[Badiou picture by The Dopper]

[The written-up version of this is in the latest issue of The Philosophers' Magazine (Issue 46). I conducted this at the Goodenough Club, where Badiou was staying, on the 22th March this year.]

NP: You’re in London for the Sarkozy talk tonight and for the Communism conference at the end of the week. Obviously there has been huge interest in this conference, the organisers had to change the room twice, ultimately accommodating close to a thousand people. I wonder if you have any general comments about why the ‘idea of communism’ might be so important.

AB: It’s a true question because ‘communism’ was really a dead word for a long time. The reason was, naturally, the complete failure of the ‘great experiments’ of the last century concerning communist parties, communist states and so on. There has been a sort of collapse of all that, without any immediate kind of positive lesson because it was really an exhaustion. It has not really an insurrection against that kind of state but maybe a kind of illness and finally a death without any positive construction afterwards. All these countries are today capitalist in one way or another. So after that it was really an obscure word and so we have to interpret it in a new situation, this world, because it is once, possibly, it is an important world in its philosophical and political determination.

I think that there are probably two forms of explanation of this fact – a thousand people in a room in London to hear some philosophers talking about communism! It would have been impossible ten years ago, so we have to give some explanations. The first one is that after the victory of global capitalism, there have been some deceptions, something wrong. There hasn’t been a new peaceful world. We have huge inequality. We have no unity of the world, but a rich western world and another world which is not at the same level at all. We have also inside the rich world itself very strong inequalities, and more and more. We have wars everywhere in the world: Africa, Iraq. And we have something very important I think, a sort of confusing uncertainty. People cannot really know where they are going. So the first explanation: we are not in simply a victorious capitalist world. We are practically 20 years after this apparent victory and the world is not a very good one. So this is the objective explanation but there is also a subjective one.



We can say simply that global capitalism is not a vision of the future. It’s only a sort of continuity of itself. Capitalism is only a repetition. A repetition of the same world, the same necessity with many features of the repetition, the circulation of money, the generalities of communications, and so on. So there is something in that world which is also new and always the same. And I think it’s the profound experience of all people today. There are new objects, new cars, new phones, and so on. But in fact the experience of the world is the same. Is it possible to live in that sort of world for a long time? During a short time it’s always possible, we have some objects, some merchandise, we have the market, and so on. But in the long-run there is no vision of the future. There is the feeling of pure repetition. My philosophical conviction is that people cannot accept that sort of world for a long sequence. The subjective sequence which is accepting all that – there is no other possibility, the collapse of communism, there is no other possibility. It is why today we have a curiosity, a feeling concerning other possibilities. Not only communism, but religious possibilities, nihilistic possibilities too – no future – and pure immediate existence. But new forms of politics. The world today all that, especially young people, have a new interest have a new interest in this old word.

NP: At a previous conference at Birkbeck [Is the Politics of Truth Still Thinkable?], you suggested that we needed to come up with some new words. Maybe then there’s a kind of problem with going back to words like ‘communism’. You said that capitalism is about repetition; do we really want to repeat their repetition? There’s a worry I think if we can’t find new words to replace communism, proletariat etc. What’s missing, what’s the problem?



AB: I think we must distinguish in the word communism (and in some other words), two completely different aspects. On one side, it’s something like an old politics of the old century, and experiment which is finished. Everybody knows we cannot repeat that kind of experiment. But it’s less the word communism than the word ‘communist’ as in party or state. On the other hand, communism is an old name but it is the name of the historical possibility of a world which is not under the rule of private property and so on. This idea is today different from any form of concrete realisation We are at the opening of a new sequence where there is a great interest for new ideas and old words. I think for the moment, this is at the conceptual level. I don’t think that communism is something which can be an immediate political programme. Communism is not the name of a programme. It has been the name of a programme, for Lenin or Mao. But nobody today thinks we can go immediately from the idea of communism – of a society which is collective, not under the law of private property – to a political programme tomorrow. The idea is that we are instead at the beginning of a new subjective sequence of the understanding of what is politics, what is new politics. It is why it is possible to discuss the old words without any precise political community. If you take the conference, the speakers have very different orientations in relation to concrete programmes. But we have in common the idea that there is an ideological or conceptual level which is not immediately reducible to the concrete level which can be discussed on its own terms. And communism is the name of that sort of discussion.

NP: In recent months in Britain and in France, among other places, there have been lots of student protests. British universities have seen a series of occupations protesting against Israel’s actions in Palestine, but also against obstacles they are coming up against as students, fees for example. Many students seem to be radicalised. This is something that hasn’t really been happening in Britain for quite a long time. I wanted to ask you, in relation to ’68 for example, whether you see any parallels, or are the protests different? Is it a repetition of a form of political action, or are there new forms?



AB: It’s difficult to say. What I see in France today concerning the movements against the reforms, Sarkozy concerning education and universities is for the moment unclear, Certainly it’s a real movement, we can see new activists and there is a clear position against privitisation of education in general. But this revolt is exactly between a sort of repetition of some aspects of ’68, certainly, occupations, and so on and something which is not completely clear which is probably the search for political determination which is not the return to old ideas of forty years ago, but which is not resignation. This subjectivity is fragile at the moment because precisely there is no real discussion at the ideological level. I think this is why is it’s necessary for us to organise some discussion at this level, and it’s probably why so many people are interested in this kind of organisation. It’s clear that today the movement, it’s weakness is not on the side of action, they are really angry, they are ready to do something, but the weakness is an ideological one. But we can understand that, they cannot simply adopt a purely old features, but the new ideas are unclear.

NP: A related question. Your conception of philosophy is that it is essentially ‘empty’, but how do you see the role of philosophy with regard to this need to generate new ideas? What role does philosophy have that perhaps it didn’t ten years ago? Is there a resurgence of interest in philosophy in general? The number of students applying to study philosophy (and economics!) has risen a lot since the financial crisis. Does philosophy have a task?

AB: I think there has been a long sequence since the eighties where the dominant philosophy was in fact without interest. I mean, why philosophy if all it says is that it is a very good world? It’s democratic, it’s better than other worlds, it’s not perfect, but perfection is not a good thing. And so in that sort of orientation, philosophy becomes two different things: a media one, which promotes ideological propaganda for the state of affairs, and the academic disciple. But in the end if philosophy is something between public propaganda and academic speciality, it’s not very interesting. So philosophy was not in general, with some exceptions as always, something which could interest young people because it was without an critical or existential function. I think it is a little different today, there is a new generation, there are young philosophers who are interested in a new figure of philosophy: neither purely academic speciality nor purely ideological propaganda for the world as it is. I think it also explains that the interest in philosophy is also a political one. Not because philosophy is directly politics, I don’t think it is, but because this new philosophical possibility is in relationship to the political situation, but not reducible to it. There is a subjective necessity today to struggle against reforms and so on, and to have some ideas. If philosophy can in the end be free from the media operations on the one side, and enclosure on the other, it can be useful for the development of the movement, because the weakness of the movement itself is an ideological one, not a practical one.

NP: It’s interesting thinking about your own career. It’s really only in the past 7-10 years that America, for example, has recognised you now, you’re invited over there constantly. But in a way if you read your work as a whole, you’re one of the most consistent thinkers. Even in the ‘80s during this period of reaction, you’re the one saying, no we should hold on to these ideas of ’68, and so on. But it’s taken a really long time for you to be recognised in certain places. And I wonder if there are any downsides to this, anything you don’t like about this kind of recognition.



AB: It’s a very complex situation, naturally. But it’s also a pressure concerning my identity, the identity of philosophy in general. We can practically understand that as a search for the continuation of French theory and where is French theory today. The negative aspect is that in some sense 'French theory' was a part of the American academic system and there’s always a risk to be closed into that sort of system, of the academic system. Because we know that in America the world of universities, students, is a closed world. At the moment you can do what you want, but without any consequence. And if we are only that then it’s a real risk. So there is a negative dimension. But the positive one is that there is a new identification of philosophy itself, probably at the risk of academic examination but also with the possibility of a new freedom. A new freedom which is the relationship between philosophy and something else. ‘Something else’, naturally it’s an obscure notion! Something else can be precisely the dimensions of the academic systems, the departments of philosophy or romance language. So it can be a battlefield without interest. But in another sense it’s a new identification. For example, in New York, it’s clear it’s not an academic system, there’s a real circulation. I gave a lecture in New York about communism which was absolutely full with young people, too many, an it was not an academic system. It was a mixture of activist groups, artists, students, intellectuals. A new mixture. The point was, we were talking about communism in the States, which is really a prohibited name. But it is not reducible to what we know about this name, so communism is the name of a strangeness of Badiou and of philosophy, between philosophy and something else. And so I know the negative part, but I have an intuition of something really new in the diffusion in the way in which philosophy is in relationship to something else. Maybe it’s sometimes politics, or political ideology, but also artistic creation, not aesthetics in the academic sense, but a complete relation to artistic creation.

NP: On this question of philosophy’s relation to something else, are you still working with the sans papiers? How are things on the ground?

AB: The question of the sans papiers, undocumented workers and so on are really at a point where the political possibility is linked with something which is of a philosophical nature, And why? It’s because the fundamental idea concerning the sans papiers is what I call in the Sarkozy book the affirmation that there exists only one world. And this affirmation is in some sense of a philosophical nature, because politically you say there is only one world, it’s very abstract. And it’s not true. In fact there are probably two or three worlds today, the south, the north, different names. But it’s a philosophical idea, in close relationship with something which is a political process. We can organise the struggle against the laws of discrimination and persecution against the workers from other countries. And it’s a very important struggle in France for many years. So we have a political process which is relatively new because before the 60s there isn’t anything like that, so it’s new in the long sequence and which is a concrete determination of the affirmation that there is only one world inside your world. It’s not an abstract determination. We have to say this man or this woman who comes from this country. We have to work within the political field as we work with somebody who is really of the same world. Philosophically we have to affirm like a law the idea that there is only one world and politically we have to organise the struggle against persecution in complete equality with them. It’s not only to be in favour of their struggle, because it’s also my struggle. There is complete equality, This equality, which is a subjective equality, is the realisation purely at the concrete, political level of the abstract philosophical affirmation that there is only one world. It is why concerning this question that there is a sort of immanent relationship between philosophy and politics.



NP: Obviously your big book Logics of Worlds is coming out soon, and I know you’ve said sometimes that this is the last big contribution to your philosophical position, so I wonder now what you might want to do.

AB: I must say to you that I am in some kind of hesitation, because I have the idea of a third big book after Being and Event and Logics of Worlds because there is one question which is not really explored in the first two, which is the question of the form of the contents of subjectivity inside the process of truth. Formally I have said you have fidelity, reactive subjects, obscure subjects, it’s a purely formal distinction. But take the subject on the side of fidelity, for example, what exactly is the becoming, the real description of that sort of subject, not at the level of its formal disposition, its logical consequences, but at a much more immediate level, what is the immediacy of the subject? On a precise point which is the relationship between individual and subject, it’s a very important philosophical construction that there is a difference between individual and subject, and subject is generally something not reducible to the individual. In fact, even when the truth procedure is very near to the individual, like in love, finally the subject of love is not reducible to the individual. But in another sense, there is no subject without individuals. The subject is not a transcendental thing without individuals so the truth-body, in the language of Logics of Worlds, cannot exist without the individual bodies themselves but what is exactly the subjective point where the individual is incorporated, there is an embodiment. But what exactly is the vision of the point of view of the individual concerning that individual? We can understand formally what the signification of the embodiment of the individual in the truth-body is, but in fact in the two first books, all that is done from the point of the truth. And finally, to speak like Spinoza, from the standpoint of eternity. So we can see something of the standpoint of the individual but from the standpoint of truth and eternity, and so, to be completely convincing my system must describe all these processes from the point of view of the individual.

NP: Do you think that this is what Sartre was trying to so in the Critique of Dialectical Reason? When he talks about seriality and the group-in-fusion, he’s trying to talk about those bonds and those subjective transformations, of individuals that have become something else.

AB: The difficulty at this point is to create a framework which is not of a purely psychological nature. And so to create a framework when we can describe the relationship of an individual to the truth, but this is not the point if view of the truth. Because if we adopt the standpoint of the construction of the truth there is finally only one very brutal norm, which is that some individuals are in a truth-process and some are not. And concretely this is not exactly the position because the individual can be divided. A part of him or herself can be near the process of the truth and another part not. And what about a plurality of truth procedures? The same individual can participate in different truth procedures. What is it to be in love and caught up in a political truth procedure? To constitute the conceptual framework of that sort of project is not easy because we cannot accept pure psychological description. So, it’s a conceptual problem, and so I return to this difficulty! Am I really able to do that. I don’t know concerning the time and the concentration and the conceptual framework. Maybe it’s much more the problem of other generations.

NP: Perhaps one response to this would be to say, well isn’t this what literature does, what plays do.

AB: Exactly. Maybe it’s not a philosophical question, maybe it’s part of the truth procedure of art. We can say that, for example, mathematics is ontology, but we have to philosophically elaborate upon this idea, it’s not completely reducible to mathematics itself. And you can say also that the relation between individual and truth procedure is a question in literature, in poetry and theatre. But I’m not completely convinced that we can say only that. And finally, it’s not a philosophical question so we can say only that this possible answers to these questions are in literature. If I in the end don’t write this book, the title of which would be The Immanence of Truth or something like that, I have only two projects. First a small book concerning negation, because there is really a complete logical transformation of the question of negation today, so there is something which must be incorporated into the philosophical framework, because we have new forms of negation, new relationships between different forms of negation. On the other side, Plato, there are two works in progress. First the translation of The Republic, a very new translation. And the other is a movie, 'The Life of Plato'. With Brad Pitt.

NP: You could be Socrates.

AB: My idea would be that Plato and Socrates are played by the same person. The movie will be the idea that Socrates is a retrospective creation of Plato, so inside the movie Socrates would be something like the old-young Plato. During the movie Plato finally becomes Socrates, something like that. But the script is not finished, so there are many possibilities!