NOTES
FROM : Badiou, A (2012) 'The philosophical
concept of change within politics’ EGS
video.
…The
state must continue the law.The
state changes the law if necessary.This
makes political change more complex than change
in science or arts, because repetition is
strongly supported.The
struggle against state power can also find
itself involved in repetition.The
state exists precisely to repeat.It
imposes repetition on any attempts to change,
which explains the common failure of
revolutionary movements [so we have a social
reproduction theory here at last —but no mention
of sociology.Presumably Marx will do—well, better than
nothing, and a great improvement on Deleuze].
Political
action requires a theoretical effort to generate
creative possibilities, as we see in all the
great political works.It
requires a knowledge of the history of politics,
of repetitions, and of those rare creations.It
should study the nature of the state and its
relation to change, through a dialectics of
repetition and change.It
should recognize that there is a general law
between the possession of power and repetition.The
state even prescribes and proscribes what is
possible: it defines possibilities, and this is
its true power [as in S. Lukes’ famous
analysis—he also had agenda setting and coercion
as the two lower levels].The
state can be oppressive and violent or work
through the law, but it pursues its common role
of prescribing.It is the centre of repetition.We can
see this in art if for example there is a strong
academy which insist that art must imitate
nature or it is not art [but this misses the
issue of legitimate force?].
The state
describes possible actions, and if we accept, we
are bound by a repetition.Political
subjectivity
itself can be affected, and can be inside state
prescriptions.There is only one creative possibility,
and that is to do the impossible as defined by
the state and its laws, to both affirm and do
the impossible.The state accept some possibilities, such
as a general strike, but these are really
realized, so the first step might be to realize
what is possible but rare—but we would still be
inside the state.
We have
seen the creation of the impossible more
commonly in science, art or maths—the creation
of irrational or imaginary numbers, for example.Most
important scientific developments are creative
like this.They represent a forcing of possibility [forcing
has its origin in particular set theory too I
gather].Art
has similarly affirmed new forms, as in
Schoenberg for example.We
must do the same in politics.
There are
different points of view in politics, and a
relation between change and the contexts of
change.The
structure of state power is repetition and the
laws of repetition, and the context is changes
in the world.True change is an event—which
opens new possibilities, not just realizing
existing ones.Change must affect the structure of the
world, for example the structure of the state in
the political field, and the general structure
of repetition, and it must be opposed by the
event.The
event is outside the laws of the world.Truth
expresses the connection here, what happens when
events happen, and the possibilities for new
forms of truth that emerge.
So we need
to understand the world (the place of change and
the structure), the event (which is a localized
rupture, where creation in art and science is
its general form, the creation of
possibilities), and change (the realization or
creation of possibility).In
artistic creation, for example, a new vision
appears, a new possibility for art and there is
then exploration.A truth [and Badiou insists on the
singular and says there are many
truths—presumably all of the same form as in his
earlier lecture, though? ] is the consequence of
an event inside the world.It
expresses the logic of change and is a
consequence of change.
There is
no place in the normal world for events.They
create a new place and therefore a new world.The
existing possibilities in the world, those
provided by its structure, change because new
possibilities emerge.This
has been at the bottom of the whole question of
revolution, the avant-garde, the emergence of
new science and so on.
There was
a definite project to create a new world in the
last century by destroying the old one, ‘a great
and terrible passion’.Then a
reaction to this project, to avoid too much
negativity and destruction, to accept the world
to some extent, and to accept its limits.This
involved a turn to the theoretical notion of
change through the inside, through the event,
without complete destruction.We
need to find the point where we can go beyond
repetition.This is more than an academic question,
since we all now know of the terrible
consequences of projects aimed at absolute
change.Destructive
change like this was mistaken anyway, since the
world is a structure, a law of repetition [not a
simple single social formation that can be swept
away].We
can only pursue change inside by going to the
limit point of repetition, thinking of the
structure and of creation as a dialectical
vision, not the complete rejection of structure
followed by massive violence.We
still need rejection, and possibly some
violence, but not so much.