We have to get away from the obsession with language. Speech is of vital importance, but is is caught up in its multiform correlation with the integrality of affirmative experience, and has no constituent syntactic power. To confuse philosophy with grammar or with an inventory of rules is aberrational. Let us abandon, like an old corpse, the idea that natural form of thought is judgment. And above all, do not judge: that is a good axiom for thought.--Alain Badiou on "Gilles Deleuze" (ca 2005) in Pocket Pantheon: Figures of Postwar Philosophy. Translated by David Macey (2009), p. 117.
As regular readers know, I have a soft-spot for some of the thinkers (e.g., Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze) most reviled by the opinion-leaders of the school in which I learned the toolbox of my profession. But I have never grown fond of Badiou; I find his Maoism abhorrent; his use of set-theory mostly comical. I dislike his writing style (see the first sentence above). But I have a grudging respect for his reading of Spinoza, yet it does not teach you anything you wouldn't know if you read the Ethics carefully. In addition, he once embarrassed friends by not honoring a commitment to headline a conference, too.
In other words, I don't know what madness possessed me to shell out five British pounds for Pocket Pantheon when Verso had a fire sale. Once I opened the book, I saw he had entertained the thought to call the collection "Funeral Orations,"* but was (luckily) discouraged from using it. The book is a series of "tributes" that jointly function as an introduction to the amazing flowering of what we may call an affirmative philosophy in Paris from the 1930s to the 1980s.+ A philosophy that was clearly haunted by the heroism, courage, and austerity of Jean Cavaillès, and, in the context of military defeat, the strife of decolonization, and the surprising period of economic growth, adopted Nietzsche as the starting points to overcome Heidegger and Schmitt and the baleful choices they made on behalf of philosophy. And, yet...
I really expected to dislike Badiou's essays--I was expecting him to insert himself into the narrative, becoming the magnetic center of the stars he describes. But Badiou is capable, in fact, of removing himself from the scene of thought, of ignoring his own aspirations; he turns out to be generous and insightful readers of others, capable of (ahh) expressing those he describes and revealing their individuality. All of his essays are invitations to re-readings of the works in light of the lives.
The quote above is the fourth lesson he ascribes to Deleuze. How to prevent thought from becoming judgment is no easy matter, especially because so much philosophy one encounters casually is about finding justifications for divisive judgment (as the conclusion of an irrefutable argument, a decisive thought experiment, a norm of assertion, etc.).
All writing and reading runs the risk of leading the thought of another.
In Badiou's hands this -- this avoidance of ruling over others, and being ruled by others -- is, in part, the significance of Derrida's method. The (2005) tribute to Derrida is a virtuoso, touching performance in which he shows the political significance of Derrida's method. Derrida's (metaphysical and methodological) obsession with the non-existent, with the outer edge of vanishing points, where texts show slippage, is revealed as being about the nature of true peace, which is "based upon an agreement" about "that which non-exists," (138).
Rather than defend Derrida and this reading of Derrida here, I'll just encourage you to reflect on that highest thought; and if you glimpse its potential to go locate Badiou's Pantheon of fourteen lives.
And with that, I wish you a lovely Summer break. I hope these digressions return in August.
*Interestingly, his reference point for that title is Bossuet rather than Pericles (or Plato/Lincoln). Bossuet is largely unknown outside French culture. I only know of him because he was the rival to Fénelon.
+Badiou's Pantheon is nearly entirely male.
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