Table Of ContentATROPOS PRESS
new york • dresden
General Editor:
Wolfgang Schirmacher
Editorial Board: Ecological
Giorgio Agamben
Pierre Alferi
Hubertus von Amelunxen
Alain Badiou
Judith Balso Metapolitics:
Judith Butler
Diane Davis
Chris Fynsk
Martin Hielscher
Geert Lovink
Larry Rickels
Avital Ronell Badiou
Michael Schmidt
Friedrich Ulfers
Victor Vitanza and the Anthropocene
Siegfried Zielinski
Slavoj Žižek
By
Am Johal
© 2015 by Am Johal
Think Media EGS Series is supported by the European Graduate School
Cover Design: Peggy Bloomer
ATROPOS PRESS
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................4
I would like to thank a wonderful community of colleagues at the
PREFACE ......................................................7
European Graduate School and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver,
Canada who provided generous guidance to me throughout the writing
INTRODUCTION ...............................................9
process. I would like to thank Alain Badiou for providing inspiration to
take on this topic as a result of his seminars in August of 2012 at the Eu-
1. BADIOU, ECOLOGY, AND THE SUBJECT OF CHANGE ...........13
ropean Graduate School. I had already chosen this area as a topic, but the
Change ...................................................13
discussions from his seminars provided an important opening to explore
A New Modern Tradition .....................................16
these questions from a novel angle.
What Is It To Live? ..........................................18
The completion of this book would not have been possible without
Philosophy as Affirmative Dialectic .............................20
the wonderful community of people in Vancouver and elsewhere of aca-
The Problem of Ecology and the Task for Philosophy ...............22
demics, artists and activists who provided guidance, inspiration and the
Philosophy and Event ........................................26
occasional drink when necessary. Working in a new register, out of my
The Subject ................................................31
own comfort zone, was a truly special experience. Thank you to Samir
The Death of God and a New Relation to Human Death .............32
Gandesha, Jeff Derksen, Jamie Hilder, Dan Adleman, Giorgio Agamben,
On Mourning ...............................................37
Judith Butler, Hilda Fernandez, Wolfgang Schirmacher, Glen Coulthard,
What is Ecology as Such Today? ...............................40
Matt Hern, Benjamin Bratton, Avital Ronell, Catherine Malabou, Nich-
olas Perrin and Althea Thauberger for either generous readings of my
2. ECOLOGICAL METAPOLITICS: A Case Against
work, or providing invaluable insights along the way in seminars.
Democratic Materialism ........................................43
Special thanks to Andrea Actis and Patricia Reed for their generous
Badiou and Democratic Materialism ..............................43
assistance in thoughtfully editing my work in various stages.
Political Philosophy ...........................................45
Ecological Metapolitics and Democratic Materialism .................49
Environmental Ethics and Philosophy .............................52
Ecological Metapolitics as Affirmative Construction .................53
Badiou Against Heidegger ......................................55
The Truth ...................................................56
Against Human Rights .........................................60
The Evental Rupture and its Consequences .........................62
3. THE DIALECTIC OF RESISTANCE .............................65
War All The Time .............................................65
Clausewitz ..................................................68
A Case for Permanent Resistance ................................69
PREFACE
Time/Space Resistance .........................................70
The Situationists ..............................................72
T
State of Exception ............................................74
his book interfaces Alain Badiou’s philosophical work on militant
State as Solution? .............................................78
political change with the contemporary question of ecology and the
Coulthard: Fanon’s Reading of Hegel .............................80
geological epoch referred to as the Anthropocene. Building on Badiou’s
broader philosophical ontology, Ecological Metapolitics will be intro-
4. ACCELERATIONIST GEOPOLITICS AND A NEW NOMOS
duced as a philosophical term, defined as the consequences a philosophy
OF THE ANTHROPOCENE ....................................85
is capable of drawing from the political project of ecology as thought.
A New Concept of the Political ..................................91
Concepts of democratic materialism, human rights, democracy and ethics
Theory of the Ecological Partisan ................................94
will be critiqued, exposing the limits of existing political philosophy.
Geopolitical Nomos ...........................................96
The discussion applies a methodology of affirmative dialectics to today’s
Global Power, Spatial Ordering ..................................98
ecological questions, considering them from the perspective of the event,
Nomos of the (Post) Anthropocene ..............................104
political change and the subject. Through such framing, Badiou’s philo-
Accelerationism and its Discontents .............................111
sophical contributions are situated within current ecological discourses.
Discussions on resistance, the passion for the real, sovereignty, acceler-
5. ECOLOGIES OF DESIRE .....................................117
ationism and geo-engineering are also considered in the book. Though
On Marx’s Metabolism .......................................117
Badiou’s oeuvre evidently figures prominently in my treatment, it is also
Capital and Nature ...........................................126
complemented by thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben,
Waiting for the Disaster .......................................127
Judith Butler, Glen Coulthard, Frantz Fanon, Carl Schmitt and others.
Mastery Over the Mastery of Nature .............................130
Transcending Stupidity and the Logics of Capital Flows .............134
Weather-Making, Artificial Life and the Nomos of the Air ............136
What is the Time of This Time? .................................145
CONCLUSION ................................................149
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..............................................151
ENDNOTES ..................................................157
7
INTRODUCTION
W
hile the history of ecological thought and the relation between
humanity and Nature within continental philosophy extends back to the
Greeks, the geological epoch known as the Anthropocene presents new
challenges to thinking through the question of being and non-being today.
Our new condition scrambles old ways of thinking through the problem,
and brings new possibilities to the forefront. The Anthropocene urgently
foregrounds the necessity for new ideas concerning age-old philosophi-
cal questions: what is it to live; the human relation to death; the human
relation to Nature; and the human relation to other species. The Anthro-
pocene brings back old philosophical questions in a new frame. The
question of ecology today is properly a question of ontology, the science
of being qua being, in the philosophical field.
Broadly speaking, Alain Badiou’s philosophical work considers pro-
cesses of militant political change, the formation of the subject and the
event, through what he identifies as the truth procedures of politics, love,
science and art. Through a re-reading of Hegelian dialectics, Marxism
and Structuralism, his work addresses the subject and the real. The influ-
ences of Plato, Sartre, Althusser and Lacan, resonate throughout his work
but his thinking also takes a considerable distance from each of them as
well, developing a philosophical ontology that is uniquely his own.
While Badiou is not viewed as an ecological thinker or someone
thinking through ‘Anthropocenic’ problems (having commented or lec-
tured only sparingly on the issue), he is nonetheless an innovative thinker
to map onto these pressing ecological questions. The aim of this book is
precisely to interface Badiou’s philosophical work with the contemporary
question of ecology, placing his work in dialogue with other thinkers as
9
10 Ecological Metapolitics: Badiou and the Anthropocene Introduction 11
to what philosophy can offer to the discourse, beyond the same-old Envi- in order to reimagine the question of ecology within the current historical
ronmental Ethics readers. Though I will not focus on Badiou’s set theo- context, locating Badiou’s ontology in relation to others. Badiou views
retical proofs, it is my position that Badiou’s ontology and, more broadly, the problem of ecology as properly being a question inside the emergence
his work on thinking militant political change, has much to contribute to of the subject of the event.
the current crisis. The fourth section addresses geopolitics, sovereignty and the limit
Of course, thinking through ecology in philosophy is not an attempt point of change, where, Badiou reminds us, inside the desire for change
to suture philosophy to politics – in the parlance of Badiou, such a move is also the fear of the passion for the real. Ecology also opens up spatial
would constitute a disaster of thinking. In mapping Badiou’s work upon and temporal scalar problems that will be discussed. Geopolitics and spa-
the discourses and problem of ecology today, a conceptual space opens tial ordering, combined with new confrontations related to the very idea
up to think through the problem philosophically at a topological level – of national sovereignty, emerge at a global scale while impacting local-
what I call Ecological Metapolitics. In responding to questions, Badiou ization. The work of Carl Schmitt, Benjamin Bratton and the movement
has often remarked that the contemporary problem of ecology is properly known as Accelerationism is brought in to the fray of ecology, geopolitics
a political one. He has, however, also lectured on the matter, teasing out and sovereignty, alongside Badiou’s work.
what he views as the properly philosophical problems at stake in ecolo- Finally, the problem of ecology is then woven through the ideas of
gy. Given the mutual interpenetration of these fields, the book proceeds Karl Marx, the Frankfurt School, and a critical analysis of the possibility
through five chapters. of contemporary collective interventions through emergent technolog-
The book departs by looking closely at Badiou’s limited work direct- ical possibilities, such as geo-engineering. In conclusion, we return to
ly related to ecology and places it within his lifelong project of thinking Badiou, giving him the last word on what philosophy may have to offer
militant political change so as to grasp the stakes of what he brings anew the problem of ecology today, summarizing as it were the parameters
to the question. As the question of ecology today is also an existen- framing the project of Ecological Metapolitics.
tial one, the book will discuss the idea of death, the death of God, and
mourning. Ultimately terms such as ecology and my own term, Ecologi-
cal Metapolitics, will be newly defined in the process.
Secondly, the book will follow Badiou’s ongoing critique of what
he refers to as democratic materialism. This idea, in my view, is crucial
to deconstructing the ecological impasse and what is done in the name
of democracy, political philosophy, human rights, and ethics. Badiou’s
ontology provides a useful clearing procedure to open up philosophical
space to think the problem of ecology today in a radically deconsecrated
realm.
Thirdly, this book looks at the philosophical history of thinking the
idea of resistance, through a number of theorists in the philosophical field
1
BADIOU, ECOLOGY,
AND THE SUBJECT OF CHANGE
Change
Although Alain Badiou has not directly written or lectured widely on
the topic of ecology, his thinking of emancipatory politics through his
body of philosophical work can nonetheless be sufficiently aligned with
current questions in ecological discourse today. Expanding from his few
lectures and writings on ecology as a conceptual starting point, defini-
tions of both ecology and, what I am calling Ecological Metapolitics, will
be established. These definitions are built around the idea that humanity
is a part of Nature and not apart from it, but also, that humans are unique
beings on the earth who, unlike other species, have a singular capacity
to destroy all living beings on earth. Although the human animal has a
dependent relationship to Nature, Nature does not require the human ani-
mal; Nature itself has the capacity to destroy the world and living beings
as well. In this formulation of ecology, necessary philosophical questions
emerge concerning the relation between Nature and history, as well as
the very possibility of the continuation of the collective world of living
beings as such.
The contemporary Western world is the inheritor of the En-
lightenment idea that history is a struggle against Nature and that change
involves dominion over Nature. Following Badiou, located within the
problem of ecology today is a call for the invention of a new modern
tradition, where ecology is positioned as a question properly inside the
13
14 Ecological Metapolitics: Badiou and the Anthropocene Badiou, Ecology, and the Subject of Change 15
subject, rather than a question inside of Nature. In ecology, there is a better than immobility?...What is a change in society?...What is a change
desire to transmit the conditions of existence toward the future, towards in life?, And what is a change in private life?” 7 The idea of change in
the continuation of existence as such, yet it is also a desire to move ecology, in its contemporary form, is a human construction according to
beyond “the monstrous human desire for newness.”1 For Badiou, within Badiou. Nature, as it were, does not think change of its own accord. Ecol-
ecology, is a will for a new tradition that constitutes a revolution of the ogy is a human construction that attempts to think through the problem
revolutionary tradition itself: ultimately, it is an attempt to invent a new of the relationship between humanity and Nature through a subject, and
modern tradition. Described this way, ecology is both “a rupture with the to reiterate, this is precisely why ecology is properly a question inside
modern world and a rupture with the revolutionary tradition”2; it is the the subject. Bruno Bosteels observes, that for Badiou, “truth is first of all
“means of the modern world mobilized inside the contradiction of history a process or a labour, rather than an act of revelation or a propositional
and nature.”3 Nature, as it will be defined here, concerns the earth and attribute…the practice of philosophy…amount[s] to thinking the truths of
all its phenomena in the material world, existing independently, with or one’s time, truths that have occurred before the arrival of the philosopher
without, human activity or civilization. on the scene of the event.”8 Politics, love, science, and art produce truths
Badiou speaks of the dialectic, between change and immobility, and without philosophy in Badiou’s ontology; they are what he calls condi-
between change and tradition.4 He argues that, “tradition is something tions. Badiou proposes that the philosophical task “is to organize inside
that does not organize change but rather organizes a sort of struggle the subject the struggle against false change or bad change.”9 It is to build
against the change.”5 Change can be a disruption on the side of accelerat- resilience against the terror of the common ideology, which can be de-
ing the capitalist world as it is, so it can also work against the continued fined as the ideology of the world as it is—democratic materialism under
existence of the collective. For Badiou, change regarding the question of the finitude of capitalism. This struggle against change, on the side of tra-
ecology must be tied to the concept of equality in order to have relevance dition, he names the “conservative change”—“a change toward continui-
in philosophy. In an interview with Oliver Feltham, Badiou frames his ty, conservation.”10 Badiou presents this not as a passive operation, but as
concerns with ecology in this way: an active one to “affirm the necessity of the repetition.”11 Michel Serres,
in The Natural Contract, writes, “At stake is the Earth in its totality and
Let’s start by stating that after ‘rights of man,’ the rise of ‘the rights of
humanity, collectively. Global history enters nature; global nature enters
Nature’ is a contemporary form of the opium of the people. It is an only
slightly camouflaged religion: the millenarian terror, concern for every- history: this is something utterly new in philosophy.” 12 Within ecology
thing save the properly political destiny of peoples, new instruments is the consideration of the tragic magnitude of anticipation, decision and
for the control of everyday life, the fear of death of catastrophes…It
memory of the collective human subject in the world. It is also a relation-
is a gigantic operation in the depoliticization of subjects….Nature is
therefore in no way a norm situated above humanity. We will inevitably ship to the future and those not yet living.
make decisions according to the diversity of our interests. Ecology
Badiou shifts the question of humanity, change and Nature into its
solely concerns me inasmuch as it can be proven that it is an intrinsic
dimension of the politics of the emancipation of humanity. For the contemporary form: ecology. The destruction of Nature by humankind
moment I do not see such proof.6 is, by all definition, on the side of change, where current forms of capital
circulation, resource extraction, and human domination over Nature are
Beginning with a consideration of ecology, Badiou asks, “What repetitions of a specific type of change. For Badiou, the ecological vision
is a change? What is a true change? What is a false change? Is change of a repetition of the natural world and the continuation of the species be-
16 Ecological Metapolitics: Badiou and the Anthropocene Badiou, Ecology, and the Subject of Change 17
yond the sphere of the singular human animal is on the side of tradition. Badiou’s formulation of ecology posits a new relation between
This, it would appear, is a counterintuitive category of truths: conser- history and Nature to include all living beings and the natural world,
vationist ecology, although revolutionary, attempts to preserve tradition and not (importantly) exclusively of the anthropocentric vision of the
(repetition of Nature). Logically speaking, to persist in the destruction of world. The separation of history and Nature is refuted in this vision of
Nature is identical to the change inside of capitalistic logic. Reinforcing ecology; instead, this new vision calls for their mutual entanglement.
Nature’s repetition would be a new tradition within the conservative idea That humankind is the master of Nature as part of the Enlightenment
of change for Badiou. The move to establish the repetition of Nature as tradition (affirmed by the likes of René Descartes and Francis Bacon)
such, in overcoming the violence and destruction organized by humanity forms the logic of the terror of common ideology today. Ecology must
over Nature, involves the invention of a new modern tradition.13 propose a break from this tradition, but this does not entail a world of
pure repetition and pure tradition. Instead, inside the desire for a new
tradition in ecology must be “the possibility of a future which is not
A New Modern Tradition only composed of change but also of continuity and repetition.”19
Badiou contrasts what he terms as a tradition, against that of the classi- Gilles Lipovetsky, in Power of Repetition, writes of repetition in
cal revolutionary vision that he argues is on the side of change. Badiou this way:
places ecology in the context of a traditional revolution by articulating
it as “a revolution of the tradition itself.”14 In ecology, there is a desire a paradox: it is in a second chance occurrence that necessity arrives,
when the constellations of pulsional or discursive bodies find them-
for a new, modern tradition. The classical revolutionary idea is also a selves blocked, stabilized, when repetition replaces unpredictable
tradition—a tradition of change, supporting the idea that the old world movements of attraction and repulsion. Then comes the concept, the
symptom, the affective dispositifs – and simultaneous with these
must be destroyed. Inside the desire for a new tradition in ecology is “the
effects, the institution of negation, since every stable formation, qua
possibility of a future which is not only composed of change but also of permanent, continually excludes the same combinations. Such is the
continuity and repetition,”15 in other words it does not aim to “create a very operation of power: not so much exclusion, inevitably implicated
in every complex of bodies qua determinate assemblage, as the repe-
new form of pure progress or of pure becoming.”16 tition of exclusion, a repetition inscribing a fixed order. So that power
As a question probing the relation between Nature and history,17 is found ready made in its entirety in the sphere of affects or thoughts
once the latter are constituted in iterative configurations, thus produc-
ecology must cope with its inheritance of the Enlightenment ideal (at
ing an order which does away with the formation of new combinations,
least within a Western context) that history is a struggle against Nature the chaotic movement of bodies, the play of chemical chance. That all
power entertains a specific relation to time and to chance, this is what
where change involves a dominion over Nature. In the processes that
seems to us essential in Libidinal Economy…To the point, as we shall
structure such a relation, there is not only the destruction of Nature, but see, where the essential function of the general systems of powers,
of civilizations, languages, cultures, other species and geographies that even within the framework of capitalism, will be to retain time—that
is, to administer or to impose mere production.20
are on the side of tradition. The task of ecology today is not a return to a
world of pure repetition and pure tradition; rather, it is the arduous task of
Badiou argues that the problem of a treaty between Nature and history
ecology to create a new modern tradition. Badiou takes the position that
is that humankind is on both sides. Nature does not speak; it is mute
this new modern tradition is not a movement from the past to the present,
according to Badiou, so the question of ecology and its attendant relation
but from the present to the future—“an attempt to create a future which is
between history and Nature is a way of humankind negotiating with
not the continuation of pure change, of destructive change.”18
18 Ecological Metapolitics: Badiou and the Anthropocene Badiou, Ecology, and the Subject of Change 19
itself.21 It could be argued that the tsunamis, earthquakes, weather occur- The question of ecology is about a change to the modern world it-
rences, and loss of species can be considered a form of communication self. In Badiou’s formulation, “a dialectical tradition is not repetition, it is
by Nature of a catastrophe to come, or it could be humans signifying Na- the preservation of the new relationship between tradition and change.”25
ture retroactively. This would, however, place too much emphasis on one Human civilization, and the repetition it constructs in the modern world
side or the other of the Nature/history coin without working through their today, is at war with Nature. The work to change the world regarding the
imbroglios. In this light, the contemporary problem of ecology, I would problem of ecology is a “desire for a new tradition, inside of which there
argue, is a human construction whose possible solution is dependent is the possibility of a future which is not only composed of change but
upon a becoming subject. And, as we know from Badiou, such a subject also of continuity and repetition.”26 Badiou argues that “we must transmit
is only born in fidelity to an event. the conditions of this existence for the future, for the continuation of
existence as such…it is the struggle to continue the pure existence of
the collective.”27 This idea of change, both political and theoretical, also
What Is It To Live? involves a subject that has a particular task to distinguish between good
With Badiou, we return to one of Plato’s founding questions for philoso- and bad forms of change. As Badiou elaborates,
phy: What is it to live? Ecology raises this question once again in a novel
It is to organize inside the subject the struggle against false change, or
way, demanding of us to define our relation to the future and to Nature in
bad change. And it is to organize in the subject the return to the good
our own time. Our task for a philosophy adequate to the problem of ecol- repetition, or the good life inside the repetition.”28
ogy is to continue with the Platonic thread, which, in Badiou’s account of
it, “was based on the idea the only life worth living is one oriented by an There is a relation to the future being proposed, one which implies a
idea and by our participation in a truth procedure.”22 With the question of change in the human relation to the present. If being, or Heidegger’s no-
ecology, we are once again in Plato’s cave since change is also concerned tion of Dasein, is part of a present being-there, how can we propose this
with questions of power, knowledge, and truth. As Badiou argues, movement of being-there to the future-being-now, without doing violence
to the being-there? How does one adequately transmit today the con-
the fundamental propaganda of power is the claim that we must stay
ditions of the future world? Is one to negate living in the present world
inside because it is rational, reasonable and necessary to stay inside…
my claim is that we must begin with the idea that power, the state, and and conduct one’s life for the future of Nature? Is one to construct a new
the institutions of power, are on the inside of the cave…Power has a re-
world and a new subject that is living for the future world? How can we
lation to change because it articulates what change is really possible.23
do this without constructing a passion for the real that is the neo-authori-
tarian legacy of the last century?
Badiou also warns of the consequences of what is called a crisis,
Within the question of ecology there is a danger of moving from the
and asks us to pay particular attention to how crises are defined, and in
terror of the common ideology (what Badiou identifies as democratic
whose interest. He writes, “there is propaganda concerning the idea of
materialism) to the passion for the real from the last century. The danger
crisis today. Today, a crisis is something which is good for the inside”24,
lays in the (possible) production of a new terror, a reactionary terror; both
suggesting that we must first determine what is inside and what is outside
on the side of Nature and on the side of democratic materialism. This
the repetition of the common ideology, in order to adequately speculate
relation to an uncertain future, the possibility of collective finitude or
on change at all.
