Reading Alain Badiou’s “The Rebirth of History” During #BlackLivesMatter & COVID-19

1.

During the time of the pandemic an uprising occurred. It was the movement of people responding to the police killing of George Floyd. This particular killing ignited something bigger than Floyd. It ignited a riot. I return now to Alain Badiou’s work The Rebirth of History which I wrote about in relation to anarchism 8 or 9 years ago. I turn to it because a friend of mine — namely Daniel Tutt — has used it to analyze the uprising in the United States (but which is no longer confined only to the United States) but also because I wonder to what extent it is capable of responding to the unique context in which we now find ourselves. Does Badiou’s paradigm hold up during the time of COVID-19? This is the question I am asking myself as I enter into my reading.

The first few paragraphs of the book take aim at some enemies and we are right to detect Badiou’s suspicion in them. He is setting the stage for an alternative perspective. But to do so he must begin first of all with that which is knowable, that which is opinion and law, and so on. Yet, he is not naive enough to believe that the state represents mere stasis. In fact, he claims that the role of most of his enemies are those who claim that they represent ‘real change.’ Therefore, change is the name of a new sort of conservativism; perhaps it is even the name for tradition today. Those who are on this side of tradition therefore critique all others for not offering real change. He is not afraid to place these people on the side of our ‘masters.’ Thus, we outlines that the masters discourse is today one which attempts to represent change and to accuse others of not offering real change.

One such change is what the sociologists call modernization. It is an old claim concerning ‘progress’ and ‘development.’ This discourse introduces a perspective of change as reform, that is, of change as incremental developments that build resilience and flexibility into the capitalist system. Badiou seems to be suspicious of this because change — if it is to be change at all — must be permanent in its orientation. Badiou goes on to highlight the ideological contents of this master discourse of change: it is secular in orientation, it demands urgent responses, it aims to extract surplus value and to maintain or increase existing concentrations of wealth and power. This is the law of change under the master discourse.

Next Badiou aims to subtract from this position three points of opposition: first, change — under modernization, reformist, democratic, secularist, globalized, principles — aims only to renew and maintain the “unlimited power of financial and imperial oligarchy”; second, there is a growing sequence of opposition to the ‘regression’ principle which underlies this notion of change. Yet this movement of opposition is currently “blind, naive, scattered and lacking a powerful concept or durable organization.” It is for this reason that Badiou claims that we are living during the “times of riots.” He sees something optimistic in this blind movement because it is something like a political awakening. The riots aim for progress of change rather than the regress of change offered by the first opposition. Third, there is the opposition of “glorious mass mobilizations” which aim to defeat these riots by folding them into the first opposition through “representation,” capitalist and political corruption, and so on. This is why there must be an Idea. The Idea can sustain the riot through to another phase of transition that remains distant from the regressive or recuperative moments of the first and third oppositions.

2.

Badiou begins this chapter by focusing on some critiques of his work. First that he is idealist and second — an extension of the first point — that he is a communist without being a Marxist. Incidentally, he claims that it is better to be communism without being Marxist than to be Marxist without being communist. The reason is because Marxism seems implicated within a hegemonic ideology today. Yet, his fidelity to Marx’s work does not necessitate that one openly state it. He compares the situation to the contemporary Mathematician who does not feel the need to openly and explicitly declare his or her fidelity to Euclid or Euler. Next, he defines communism as: “the organized knowledge of the political means required to undo existing society and finally realize an egalitarian, rational figure of collective organization.”

The question which concerns Badiou is whether or not we can declare that there is a ‘new’ capitalism (e.g., postmodern capitalism, schizocapitalism, a capitalism that does not require the state, etc). He relegates this radical leftist position also to the ideology of change mentioned in the first chapter, calling them ‘dupes of the dominant ideology.’ Badiou claims rather that contemporary capitalism has all of the same essential features as classical capitalism. And the old Marxist analysis still works. Marx discussed, for example, the ‘world market’ and this is linked to ‘globalization.’ Marx discussed the concentration of of capital. Marx also discussed the so-called ‘disaster capitalism,’ of which Naomi Klein has made herself on the bestsellers list: ‘cyclical crises’ are inherent to capitalism and ‘testify […] to the absolute irrationality of capitalism.’

Badiou places the ‘executives of capitalism’ on both sides — left and right, and includes some names that might be surprising to some readers (Obama, Zapatero, etc). Marx believed that it was possible that the full development of capitalism — along with all of its poverty, and so on — would be interrupted by communism. Thus, he claimed that there will be a choice between communism or barbarism. And, since communism did not occur to disrupt this process, Badiou maintains that we are now within barbarism. It was the organized proletariat that would ‘forestall’ this turn toward barbarism, whereby barbarism is just another name for capitalism in its purest form.

Badiou therefore claims that contemporary capitalism is a continuation of the sequence of classical capitalism. Those whose mantra is ‘change’ are not therefore in the service of a ‘rebirth of history.’ Such a rebirth requires an agency that is both destructive and creative (he puts the two words in that order) and which therefore makes a “genuine exit” from capitalism — the ‘order.’ Surprisingly, then, Badiou, unlike Zizek, agrees, to some extent, with Fukuyama’s thesis about democratic capitalism as the ‘end of history.’ Badiou concludes this chapter by pitting ‘capitalism’ (which is ‘the end’ and which is ‘barbarism’) against a genuine awakening (which is a ‘popular initiative’) within which an “Idea will take root.”

3.

Badiou opens by discussing the way that political leaders and the media discuss rioters as ‘gangs,’ ‘hooligans,’ ‘thieves.’ This group of people are set up against the law abiding citizens who defend property and popular morality. As I read this passage I think of the new juxtaposition in America during the uprising after George Floyd’s death. It is not possible to sustain the distinction between hooligans and popular morality since morality is here increasingly on the side of the rioters. Thus, the distinction seems to be shifting between those of ‘law abiding’ citizens and those citizens who havtivee awaken to a certain moral consciousness. At the time that Badiou wrote this there were riots in the United Kingdom. Footage of the police cracking down ruthlessly on those rioters was used to quell the uprising, and it was largely effective. Thus, it seems to me that there is another distinction then: in the United States any footage of police brutality is now used to strengthen the moral conviction of the rioters. The distinction is increasingly between those who are on the side of the new awakening, the new consciousness, and those who choose to remain true to the old way. But what is the awakening versus the old way?

It seems to me that the awakening constitutes those who are finally coming to terms with the past which has been largely repressed within the popular imaginary. In America racial tensions have always existed yet they were never directly confronted in any way that had profound revolutionary success. Thus, COVID opened up a space for people to confront the truth that has always existed within America. It is a country built upon the exploitation, brutalization, and subjugation of blacks and people of colour. To finally become conscious of this is to wake up from the dream that those tensions either didn’t exist or else can continue to exist indefinitely. Conversely, those who remain asleep are those who refuse to wake up to this reality. What wakes people up? It is precisely those who continue to remain asleep. Badiou wrote that: “what gets forgotten in all this is the real crime, as well as the real victim: the person (often persons) killed by the police. With utter uniformity, riots by the popular youth in the ‘suburbs’ […] are provoked by the actions of the police. The spark that ‘lights a prairie fire’ is always a state murder.”

The intellectuals, claimed Badiou, typically rush in to rationalize the repression of the riot. Yet, here again, because of the different distinction within the United States — where morality and awakening is on the side of the rioters — we do not this time see intellectuals rising to the defence of repression. It happens, to some extent, but it is a slower defence. This, it seems to me, demonstrates a certain progress in the ‘war of position’ whereby intellectuals are less likely to separate the riots in terms of ‘violence’ and ‘peaceful’ tendencies because finally the violence is considered on the side of the immoral police and state forces. The police therefore find themselves also split between the moral element and the repressive element. Authority without morality therefore occurs, and the maternal superego authorizes one to ‘do the right thing’ in ways that are either destructive (as we’ve seen in many cases whereby the left attacks itself) or productive ways (as we’ve seen now in the left attacking repressive power itself).

There is a sense, then, that the following has changed within the American context: “while there is zero tolerance for the young black who steals a screwdriver, there is infinite tolerance for the crimes of bankers and government embezzlers which affect the lives of millions.” This distinction once again is crumbling within the American context. What Badiou points out is that at the center of the racial uprising is often an unacknowledged problem of class: “To believe that the intolerable crime is to burn a few cars and rob some shops, whereas to kill a young man is trivial, is typically in keeping with what Marx regarded as the principal alienation of capitalism: the primacy of things over existence, of commodities over life.” Thus, the riot in American should now be approaching the point within its ostensibly moral discourse about this key tension: property versus life itself. This is one way in which the immediate riot can expand beyond its localized occurrence and gain a more revolutionary potential that will not fold back into capitalist recuperation.

At this point Badiou makes a distinction between three types of riot: (1) immediate riot, (2) latent riot, and (3) historical riot.

First, an immediate riot is this first period of unrest among a fairly localized population amidst state violence — usually a killing — of an individual. Badiou even cites killings that are more obscure, like the case of a riot in Tunisian which was sparked by the suicide of a street vendor (because he was not allowed to sell on the street). An immediate riot is therefore the first phase of a possible historical revolutionary sequence. Sociologically speaking, Badiou points out that riots are almost always initiated by the youth. The challenge is therefore to increase the scope of the riot outside of its localized occurrence. It needs to transport itself to a new site — somewhere outside of the initial site in which the violence played out, somewhere outside of the community within which the violence was inflicted. This is why the American punk musician Jello Biafra, from the band Dead Kennedys, in his famous song about Riots, was critiquing rioters for destroying their own community. The point is therefore to take the initial destructive force and transport it to a larger site, a site where one can allocate a more structural determination (the market place, the state, etc).

Thus, the immediate riot is required, according to Badiou, yet it is often blind. It must dislocate itself and form a consciousness of universal sites of antagonism. An immediate can also spread or dislocate itself through the logic of contagion. This is a form of mimicry, it follows a logic of attempting to imitate the initial riot. Yet, to pass into a “latent riot,” imitation will not be good enough. So to summarize Badiou’s point we could put it like this:

(1) immediate riot, localized, relatively unarticulated, destructive;

(a) extension or displacement through imitation of the initial riot into a new locality (unsustainable, remains within the framework and logic of an immediate riot);

or

(b) displacement into another setting and demographic.

Only 1b can lead toward the 3rd type of riot, that is, the historical or revolutionary riot. It is a matter of displacement into another context or world where the population is differentiated from the local one. The goal is to avoid “only combining weak localizations (at the site of the rioters) with limited extensions (through imitation).” But there is another important ingredient, according to Badiou, for a localized or immediate riot to pass into a historical riot: subjectivity. If the subjective intention is merely destructive and cannot find for itself a notion of universality, then it shall remain an unfulfilled revolutionary potential. There is an impurity within the immediate riot because there are those within it that will take advantage of the moment, especially those within organized crime circles. Yet, the rioters will need to distinguish themselves from the elements of organized crime by recognizing that organized crime is on the side of capitalism itself. If Max Weber once argued that the state has a monopoly on violence then we might also claim similarly that capitalism has a monopoly on moral corruption.

3.

If the last chapter introduced the immediate riot then this chapter introduces the latent riot. He opens the chapter already with the following distinction: if an immediate riot is ‘below’ a latent riot then a historical riot is beyond it and exists toward the development of a new large-scale politics. Badiou makes a prediction about Western capitalist countries: this is the age of riots, and that, within the context of these countries we can expect the possibility of historical riots to emerge. It is clear that Badiou was correct about this possibility: “by this I mean an eventual rupture creating the possibility of the unforeseen historical unfolding of some immediate riot.” Badiou’s reasoning is not that violence is any more or less developed within contemporary Western capitalism — although that may or may not be the case — but rather that there is the development of a certain mode of consciousness, or what Badiou calls “subjectivity.” There is the development of the ‘subjectivity of a latent riot.’ It is therefore clear from this statement that what ultimately distinguishes the immediate riot from the latent riot is the development of what Marx called class consciousness, or what Badiou more broadly refers to as subjectivity. The latent riot unites various differential subjectivities through a shared slogan or textual narrative against the state actions and capitalist interests. What is most important within a latent riot is the extension of the domain of subjectivity, the articulation of a shared interest vis-a-vis state and capitalist interests, and the defence of the recuperation of the movement into policy initiative, merely symbolic value which may be profited through the media, and the production of marketing techniques aimed to harness the power of the people into the extraction and reification of surplus value.

4.

Finally, the historical riot “is the result of the transformation of an immediate riot, more nihilistic than political, into a pre-political riot.” Thus, a pre-political riot is not something that implies it is less important but is rather a requirement for the development of what might come next. A pre-political riot is an attempt at extension into history. A historical riot attempts to hold its ground beyond the momentary instant so that it might endure in time, that is, within history. Thus, when Slavoj Zizek asks protesters often to think about ‘the day after,’ this is what he seems to me: how can we endure during the immediate and latent riots into the formation of a new historical political sequence? This requires through the latent riot the formation of a universal truth, a universality which defines the scope of the problem among disparate subjective formations. It is for this reason that the riots in America seem to some extent to be within the immediate to latent moments, the pre-political moments. Yet, if race has been one of the central antagonisms of the building of American class warfare then it might be seen to be much more close to approaching the political or historical sequence.

Therefore, a historical riot requires from the latent riot the following three ingredients: first, an extension or displacement which is promised within the latent riot which is not simply destructive but also meant as a constructive moment of truth; second, a unification of subjectivities across the various displacements which endures in time, and; third, a symbolic nomination which secures this unification of disparate subjectivities. It seems to me that #BlackLivesMatters functions in a way that offers some promise in this direction of historical riot. The historical riot is defined by the cessation of its localiation and the development of a new temporality of historical sequence. We have not yet witnessed this movement into the historical register of invention but we seem to be approaching it. Badiou here defines an important concept: “intervallic period.” There are sometimes intervallic periods within the movement of riots. The intervallic period is a qualitatively new possibility which comes after the uncertainty and novelty of the immediate and latent riots within the historical perspective. It is the clarification of what came before and the presentation of a novel construction which is the alternative to everything which came before. Intervallic periods are periods of dormancy whereby the alternative narrative of alternatives and novel solutions is waiting to be found: “an open, shared and universally practical figure of emancipation is waiting.” It is an uncertain interval.

Thus, I read from this that the historical moment of the riot is defined at its convergence with the latent riot by these intervallic periods which are discovered retroactively. Badiou claims that we are still living during this era of riots within which we remain within the intervallic period. It is important that we not think simply in terms of the nationalist context — although Badiou does not mention this. For example, #BlackLivesMatter has been picked up in a lot of different nations and it has been thought of in different ways. It nonetheless still seems somewhat chained to certain national contexts and unable to situate itself outside of the intervallic period to link up with other riots which have taken place around the world in recent history. During the intervallic period we cannot find a ‘political form’ yet. There remains a fundamental negativity to the riot, to its symbolic articulation. In this sense, would we say that #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, and so on, remain largely negative declarations. This does not in any way discount their truth. They must approach the affirmative element of an Idea. Badiou summaries all of this in the following way: “the riot is the guardian of the history of emancipation in intervallic periods.”

The problem is always one of affirmation. Badiou does not use this as an accusation against militants or activists but rather as a universal truth: “history does not contain within itself a solution to the problems it places on the agenda.” And so we must invent that solution. It is always a question of moving from those who are cast aside today toward their historical victory.

5.

What is most forceful and yet also most unsettling about historical riots is that they proposed a challenge without a solution. Nobody is prepared for the change that it proposes and there is as yet no awareness of how that change might come about. Riots do not in of themselves have the answer that they seek, and neither do the political and capitalist forces they are often up against. In other words, Badiou claims that there is in fact no prefiguration of what shall come about after the new political sequence within the momentary riots themselves. This seems to contradict the (often American) anarchist claim that there is a moment of prefiguration within the riot (witnessed in mutual aid efforts, etc). Badiou explicitly addresses these sorts of arguments: “in mass movements with historical dimension there are always people who sincerely believe […] that the popular democratic practices of the movement […] form a kind of paradigm for the state to come. Egalitarian assemblies are held; everyone has the right to speak; social, religious, racial, national, sexual and intellectual differences are no longer of any significance. Decisions are always collective […].” The problem is that the democratic practices of the movement are so far removed from being routinized that there is no way to overcome this conflict. Badiou here claims that Marx was correct in claiming that the only way forward is a transitional dictatorship — the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The problem as I see it is that the historical riot or mass movement can very easily involve itself in populist mob behaviours which can be perceived by many as radically unjust and untruthful; for example, since justice is now linked very tightly with the morality of the people it can be felt all the more hard by those who are victims of the mob. This is a danger that has been felt very much through the development of the #MeToo movement, and other movements. It is also a danger I have witnessed years ago in my anarchist organizing when the mob would harass and seek justice against those who were wrongly accused. It was a terrible cruelty, and for those who suffered it perhaps was worse than the order which preceded the movement. As I see it, this is seen as an obstacle to the political sequence and an inhibition of the revolutionary potential of the movement. One must aim to achieve “political fidelity to the movement.” Badiou now offers the following:

(Pre-political sequence) — — — — — — — — — -> (political) revolutionary sequence

(1) immediate riot → (2) latent riot → (3) historical riot

The pre-political sequence (immediate and latent and some aspects of the historical riot) is distinguished from the revolutionary or political sequence by the fact that the latter offers an alternative to the power it intends to overthrow. Yet, for Badiou, the second also includes an aspect of taking control of the state itself for the purposes of safeguarding the revolutionary Idea. When the historical riot makes this adjustment it has registered itself within the end of the intervallic period which is the carry-over of the latent riot toward the new political world. It is the rebirth of history.

The danger that Badiou warns against is that the historical riot does not generate an Idea. If it does not do so then the movement can become recuperated by a reform or revolutionary government which does not address the latent dimension of the riots. This is the concern we need to be attentive to with the historical riots in America regarding #BlackLivesMatter. We have a real possibility here because the Trump Administration is not aiming to recuperate the movement. It is rather within the cultural sphere that the recuperation is happening. We could see this as a war of position but it might also offer a new challenge: that the movement transform itself into a political Idea without merely remaining a symbolic point of reference within the cultural imaginary.

Badiou next points to the international dimension of the historical riot. If a movement is to remain historical — that is, global — then it must be sensitive to the logic of inclusion which occurs during pre-political processes. For example, and this is my own example, when Muslims were attack around the world in the last few years, the media and radical community often responded in terms of “inclusion.” The message was clear: “you are one of us.” The message was often directed to the emerging Muslim refugee population. Badiou’s lesson is to be cautious of this approach. The question is: “[is] Western inclusion […] a genuine change?” The answer, for Badiou, and here I am in agreement, is that it is not a genuine change. He continues: “what would be a genuine change would be an exit from the west, a de-westernization, and it would take the form of an exclusion [rather than an inclusion].” What is meant by exclusion is not the rejection of Muslims from within the Western world — not at all. But a return to the latent dimension of our logic: to acknowledge the way in which Muslims and refugees and other rejected peoples within the West are rejected in ways that perpetuated such rejection through the political and capitalist apparatuses.

6.

Badiou returns in this chapter to the question of ‘a desire for the West,’ which translates into a desire for inclusion within Western capitalism. Badiou is right to point to this as a threat to the revolutionary impulse. It is a threat because it outlines a logic of inclusion: “who will protect us from the all too real subjective power of the desire for the West?” Yet, within some non-Western uprisings, we can discern that there is no desire for the West among its various subjectivities. I wonder here why Badiou did not liken this to the earlier discussion of extension through imitation. Imitation of the West, this metonymic logic, is similar to the ineffectual nature of those within a given national or cultural context which displace or extend the riot through repeating its local gestures. Badiou uses this topic as a point of departure for discussing the specific subjectivities which seem most revolutionary: “in a world structured by exploitation and oppression masses of people have, strictly speaking, no existence. They count for nothing. In today’s world nearly all Africans, for example, count for nothing.”

Badiou defines these subjectivities as “inexistent.” They are somehow outside of the world. When the political process occurs and there is a revolutionary sequence it is because there is a change of the world, the inexistents of the world begin to finally exist within that world with maximal intensity. Yet this is conditioned by what Badiou names an “event.” An event is elusive. It has no epistemological content in of itself except that it is: “what makes possible the restitution of the inexistent.” With #BlackLivesMatter we can see exactly this evental dimension: blacks are now saying “we used to be inexistent, but now we are forcing our existence within this world.” It is for this reason that I find myself in a subtle disagreement with Daniel Tutt — my friend, who I believe nonetheless has much more intelligence on these matters than myself: #BlackLivesMatter is precisely evental and is moving beyond the pre-political process. There is a subjective moment of articulating its inexistence and a movement of people to articulate an existence. Badiou writes that the power of this proclamation of the event “is such that — a truly remarkable thing — the whole world concurs.” Whereas the media and the culture usually finds this evental moment horrific (it is usually a horror for the populist movement) this time it is not the case, and this may very well be because they have already witnessed the change of the world due to COVID-19.

The political subjective process which responds to this event legitimizes itself and its truth through its own authority. This is what Badiou means by the dictatorship as an outcome of the political event. Badiou writes that at this moment “nobody needs propaganda or police for what they say is what is true in the situation.” Is this not what we are experiencing now within America? The police are being completely overhauled in some parts of the country, people are calling for the police to be defunded and completely removed. And in some cases they have been. The exceptional members of the dictatorship impose their will and decisions “as if they were those of a general will.” This seems terrible to some, but the logic is one of being in touch with the universality of what Lacan named the ‘not-all,’ the excluded, the refuse, the refugees, those who have been historically oppressed and isolated from prevailing political and capitalist expansion. This is why #BlackLifesMatter will need to find itself situated also among these surplus peoples.

Truth is the articulation of the consequences of the event and its authority is autonomous to the exceptional people who have recourse to the universal. This is a truth that rises above the mob and the truths of the old world. It is an undeniable truth that guarantees the new political process and secures its evental dimension.

7.

We can see the event because of three signs: first, intensification (this is the uprising itself, in a sense), second, contraction (thus, the reaction to the event), and third localization. All of this is pre-political and it is here that the new truth begins to become organized. Badiou claims that the organization of the truth is somewhere between an Idea and an event. Thus:

Event — → organization (of the truth of that event) — → Idea (truth as such)

It is the political militant — activists armed with fidelity to the event — which move this process of event through its organization into an Idea. Yet, the militant is not a ‘name’ but something more like a placeholder. We do not yet know the name of the militant until the Idea has been implemented and secured. Then, retroactively, we give name to the militant as the organizer of a truth. The organization is always that group of militant subjects who charge themselves with the responsibility of carrying out the consequences of the truth of that event through the organization of its elements into an Idea. The organization always contains or ‘retains’ “traces within itself of what made for the creative power of the historical riot.” So what are these traces? First, contraction. Contraction refers to the minority of those whose membership within the organization is defined. The organization must contract, it must create a rule for exclusion. Second, intensification. Intensification is defined by a militant conviction and dedication and fidelity to the event. It is a question of the intensity of subjectivity relating to the event. Third, localization. This refers to being accessible to particular ‘hot’ zones or sites where the contradictions and evental occurrences are being brought into existence.

It seems to me that these three principles are related to some extent to the secret organization outlined in the manifesto of Mikhail Bakunin’s boy lover Sergai Nachayev. Badiou maintains that the organization will not necessarily take the form of a ‘party’ in the sequence of riots to come. We do not see within American, for example, the formation of a party as a consequence of #BlackLivesMatter or #MeToo, etc. According to Badiou, one of the major challenges will be how to resolve contradictions within the movement and not by recourse to the existing political frameworks. It is not clear that #MeToo was capable of doing this since it popularly used the courts and judicial systems already in place. This is perhaps a mark of its limitation as a political sequence. Yet #BlackLivesMatter is now approaching this dilemma. It asks for the police to be held accountable within the courts. And the American government was quick to give way to this demand. Then a second demand was made: hold all of the police officers present accountable. Next, they were all held accountable. Finally, it was demanded that the conviction be elevated, and this demanded was met. The problem was that the demands were met. Yet, there is a sense in which the movement nonetheless remains dissatisfied with these moves on the part of the state. And for that reason we should remain hopeful for the future of the movement.

The political organization must retain the exceptional status of the movement, it must remain within what Lacan named the logic of the not-all. This is what makes all political movements essentially feminist since the exception or the not-all is a feminine process of sexuation for Lacan. In any case, militant fidelity on the part of the subject is one of safeguarding this within the organization. Badiou claims that a central question emerges within the organization: “how are we to be faithful to changing the world within the world itself?” Badiou then clarifies all of this in a wonderful passage: “a pre-political event, an historical riot, occurs when an intensive super-existence, articulated with an extensive contraction, defines a site where the entire situation is refracted into a universally addressed visibility. Identifying an evental situation is something done in the blink of an eye: since it is universally addressed, you, like everyone else, are touched by the universality of its visibility. You know that the being of an inexistent has just appeared in a site specific to it. That is why, as we have said, no one can publicly deny it.”

The most delicate moment in the transition from a pre-political organization amidst a historical riot toward the political sequence is the moment when an organization begins to articulate the positivity of the new world. This is the moment when the old world — the state, ideology, capitalism, etc — will finally attempt to get the upper hand: “if this moment is missed, the rebirth of History is nothing more than a brilliant anecdote, and politics remains apathetic.”

8.

In this chapter Badiou outlines a logic of identity. There is an identity marked by a certain declaration, e.g., the object ‘being French.’ And there are those who are maximally identified with that object and those who are minimally identified with it (e.g., Muslims). Those whose identities are far removed from the object are what Badiou calls “separating names.” They include within France “Islamist,” “burqa,” and so on. Justice today, within this world, often indicates the eradication of separating names. Within #BlackLivesMatter it is the eradication of blacks. Yet, there is also the eradication of Muslims within America, and other minimal identities. When an event happens, according to Badiou, there is a disappearance of separating names. Thus, in #BlackLivesMatter it is the disappearance of justice to blacks. The ‘generic’ is the name of those who are indistinguishable within the object. Badiou claims that an “organization exists when the power of the generic is preserved outside the movement, outside the riot.” Thus, the generic — as that which exists outside of identity, as that which inexists — is organized not independently of the organization but precisely as the principle of the organization.

Badiou provides a summary of everything hitherto discussed:

“A political truth is the organized product of an event — an historical riot — which preserves intensification, contraction and localization to the extent that it can replace an identitarian object and separating names with a real presentation of generic power such as its significance has been disclosed to us by the event.”

Badiou proposes that the generic is always incompatible with the state and this is why it is inherently revolutionary. Yet it is not necessarily the case since the state can maintain itself without identity by appearing to limit its scope as it does now within the neoliberal manifestation. The concern that I have with Badiou’s statement here has to do with what Freud named “death drive,” or what Lacan names “the drive” and jouissance. I will forego this discussion in order to continue reading the text from Badiou.

9.

This chapter provides a summary of the theory developed within the text.

Once again:

“A political truth is a series of consequences, organized on the condition of an Idea, a massive popular event, in which intensification, contraction and localization replace an identitarian object, and the separating names bound up with it, with a real presentation of the generic power of the multiple.”

This to me seems to fundamentally miss the difficulties of the drive. And it is this question that I shall need to explore more in some way in the future. Yet, in some way, it is the organization of the political truth which overcomes the problems of the jouissance of the mob — the problem of death drive.