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ALAIN BADIOU interview with OLIVIER ZAHM

ALAIN BADIOU interview and portrait by OLIVIER ZAHM

ALAIN BADIOU is the sole remaining pillar of the critical philosophy of the 1970s. For
decades Badiou was overshadowed by the likes of Foucault, Deleuze, and Althusser, but
today his ideas are being rewarded with the consideration of a new generation of thinkers.
His growing philosophical influence can be attributed to his surprising loyalty to both
metaphysics and politics. After a long period of metaphysical deconstruction lasting
from Nietzche to Deleuze Badiou is now reinventing a radically new metaphysical
system, one combining Plato and Lacan. But hes not only the last metaphysician, hes
also the last Maoist of the French intellectual scene, still protesting in the street for the
rights of immigrant workers. How is it possible today to be both a Communist and a
Platonist and to garner the enthusiasm of a generation ardently questioning the
consensus of our time?

OLIVIER ZAHM What kind of period are we in today?


ALAIN BADIOU I think were experiencing an intermediate period today, an interval.
Now, periods that are intervals are very interesting, because certain things in them have
not yet been decided. Im convinced that, beginning with the French Revolution, there
was a great closing off of modernity, one traversing the 19th and the 20th centuries, with
many twists and turns in all domains, and that this was a period during which political,
scientific, and artistic innovations were considerable. A similar period was the
Renaissance in the 16th century, and the preceding period was 5th century Greece. These
are periods we dont see very often. We have arrived at a moment when the question is to
know which is the best path to specific exceptions in our own world which is not very
clear. There are postmodern points of view, saying, Thats great. We can recap all of this,
and we can mix it up, and finally we can do it all! Everything is possible! And there are
more nihilist orientations that contradict this, saying, Nothing is really possible. Were
entirely blocked. All we can do is repeat ourselves.

OLIVIER ZAHM Which orientation do you choose?


ALAIN BADIOU My position is that we must learn to reaffirm something. In other
words, we must not settle for the criticisms of others or for negativisms. We need to
relearn how to affirm. So, now we are in one of these intermediate periods.

OLIVIER ZAHM Are we just sort of hanging on, and not rushing toward disaster?
ALAIN BADIOU No, I dont think weve hit bottom yet. [Laughs] Were in an
unresolved moment. The idea of total disaster would be the conclusive nihilist position:
No future. And what would be reborn or arise from such a disaster? We cant really
anticipate the answer. Personally, I think that if disaster is still a possibility, not
every card has been played. The situation is more contradictory or contentious than it
perhaps seems. The hegemony of capitalism is flagrant, but not without vulnerabilities.
Everyone says that capitalism is absolutely dominant today, and that with the collapse of
the Soviet Union, China is the motor of planetary capitalism. There is indeed objective
evidence of that, but the subjective domination of capitalism is significantly less
perceptible. To define subjective domination, Id ask, What are the new values and
visions of the world that the dominant group seeks to impose? In reality, this dominant
group is miserable. And thats the point: its spiritually impoverished. It seeks to
guarantee the perpetuation of its machinery, but that alone cannot assure its
survival. It isnt true. And we must not believe it.

OLIVIER ZAHM Especially since the machine itself is fragile; it can abruptly lose
control on financial, economic, and ecological fronts.
ALAIN BADIOU Exactly, the machine is in a precarious situation, thats clear. The
contrast is especially striking when you compare it to the bourgeoisie of the 19th century.
At that time they was a true leaders class, in the sense that they offered a series of
intellectual, speculative, philosophical, moral, and artistic propositions. They felt they
had a planetary mission, one that included some of the more ignominious colonial
expeditions. They felt subjectively very powerful. Thats not the case with the leaders of
today, whose class is objectively empty. They do hold the reins of the planet,
but subjectively they have nothing to say and nothing to offer. This is also why young
people feel left behind, uncertain, and disoriented. The only thing leaders offer them is
conspicuous consumption.

OLIVIER ZAHM You can see clearly in the artists of today the most obvious
example being Damien Hirst that the only value recognized by young people is
money.
ALAIN BADIOU Youre absolutely right. But money is a value we know was always
virtual. The problem with wealth concerns the nature of spending. Clearly the bourgeoisie
no longer has the aristocratic sense
of spending the way the old bourgeoisie used to imitate the nobility, having inherited
from them a sense of ostentatious, stylish, and even artistic spending. The current
monetary oligarchy spends like pigs. But their disgracefulness hasnt seduced all of
humanity, nor will it, even if for a certain time a lot of people took the bait. Its an
extremely weak and provisory moral, more so than the ones offered when the world was
dominated by religions and ironclad class restrictions or even by sophisticated
politeness. What strikes me, though, is that the current bourgeoisie does not impose any
rules on itself. All the political scandals of late are about that. They are incapable
of imposing rules. They flounder, doing whatever they want, cashing in like bandits,
while aspiring to dominate the world. That cant work for very long.

OLIVIER ZAHM Will the capitalist machine collapse all by itself because of its lack
of a spiritual core?
ALAIN BADIOU Yes, from its spiritual emptiness which isnt the same thing as
emptiness of religious spirituality; its more a mental emptiness.
OLIVIER ZAHM A spiritual void that endangers post-capitalism from within?
ALAIN BADIOU That is my view. When Marx said, The dominant ideology is the
ideology of the dominant class, what he meant was that in order for a dominant class to
completely dominate, it needs to be able to impose its representation and vision of the
world on those it dominates. But this vision of the world cannot be limited to the
simple fact of domination itself. In fact, it is an absolute paradox, and is not acceptable!
In reality, we need our dominant classes to present examples of civilization, but the
contemporary class is not in the least bit civilized. It offers nothing of interest on either
moral or artistic fronts.

CONTEMPORARY ART OLIVIER ZAHM And yet the dominant


classes, including the financial world, seem to be fascinated by contemporary art. For
them art is the absolute product. This infatuation is more
astonishing because often the works of avant-garde artists contradict or severely criticize
the values or representations of their collectors. We find in the collections of the great
industrial leaders works that are essentially critically damning to them.
ALAIN BADIOU But that contradiction works because there is a certain
precariousness in it. Contemporary art is not homogenous with its buyers or its clients,
who may of course still hang art in their living rooms. A large part of art functions from
underneath, corrosively criticizing the dominant universe in which it circulates.

OLIVIER ZAHM Must true art always break with the dominant ideology or the
ideology of domination?
ALAIN BADIOU Art of any period is appropriated by the wealthy and dominant
classes. Thats hardly new. For example, the fact that the bourgeois of the large Italian
Renaissance cities were the ones buying works by Tintoretto or Titian did not detract
from the fact that true art, meaning art which constitutes its own affirmation, cannot serve
the ideology of domination. At least, I dont think it can.

OLIVIER ZAHM Then how do we explain the present agreement


between contemporary art and the dominant classes, beyond the dominant
classes capacity to buy and collect priceless works of art and give to them an excessively
fetishistic value?
ALAIN BADIOU For the moment, contemporary art tolerates or accepts this
appropriation by people who in reality have nothing to do with it, except to transform the
art into the value they are searching for and
to make people believe that, after all, a painting is much better than cash, because its
something one can show off. They do that as patrons of the arts, too, with fashion and
haute couture and commissioned
architecture. This has always been a function of the dominant classes. I think its also all
been carved up that its postmodern, and that none of it constitutes a strong affirmation
that legitimizes their domination.

OLIVIER ZAHM So, for you the connection between capitalism and contemporary
art is superficial?
ALAIN BADIOU The incorporation of contemporary art seems artificial to me. Its
only pretend, and like all pretense it has only a transitory effect. It isnt nothing, but it is
pretend. I think that one
day soon the flagrant discordance between our vision of the world and the vision of the
future that the dominant oligarchy offers and the fact that its strutted around in front
of the essentially critical constructions of contemporary art will fall apart. This
contradiction will blow up, and it will blow up the propositions denouncing the state of
things inside art itself.

OLIVIER ZAHM Your vision of art seems so austere, even Mallarmean, veering
toward abstraction and subtraction. It seems to go completely against the trend of an art
world dominated by a market of financial
flux. In your Manifesto for Affirmationism you defend the power of abstraction against
spectacle. And you go further: you say that contemporary art has a duty to not be
Western. Should we follow that to the letter and seek out, say, African or Tibetan artists?

ALAIN BADIOU Thats not what I meant, but it can be that too. When I say it should
not be Western, I mean it should not have to serve the system of representation of values
and norms that we attribute to Westerners. But what does the word West mean? It
means the system that organizes and links together the wild capitalist economy and
the amplified democratic system. The West is that mix of unbridled liberalism and
imposed democracy. It is obviously not a geographical definition, because we include
Japan in it. It isnt so much a question of East and West, either. Its the canonic West. Its
the West because at the heart of it is the United States, which is at the controls. Therefore,
when I say that art must not be Western, I think that its necessary for art to attempt to not
serve the hegemony of this normative system we call Western, which vastly overflows its
strict geopolitical designation. So it seems to me that one of the commandments of art is
to not be totally absorbed or incorporated into Western politics. It doesnt always work
this way look at whats happening with the artistic movements in China, whose
economic market strength is constantly increasing.

OLIVIER ZAHM A lot of Chinese artists are strongly influenced by the Western
world.
ALAIN BADIOU Exactly, and in reality they represent a Westernization of the
historical elements of Chinese art. And this imperative to not be Western is in effect an
imperative, which says that art must somehow try to return to its functions of
resistance, criticism, and exception, and to include the possibility of saying something
about the situation, rather than showing the situation itself. Its not just to not be bought,
because its always bought works of art circulate in the monetary world; thats hardly
new. Whether its bought or not doesnt matter; it can mark internally its distance to that
world. The difficult point is that, in order to mark that distance, the simple critical or
negative function is not enough.

OLIVIER ZAHM Its not enough now because we know that the avant-garde went
through all the forms of negativity, transgression, deconstruction, etcetera.
ALAIN BADIOU Yes. It saturated them, and today the problem is indeed that that
isnt enough, because you disrupt the representation that youll be able to mark that
distance. In reality, its all been absorbed in the dynamic of Western freedoms you can
do it, just as you can do anything you want. The formal emancipation of the avant-garde
is henceforth nihilist because its no longer opposed to anything as we all know, its
authorized. But still, art should be in opposition to something, meaning that its exception
would be that the movement by which we create works of art is not homogenous with the
planetary expansion of contemporary capitalism. For that we need a regime of new and
local affirmation.

OLIVIER ZAHM Which would tend toward abstraction, and be opposed to what you
call the carnival or the spectacle?
ALAIN BADIOU Yes, thats the hypothesis I would propose. I think we must find
figures of abstract sublimation lets call them that which arent the bric--brac of
postmodern expenditure, the bric--brac of objects, or a sort of ironic mimetic of the
market, like so many art installations are. Many of these installations are basically
concentrated versions of La Samaritaine (the French version of the Macys store Ed.).
I get that. After all, its a way of parodying the market, and parody is a form of art. But I
do not think these forms of parody, derision, and irony will be enough in the future. Im
for a return to more monumental ambitions, exactly the same thing I look for in
philosophy, which I accept as being systematic. I love things that offer a disconcerting
monumentality.

OLIVIER ZAHM How does your passion for Mallarm tie into what you have been
saying? Are there lessons to be learned from Mallarm?
ALAIN BADIOU I think there are two Mallarms theres the one who was drawn
to negativity, criticism, subtraction, and even death; and theres the fading-away side of
Mallarm. The poem creating its own
nothingness, its own finality. That was very interesting. I really liked it. The other
Mallarm is about the appearance of the idea. At the end of his poem, Coup de d [Throw
of the dice], nothing has taken place,
except perhaps at the altitude of a constellation. Thats the other Mallarm. He was able
to create a scintillating object, out of the void, which embodied the future. I think that at
the time of the avant-garde, that first Mallarm, the savant of the void, if I may call him
that the negative one was the most important. I think that now we must also lean on
the second Mallarm, the one who did not despair that his work with the negative would
actually bring about an affirmation of a new kind.

POLITICS OLIVIER ZAHM Lets talk about political affirmation. At the


beginning of this interview we said that you are one of the few philosophers today who
offers in all cases, hypothetical or real the
politics of emancipation and the possibility of a fight against an extreme disillusionment.
Youre the leader of a frontal attack on democracy. You are very bitter about the
democratic system, as it exists today. You say some pretty harsh things, such as the
democracy of comedy. Can you speak about that?
ALAIN BADIOU I think Western democracy is a faade regime, a propaganda
produced by the dominant oligarchy, which it uses for its own domination. If the
dominant class can only pride itself on its lucrative results in the market, it will not attract
many people. Yet it prides itself on a democratic faade, which it pits against tyranny
and despotism. It admits its own injustices, but proclaims that, at the same time, it offers
essential freedoms.

OLIVIER ZAHM Thats certainly something. Isnt democracy a lesser evil?


ALAIN BADIOU Yes, except that when you look closely at what is done with these
essential freedoms, you see that theyre coded freedoms. The democratic system gives the
illusion of political freedom to people,
whereas in reality this political liberty consists only of it being allowed to designate the
political representatives of the capitalist oligarchy in power.

OLIVIER ZAHM By coded, do you mean monitored or manipulated?


ALAIN BADIOU Lets call them flexibly predetermined. Thats the great advantage
of the democratic system. Its not vertical control or coding that must constantly be
reiterated. Its more a horizontal coding, which is quite flexible, in which the system of
possibilities, deep down, is really an extremely coded system of possibilities. I accuse
Western democracy of being a fraud, of not being a democratic reality. Its a pre-coded
democracy, one in which everyone knows that the fundamental orientations that govern
our existence will not ever be modified, because the opposition and the majority
fundamentally agree that they will not revolutionize society. In other words, we give
a little more to these guys, a little less to these other guys, or the other way around, and
well keep tinkering with it. But thats an unessential freedom. Its a secondary one,
obsessed with the smallest
details. And they are constantly conning people, promising them at each election changes
that of course will never happen. So I accuse the system of being hypocritical, meaning
that all it claims to defend freedom, pluralism, and the promise that all options are
possible is in fact only virtual.

OLIVIER ZAHM What proof do you have of the collusion between the current
democracy and capitalism?
ALAIN BADIOU Lets begin with an empirical statement: I do not think that this
political system exists elsewhere other than in developed capitalist societies. It does not
seem to be compatible with any other societys system. Therefore, there are good reasons
to think that its the most appropriate political system for developed capitalism. This is
why everyones waiting for the moment when China becomes democratic.

OLIVIER ZAHM So democracy is an instrument of domination and even of


conquest for capitalism.
ALAIN BADIOU Thats what Bush said when he declared that the goal of the
invasion of Iraq was to create a new democracy. When everyone saw that he lied about
the existence of weapons of mass destruction he had
to find another reason for the invasion: to spread Western democracy in Iraq. Its the same
thing in Afghanistan today. Were at war there to impose democracy. It wont happen, in
either case. But thats an entirely different problem.

OLIVIER ZAHM Is democracy an instrument that serves capitalism? Is it a form of


voluntary servitude? ALAIN BADIOU The truth about the democratic system is that
its a flexible system, appropriate for creating a political subjectivity, which will not
contradict the domination of capital. And it works also on maintaining, renewing, and
expanding the group of leaders, which, as we know, are not at all the People. The People
have absolutely no rights when great decisions concerning them are made. They dont
consult thePeople when theres a giant bank crisis, when the State must give billions to
the banks. We deal with the situation as we always have. The recent crisis was revelatory:
we saw that the State is the support, the guarantor of the dominant oligarchy.

OLIVIER ZAHM Are you anti-democratic?


ALAIN BADIOU When you are categorized as being anti-democratic, you are
immediately identified as being a fascist, or something like that. Its the propaganda
kicking in. If, however, we enter a level in which
democracy is a kind of political movement incompatible with the oligarchic power,
especially the financial and economic oligarchy, well, then Im totally ready to defend
that democratic ideal. But the present form of the regime is a fraud; it usurps the name,
the word. We are living under a strict oligarchic, autocratic regime. If you look at the
circle of people who are the dominant politicians, the leaders of the large companies, the
leading lights of the national and international media, you see that its such a small group.
This small group decides everything, with the help of a few military and engineering
elite.

OLIVIER ZAHM But this elite is so tight, compared to the masses, who are now
aware of the corruption. How do you explain why this is still going on?
ALAIN BADIOU The situation will continue as long as no one comes up with an idea
for a different situation. It is a negative continuity, in the absence of all revolutionary
representation. There again, obviously these are the dividends from the collapse of the
USSR and of Communism. Its the result of a determined, furious propaganda that says
that any other political hypothesis is impossible, criminal, or terrorist. Most people think
that. Everyone tells himself that were living in a corrupt and detestable society, but that
there isnt any other way, that this is the least awful of situations. The present system only
holds on negatively, due to the incredible weakness of that which I, as a provocateur, call
the Communist idea, an idea based on necessity and the possibility of something different
a policy of equality and emancipation. Something else is possible. At its nucleus is the
idea that societal domination by this kind of oligarchy is not an absolute necessity.

VIOLENCE

OLIVIER ZAHM Is there today a form of contestation or opposition other than


violence? We have the feeling that theres an absence of representation, of political
apparatuses, and a lack of leaders or charismatic individuals who could convincingly
bring us an alternative discourse. Young people choose the destructive path of rioting in
the suburbs, or of joining the Black Blocs in the large international conferences. What
can you offer them instead?
ALAIN BADIOU I think that in politics, in art in everything were in an
intermediary period, and that the mental, ideological, and representative horizons are in a
state of extreme weakness. In times like this the impasses of the situation blow up in a
symptomatic fashion, in the form of violence. Its nothing new. But this kind of anarchic
violence must be treated as if it were a symptom of the situation. Its a variation of
contemporary nihilism, in which no one promises anything, no one offers anything that
makes any sense to us and so we destroy it all. It becomes No Future, and kids start
setting cars on fire.

OLIVIER ZAHM Isnt it the responsibility of the intellectual world to engage this
nihilistic impasse?
ALAIN BADIOU Since the 80s a phenomenon has been rising in France: the
constitution of an intelligentsia in the oligarchy. Its a new thing, because during the
period between 1945 and the 1970s, the
intelligentsia was mostly dissenting, although in different groups with different positions.
But for the last 20 years the intelligentsia has been mostly a vassal, one thats dependent
and occupies a strong media position. And this servitude exacerbates the situation for
young people for the dominated. It exacerbates things because it gets rid of everything
that could be a horizon of representation and support and emancipation. It advocates a
closing off from the world as it is now. So its not surprising that when these young
people without horizons attempt to get out, to move, that they can become rather brutal.
So the duty of the intellectuals who wish to maintain the tradition of dissent,criticism, and
affirmation which in France comes to us via our 18t century ancestors, Voltaire and
Rousseau is to revive the idea of an alternative.

OLIVIER ZAHM Is there a political discourse that young people may in fact be
hearing? Theres not much of a theoretical gap between your often-difficult philosophy
and the views of kids in the suburbs, and of those whom you call the proletarians.
ALAIN BADIOU Not at all because a discourse must always begin at a certain
level of generality; then little by little it constructs its mediations. When Marx wrote
Das Kapital and The Poverty of Philosophy he was not saying that the worker who in
all likelihood didnt even know how to read would understand it. We arent bothering
with stuff like that. We need first to be sure that the structure is theoretically clear and
declarative. Then you can talk about mediations. Dealing with those mediations is
fundamental. Mao, my old master, said, When righteous ideas take hold of the masses
they become a spiritual atomic bomb. I like the spiritual atomic bomb bit. Intellectuals
must know how to speak to people. Im an old militant. I worked a lot in African shelters,
and with the factory workers. You mustnt think Im only a theoretical thinker. I have
more links and relationships with the working class than most of my colleagues. Ive
been there. But I know that we still must begin at the highest levels of intellectuality. I
see also that those who try to evade this necessity of starting at the top dont offer
anything to those at the bottom.

MAO ZEDONG OLIVIER ZAHM Speaking of Mao, how can you explain
your fidelity to him, in the face of the crimes and exactions of Chinese Communism?
ALAIN BADIOU Mao was the first one inside the group that dominated the
revolutionary movement since 1917 to realize that what they had built meaning the
State Party had become oppressive, and probably
restorative and bourgeois. We must not forget that he said, You ask me where the
bourgeois of today are. I will tell you theyre in theCommunist Party. That was Mao.

OLIVIER ZAHM Wasnt that the basis for the Cultural Revolution?
ALAIN BADIOU Yes, and he said that before it started. Hed been conscious of it for
some time. Launching the Cultural Revolution was an attempt at a nearly desperate truth:
trying to see how to get out of the disastrous situation of having built a despotic State,
one that was widely terrorist, but without having a real Communist movement. Mao said,
Without a Communist movement there is no Communism. The State was not fulfilling
that function.

OLIVIER ZAHM Was the State rotting inside its own Communist dictatorship?
ALAIN BADIOU It was rotting inside a system of privilege, bureaucracy, inertia, and
control. During the period of the popular war in the conquest of power we knew what the
movement was. It was, after
all, Mao who organized those millions of peasants about whom no one had worried
until then and who gained power with them. Little by little, the State became a sort of
fixed apparatus in which the oligarchic temptations to take advantage of things were
widespread. He wanted to re-launch the movement, sought available forces to do so,
and he found the student movement, simply because at that time it was mobilized all over
the world. It happened in China just as it did here in France. Students set May 68 in
motion. So he found the students and sent them into battle and then he got hold of a
group of workers. It was like May 68: students and some of the workers. You have to
realize that it was as if one part of the State went to war with another part of the State.

OLIVIER ZAHM So Mao remained a revolutionary to the end, even within his own
State.
ALAIN BADIOU Exactly, and thats why its absurd to identify him with Stalin,
whom he criticized severely in several texts, on this same point. Stalin was the man who
decided that the only available instrument
to get things done was the State itself. And Stalin used the State for terrorist and criminal
ends. For a long time it was, in part, the same for Mao, because Mao was indeed
influenced by the Communists of the time, by the Soviet State. But that was not his
fundamental position. From the beginning his position was different. He had a lot of
problems with the Comintern and the Russian envoys in China because his principle
had always been for the movement. He always thought that without the movement of the
masses, whom he called the only true heroes of universal history, there would be no
Communist movement. For him the Party was
only a temporary crystallization of the forces and resources of the movement. And if at
any given moment the Party was working against the movement it was the Party that
should be blamed. And this resulted in a
disastrous anarchy. Im not saying he succeeded; if he had we would have heard about it.
We would have had another phrase, another model. The Cultural Revolution failed.
Thats indisputable. And it was ostly, as are all revolutionary endeavors that fail. The
Paris Commune was costly. The Cultural Revolution failed, but Mao was the last
figure who had attempted to deal with the terrible dialectic between power and the
movement.

OLIVIER ZAHM Between the State as an instrument of Revolution and the essence of
Revolution?
ALAIN BADIOU Exactly. Thanks to Marx we know that the true essence of
Revolution and emancipation works against the State, toward the decline of the separate,
monolithic character of the State. So we can say that Mao did try to fight against the
separate character of the State.

OLIVIER ZAHM Okay, but just to reassure me you reject the crimes and other
exactions of Mao and Communism, right?
ALAIN BADIOU Obviously.

OLIVIER ZAHM I have to ask this because for certain individuals in certain
Parisian salons it isnt so clear.
ALAIN BADIOU I reject the crimes and exactions of Communism with extreme
virulence, not only as crimes and exactions, but also because they proved to be entirely
useless and they discredited the Communist
idea. I have so many more reasons to condemn these crimes than all the people in the
salons you mentioned. [Laughs] But its like that
well-known and overused expression throwing the baby out with the bath water. From
a propaganda point of view, to consolidate the power of the present oligarchy, people say,
Listen, dont even think about Communism. If you do, youll end up with Stalinism.
Thats crude and untrue: history doesnt repeat itself and we wont end up with Stalinism.
We decide what to do so as not to have a Stalin or a Mao, people so hated by everyone.
When I speak of Mao, who was a critic of Stalin, I speak of Maos failures. I criticize
both Mao and Stalin. Those people in the salons who hate Stalin are not the victims
of Stalinism. In reality, theyre happy that Stalin massacred all those people. It helps them
to maintain their power. Stalins worst crime is to be brought up as the definitive repellent
for Communism.
COMMUNISM
OLIVIER ZAHM In order to present a possible political alternative for today
you invoke the idea of Communism. But what things of historical Communism would you
reject, and what things would you keep?ALAIN BADIOU First, I would keep the idea
that Communism presupposes the construction of large-scale worker organizations.
I dont think that can be done under the military model of the Leninist party. The belief in
an active, powerful worker class seems to me to be a necessary idea. You cant entrust it
all to small divergent groups. The second point is that we need to examine closely the
private appropriation of important funds for production. To these two things I would add
a third, one which has remained problematic from the beginning to the end of the real
history of Communism: the movement, which little by little is putting an end to the
separate State, and is instead proposing a kind of associative auto-organization of
production. These great ideas of Communism, which were tried out and experimented
with, were crushed by the massiveness of
the State. But I think they are the only ideas with which one may gauge the contemporary
oligarchic system.

OLIVIER ZAHM During the recent financial crisis, shouldnt we have nationalized
the banks, or at least gotten rid of the stock market?
ALAIN BADIOU I think we should have nationalized the banks. Public debate ranged
from, Should we give a lot of money to the banks? to Should we regulate them or
not? That was as far as it went. Of course,
in terms of regulation weve done almost nothing and will do nothing, or almost nothing.
Thats for sure, because its the essence of the current system: banks have great latitude
and we will not be able to control them. Lets also remember that the nationalization of
banks is a process, one that already existed in France under De Gaulle. Its neither a
chimera nor an improbable idea. In any case, it was out of the question; they nationalized
things only when forced to, such as when the companies were failing and there was
nothing else they could do except to have the State buy them. They always said they
would return the companies back to the private
sector as soon as possible, and that they would eventually get their money back. It was
obvious that this financial crisis was a grandiose occasion to make the largest banks into
collective property.

OLIVIER ZAHM How do you manage a collective property on the scale of


international capitalism?
ALAIN BADIOU Theres a legend that says that once a company has been
nationalized it no longer works. It begins running a deficit. That is false propaganda.
Everyone knows that when EDF, the French electricity utility, was nationalized it became
a perfectly healthy enterprise. It was admired by the entire business world. But the
recent disappointment from centralized economies happened quite recently, when they
began to feel major world pressure. East Germany was a two-fold artificial construction,
run by the Communist police, set in place by its Russian occupier. In the early 70s East
Germany was the seventh largest economy in the world. It wasnt a very big country, so
we should examine what happened there quite empirically. As soon as the parameters of
contemporary competitiveness were set in place, when it was announced that large public
companies were not viable, the country was dismantled, inappropriately and prematurely
subjecting its market to a highly competitive environment. In reality, nationalized,
collective, and cooperative enterprises can perform at a high level if the environment in
which they evolve and prosper is adapted.

OLIVIER ZAHM You often use that old Marxist term proletarian. Who are they
today?
ALAIN BADIOU Proletarians represent a much larger category than just the factory
working class, which was the core group. For me the proletarians are all the people who
have nothing or practically nothing for survival other than themselves: extremely
poor third-world peasants to barely-making-it students, with many others in the middle.
They are the people who have neither an interest nor an adhesion to the rules of the
current dominant oligarchy. Thats a lot of people, of which a substantial percentage
is alienated from the system for various reasons, as has always been the case. Of course,
in the Old Regime many peasants were in favor of the King.

OLIVIER ZAHM Does your definition of proletarian relate essentially to the different
levels of life, poverty, and marginalization?
ALAIN BADIOU Yes. Its economic but also subjective. They go together
indissolubly. Unlike Stalin, who was extremely economical in his definition of things,
Mao Zedong said, A proletarian is a friend of the revolution. I agree. The friends of the
revolution, including intellectuals, are a part of the proletariat. So the word proletarian
brings together people who are not in favor of, or comfortable with, the dominant
oligarchic
order. They have no love for, or interest in maintaining, that order. Obviously those who
are directly and materially oppressed find it easier to think they would like to change the
situation.

OLIVIER ZAHM Is proletarian an international category?


ALAIN BADIOU Absolutely. Its fundamental that we understand that there is only
one world, and that its on a world scale that these emancipating initiatives will be
deployed. Of course, they will take place somewhere specific, but they will be reflected
and accepted on an international scale.

OLIVIER ZAHM What happened with the recent crisis in Greece could have been a
tipping point for the rest of Europe.
ALAIN BADIOU Yes, but only if the generic idea of a different alternative had been
more widespread and better articulated, and if the media and other organizational
protocols had been more extensive. In the present situation there are few chances that it
will spread.

OLIVIER ZAHM Youre not very optimistic.


ALAIN BADIOU The situation is not good. As is any intermediary situation, its just
the beginning of a subjective reconstruction.
OLIVIER ZAHM I wonder if its the hope of revolution that you cherish the taking
of power, a change of government, a brutal reorientation of politics. It seems to me that
you foster the somewhat
utopian idea of the capitalist system collapsing, of the whole State apparatus collapsing
into itself. Can we seriously imagine that a new apparatus, a revolutionary State, could
auto-destruct inside its own expansion processes?
ALAIN BADIOU Yes, but you create a problem for me here. Could we do better than
the Cultural Revolution?

OLIVIER ZAHM For that, we would need to imagine what could be called an
artistic revolution.
ALAIN BADIOU Yes, exactly. I think its a problem that needs to be dealt with at a
new level of invention. But there is great difficulty. Its not about saying that there will
never be another form of social organization. Marx proposed substituting for the State
something he called a regime of associations. Association is a little vague, but what he
meant was that there would be local associations closely correlated with others in an
organizational system for society. Individual atomization is capitalism, which doesnt like
intermediate bodies; it likes having the power of the State on one side and the individual
consumers on the other.

OLIVIER ZAHM With dispersion and solitude.


ALAIN BADIOU But we could fill the interval the intermediate period with
associations. Thats why Mao was so different from Stalin. From the beginning, Mao was
fascinated by the idea of having the instances of popular power distinct from the Party,
not belonging to the Party. He did when he was working on a smaller scale, in
the underground. There were assemblies with specific powers. He saw that a dialectic
was needed between the State and something else. And it is in this area that we must look
and we need to do it now.

OLIVIER ZAHM When we hear Socialist Party speeches promoting associations and
caring on the local scale a good neighbor policy, helping hands, social networking
associations I wonder if this perspective has not already been overused, and even
tarnished. Is there not a risk of diminishing political ambition or revolutionary
radicalism in an over-managed society?
ALAIN BADIOU All political ideas are separated into Right and Left. You learn that
as soon as you get involved in politics. As soon as you have a new idea, someone comes
up with a Rightist version of the same idea, and another with a Leftist version. Theyre
split.

OLIVIER ZAHM Like cells.


ALAIN BADIOU The idea of association, and the idea of endowing powers that are
not the powers of the State, by managing situations locally, is something everyone talks
about, not just the Socialists.

OLIVIER ZAHM Whats lame about the Socialists these days is that all they talk
about is their associative vision.
ALAIN BADIOU Thats what I was going to say, but there is a Leftist version of this
idea which says that if you are willing to construct a new State power, you must also
organize people so that they will take charge of their own affairs. For example, the
fundamental Leninist idea of creating a Party which would have military capacities and
an ironclad discipline was an ultra-revolutionary idea for him, because the Party could be
victorious in an insurrection, even though during the 19th century all the workers
insurrections were shot down in flames because they were not organized. Its a beautiful
idea. Under Stalin, that idea became a reactive and terrorist idea, one that was used to
destroy all opposition and to control the people. Im fully aware that when you discuss
the dialectical nature of all invention, and especially when you propose something that is
as yet unclear, youll have many different, even opposing, versions of that idea. You
cannot ask a political idea to be its own guarantor. It must be proven with what is
invented, cobbled together, and constructed. And I do see your objection. It is possible to
create from this associative vision a version in which the oligarchy will prosper on its
own, still hold the reins of society, and at the same time amuse people with suburban
gardens and sports clubs.

OLIVIER ZAHM To end our talk about politics, should we hope for a kind of auto-
destruction of the machine, something like what happened in Argentina or Greece?
ALAIN BADIOU Only on the condition that we have sufficient forces and
proletarians of the kind I spoke of before, ones who are inventing a degree of
organization sufficient to control the situation.

OLIVIER ZAHM Ones who have enough control to make something out of it?
ALAIN BADIOU Yes. Otherwise there will be an even worse collapse, which could
lead to riots or wars. Lets not forget that war is always the last resort for capitalism,
when its really on the rocks with military people presenting themselves as credible
saviors. Well only survive the general stampede if weve arrived at a point at
which another hypothesis is possible.

OLIVIER ZAHM In Argentina people came up with a new kind of barter.


ALAIN BADIOU Yes, I know. I followed the events in Argentina quite closely. They
did try bartering. And there were attempts to set up automated takeovers of companies
that had shut down or had left. A lot of interesting things happened. The solution wasnt
so horrible. The administrative regime wasnt great, but it wasnt a radical
political invention either.

PHILOSOPHY

OLIVIER ZAHM Philosophy is discussed everywhere today in the media, in


magazines and its frequently brought up in ethical debates. But for you it all seems to
be nothing more than moral sermonizing. Is the philosopher of today necessarily anti-
humanist?
ALAIN BADIOU This is something we get from the 60s, which is where I come
from. In the 60s a kind of agreement was made just after Sartre declaring that
philosophy was fundamentally anti-humanist, and
that it could not sustain the figure of Man, as inherited from academic philosophy,
metaphysics, or traditional morality. Foucault spoke most clearly about this, copying
Nietzsches idea about the Death of God, declaring that it would be necessary to
pronounce the Death of Man. Thats how I was raised, believing that the category of Man
is an uncertain one, that it is necessary to deconstruct it or abandon it. But to respond
precisely to your question, I think all creative contemporary philosophy will distance
itself from classical humanism. In my view, all attempts to return to a traditional
humanism are, in reality, a reactionary enterprise in the strictest sense of the term; in
other words, its reactive. Thats the first point. The second point, again in my view, is
that doesnt mean that all forms of humanism must be obliterated or rendered impossible,
since that depends on the
changes applied to that category of the subject.

OLIVIER ZAHM If by the term Humanism we also mean the Rights of Man, then
your philosophical opposition to these notions something that seems to be an
unassailable and established consensus, especially
in France is an attack against the renunciation of a more radical political way of
thinking.
ALAIN BADIOU Yes, certainly. The area of human rights the way they developed
and, I think, peaked in the 80s and 90s is a recent development. I also think that this
development is more ideological than
philosophical, and it has in fact helped people to abandon all revolutionary perspectives
in order to establish a consensus, such that in the end its more important to take care of
victims than to think about them before the fact. The word human in the concept of
Human Rights is in reality about the victim, about identifying the man and the victim in
order to establish an essentially moral consensus.

OLIVIER ZAHM But isnt politics speaking for or taking the side of the victim?
ALAIN BADIOU It makes sense to speak of pity for victims, but that in itself is
within the category of morality, not of politics. Its in the moral arena that we have tried
to insert political combat. That was typical of the 80s: attempting to replace that which
we call revolutionary subjectivity, which was largely dominant in the 60s,
with subjectivity, which is in fact moral. And its moral to the point where what we think
of as philosophy today is merely a moral caution which is extremely prevalent.

OLIVIER ZAHM So, when you speak of demoralizing philosophy, you somewhat
ambiguously mean that, like Socrates, youre willing to take the risk of corrupting
youth.
ALAIN BADIOU Yes, exactly. Thats an excellent definition of philosophys task
corrupting youth has always amused me. What do we mean by corrupt? In the case of
Socrates, to corrupt means to force young people to question the consensus of their time,
instead of being shaped by the constant consensual molds of their time. Human rights
what does that mean? And totalitarianism? And democracy? All these key buzzwords of
our era must be questioned fully. Thats what philosophy does. The more these ideas are
positioned and seen as being undisputed, irrefutable, and consensual, the more they must
be questioned. The philosopher is the corrupter of those who think that youth must be
well brought up. What does that mean exactly? Well brought up in this case means
according to the dominant idea. Young people who go straight to school instead of
setting cars on fire because theyre rebelling in the suburbs thats what being
well brought up is called.

TRUTH OLIVIER ZAHM Can the consensus be broken using one of your key
words, like Truth, say?
ALAIN BADIOU Yes.

OLIVIER ZAHM For my generation, and for people younger than I am, Truth is a
concept that has pretty much been
ALAIN BADIOU Abandoned?

OLIVIER ZAHM It means nothing now.


ALAIN BADIOU Yes, we no longer use it.

OLIVIER ZAHM It seems to me that everything today is up for discussion, that


everything is relative and manipulated, and that the word truth no longer carries any
weight.
ALAIN BADIOU But the fact that everything is up for discussion is not, in my view,
a contradiction of the idea of Truth. I think its the other way around! Truth is that which
resists all discussion. Besides,
who argued and discussed more than Socrates or Plato? They never stopped discussing.
And they did it because they were convinced that only Truth could end their discussions
Truth, not consensus. So when youre
reduced to saying, Yes, I dont know how I can go further with this point, thats when
youve arrived at the moment of Truth. Without a moment of Truth, the fact is that one
could argue endlessly about
something, driving it toward skepticism, and I think contemporary skepticism is actually
nihilistic skepticism.

OLIVIER ZAHM Meaning a skepticism that adds nothing, one that is only negative?
ALAIN BADIOU Its neither critical nor rationalistic; its nihilist, meaning everything
equals everything else. Which is the maxim of public opinion, that all opinions are
correct. People say, Its just my opinion. Voil! You have your opinion and someone
else thinks something else. People call this free speech, which is a right no one dares to
abrogate. But that would mean, first, that there is no truth, which definitively puts an end
to the discussion and only increases the diversity of opinions. Second, that we live in a
time when nothing is worth more than anything else. Meaning that we are living in a time
when values have been devalued, but not in the way described by Nietzsche, which is a
transvaluation, a reappraisal of values. This devaluation of values is what has caused the
prevailing contemporary nihilism in young people today.

OLIVIER ZAHM Do you see this nihilism in your students?


ALAIN BADIOU What strikes me about contemporary youth is that the best minds
those who have the greatest critical will or the strongest thinking personalities have
been forced into nihilism, because its
either that or the consensus and the adapting to the way society is. Those who have a
spark of rebellion, but who cant handle the Truth category, go through a nihilist phase, as
if theyd been carrying around this poison for a long time. By meeting me and reading
my books, they encounter the possibility of a non-nihilist way of thought.

OLIVIER ZAHM But is the word truth sufficiently stimulating?


ALAIN BADIOU The concept of Truth has been devalued for quite some time, and
left like a dead dog in the gutter. But truth is just a word, after all. We can replace it with
other words.

OLIVIER ZAHM But in order to take the idea of Truth seriously, or to think that
Truth is still possible, its necessary to articulate a metaphysical construction. You
havent given up on that metaphysical ambition?
ALAIN BADIOU In my view, in the contemporary world if you wish to offer a
convincing category of truth, you can only do it via a serious re-construction. Restoring it
or re-founding it will not happen simply by repeating the word truth like a parrot. Its
necessary to construct it and re-construct it. Thats what I call metaphysical: the patient,
methodical reconstruction of the conditions of a category in this case Truth. And there
are many other concepts annexed to it: situation, being, the real, opinion,
dialectic, whatever you need. In order to end contemporary nihilism, you need
to introduce another strong category, which must be constructed. Currently it does not
exist; it still has to be invented.

OLIVIER ZAHM Is there no other way to escape our current nihilism, other than
with the invention of a new metaphysical system?
ALAIN BADIOU Not only do I assume the metaphysics, I also assume the system
that will develop it because any construction is necessarily systematic. In addition, the
strength and the singularity of what Im proposing is due to its systematic aspect, even if
Im constantly being reproached for it. You cant have everything. You cant have the
values of the systematic as well as the chills of nihilism. You have to choose. [Laughs]

OLIVIER ZAHM Therefore, you dont hesitate to present yourself as being in Platos
direct lineage. You say that youre a sophisticated Platonist crossed with a material
Platonist. This seems a little contradictory.
ALAIN BADIOU Well, vulgar Platonism, as opposed to my sophisticated
Platonism, says that Plato created a metaphysic of two opposing worlds, the sensitive and
the intelligible, the underworld and the world above, the world of things and the world of
ideas.

OLIVIER ZAHM Thats what they taught us.


ALAIN BADIOU I think its also a fallacious Plato. Its a neo-Platonic construction
which was developed very soon after Platos death and which is entirely false, but I dont
want to get into the technicalities. Plato offered a certain number of archetypal
images through this unique question: What does it mean to think something? But the
something in question is not an idea its just something. What makes the truth of
something? For him it is also the question of knowing how it is true that this thing is a
table, or how it is true that such and such is correct. Its both things at the same time.
Its neither more intelligible nor more sensible. Its in the connection between, and in the
unity of, these two things. With this unity in very specific circumstances, as we live in
a specific world with specific things Plato helps us take from this specific world a
certain number of universal truths. The question is Platonist, as it relates to Plato. So I
would say that I am a materialist Platonist because I think that the doctrine of the idea is
the doctrine of the process of knowing the things of this world, as there is only one world,
and not the doctrine of the something that would be part of another world.

OLIVIER ZAHM Now you have this wonderful sentence which synthesizes your
materialism, you say, There are only bodies and languages, except that there are
truths. And that the truths unite worlds which may seem divergent or disparate. Can
you explain this, it is such poetic statement.
ALAIN BADIOU Absolutely its a poetic statement that the system tries to
explain. I try to explain my own poems, but philosophy has always used dense expository
phrases that sum up thoughts and the systems around them. I remain a classical
philosopher.

OLIVIER ZAHM So, does Truth escape the materialism of bodies and languages?
ALAIN BADIOU No. Im saying that that which is true is also composed of bodies
and language, because otherwise we would need two different worlds, and we only have
one. Simply put, Truth is an exceptional combination of bodies and languages. Meaning
that it does not follow the general rule, which is that there are bodies, languages, objects,
trees, tables, all recognized and understood or a mathematical theorem, a magnificent
painting, an all-consuming lovers passion, or a revolution on the barricades. The thing I
love most in life is the Truth that you see clearly when the situation is exceptional.
Meaning that Truth brings together bodies and languages in a new way. It isnt simply the
repetition of the laws of the world. Its an exception to them.

OLIVIER ZAHM Is this new? Is it going to stick around?


ALAIN BADIOU It plans to rally, to develop, and to have consequences, and it plans
to gather a certain strength proper to the situation in the world one that we will
recognize as Truth not only in this world, but in others. Its in this sense that Truth can
unite worlds that have moved apart in time and space. It is universal and
also recognizable as an exception. Quite simply, its a question Marx would ask: Why do
we admire this great Greek statue, even though our world is completely different from the
Greek world? We dont speak the same language. We dont have the same technology or
the same gods. We dont love each other the way they did. We dont do anything the way
they did. And yet a tragedy by Sophocles or a great statue can speak to us deeply. And we
incorporate them into our culture and into our way of being.

OLIVIER ZAHM Does performing Sophocles in Parisian theatres today offer proof
that there are universal truths?
ALAIN BADIOU If you think about it, that in and of itself is effectively an enigma,
because if youre completely relativist, you should say that Sophocles plays are only
comprehensible within the Greek context in which they were written. Thats all I will say.
But in what sense can I call Sophocles plays truth? On one hand I admit that they were
conceived, written, and staged in Ancient Greece. But on the other hand, there is
something in the plays that not only conforms to that Greek world, but which we can also
incorporate into the contemporary world. Things can move from one world to the other,
and that possibility is called a truth.

OLIVIER ZAHM Is a philosopher a specialist of exceptions, then?


ALAIN BADIOU Absolutely, but the theory he makes of those exceptions should
simultaneously cover a theory of repetition, because in order to think of the exception,
you must first think of what is not exceptional, what is common the laws of things,
opinions, and other predominant ideas.

OLIVIER ZAHM But when truths pass from one world to another they dont
necessarily mean the same thing.
ALAIN BADIOU Exactly, because the exception does not manifest itself in the same
way in different worlds. The exception will be comprehensible from one world to
another, but that does not mean that worlds produce exceptions in the exact same way. Ill
try to show you in a theoretical way that there must be rather severe conditions
for important and significant exceptions to arise in any world. I also should say that there
may be periods, which I call atonic, in which the capacity for creation is limited, and
even hindered. If you take art history, since thats one of your strengths, there have been
periods of extraordinary creative prodigality, and others in which there are crises, periods
that are more atonic, less universal meaning that we remember them less than other
periods even if there are no periods entirely devoid of art. How do we explain this? It
can be explained by the fact that the exception is always linked to why it is an
exception. There are worlds that are favorable to exceptions and others that are not. And
its this exact point that interests the philosopher.

LOVE OLIVIER ZAHM Okay, lets talk about your concept of love, in terms of
invention and re-invention. You say that love is i

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