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The cover can be displayed as a complete cover image for the purposes of publicizing this work however the artwork cannot be extracted from the context of the cover of this specific work without breaching the artists copyright. Support re.press / Purchasing Books The PDF you are reading is an electronic version of a physical book that can be purchased through any bookseller (including on-line stores), through the normal book supply channels, or re.press directly. Please support this open access publication by requesting that your uni- versity purchase a physical printed copy of this book, or by purchasing a copy yourself. If you have any questions please contact the publisher: re.press PO Box 75 Seddon, 3011 Victoria Australia [email protected] www.re-press.org The Praxis of Alain Badiou Anamnesis Anamnesis means remembrance or reminiscence, the collection and re- collection of what has been lost, forgotten, or effaced. It is therefore a matter of the very old, of what has made us who we are. But anamnesis is also a work that transforms its subject, always producing something new. To recollect the old, to produce the new: that is the task of Anamnesis. a re.press series re.press The Praxis of Alain Badiou Paul Ashton, A. J. Bartlett and Justin Clemens, editors re.press Melbourne 2006 First published 2006 by re.press This work is ‘Open Access’, published under a creative commons license which means that you are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors, that you do not use this work for any commercial gain in any form and that you in no way al- ter, transform or build on the work outside of its use in normal academic scholarship without express permission of the author and the publisher of this volume. Furthermore, for any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. For more information see the details of the creative commons licence at this website: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ Published by re.press PO Box 75 Seddon, 3011 Melbourne, Australia http://re-press.org Typeset by A&R in Baskerville Printed on demand wherever it is desired. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry The praxis of Alain Badiou. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 9780980305203. ISBN 0 9803052 0 9. 1. Badiou, Alain. 2. Events (Philosophy) - History. 3. Ontology - History. 4. Philosophers, French. I. Ashton, Paul, 1974- . II. Bartlett, A. J. (Adam John). III. Clemens, Justin. (Series : Anamnesis). 111 This publication benefited from a small grant from the Institute for Community Engagement and Policy Alternatives (ICEPA) at Victoria University, Australia. Contents Abbreviations vii Acknowledgements ix introductioN Masters & Disciples: Institution, Philosophy, Praxis 3 Paul Ashton, A. J. Bartlett & Justin Clemens What is a Philosophical Institution? Or: Address, Transmission, Inscription 13 Alain Badiou sciencE The Law of the Subject: Alain Badiou, Luitzen Brouwer and the Kripkean Analyses of Forcing and the Heyting Calculus 23 Zachary Fraser The Limits of the Subject in Badiou’s Being and Event 71 Brian Anthony Smith Had we but worlds enough, and time, this absolute, philosopher… 102 Justin Clemens lovE Count-as-one, Forming-into-one, Unary Trait, S1 147 Lorenzo Chiesa Introduction to Sam Gillespie 177 Sigi Jöttkandt Giving Form to Its Own Existence: Anxiety and the Subject of Truth 180 Sam Gillespie Conditional Notes on a New Republic 210 A. J. Bartlett arT An Explosive Genealogy: Theatre, Philosophy and the Art of Presentation 247 Oliver Feltham Ontology and Appearing: Documentary Realism as a Mathematical Thought 265 Lindsey Hair Can Cinema Be Thought? Alain Badiou and the Artistic Condition 291 Alex Ling politicS Towards an Anthropology of Infinitude: Badiou and the Political Subject 309 Nina Power The Bourgeois and the Islamist, or, The Other Subjects of Politics 339 Alberto Toscano Philosophy and Revolution: Badiou’s Infidelity to the Event 367 Toula Nicolacopoulos and George Vassilacopoulos Follysophy 388 Dominique Hecq Bibliography of Work on and by Alain Badiou in English 393 Contributors 419 Index 421 Abbreviations C Conditions CT Court traité d’ontologie transitoire D Deleuze: The Clamor of Being E Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil EE L’être et l’événement BE Being and Event HI Handbook of Inaesthetics IT Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy LM/LOW Logiques des mondes: l’être et l’événement, 2 LS Le Siècle M Metapolitics MP Manifesto for Philosophy NN Le Nombre et les nombres OB On Beckett P Polemics SP Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism TO Briefings On Existence: A Short Treatise on Transitory Ontology TC The Century TS Théorie du sujet TW Theoretical Writings vii Acknowledgements The production of a collection of essays such as this is a laborious process at the best of times. When it is an ‘Open Access’ publication, however—that is, as free as possible from the constraints of commerci- ality and the restrictive property ownership regime of copyright—these labours multiply significantly. Consequently, we have relied on the gen- erosity and support of a number of friends and colleagues. We would like to thank them here. We thank the contributors for their work, as well as those who responded to our initial call for papers but did not make the final volume due to the sheer number of responses. This made for many difficult choices. We would like to thank Helen Johnson for the free use of her image The Centre for the Study of Adhocracy: The Library, which appears on the cover of this volume, and the Sutton Gallery in Melbourne for making this possible. We thank also the thinkers who have contributed to the production process or offered intellectual support in one form or another. These include Russell Grigg, Sigi Jöttkandt, Dominiek Hoens, Rachel Hughes, Angela Cullip and our blind reviewers (the unnameable backbone of all such collections). We would like to give a special men- tion to the Melbourne Badiou Reading Group (they know who they are). Finally, we thank Alain Badiou for his permission to translate ‘What is a Philosophical Institution?’ and for the terrifying claim that he will ‘read every article’. The essays in this book first appeared in the open access journal Cos- mos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy (C&H). Paul Ash- ton, as one of the ‘organizing’ editors of Cosmos and History, would like to thank the other key organizers of the journal for their work in creating the context in which projects like this can take place: Arran Gare, Roberto Schiavo Lena and Claire Rafferty. Paul Ashton A. J. Bartlett Justin Clemens Melbourne 2006 ix introduction Masters & Disciples: Institution, Philosophy, Praxis Paul Ashton, A. J. Bartlett & Justin Clemens ‘Discipline, comme tu saignes!’ —René Char ‘Consequently, a true master [Meister] is at bottom only he who can provoke the other to transform himself through his act’. —Slavoj Žižek I. The situation This book, The Praxis of Alain Badiou, collects texts first published in a special issue of the online journal Cosmos & History. Our call for submissions to that issue read as follows: To mark the English translation of L’Être et l’événement as Being and Event, the journal Cosmos and History will publish a special issue on the work of the philosopher Alain Badiou. The approach of this journal is to publish work that goes beyond the merely exegetical and to this end we would like contributors to take up the challenge Badiou raises in Being and Event when he says: ‘The categories that this book deploys, from the pure multiple to the subject, constitute the general order of a thought such that it can be practised across the entirety of the contemporary system of reference.