Badiou

Alain Badiou explains the difference between œuvres and déchet from Immanence of Truths. A work is the product of a truth-procedure which can exist beyond its finite conditions of creation while a waste-product merely exists for the market place.

“It is at this point, moreover, that one can again think fidelity as a counter-state: what it does is organize, within the situation, another legitimacy of inclusions.” —Being and Event

“How else could Category Theory have arisen, taking as its 'primitives' not multiplicities, but 'morphisms', or arrows, designating 'correspondences' between structural 'objects'?”

“The void, the multiple-of-nothing, neither excludes nor constrains anyone. It is the absolute neutrality of being – such that the fidelity that originates in an event, although it is an immanent break within a singular situation, is none the less universally addressed.”

“The site, itself, is presented, but ‘beneath’ it nothing from which it is composed is presented. As such, the site is not a part of the situation. I will also say of such a multiple that it is on the edge of the void, or foundational (these designations will be explained).”

Recent interview with Alain Badiou (spoken in French with subtitles available). youtube.com/watch?v=roYMkx…

“History is neither subjective nor glorious. History should instead be said to be the history of the State.”

“However, every regime of exception imposes a rupture stipulation: you’re no longer dealing with the simple continuity of the “there are languages and bodies” since you acknowledge that there are things that make a cut in the regime of the “there is.”” —Images of the Present Time

Marx’s Thesis XI: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” If the point is to change the world, then what is your theory of change? I resolutely hold that Alain Badiou best answers this with his philosophy of the Event.

“Is there a congruence between this figure of the brothel and today’s world? I think that in many respects there is.” —Images of the Present Time

“Contemporary conservatism no longer argues from the sacredness of the established order, but from its density. Every local cut, it says, is really a 'tear in the social fabric'. Leave natural laws (the market, appetite, domination ) to operate…”

“We can rely only on principles and we can only treat, on the basis of these principles, local situations in such a way as to pursue singular political processes within them.”

One of the Eighteen exercises in contemporary philosophy from ‘In Praise of Philosophy’

“The whole argument is designed to reduce the situation to an extremely banal statement, which leaves no room for perceiving an infinite potentiality. This reduction is achieved by a systemic and rhetorical operation of verbal covering-over of the system of possibilities.”

“with regard to the existence of hundreds of thousands of foreigners in our countries, there are three joint objectives: to oppose persecutory integration, to limit reactive purification, and to develop or expand creative identity.” —A New Dawn For Politics