To love is to struggle...

"To love is to struggle, beyond solitude, with everything in the world that can animate existence- this world where I see for myself the fount of happiness my being with someone else brings.  'I love you' becomes: in this world there is a fount you are for my life.  In the water from this fount, I see our bliss, yours first.  As in Mallarme's poem, I see:

                In the wave you become
               Your naked ecstasy."


Alain Badiou

In Praise of Love

"When I lean on the shoulder of the woman I love, and can see, let's say, the peace of twilight over a mountain landscape, gold-green fields, the shadow of trees, black-nosed sheep motionless behind hedges and the sun about to disappear behind craggy peaks, and know - not from the expression on her face, but from within the world as it is - that the woman I love is seeing the same world, and that this convergence is part of the world and that love constitutes precisely, at that very moment, the paradox of an identical difference, then love exists, and promises to continue to exist.  The fact is she and I are now incorporated into this unique Subject, the Subject of love that views the panorama of the world through the prism of our difference, so this world can be conceived, be born, and not simply represent what fills my own individual gaze.  Love is always the possibility of being present at the birth of the world."

Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love.

Theological Thought (an excerpt)

On a broader level Zizek and Badiou’s engagement of theological material raises another question. What is the status of theological thought? Who “owns” it, i.e. who has the right to engage in and utilize it? Is it the special possession of faith traditions, somewhat like the knowledge and apparatuses of various scientific disciplines, or can non-faith participants legitimately comment on religious theology? In other words, does it have the same status as communist egalitarianism, as pointed out by Rancière a propos failed communist communities:

They did not fail, as the opinion goes, because individuals could not submit to the common discipline. On the contrary, they failed because the communist capacity could not be privatized. The sharing of the capacity of anybody could not be turned into the virtue of the private communist man.

Insofar as egalitarianism, ethics, and the Event (in the sense of creative novelty) are concerned, can the Church (or any other monotheistic tradition) not admit that in the past it has “privatized the capacity of anybody,” has made these categories virtues of the religious community as if without the Church everyone would only do “what was right in his/her own eyes,” as if there could be no new subjective creation without the coming of the new person in Christ? It was Alan Watts, that once Anglican minister cum Zen Buddhist who summed up the state of homily during his time in the Church: “So much of the preaching we hear on Sunday morning comes down to this: ‘My dear people, be good!’” So much should be admitted. Does this not reflect, however, a kind of theology that is little more than humanism? If so it is merely a reflection of a kind of contemporary theology concerned with seeming relevant, having given up on the more problematic core of Christian thought, what Badiou refers to as a “fabulation:” the historical status and meaning of the Resurrection. The Church too is not without its reactionaries here. For them the Resurrection is not a historical category but like Badiou, merely provides a hermeneutical substrate for further thought regarding the human subject/community. This too is so obviously a compromise with modernity, one that would cause the one who said “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” to roll over in his grave. It reflects a certain cultural type, or because we are speaking of Badiou and Zizek we might properly say “class,” that as a result of a life of relative comfort can no longer identify with the words that follow those just quoted: “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” In short, it reflects a decadent class theology.

Here then is the limit set upon the appropriation of theology. In so many instances, all of its resources are of the category “capacity of anybody.” It becomes privatized at precisely the point one can say “I have hope in Christ not just in this life only,” i.e. the Resurrection hope theology of the world’s destitute.

The Logic of the Site -Tunisia-

Logic of the Site (With modifications). Badiou (2009), 374.

To use our example of Egypt: As a consequence of the sequence inaugurated in Tunisia it is the proof of the singularity of the Tunisian event. Time will tell if this sequence will reach maximal consequences, as people in country after country continue to call for reasonable living conditions and the overthrow of corrupt rulers. In this way the Evental potential of Tunisia is being realized day by day.

Inception -Excerpt from a letter-

"Those who dream of the banquet may weep the next morning, and those who dream of weeping may go out to hunt after dawn. When we dream we do not know that we are dreaming. In our dreams we may even interpret our dreams. Only after we are awake do we know that we have dreamed. But there comes a great awakening, and then we know that life is a great dream. But the stupid think they are awake all the time and believe they know it distinctly." Chuang-tze

And of course the question remains: What difference does it make whether we dream or wake? Both in Inception and our butterfly Philosopher one experiences the same sufferings, the same joys, the same frustrations and anxieties whether the subject sleeps or wakes. Once again the Whole of a given life is a chimera (whether dreamlike or wakeful). It is rather the worlds of a subject which contain truths, mediated through the subjectivity of a subject (asleep or awake).

In other words, the movie ends at an appropriate moment (the top continues to spin and we do not find out whether it topples or not) not because it "keeps us guessing whether we're dreaming or not" (as the website suggests). The point is precisely that it no longer matters. The subjective truths conveyed by the main character finally meeting his children subsumes all other concerns. This is the ultimate truth of the scene. The top represents the Whole of the situation (the possibility of Wakefulness or Fantasy) which is abruptly cut off (cinematographically) because it no longer represents the Real of the situation (the -subjective- localization of the truth of the power of Love). We could say that ultimately we are indifferent to the top. It's being (and representative function) cease to exist from the point of view of the subject, hence, its banishment from sight without further consideration. Whether it stands or falls, it is no longer considered a site of truth for the subject.

The Political Subject -Egypt-

Recent events in Egypt provide the opportunity to elucidate the example of a Badiouan political subject, reactive subject, and obscure subject. The Evental trace, to be named in the statement by Egyptian youth: “Bread, Freedom, Human Dignity,” comparable to revolutionary slogans the world over, indicates the activation of an Evental subjectivity, a subjectivity in which identarian predicates do not play a role: “I don’t belong to any particular political party, I’m one of the people.” At every point the newly subjectivated body must choose to be faithful to the Evental trace or to betray it, to defy curfews which deny it both freedom and dignity, or submit to the wishes of the errant superpower etc.

The reactionary subject is known by the dismissal of the Evental trace as Event. The “demonstrators” will eventually “drift away.” They do not represent the will of the people: “For all the west, starting with the United States, [Mubarak] has always been considered a wisest man and a point of reference. Compared to a population of 80 million, the number of people on the streets is really low" (Berlusconi). Or Sarah Palin’s statements: “...so we need to find out who was behind all of the turmoil and the revolt and the protests so that good decisions can be made in terms of who we will stand by and support" ( This comment further reveals the conservative reactionist’s denial that the body of a truth can be the true source of a creative novelty. Why, for example, must Palin look for a ghostly spectre behind the uprising, rather than recognize a legitimate movement of the people?). It further denies the ability of the activated body to carry out the consequences of its statements without a compromise of its original position, or it undermines its role in the unfolding of the process. For example, Hilary Clinton’s statement: “... our assessment is that the Egyptian Government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”

The obscure subject wills the destruction of the politically subjectivated body. The baltagea, pro-Mubarak “thugs,” activate a fascist political component with the use of “clubs, machetes, swords and straight razors on Wednesday to try to crush Egypt’s democracy movement.” Evidence of this obscure subjectivity can also be found in its naming of an “atemporal fetish,” in this case the designation “War Hero.” Mubarak himself precisely designates the obscurantist’s formulation of “the incorruptible and indivisible over-body” in a televised address during the protests: “The nation remains. Visitors come and go but ancient Egypt will remain eternal, its banner and safekeeping will pass from one generation to the next. It is up to us to ensure this in pride and dignity.”

Badiou on Being

We begin with the infinite multiplicity: the multiplicity of multiplicities. These do not exist as such, but they have being. Being is pure multiplicity. How is this so? In the same way that the referent of a mathematical formula does not exist and yet has being. “For a multiple to be, is to belong to another multiple, whose being is already presupposed.” This referential multiple is known as a “situation”. Existence is a quality of being. As such it is in the being of existence to inscribe itself within the infinite: “Existence is the proper intensity with which a multiple inscribes itself into the infinity of a situation.” We may say then that existence is a participation in the infinite. Here we have the beginning of a discourse on logic, that is to say, a discourse on the relations between situational appearances. Here too, I believe, is the beginning of a discourse on ethics, which for Badiou, pertains to the fidelity of a subject to the [situational] Event.

La Fidélité au Réel

Then was there again spoken unto me as a whispering: "It is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps guide the world.
Thus Spake Zarathustra, 44.

For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.
1 Thess. 5:2- St. Paul.

It has been rightly said that Nietzsche owed Paul a great debt, the very man he poured so much contempt upon. Here the Event cannot be predicted. The very act of naming it has already denied its realization, has missed the mark. It is as the Old Man once said:

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Thus the Event loses its universal character through the act of prophecy. It is not the Event, but a simulacrum of the Event which here presents itself through the words of the prophet. There is no sign which precedes it: it must catch us unaware. As the immortal Badiou has said, “The universal is always an incalculable emergence, rather than a describable structure.” For Badiou, every universal is singular, or is a singularity, not a regularization of the particular, but a singularity that is subtracted from identitarian predicates (though which obviously proceeds via these predicates). The universal originates in the Event, and the Event is intransitive to the particularity of the situation. So, to take Badiou’s examples, political universalism depends entirely on fidelity (or infidelity), not to a certain doctrine, but to The French Revolution, the Paris Commune, Oct. 1917, etc.

Here at last I ask the question: Has the Church not been guilty of delegitimizing the Event, of attempting to complete the singularity, a singularity that in order to remain universal must remain open and incomplete? It should not be forgotten that Paul again and again recalled to his listeners the fact of Christian telos, of realities’ openness to the eschaton, and of Christian hope, which continually longs for what it does not possess. It is precisely this longing, this recognition of the openness of life and existence that displays its fidelity to the Christian Event. Here there is no recognition of that presumption so common in the Church. Here one finds mirrored (not a mere feigning) the fundamental commitment, and decision, not to a particular event, but to “a possession forever”, the result: the infinite generic multiple of the Event.