‘…the true revolutionary is moved by strong feelings of love’
Che Guevara, Socialism and Man in Cuba
‘…conviction in love and politics, something one must never renounce.’
Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love
Speaking in the terms of his articulation of the four conditions for philosophy, Alain Badiou remarked that love is effectively ‘minimal communism’, thus drawing a link or an articulation between two of his four ‘irreducible’ conditions: politics and love. Elsewhere, speaking to their relational distinction he has said that ‘politics begins where love ends’.
Badiou’s work on politics and love – both practical and theoretical – is extensive, and predates his articulation of them into distinct and operative ‘conditions’ for philosophy wherein these conditions are made formally compossible in terms of what in each is the same, that they effect or produce a truth. This double articulation as irreducible and formally the same – a constant from Being and Event through Logics of Worlds – has recently been somewhat rearticulated in the third big book of the Being and Event trilogy, Immanence of Truths, wherein Badiou explores (even if hinted elsewhere) a somewhat interconnected variation on their distinct conditionality, specifically in his late chapters on Comte, concerning politics and love. This rearticulation gives us an opportunity to re-interrogate the status of these two conditions in terms of their separability and more interestingly, in terms of their interaction and inter-activity. This course will interrogate/integrate Badiou’s two claims: love is minimal communism; politics begins where love ends.
Taking heed of Guevara’s prescription quoted above, this course will interrogate Badiou’s oeuvre in four key ways, examining:
a) the formalisation of conditions
b) the early, pre-conditions writing on love and politics
c) his separate and distinct conceptualisation of politics and love as irreducible singularity, which serves as the basis of their formal compossibility
d) looking from this formal compossibility to the possibility as suggested in Immanence of Truths (and by Guevara et. al) of some subjective rather than purely formal compossibility between politics and love.
Lecture Outline:
Week 1
General orientation
What is a condition
The generic.
Week 2
Politics and Love: checking what condition my condition was in; the pre-Being and Event of them.
Week 3
Politics can be thought the idea of communism
Week 4
Love’s work is a thought of the two which is not one
Week 5
The compossible redux: Absolute style (Immanence of Truths)
For those not overly familiar with Badiou – man and philosopher – I recommend watching the film: Badiou @ https://vimeo.com/418047554
To become familiar with the basic framework read: Manifesto For Philosophy.
More complexly but still accessible, see the Interviews: ‘Being by Numbers’, Artforum, 1993 @ https://www.artforum.com/features/being-by-numbers-202925/ on Being and Event
&
‘Matters of Appearance, Artforum, 2006 @ https://www.artforum.com/features/matters-of-appearance-an-interview-with-alain-badiou-174543/ on Logics of Worlds
In no specific order, we will consider texts, fragments and excerpts such as:
- Manifesto For Philosophy
- The Scene of the Two
- What is Love?
- In Praise of Love
- There’s No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship (with Barbara Cassin)
- Metapolitics
- Saint Paul
- On Beckett (Love)
- Lacan
- Can Politics be Thought
- Being and Event – e.g ‘formalisation’, Meditation 31
- Logics of Worlds – e.g. Kierkegaard, A Political Variant of the Physics of the Subject-of Truth; The Four Forms of Change – Rousseau’s Nouvelle Heloise/Eloise and Abelard
- Immanence of Truths – e.g. Comte and Love/Finite Politics, Infinite Politics
- Theory of the Subject – e.g. Love What You Will Never Believe Twice
- The Century – Breton
- Badiou by Badiou