Badiou, Balibar, Ranciere : re-thinking emancipation

194 Pages·2010·8.75 MB·English

by  Badiou

BADIOU, BALIBAR, RANCIERE
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy
Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series from
Continuum. The series features first-class scholarly research monographs across
the field of Continental philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to the
field of philosophical research.
Adorno 's Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan
Badiou, Marion and St Paul, Adam Miller
Being and Number in Heidegger's Thought, Michael Roubach
Deleuze and Guattari, Fadi Abou-Rihan
Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation, Joe Hughes
Deleuze and the Unconscious, Christian Kerslake
Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New, edited by Simon O'Sullivan and
Stephen Zepke
Derrida, Simon Morgan Wortham
Derrida: Profanations, Patrick O'Connor
Derrida and Disinterest, Sean Gaston
The Domestication of Derrida, Lorenzo Fabbri
Encountering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan Wortham and Allison Weiner
Foucault's Heidegger, Timothy Rayner
Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, Walter Lammi
Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling, Sharin N. Elkholy
Heidegger and Aristotle, Michael Bowler
Heidegger and Logic, Greg Shirley
Heidegger and Nietzsche, Louis P. Blond
Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology, Peter S. Dillard
Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael Lewis
Heidegger, Politics and Climate Change, Ruth Irwin
Heidegger's Early Philosophy, James Luchte
Idealism and Existentialism, Jon Stewart
Kant, Deleuze and Architectonics, Edward Willatt
Levinas and Camus, Tal Sessler
Merleau-Ponty 's Phenomenology, Kirk M. Besmer
Nietzsche, Nihilism and the Philosophy of the Future, edited by Jeffrey Metzger
Nietzsche's Ethical Theory, Craig Dove
Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, edited by James Luchte
The Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia Duttmann
Sartre's Phenomenology, David Reisman
Time and Becoming in Nietzsche's Thought, Robin Small
Who's Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? Gregg Lambert
Zizek and Heidegger, Thomas Brockelman
Zizek 's Dialectics, Fabio Vighi
BADIOU, BALIBAR, RANGIERE
Re-thinking Emancipation
Nick Hewlett
Contiuum
Continuum International Publishing Group
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©Nick Hewlett 2007, 2010
First published 2007
Paperback edition 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from
the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: PB: 978-1-4411-0967-5
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Aarontype Limited, Easton, Bristol
In memory of (Enone Hewlett, 1920-2006
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Note on Translations X
Abbreviations xi
1 Contexts and Parameters 1
Three characteristics of modern French thought 10
The legacy of Louis Althusser 17
Concluding remarks 22
2 Alain Badiou: Event, Subject and Truth 24
The role of philosophy 28
Truth 33
The event, movement and change 37
Concluding remarks 45
3 The Paradoxes of Alain Badiou's Theory of Politics 47
Politics, the event and truth procedures 49
Against and beyond the postmodern 59
Marxism and historical materialism 62
Democracy 69
Parliamentary politics 72
Badiou's political activism 75
Concluding remarks 81
4 Jacques Ranciere: Politics is Equality is Democracy 84
Listening to the unheard 86
Liberal democracy and language 95
Defining the political 100
Democracy and post-democracy 108
Concluding remarks 111
viii Contents
5 Etienne Balibar: Emancipation, Equaliberty and the 116
Dilemmas of Modernity
The political 119
Ambivalence, universality, ideology 127
Political violence 129
Lenin and Gandhi 136
Concluding remarks 139
6 With and Beyond Badiou, Balibar and Ranciere 142
References and Bibliography 155
Index 173
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Gary Browning, Christopher Flood and two
anonymous readers for commenting on drafts of individual chapters
of this book. Thanks also to participants at conferences and seminars
at the Universities of Fukuoka, Budapest and Leeds, at King's Col-
lege, London, and at University College, London, who commented
on some of the ideas in this book. In particular, I would like to thank
Gregory Elliott for a detailed, sensitive and highly insightful reading
of the manuscript as a whole. Sarah Douglas at Continuum showed
immediate enthusiasm for the project when I first approached her,
and was very helpful and encouraging thereafter. Nick Fawcett did
an excellent job copy-editing the manuscript. The final shape of the
book, including any errors and infelicities, is of course my responsibil-
ity alone.
My appreciation goes to the Arts and Humanities Research Coun-
cil for funding a period of leave in order to bring the project to fruition
and to the British Academy for two travel grants. An earlier version of
Chapter 2 was published in 2004 in Modern and Contemporary France
12 (3) and an earlier version of Chapter 3 was published in 2006 in
Contemporary Political Theory 5 (4).
I would like to thank Bridget Taylor, who has not only given con-
sistently sound advice during the time I was writing this book, but has
also shown huge patience as I went through authorial highs and lows.
My children Emily and Gus have been moving towards adulthood
over the past few years and remain constant sources of happiness.
Lasting happiness and enduring love are qualities I associate strongly
with my mother, (Enone, to whose memory this book is dedicated.