, he is a great militant against globalisation!

This is a difficult question. We must start with the contemporary definition of the State. This definition must include the economic apparatus. We must not immediately separate State from economic globalisation. Such a dialectic is wrong. In fact, in the definitions of the different States – that is to say the hegemonic States (American), the intermediary States (European), and the emerging States (Brazil, China) – in the definition of all States, the economic space is present. So there is no true opposition between, on the one side, the autonomy of the State, the reinforcing of the State or the weak State, etc., and on the other economic globalisation. Each

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State, therefore, is interior to a general situation. This is not completely new. Even in the past, States were always confronted internally to the question of the other States.

There were no global politics, and then State politics. Each State was also a very complex system of relations with other States. Beforehand, for instance, the general form was inter-imperialistic competition. Take France and England in the 19th century, we see that there was globalisation. Obviously, the French strategic and colonial policies were completely articulated on the question of the British Empire.

In reality, we need to take the modern definition of the State as being in itself marked by the global development of capitalism, that is, by the existence of a global market. A great prediction by Marx! Marx’s observation is much more relevant today than it was in his own life-time. This is a typical example of a scientific prediction that is absolutely remarkable. So I do not think that the problem is at the State and/or globalisation level, but rather in terms of a new form of the State that is situated in an economic set that is part of the State, and that defines certain strategies. More particularly, the strategy of the dominant States (American), or of emerging States that are virtually powerful – such as China, India, and Brazil – and the strategy of intermediary States (the European States), are different strategies. The discussion is open as to how the different States can take strategic decisions in their own context.

An important point is that every State uses propaganda to convince us that all the decisions they take are necessary. Let us take for instance the French government (although the same could be said about the British government). What is the French government saying to us? As the British government before, it is destroying public hospitals, public schools, etc. It follows the British, and follow it will! What is the State explaining? It is explaining that specific policies must be implemented. It cannot claim that all this is acceptable, that it is right. So, instead, they claim that such policies are mandatory. But is this truly the case? It is his policy to say that it is necessary, it is the State policy. This is the government’s way of situating this State policy in an economical context that is part of State decisions. Therefore, I think that there isn’t an opposition at all between the struggle against the capitalist system and the welldefined political struggle against a well-defined State. In my view, it is the same thing.

I find that it is much more efficient to concentrate your forces on concrete State decisions that we know to be decisions taken by people that are there, that we can denounce and attack, against whom we have a political space to manoeuvre, rather than organising protests where the great economic leaders are meeting. I am an old Maoist in this respect, and I have retained from Mao this idea: we must control the area from which we are fighting; never go where the adversary gathers.

So I have never been interested in going to Seattle, or elsewhere, simply because the economic leaders were present. It is almost as if as soon as the opponent waves his flag somewhere you must immediately meet them. On the contrary, we need a strategy that allows us to create our own space, to develop our own strategies and political decisions. The question of space is fundamental to politics. For example, who decides where to send the forces? Where do you concentrate your forces? And political independence is to be able to choose your own space.

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One of the aspects of the anti-globalisation movement that I denounce is its dependency towards the State – if “State” can also be understood as the general economy. This movement depends on the State because it gathers where States gather.

This is useless. And to ask for what? What is it going to ask the G8? Here we can organise a protest to demand from Chirac that he changes the law on the sans-papiers. But from the G8? What do we demand from them? To change global economic policies? To change capitalism? If this is the case, then it is nothing more than reformism! There is actually a whole branch of this movement that asks for reforms regarding international commerce. This avenue is of no interest at all to me; it is not my problem.

To summarise, I would answer in two ways. Firstly, I believe that opposing local State situations contra globalisation is misguided. This is not the true problem; it is not the right direction. Secondly, I think that, today especially, we need to focus our strength precisely on State decisions, because we can measure what is created in this way. At the level of the reformation of global capitalism, on the other hand, we have no real power.

SC: Isn’t there, actually, a difference in the political strategy adopted by the Organisation politique and the anti-globalisation movement? Precisely regarding the question of the locality of the action?

AB:Absolutely. Just as there is a theoretical contradiction between Negri and Hardt’s conceptions and my own work. Their conceptions are, in my view, systemic, and in the end they replace the vitality of the political singularities by a systemic consideration. Why are they systemic? Because in reality, what Negri has always been thinking is that there is a unique constituting power, and that this unique constituting power, that the creativity of capitalism, has the same origin as the creativity of communism. This is why he is the philosophical inheritor of Spinoza.

There is only one substance! There is truly only one substance! The substance that creates the capitalist novelties is the same substance that creates resistance to the novelties of capitalism. This is thus an anti-dialectical thought in a very important way; and this is why he attempts to find the point of constituting unity between the figures of oppression and the figures of the resistance.

I am completely alien to this kind of thinking. I am convinced that there are constituted dualities, that a true political strength is absolutely heterogeneous to the militant space. This political strength is not the reverse of the militant space; it is its constituting principle, not its hidden secret. From this point of view I think it is quite important to break with this type of inheritance, and consequently with a certain Foucault – after all, they draw quite a lot from Foucault’s work. Foucault is a very complicated thinker, especially in politics, where very few risks were taken. But it is possible to interpret Foucault as someone who says: finally, power and resistance are the same thing. I think this is not the case at all. I think that we only have resistance to the State when it is constituted elsewhere, when it is heterogeneous to the nature of the power. I really believe in the “power of the two”, in the power of difference, but a true difference, not false difference, such as thinking that we have a single twisted space, as if resistance was the torsion of power. I am not favourable to this idea. I think that on

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this point, between a certain Foucault, Négri, a certain interpretation of Deleuze (even though Deleuze was quite prudent in politics), and the anti-globalisation movement, all of this is a set that, in my opinion, will not create any real political renewal.

In the end, although this movement claims to be radical, I think it is nothing more than reformist. It has no other option than to be reformist, than to ask for a capitalism that is not as fierce. This doesn’t create any politics! It creates movements.

But it is not the case that if we have movements, we also have politics. This is a very important point. There are innumerable movements that constantly occur; some movements are renewals of political thought, but this is not the same as simply being a movement and nothing more. Negri always speaks of the great creativity of the multitudes (multitude is the new name for masses, let us admit to this), but where have we seen this creativity? It is not because you’re protesting at Genoa that there is a creativity of the multitude. I have seen hundreds of these type of protests over the years and can honestly say that there isn’t an ounce of creativity in all of this.

Hence, the problem of creativity at this stage is a problem of knowing what creates a political heterogeneity. But to create a political heterogeneity supposes very complicated and very novel principles of rupture. I am not saying that all this is easy, on the contrary. But at least we have this idea: we have this experimental idea of seeing how, on a certain number of issues, in a certain number of spaces, we can finally create political heterogeneity. Here, there is an empirical rule: I think that we can finally create political heterogeneity in continuity only with popular components that are themselves heterogeneous, and that the little civil bourgeoisie is not the one that will create by itself such political heterogeneity. The important question of the “ordinary people”, the “ordinary workers”, the proletariat, remains; this is an empirical question, but it is also more than empirical. The antiglobalisation movement is also a movement that is – in old Marxist terms – bourgeois. Let us put aside this old vocabulary, but let us also admit that antiglobalisation is not a popular movement. This at least is clear! It is perhaps an ideological movement, which is interesting, but all in all, I think that it remains confined within the categories that are not those of the heterogeneous.

My difference with Negri on this point is almost ontological; it is truly fundamental. It is really the attempt to create from scratch a substantialist, vitalist, and political – homogenous, finally – vision, whose practical form is in fact the movement itself. There is no other practical form than the movement. But the movement does not resolve by itself the questions of politics. Politics is first and foremost the creation of spaces: you must create your space. This, you have well understood.

RP: In the Manifesto for Philosophy, there is a moment where you say, “philosophy has a responsibility to maintain its sophistic double rather than to remove it”. Presumably, there is a connection between that and the ethical injunction to show reserve. Is this a reserve which is relative to a truth procedure, that when one is engaged in a truth procedure one shows reserve?

This is no concession to the ethical ideologies, which you criticise.

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AB:The reserve is not a formal reserve, naturally. It is a reserve immanent to a truth procedure. And it is something like the struggle against “ultra-leftists” that is always a sort of radical fidelity, a radical fidelity without any consideration for the situation. So, here there is always the possibility of disaster. Hence, reserve is not a formal principle; it is only a sort of rule for the continuation of the process.

RP: Recently, you described democracy as something like a prohibition on thought. At other moments however (in last year’s Political Theory Conference at the University of Essex for example), you seemed to leave open the possibility of a “true democracy” whose exceptionality we might compare with that of a truthprocedure. One obviously thinks, in this connection, of Jacques Ranci~re, for whom the essence of democracy is its interruptive character. Now, in this sense, could we not say that militancy is the bearer of the democratic sensibility?

AB: I can simply answer: Yes! Fundamentally. Exactly. The question of democracy is a complex one, because in fact there is an anti-democratic tradition which is completely reactionary. So when you are in a sort of connection with reaction and tradition it is a problem. In fact, it is imperative that we criticise the democratic fetish today, rather than capitalism. Let’s be honest: nobody really loves capitalism. The subjective propaganda of capitalism is not… capitalism! Capitalism is a so-called “natural necessity”, but everybody knows that there is something wrong with it: inequalities, inequities, and so on. So there is no propaganda which is directly about capitalism. It is rather always about democracy. So politically speaking, the question of democracy is much more important. You have to go from democracy to capitalism and not from capitalism to democracy. And what exactly is a critique of capitalism? Concretely, political intervention is about decisions that are taken in a democratic framework, the legitimacy of which is the true question.

But you have to be really clear about the distinction between your critique of democracy and the critique of reactionary political democracies, the Fascist critique of democracies, and so on. The Communist movement was not at all democratic; it was a movement for the dictatorship of the proletariat, for a new form of State, and cannot be confused with democracy.

The critique of democracy is something rather complicated. It is why sometimes I think that we must distinguish between true democracies and false ones. This is an old problem. I think that finally, in the text about democracy in Metapolitics, I say something like democracies are militancy in itself. Democracies are the “real” of politics (true democracies). There is nothing political about party politics. You can say that the development of a new political field, the creation of something new, is democratic.

RP: This question touches on a comment you made earlier in the interview, when you asked “The Left? What Left?” Returning to this issue – one could perhaps say that at the moment, a renaissance of militant political thought seems to be taking place. It is easy for the student to be struck, for example, by the related sets of concerns that play between your work and that of, say,

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Ranci~re, Laclau, @i`ek, Balibar, etc. In your view, however, is this an accurate depiction of the contemporary intellectual scene, and if so, is this factor of any interest to you? Also, how do you relate to the work of these other authors?

AB: There is certainly a new situation concerning the political question. Let us leave the word “Left” aside for the moment. I think this new situation concerns you much more than it concerns us. Because you know, Ranci~re, Laclau, @i`ek, Balibar… we are not very young! None of us! All of us are from the Sixties. So the new point is the transmission to the new generation. Here, there is something new. All of us, we can say: there are some people that are asking for something different in political thought, in your generation. Ten, fifteen years ago, there was… nothing. But this is over. Thanks to you! We have continued. But it is true that there is a new situation that is your situation, and your invention. Naturally, you are looking for a transmission of this experience; naturally, in terms of this new situation, we have discussions with those you have quoted. Actually, I think we are like a circus! The political circus! @i`ek as the acrobat, Balibar as Monsieur Loyal. When I go to Los Angeles, I see there @i`ek and Balibar, and I’m in Switzerland with @i`ek and Agamben, and so on. We are a small group and quite different one from another, but finally with time we are also in the same process. The differences are always interesting, but it is like the difference between Marx and Feuerbach. In fact, the difference between Rousseau and, after that, Lenin and Trotsky.

Differences are very important, but let us not forget about the value of community. Currently, my relation to these others is one of friendship, of fraternity, and of very intense discussions – discussions, I might add, that are more and more orientated towards you, towards the new generation, in order to transmit both what is common in our work and what is different.

SC:Who is the intellectual enemy today?

AB: There is a hierarchy! But for me, the intellectual enemy is certainly not @i`ek, Balibar and Ranci~re. Discussions are always more heated with your neighbour than with the one who is far away. So there are intense discussions with Ranci~re, for example, but I would never say that Ranci~re is the enemy, obviously not. Rather, I would say that the enemy is an ensemble that is the conservative political philosophy of today, a political philosophy that is pro-parliamentary, pro-capitalist, prooccidental. In other words, an academic philosophy. There are no clear enemies.

RP: It is really interesting that you should mention Balibar and Ranci~re and yourself because the thread of continuity that binds you together is the Althusserian legacy. In the Sixties, you were all involved in the Althusserian problematic and yet you have taken the project in three different directions. For instance, in Ranci~re, Althusser is present in his very absence; there is a complete rejection of the Althusserian legacy. Whereas with Balibar and you there is still something retained from that whole discourse.

AB: There are different points that I have in common with Althusser. For instance, the question of the definition of philosophy. When Althusser says that

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philosophy is without an object, among other things, my definition of philosophy retains something of this. In particular the fact that there is no proper object of philosophy; that philosophy is an act is really something that comes from Althusser.

Secondly, despite everything, the importance of science. I have never abandoned science. Ranci~re, for example, is not interested at all in science; it is absent from his thought. Althusser however gave a lot of importance to science – not in the same way I did, but he gave it importance, and I have stayed faithful to this. Althusser was also somebody who has asked himself whether there is or is not a political subject. This is a great question of Althuser’s. Generally speaking, he has answered in a rather complicated fashion. In his view, there is no historical subject. He did not exactly say that there are no political subjects since there is the subject of the class struggle, and politics is precisely class struggle. However the question of whether there is or is not a political subject is a question that I find very interesting, but not one that interests Ranci~re, for instance; and it is one about which Balibar remains somewhat sceptical.

So I have retained many things from Althusser, whom I have also vehemently contested – but for explicit political reasons.

This interview took place at the University of Essex on 10th of September 2003.

Along with Professor Alain Badiou, three members of the Radical Politics group were present (Tim Appleton, David Payne, and Joël Madore)

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as well as Simon Critchley, Professor at the University of Essex.