Into the Wild Badiou, Actually Existing Maoism, and the “Vital Mix” of Yesterday and Tomorrow Bill Martin KASAMA ESSAYS FOR DISCUSSION Bill Martin is a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago; author of nine books, including Ethical Marxism: !e Categorical Imperative of Liberation (2008) and Marxism and the Call of the Future: Conversations on Politics, History, and Ethics (co-authored with Bob Avakian, 2005). Current projects include A Debriefment of Maoism: Alain Badiou and the Renewal of the Communist Hypothesis, and !is Bullshit Society: An Experiment in Truth and Social !eory. Bill is a participant in Kasama, a project of communist reconception and regroupment. !is essay was first published March, 2010, at khukuritheory.net, a site for the radical reconception of revolutionary theory Published as a Kasama Essay for Discussion pamphlet April, 2010 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States Licence. Feel free to reprint, distribute or quote this with attribution. Kasama is a communist project that seeks to reconceive and regroup for a profound revolutionary transformation of society. website: kasamaproject.org email:
[email protected] 80039_r4 04.10 Contents INTO THE WILD: Badiou, actually-existing Maoism, and the “vital mix” of yesterday and tomorrow .............. 5 1. Into the wild ............................................................... 8 2. Fear and trembling .......................................................... 8 3. It will eat you up: resentment ................................................ 13 4. Responsibilities of philosophy ............................................... 14 5. Of standing and drawing lines ............................................... 18 6. “Taste this, it’s terrible!”, or, Death to the philosophers ........................... 22 7. Debriefment and beyond, I: the vital mix ...................................... 29 8. Further into the “vital mix” idea: particularities and methodological questions......