In a surprising act of the Good, Ray Davis has managed to completely misread Alain Badiou's philosophy. I say 'Good' because it is a gathering together of what Ray wants to tell us—telling someone something is good—but nonetheless I believe his polemic misinterprets a number of important features of the idea.
Ray: "Alain Badiou says that evil isn't self-evident. Still, he seems pretty certain of himself." This is the key flaw that I find in Badiou; he treats a number of examples as obviously good or evil, while the very thing we look to him for is some explanation of why they should be considered one or the other. But Badiou's "ethic of Truths" is not about what is good or evil, but rather it is about how you should motivate yourself toward what you see as good or evil, subjectively.
Badiou would have us—if nothing else—honor and pursue whatever original conceptions we find ourselves having, and I believe this is a very important idea. To take an example, if there is an alternative to globalized capital, then describe it, enact it, participate in it! Do not merely bitch—not about Evil-elsewhere nor about Evil-at-home—instead, honor and pursue the positive ideas that you do have, which, if they are strong, if they are a great alternative to globalized capital, then they will overtake capitalism by that force, and not by the force of anyone's gripes. That is the thrust of Badiou's so-called "ethic of Truths": pursuing something new rather than whistle-blowing on what exists. This can happen in many arenas: collective politics, individual relationships, artistic and scientific creation, and so on.
In an act of journalism worthy of Jayson Blair, Ray emends Badiou by adding "fixed" to the sentence: "The Good in artistic action is the invention of new forms that convey the [fixed] meaning of the world" (Badiou), but the word "fixed" appears nowhere in the interview. Badiou would not accept a characterization of the world's meaning as fixed—quite the contrary: the meaning of the world changes in every so-called "event" (an "event" is whatever is unexpected: "an encounter, a general revolt, a surprising new invention" (Badiou)). Yet there is, he argues, such a thing as a fidelity to what the artist subjectively sees red-hot in that moment, and on the other hand, there is a possibility of betraying that truth, of dropping it, or replacing it with something egotistic or stereotyped or otherwise not as red-hot.
Ray, why, after inserting "fixed" into Badiou's statement, do you immediately describe the "good in science" as "what approximates reality"? Isn't that question of "reality" what is at stake? If art is "what gives pleasure"—why is reality more important in whatever-qualifies-as science than in w-q-a art? Art and science have too long been separated out in this way (entertainment versus truth-finding) and I don't buy it at all. Both should bring pleasure, both should pursue the truth (though that truth might be conceived subjectively). "And it's true that my most visceral response to bad art is childish indignation: 'But that's a lie!'" (Ray).
Ray's own goals tend toward the positive ethic of Truths, particularly "1. Never supplant; always supplement." I think that is a better aphorism than Badiou's own too-terse maxim: "Keep going."
Returning to the question of political good and evil: nothing in Badiou's writing (that I've come across) advances any theory of how to tell, from within that subjective event, what the right response really is. It is treated as personal and intuitively obvious in some places "From the inside of this subjectivization, I can tell what is Evil (to betray my comrades, to collaborate with the Nazis, etc.)" (Badiou) and in others it is treated as a universal consensus: "The whole world understands that the real question is the following: ... Why are five thousand American deaths considered a cause for war, while five hundred thousand dead in Rwanda ... do not, in our opinion, merit outrage?" (Badiou). This Cabinet interview, in short, is not his best work. I recommend Ethics instead.
Despite these remarks which I suspect are just a kind of knee-jerk politicization, Badiou advances this interesting idea that, when a situation "happens" to you, you ought to live up to it, do what needs to be done, or at least, keep in mind that something needs to be done, and to rest with the status quo is not OK. To "Keep going," I believe, is indeed a courageous and important thing.
We could pretend all kinds of weird fetascrifftingfug but it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that Klank - so never mind pretendtious posturing - rhetoric is over - and under-whelmed - whatever is you is and is you ain't- all the dichotmies and dialecticas and rhizomes and Zygoates and paradigms and pothogems and pythagorisms and Kings men ain't gonnah get that dog to hunt- The ancient Twins are losing faces - ice cream and pussy - Time and Space - one melts and the other expands and shrivels and stinks - the human is an abstract construct - that alights from the stratified mechanisms of animal Breath and disstills into tesselated coils of bifurcated effluvial poetic emissions that permutate song/words into trignomatrees of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the sets and subsets thereof -there is no pretending when it comes to multipliciy - to be is to be percieved as other and everything else is either marketing,politics, economics or religion with priests entering through secret passageways and spinning tales for the general good - and why be to sure that the undominated wild doesn't drink from cavernous streams of the polluted { Fallen} inherent animal just as the dominated unwild is poisened with the re-directed excressences of its sublimated animal impurities -its impure objectivitys which leads ultimately to the question of origins and phylo-genisis's - do we begin at the begining - does such a begining even exist? or do we work Backwords - first there is a garden then there is no garden then there is = the journey of Gnosis - we reason from snake to snake and get swallowed with the tail - but what if we try from seed to tree to apple or from Chaos to Cosmos and exclude the Egyptian math - dispense with maps and symbols and go deep into the actual territory of groundings, etymologies and epistomes - something differnt and new will emerge - a bewilderment of Epic proportions that will undermine all the classic categories = there won't be anymore of this mushy - romantistical : wild +pre-conscious = Good - civilized + postconscious= Evil or any of the various variations - perhaps it will be more like a Tiger in Vegas eating a dog that is eating a snake that is eating it's tail - I cannot say for sure ........
I Can't really make backsides or tales of previous comments - The pepsis wasp -also know as a Tarantula spider is an interesting - or should I say arresting - example of design in nature - it specializes in the tarantula first paralyzing it with a sting to the abdomen and then inserting it's eggs which basically feed off the living meat of the Tarantula...and the rest - as they say is history - perhaps we have some sort of counterpart in the human world - something that from its inception paralysises and feeds off the flesh of its prey - and Rwanda might serve as an example: during the colonial era the Belgians took advantage of by stirring the pot of tribal conflict - by labeling one group as superior - the Tutsis' and the other group Hutus as inferior which led to muderous resentments between the two groups - these in effect were the Pepsis eggs which over several decades eventually resulted in full scale genocide - more than 20,000 Tutsis were killed in 1959 .. When the Belgians left the Hutus seized power and persecuted the Tutsis just as they had been by the Belgians - and so you have these eggs of ethnic hatred moving from larval stages to full blown genocide - which perhaps existed even before the Belgiums allied themselves with the Tutsis - but were brought to a critical point { larval stage} by that alliance - just as the communists' manipulation of ethnic hatred between serbs and muslim slavs led to genocide} and avenging the atrocities between groups culminating finally in a massive bloodbath - the ideological mathamatics of these situations is fairly obvious - we live in a world of competition that thrives on resentment the way a wasp egg thrives on live tarantula meat - and unsrupulous leaders manipulate these forces largly to gain or solidify their own positions of dominance - and people that have been downtrodden , disenfranchised- abused - starved and massacred are { if not completely paralysed!} ready to act on even the slightest provocation - but the Evil involved can only partly be blamed on the Manipulaters - so many betrayals and rationalizations are involved in advancing ones position at the expense of anothers - and guilt often permutates into self aggrandizing contempt until there is an unbridgable gap between the hunter and the hunted - until all the eyes and teeth are piled up into mountains of bashed skulls - anyway this is all a bit simplistic and pro -or pepsi-crustean - but with reference to the 9/11 versus the Rwanda question of Alain Badiou - and I have not read any of his books yet - this too { the question : why is 911 an ethical outrage and not Rwanda? } strikes me as simplistics - isn't it obvious that when you kill the Mayor and his associates it is going to be a bigger deal than when a group of less social -political and economic importance is attacked? Things partly become a big deal by way of marketing
and economic and social prestige even if the loss is much more horrorific in the event that get's least attention - this is generally understood .... I think it would be more profitable to pusue the 9/11 versus Rwanda contrast with a different question or a different set of questions- if we can say that certain types of ethnically racist meta- narratives - whether extrapolated from the Koran or Marxist doctrine - or Adam Smith or the Bible - whatever - we might wonder if the current philosophical project to deflate all Meta-narratives could have a positive effect on deflating ethnic -socio/economic and religious conflict - which to me does't seem likely because human passions will always seek such naratives or if none are permitted - will create their own - and will perish as always for lac of knowledge - no - what needed along with these critical deflations is something that directs people to what is best in themselves and helps them to - if not overcome hatred at least kepp it under wraps or redirect more constructively - what's neede is a Narrative that places general well being - communal harmony - acceptance and understanding of self and others on a higher plain than domination /profit / manipulation / power /control ..and so fourth - and something of this nature cannot be forced down people's throats - or they will just vomit - it has to be socially supported - socially, intellectually , ethically - economically and religiously supported - I guess this is the same old starry eyed razz-ama-tazz - just having a sort of blind faith in the common good and will of the people doesn't make sense - of course there are positive elements in the collective - but the negative ones frequently prevail - something more is needed.....something that connects and dignifies and keeps all the various guises of prestige and power from undermining our common humanity -......I'm groping for God
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