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March 29, 2006
The New Badiou
A taste of Logiques des mondes, which has just appeared in France – thanks to the sorceror anaximandrake
Today, the default belief can be condensed into the following single statement:
There is nothing but bodies and languages
Let us say that this statement is the axiom of the contemporary conviction, and propose to name this conviction democratic materialism.
[...]
However, democratic materialism admits of a global limit to its multiform tolerance. A language that does not recognise universal juridical and normative equality of languages does not deserve to benefit from that equality. We call a language which claims to provide the norm for all others and to rule over all bodies dictatorial and totalitarian. Thus, it is not a question of tolerance, but of a "right to intervene" – legally, internationally, militarily if needs be: they will pay bodily for their linguistic faults.
[...]
The history of a world is but the temporal figure of the universality of its exposition. It is in the last instance the unfolding of its superabundance of being. The infinite inaccessibility of the support of being of a world gives way to the universal exposition of relations and thus to the logical completion of that world.
[...]
It is sometimes suggested that all I see in philosophy is a way to re-establish, against the contemporary apology for the ordinary and the futile, the rights of heroism. Why not? However, the old heroism claimed to justify life through sacrifice. My wish is to make it exist through the affirmative joy that the following of consequences universally procures. Let us say that the epic heroism of he who gives his life, is succeeded by the mathematical heroism of he who creates it, point by point.
[...]
The disillusioned animal for whom merchandise is the only means of orientation – we are only consigned to its form if we consent to it. But we protect the Idea of this consent, mystery of the pure present.
Posted by robin at March 29, 2006 08:31 PM