A Historical Materialist Analysis of the Theological Turn of Alain Badiou
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Archives of Defeat? A historical materialist analysis of the theological turn of Alain Badiou. Thomas Matthew Rudman A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Department of English, Manchester Metropolitan University for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2015 1 ABSTRACT This thesis offers a historical materialist analysis of the use of messianic discourses in contemporary theoretical and literary texts. It focuses on the way the recent ‘theological turn’ in Marxist theory relates to two major historical developments: the ascendency of neoliberal capitalism and the perceived absence of any socialist alternative. In theoretical terms, it produces a symptomatic analysis of Alain Badiou and his attempt to re-invigorate communist militancy via the figure of Saint Paul. Rather than follow Badiou’s avowedly atheistic turn to Paul, I undertake a materialist analysis of the texts of early Christianity in order to show that their style of ideological and political subversion is not incompatible with the egalitarian aims of Marxism. I extend this analysis of the radical potentiality of Christian discourses by examining the significance of messianic discourses in contemporary fiction in novels by Eoin McNamee and Roberto Bolaño. Both novelists deploy the conventions of crime fiction to narrate stories of revolutionary disillusionment and the impact of neoliberal economics in the north of Ireland and the Mexico-US border. My analysis focuses on issues of literary form and how the use of messianic imagery produces formal ruptures in the texts which trouble or disturb their manifest ideologies, notably the sense of revolutionary disillusionment and the notion that there is no longer any possibility of radical social change. The central argument is that the recourse to Pauline Christianity is not, as some scholars suggest, an archive of defeat for Marxism, but rather an entirely appropriate means to resurrect the idea of militant politics today. However, I argue that Badiou’s avowed atheistic reading of Paul is not sufficient to sustain the claims that he makes for its political significance. The aim of the thesis is thus to explore and address some of the shortcomings of Badiou’s position in order to defend the articulation of Marxism and Christianity, not by disavowing the messianic aspects of Pauline Christianity but by exploring their political and imaginative potential. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisory team for their encouragement and advice throughout the development and writing of this thesis. I would also like to thank Huw Jones for posing a series of demanding questions throughout the development of my research. I am particularly grateful to Lucy Burke whose intellectual guidance and critical insight has been vital to the completion of this project. I would also like to thank Deborah Bown, the Research Degrees Administrator in HLSS, for all her advice and patience. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my parents, Denise and Paul Rudman, whose unconditional support and generosity has sustained me throughout. I also need to thank my friends and family, in particular Bahram, Bridget, Mike, Patrick, Danny, Patsy, Peter, Marie, Frankie, Keith, Elmer, Sergi, Guillem, Nigella and Nick. Undertaking this project would not have been possible without the financial support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK. 3 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: ‘Marxism is in crisis’ 5 CHAPTER ONE: ‘Paul: Our Contemporary’: A symptomatic reading of Alain Badiou in the light of Saint Paul 55 CHAPTER TWO: ‘For ye are all one in Christ Jesus’: Alain Badiou, communism and the politics of redemption 103 CHAPTER THREE: ‘Maverick dreamtime:’ ideologies of form, religious discourse and primitive accumulation in northern Irish Noir Fiction 149 CHAPTER FOUR: Pre-figurations of la marea rosada? Reading against the grain of Roberto Bolaño’s police procedural: Latin American Thermidoreans, apocalyptic discourses and utopian configurations in the state 222 CONCLUSION: Laughter in the Darkness 297 BIBLIOGRAPHY: 306 4 INTRODUCTION ‘Marxism is in crisis.’ I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me. (John 13.18).1 This thesis sets out to explore the use of messianic discourses in contemporary theoretical and literary texts. It focuses on the way in which what has come to be known as the ‘theological turn’ in contemporary Marxist thought relates to two major historical developments of the present conjuncture: the ascendency of neoliberal or late, globalised capitalism and the perceived degeneration and disappearance of the Socialist alternative. In theoretical terms, it produces a sustained analysis of the work of French Maoist philosopher Alain Badiou and his recent attempt to re-invigorate communist militancy via an engagement with the figure of Saint Paul (c.5 - c.67 AD).2 In so doing, it examines Badiou’s long standing assertion that today ‘Marxism is in crisis.’3 This claim was first expressed after the end of the militant “red years” (1966-76) and what he views as the reactionary termination of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1976.4 It has acquired greater urgency in the wake of subsequent historical developments: the ascendency of neoliberalism during the 1980s, the long-standing failure and ultimate collapse of the Soviet system, the embrace of capitalism by the Communist Party of China, and finally, the continued absence of any organized and wide-spread Marxist movement in the West, especially in the current conjuncture of an unresolved financial, and perhaps even ‘systemic’ crisis in capitalism.5 1 The Biblical texts used throughout this thesis are The English Bible: King James Version. Volume One: The Old Testament, ed. by Herbert Marks, (New York: Norton, 2012); The English Bible: King James Version. Volume Two: The New Testament and the Apocrypha, ed. by Gerald Hammond and Austin Busch, (New York: Norton, 2012) 2 Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism; trans. by Ray Brassier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). 3 Alain Badiou, Theory of the Subject, trans. by Bruno Bosteels, (London: Continuum, 2009) p.182. 4 The “red years” refers to the period of left wing militancy and armed struggle in Europe and Latin America galvanised by the student uprisings of 1968 and the emergence of the new left and various civil rights movements. The end of the Chinese cultural revolution and the failure of the Portuguese ‘carnation’ revolution are both events that lead Badiou to identify 1976 as the end point of this period. See Alain Badiou, The Meaning of Sarkozy, trans. by David Fernbach, (London: Verso, 2008). 5 Alain Badiou, Theory of the Subject, p.182; Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism; trans. by Ray Brassier, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003); Alain Badiou, Polemics, trans. by Steve Corcoran (New York: Verso, 2007); Alain Badiou, The Century, trans. by Alberto Toscano, (New York: Polity Press, 2007); 5 In literary terms, the thesis examines the significance of messianic discourses in contemporary fiction, focusing primarily on works by the Irish writer Eoin McNamee (b.1961) and the late Chilean writer, Roberto Bolaño (1953 – 2003). Both McNamee and Bolaño deploy the conventions of crime fiction to narrate stories of revolutionary disillusionment and the impact of the rise of neoliberal economics in the north of Ireland and the US-Mexican border.6 The literary texts under investigation thus focus on border spaces that are conjoined with centres of capitalist development, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.7 Historically speaking, the novels posit a link between the present period of market-driven economic restructuring and the revolutionary struggles of the 1970s and 1980s. Both writers thus produce a similar sense of historical periodization as that delineated in Badiou’s theopolitical response to what he sees as Marxism’s ‘contemporary impotence.’8 By addressing a literary genre (crime writing) which Marxist theory has generally viewed as ideologically conservative, this thesis focuses specifically on how the use of messianic discourses in these texts produce formal breaks and utopian configurations that contradict the manifest ideology of the text and that of authorial intent. My aim is to demonstrate how specifically Judeo-Christian concepts, iconography and narrative tropes emerge at critical junctures in works by McNamee and Bolaño. I focus on the way these messianic moments go against the grain of an apparently conservative cultural form and, particularly in the case of Bolaño, an authorial ideology of revolutionary disillusion. However, what is of crucial importance here is that the moments of formal rupture that I identify are characterised by the articulation of Christianity and political Marxism and therefore provide the means through which ideas of social justice and historical change can be envisaged today. As I demonstrate in the final chapters of the Alain Badiou, The Meaning of Sarkozy, trans. by David Fernbach, (London: Verso, 2008); Alain Badiou, The Communist Hypothesis, trans. by David Macey and Steve Corcoran, (London: Verso, 2010). For arguments regarding the systemic rather than transitory nature of the present global recession, see ‘Critique Notes’, Critique, 38:1, (2010), 1-9; Giovanni Arrighi and Joe Cleary, ‘Up For Grabs’, Field Day Review, Vol. 5 (2009), 122-137. 6 Following the Marxist approach adopted in this thesis, the terminology used to describe the anti-colonial struggle in the island of Ireland will follow that of the leftist and anti-colonial Republican movements in the region. Thus rather than deploy the capitalised appellation ‘Northern Ireland,’ which re-inscribes the current constellation of forces whereby the six northern counties of Ireland are understood and treated as a given national entity within the United Kingdom, the terms used in this thesis will be ‘northern Ireland’, or ‘the North.’ 7 Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origin of our Times, rev.edn, (London: Verso, 2010).