josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
Aditya Nigam: "Some years ago I had heard Alain Badiou speak in Princeton. There the audience was not communist. And it was not a ticketed show but free. There were Palestinians, north Africans and many others in the hall and Cornell West on the dias. Badiou, the French radical philosopher found himself beseiged after his talk – during the question answer session. Badiou had spoken grandly of why “9/11 was not an Event because it did not enunciate anything new” – a particularly Badiouan notion of event this. Half an hour into his talk, he was smuggling in old universalisms into his exposition, representing 9/11 as Evil. A woman student, possibly Palestinian, got up to ask him why then was Osama bin Laden considered a hero among a large number of people across the world. (By the way, I had been told just a few days ago by Sinclair Thomson of New York University, who had just returned from Bolivia that pictures of bin Laden and Che Guevara could be seen together in many places in the Bolivian capital.) Badiou, ably assisted by Cornell West tried in vain to answer her, giving rise to more and more questions in the process till someone asked: ”What then does your universalism say regarding this complete lack of ability to understand the other?”
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
Brian Massumi: "The annals of official philosophy are populated by "bureaucrats of pure reason" who speak "in the shadow of the despot" and are in historical complicity with the State. They invent a "properly spiritual... absolute State... that effectively functions in the mind. Theirs is the discourse of sovereign judgment, of stable subjectivity legislated by "good" sense, of rocklike identity, "universal" truth and (white male) justice. "Thus the exercise of their thought is in conformity with the aims of the real State, the dominant significations, and with the requirements of the established order."
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
What does maths have to do with Badiou?

When Deleuze talks about Riemannian manifolds, the notion - although precise in its mathematical conception - is left formally unexplicated, and operates primarily as a metaphor. When Badiou tells you that "a world" is a Grothendieck topos, he goes to somewhat exhausting lengths to show you in precisely what sense this can be said to be so. Showing one's workings is not an authoritarian trait.

The notion that careful reasoning is the hallmark of bureacratic power-mongering is too stupid for words. To quote Cathal Coughlan: "They don't want reason. They want obedience".
 

Dial

Well-known member
Brian Massumi: "The annals of official philosophy are populated by "bureaucrats of pure reason" who speak "in the shadow of the despot" and are in historical complicity with the State. They invent a "properly spiritual... absolute State... that effectively functions in the mind. Theirs is the discourse of sovereign judgment, of stable subjectivity legislated by "good" sense, of rocklike identity, "universal" truth and (white male) justice. "Thus the exercise of their thought is in conformity with the aims of the real State, the dominant significations, and with the requirements of the established order."


Peter Hallward: "The supervision of places and functions is the business of what Ranciere calls the 'police'; a political sequence begins, then, when this supervision is interrupted so as to allow a properly anarchic disruption of function and place, a sweeping de-classification of speech".


"Either you are taken in by a universal that is someone else's, that is you trust some idea of citizenship and equality as it operates in a society that in fact denies you these things, or you feel you must radically denounce the gap between idea and fact, usually by recourse to some identitarian logic. At this point, though, whatever you manage to achieve comes because you show yourself to belong to this identity. It's very difficult, but that politics consists of refusing this dilemma and putting the universal under stress. Politics involves pushing both other's universal and one's own particularity to the point where each comes to contradict itself". (Jacques Ranciere in conversation with PH)

Edit: I thought it was time somebody mentioned Ranciere.
 
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pajbre

Well-known member
When Deleuze talks about Riemannian manifolds, the notion - although precise in its mathematical conception - is left formally unexplicated, and operates primarily as a metaphor. When Badiou tells you that "a world" is a Grothendieck topos, he goes to somewhat exhausting lengths to show you in precisely what sense this can be said to be so. Showing one's workings is not an authoritarian trait.


true but demanding scientific/empirical coherence from what is more or less a creative act is somewhat authoritarian.

tbh i think that framing this conversation as oppositional isn't particularly helpful... lacan through guattari is much more like a continuum and the side-taking that happens both in and out of the academy is b.s. posturing. zizek being a culprit of this for sure.

as a side note, in an interview deleuze tells a story about how after the publication of anti oedipus, lacan summoned him to his office and spoke approvingly of the book, saying 'what i need is someone like you.'
 

vimothy

yurp
The notion that careful reasoning is the hallmark of bureacratic power-mongering is too stupid for words.

Has anyone actually said that? It's certainly not a position I hold -- in fact I work for quantitative maths ed researchers who would commit seppuku if accused of lacking "careful reasoning", and am studying for a maths degree in my spare time.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
true but demanding scientific/empirical coherence from what is more or less a creative act is somewhat authoritarian.

I think it's a false opposition. Badiou's position would be that any worthwhile creation is a straitening, something that arrives at its own coherence (Geoffrey Hill: "the poem moves grudgingly to its extreme form"). This isn't a question of measuring up to an external norm, or satisfying an examiner...
 

vimothy

yurp
The discourse of mathematics -- and its attendants (rigour, proof, etc) -- is important. Within Badiou’s philosophical discourse, I’d venture, mathematics has a precise function, which is not equal to its ostensible function of the production of scientific knowledge, proof, hypothesis testing, formality and so on, but rather operates as a signal: “proof” is its meaning, as well as its function.

But of course – why should Badiou be any different from any other thinker? And let us not be for or against a particular thinker, whether Guattari, Badiou, Deleuze or anyone else – that really would be too stupid, or worse, boring, for words.
 

Buick6

too punk to drunk
Isn't Deleuze the poster boy for asexuals as they traverse their way from My Bloody Valentine records to The Gossip and end up becoming Lacanian Queer-core marxists hell bent on destroying the hetero paradigm and moder of identity, only to get smashed in the face by the homophobic tribal warriors from Africa with massive penises and asses you can have a picnic on.

Realising the ultimate futility they become rhizomes, spreading their ideas like pollen catching a whiff of gendered cowpat to once again be nourished into growth of capitalist subverted religion, doctored by a dominant patriarchal paradigm, filtered by colonialism, only to understand the eco-biology of everything is 42.
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
Badiou and (particularly) Badiouvians make me feel sick... Maybe it isn't really Badiou's fault, I don't know... the nakedness of the operation... A lot of really mediocre, pretentious and superficial work is being produced under his influence, from Hallward on down...
 
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poetix

we murder to dissect
I make you feel sick - fair enough. One can't delight everybody.

But really, how many Badiouvians are there out there? Where is their power? Over whom is it exercised? I can't believe that you personally have been particularly oppressed by any Badiouvians recently...
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
What would that even mean? I haven't been personally oppressed by the NPD recently either, but that doesn't mean that I feel ambivalent about German nationalism. Or better: I'm not personally oppressed by Jonathan Safran-Foer, but I know that he's a pretty crappy novelist... Or: I know that the reason why a lot of things are popular (celebrities, shitty books and movies) is not because they are valuable, but because a) because they have a large marketing campaign behind them (Badiou! The New French Philosopher!) and b) because they appeal to people's desires and drives. In this case, the desire for (intellectual) mastery, and the master of the intellectual, amongst other things... A desire sharply illustrated by the kinds of Badiou-informed statements you've been making recently on your blog. "Love is a transversal transfinite multiple vector-actant," or whatever it is. Right.

The question of the power of theory and theorists is an important question that many people on here have spent some time discussing. Perhaps, informed by Badiou as you are, you could make a contribution yourself to this issue, and thereby prove me wrong.
 
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josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
The discourse of mathematics -- and its attendants (rigour, proof, etc) -- is important. Within Badiou’s philosophical discourse, I’d venture, mathematics has a precise function... operates as a signal: “proof” is its meaning, as well as its function."

But of course – why should Badiou be any different from any other thinker?

The burden of proof, and the means through which it is achieved is significant. If the proof of my philosophy is woven into Being itself (and its "ontology", mathematics) it is clear that my philosophical enemies are in some sense against nature. A tempting dream, this. The world is complex and sinuous, but I who knows its codes will give it back its coherency.
 

vimothy

yurp
"Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true."
 

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Would this be an appropriate place to ask whether Badiou's use of mathematics is widely recongnised as formally correct or not? I ask because I am aware that the employment of mathematical terminology and notation in the work of Lacan (who is explicitly an influence on Badiou) and Deleuze (who to be fair Badiou does seem to partially set himself in opposition to) has been widely criticised. Which of course doesn't mean that there work isn't valid in lots of other respects. But my impression is that B's maths is generally considered to be more sound or at least demonstrative of more careful study; however, I would like to know the views of those more knowledgeable on the subject than me on this.

I suspect I am going to have start reading Badiou soon, if only because he does seem so influential on current intellectual discourse, but it's a very disheartening prospect because I'm already very confident that I'm in fundamental disagreement with him, so the process is going to be one of discovering precisely where and why I disagree.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
Would this be an appropriate place to ask whether Badiou's use of mathematics is widely recongnised as formally correct or not?

The mathematicians I've spoken to tell me that it's basically OK - there's plenty of scope for disagreement over the "meta-ontogical" philosophical framework he builds around them, but the technical presentation of mathematical topics in Badiou is usually pretty faithful to his sources (e.g. Goldblatt on topoi) and often quite a bit easier to follow.

I did a fair bit of preparatory work before starting to read Logics of Worlds, and didn't find Badiou's discussion of Heyting algebras jarringly inconsistent with what I'd read of them up to that point. I think he tends to take the advice of working mathematicians. I imagine it would be a mortifying embarrassment to him if it turned out that he had got something egregiously wrong.

Lacan uses mathematical notation the same way he uses natural language, as material for puns; and Deleuze is more interested really in the intuitions behind mathematical notions than in deploying them in any formally consistent way. Neither is committed to the mathematics in such a way that their non-kosher use of it invalidates them as a thinker; whereas a fault in Badiou's maths really would amount to a fault in his system, simply because of the way in which the maths is used to give form to the system. (Nowhere is it suggested, however, that the maths proves the system...)
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
What would that even mean? I haven't been personally oppressed by the NPD recently either, but that doesn't mean that I feel ambivalent about German nationalism. Or better: I'm not personally oppressed by Jonathan Safran-Foer, but I know that he's a pretty crappy novelist... Or: I know that the reason why a lot of things are popular (celebrities, shitty books and movies) is not because they are valuable, but because a) because they have a large marketing campaign behind them (Badiou! The New French Philosopher!) and b) because they appeal to people's desires and drives. In this case, the desire for (intellectual) mastery, and the master of the intellectual, amongst other things... A desire sharply illustrated by the kinds of Badiou-informed statements you've been making recently on your blog. "Love is a transversal transfinite multiple vector-actant," or whatever it is. Right.

The question of the power of theory and theorists is an important question that many people on here have spent some time discussing. Perhaps, informed by Badiou as you are, you could make a contribution yourself to this issue, and thereby prove me wrong.

I am curious to know what's generating your fantasy that Badiouvians constitute a power-block. I would like to know, first of all, who the Badiouvians are that you have in mind. You certainly can't mean me: I'm a minor figure in a minor scene, and even the most respected and energetic participants in that scene have only very limited visibility or cultural influence outside of it. So where is the power you're speaking of? Across whom does its shadow fall? Suppose I were seeking a sinecure, and wished to make the acquaintance of some powerful Badiouvians - with whom ought I to seek to ingratiate myself?
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
Albeit, with slightly uncanny timing, I just received an email from a graduate student in a US university referring to an online conversation I was having a while back with Levi Bryant and Graham Harman about Badiou and correlationism, and asking if I had any pointers to relevant background literature (or had published anything myself...). Which was kind of nice.
 
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