Badiou on BBC
In a BBC HARDtalk interview broadcast on 24 March 2009, Stephen Sackur talks to French socialist philospher Alain Badiou. As the world’s richest economies plunge deeper into recession could there be a whiff of revolution in the air? Alain Badiou has been an intellectual hero of France’s anti-capitalist left since the Paris street protests of 1968. His recent book ‘The Meaning of Sarkozy’, in which he attacked the French President, has caused a storm in France. But does anyone beyond Parisian café society believe communism is the answer to the current crisis?
April 7th, 2009 at 6:38 am
Has the guy interviewing him not actually read Badiou? What about his non-pop works? Fucking douche.
April 8th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Yes, this seemed pointless. It was strange to watch Badiou struggle with the incompetency of the interviewer – it was as though he was utterly unable to respond to such stupidity. When Sackur said, ‘you sit there with your metaphorical Gauloise in your mouth…’ I realized that the purpose of the interview was not to ask serious questions, but to insult Badiou for having the gall to think that workers might want to manage their own affairs.
April 8th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
The interviewer’s idiocy notwithstanding, it is a pretty fascinating glimpse of a serious thinker in the world of popular television. How a philosopher deals with the banality of mass media is seldom seen and always makes for riveting viewing; Zizek’s tomfoolery is always highly entertaining and surprisingly effective, and I think Badiou does a pretty lovely job of remaining calm and level while the journalist whips himself up into a frenzy of misunderstandings and sensational accusations. There’s a great interview with Rorty on R.U. Sirius’ radio show floating about on the internet somewhere. In it, there’s a great moment when Rorty politely and coolly helps the interviewers pronounce the word ‘Kant’…
April 9th, 2009 at 2:00 am
In contrast to previous commenters, I think that overall the interviewer posed good, albeit somewhat obtuse, questions to Badiou, questions that Badiou didn’t successfully counter or repose. Moreover, I’m not convinced that the idiocy–and I’d contend that ‘ignorance’ is a more accurate description–of the interviewer is the most salient, noteworthy, or significant aspect of the interview.
To be clear, I have great respect for Badiou’s thought; but I think that in this interview he failed to adequately convey those essential aspects of his thought that the interview raised–even and especially within the restricted confines of a popular television interview, but even more specifically vis-a-vis the thoroughly capitalist discourse employed by his interviewer. Forgoing a clarification, even a brief clarification, of what he means by “politics,” for example, represents one such failure. Failing to specify what exactly he means by “freedom” is another–and these instances abound throughout the interview.
The more general point I want to make is that it is not the fault of the capitalist, admittedly suspect interviewer that Badiou faced an unfortunate, perhaps not only futile but potential detrimental struggle on (inter)national television. Rather, Badiou himself could and should have responded in such a way that the questions posed to him acquired new meaning, that the terms of discourse shifted decisively in his favor–or, to employ Badiou’s language, that the objective conditions of the situation aligned themselves with the coordinates of a subjective experience of a particular truth that rived a subject (namely, Badiou) in an Event without measure: that is, the event of Marxist communism. Incommensurability is not an excuse.
Badiou’s criticisms of Deleuze should remind us of the thorough commitment to egalitarianism and communism that resound throughout Badiou’s thought, commitments which he sets in strict opposition to the “crowned anarchy” he finds in the writings of Deleuze. To criticize Badiou’s interviewer of ignorance–or, more pathetically, to call him a “douche”–falls prey to precisely the trap of crowned anarchy forbidden by Badiou’s thought. Rather, we must hold subjects–ourselves–accountable; and in this particular instance, I believe that Badiou failed to do adequate justice to the exceptional force of his ideas, revolutionary as they may be.
April 10th, 2009 at 8:53 am
I’d like to add, and I would be willing to supply them, that there are responses to ALL the interviewer’s questions IN Badiou’s philosophy itself. What it showed was an extreme LACK of understanding of Badiou’s thought. All of his questions would have been answered in Peut-on Penser la politique?. All the answers are there, and if you wish, I will respond to each of the interviewer’s questions myself.
April 10th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I’m not sure why people feel he doesn’t come off well. He is not engaging in a point scoring debate with the interviewer, but just on the receiving end of a hard nosed question and answer session. He states his well established positions and does so reasonably clearly – what more do you want?
April 10th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Jake: There’s no need for you to demonstrate that. I agree that there are responses to all of the interviewer’s questions in Badiou’s philosophy “itself”; and frankly it would be ridiculous to claim otherwise. But if you got what you desired and the interviewer asked only questions that were not explicitly considered and addressed in Badiou’s extensive corpus, what sort of interview would it turn out to be? One that I believe would be inappropriate for the show’s general audience.
The vast majority of the show’s relatively well-educated audience–what should we say, 95%?–will, despite being relatively well-educated, not have read any of Badiou’s work. Even the interviewer may lack requisite knowledge of Badiou’s thought. But ultimately the more important and interesting point is that regardless of the interviewer’s knowledge about Badiou’s published positions, the burden of clarification–we might even say testimony–falls on Badiou to adequately answer the questions posed to him, even and especially if those answers are to be found in his already published work.
And this brings me to Nathan’s question about what more I would want: precisely a clarification of his position of the kind Badiou doesn’t, on my interpretation, adequately provide, even to an audience member like me who is relatively familiar with his work. Nathan and I may disagree about the effectiveness of Badiou’s responses, and that itself calls for serious discussion; but I certainly agree that point totals shouldn’t determine one’s estimation of the interview. For me, it’s the quality of the clarification that counts; and I don’t believe that Badiou’s conceptions of “politics,” “freedom,” “progress,” etc. were sufficiently elaborated vis-a-vis the interviewer’s own conceptions of the same terms, even within the confines of a short interview given to a popular audience.
(Moderator: please use this post. The other contains a grammatical error.)
April 13th, 2009 at 12:48 am
It seems to me that there a few points to add. First, there is the issue of the language barrier. Obviously, Badiou is fluent English, but one gets the sense that he’s somewhat out of his element responding to \hard-nosed\ questions in a non-native language. Second, the interviewer simple runs roughshod over many of Badiou’s fine (perhaps too fine for this sort of forum) distinctions. For example, when Badiou insists on the difference between the experience of communism and it’s idea or hypothesis, the interviewer simply ignores the distinction and argues that the experience of communism must invalidate the idea. Badiou’s ultimate point, I think, is that while the liberal-democratic-capitalist consensus may aspire to certain ideals of egalitarianism, opportunity and maximum well-being, it does so at the expense of its own practice–i.e., it aspires, actually, to the ideal of COMMUNISM. Now, for very well-known reasons (see Marx and everything after)the rule of private interests simply cannot realize this ideal, and this failure necessitates the reactualization of the promise of a new, alternative society, one that would overcome the inherent impasses of liberal-democratic-capitalism. The interviewer clearly comes from a perspective that capitalism is able to have its cake and it eat too, and this, I think, is a classic example of simple question begging. Could Badiou have been clearer? Of course, and he should have been. But was the interviewer equally unable to articulate and defend the crude ideological position from which he was speaking? No, I don’t think so.
April 14th, 2009 at 3:30 am
I have to say Badiou is somewhat reluctant to reply full-fledged to the questions he is posed with. To unconceal something like “communism” whose signification in everyday language stands for the nation-state experience rather than the historical, philosophical critique of capitalism (as espoused by marx that badiou refers to, but doesn’t fully disclose) and an overturning of such system or society “as it is”; that’s what badiou probably was hoping to discuss rather than the expectation of bbc audiences. I don’t think the interviewer was ignorant as much as predisposed by expectations of his audiences to whom he refers to as “people” whose view of badiou’s romantic thinking would be lunacy. I agree with Kuba that zizek handles these cases well as he tends to anticipate mundane questions like these and answers them before these sort of interviewers has chance to really ask them. I think bbc has at least some civility towards thinkers like badiou compared to the american media whose attention span consists of tidbit soundbites.
April 15th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Sure, but take for example when he says something to the effect that no one would IS convinced by his argument, that there is no one who thinks communism is a viable possibility. I mean, that’s nonsense.
April 15th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
I hate to not join in the prevailing consensus, but I have to say that Badiou did not do well in the intereview due to the fact that his ideas – as presented in the interview – are tired, Platonistic cliches. For instance, his persistence in alleging that philosophy begins with Socrates (and hence Plato) and especially his closing reference to a disjunction between a conceptual framework and the concrete – these comments merely resuscitated every sterotypical left-wing debate from the last century. And, it must be added, that this Platonism isindeed reflected in his works, and that is why we should criticise Badiou — for, could anyone ever imagine a worker reading Being and Event? It would perhaps be better to remember Marx’s maxim that the working class will be liberated through their own concrete struggles, amid a praxis which will be the topos or site for a new “framework” — it is not a matter of applying an abstract idea, but of allowing for an indigenous process of liberation to unfold.
April 15th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
James:
I think you’re missing the point of Badiou’s thought and its importance within the contemporary world. The interviewer aside, Badiou’s whole point is that the old formula of establishing a Communist society not only ended up in disaster (Stalin, Mao) but that not the methods of mobilizing the working class has become obsolete (at least within the most advanced capitalist countries).
The has been a known fact since the 1960s, especially since May ’68, where in France the riots failed to amount to a concrete and productive movement. Unlike thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze, who all saw this as a sign that political activism had become moot, Badiou read this as a wake up call to rethink the approach to actualize the idea of communism concretely. This is where he talks about the idea of communism (something which preceded Marx) and the thought/work done to manifest that idea in the material world. His point is: the 21st Century needs to create its own Marx-we need to start anew and not fall into the old tired cliches of trying to mobilize the people, when it stopped working over 50 years ago.
April 18th, 2009 at 2:18 am
I didn’t think the interviewer was bad at all, except that he was very repetitive. The show is called “Hard Talk,” and it was probably meant to be challenging, but he let Badiou speak at length and didn’t say anything obtuse really–he framed the questions exactly how most people probably would. It’s the answers that matter.
April 28th, 2009 at 12:32 am
Daimon:
I think that your comment makes my philosophical point for me, when you write, ‘… This is where he talks about the idea of communism … and the thought/work done to manifest the idea…’ Whether we agree or not about the political economic question of action – and it would seem that one would have to be naive to believe that the possibility (or even the necessity) of mass action or resistance is over – I feel that the Platonic residue of your words undermines the possibility of comprehending the role of philosophy in the context of power and action. We must begin with the concrete, and we must seek freedom by means of freedom. If we were to resurrect any 19th century figure, I think it would have to be Bakunin – and not Marx.
April 28th, 2009 at 9:41 am
James:
I do appreciate your reply. I think this is exactly what Badiou wants to happen (i.e. the fact that you and I are discussing the theoretical means of political action, etc). Now there will be disagreements down the line, of course, but the fact that we are simply discussing it is a good thing.
I don’t think that Badiou (nor I) mean that we must ‘return to Marx’. One thing that Badiou/Zizek et al mentioned in their ‘The Idea of Communism’ panel discussion was that the very notion of communism preceded figures such as Marx and Engles, Lennin, etc, and that it dates back thousands of year through human history. The notion of communism has developed dialectically (if you want to be very Hegelian about it…) and thinkers such as Rousseau, Marx/Engles, Lennin, Trotsky and other post-Marxists (Frankfurt school, etc),have contributed to the development of the very notion. Now it is key to note that its first implementation in the 20th century was a disaster (Stalinism, Maoism). For Badiou, those who want to strive to realize the notion of communism (and you don’t have to be labeled simply as a Marxist to want this) then we must learn from the mistakes of the past and go back to the theoretical drawing table, metaphorically speaking. But the answer is not to JUST go back to Marx. I think Badiou understand the contributions Marx made to concretely realizing the notion of communism, but it the ‘answer’ is not just in Marx. More theory needs to be done, obviously-and so Bakunin might have something to add to the theoretical work.
August 11th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
James:
Badiou is very clear that politics is not a striving to realise but a striving – this is a very important detail of his theory of political action. It is also what makes him ambivalent about the condition of any particular evental sequence – is May ’68 an event? that is a matter that is suspended by the potentially infinite trajectory of action – for which apparently no judgement can be final.
The interview was difficult for Badiou and the talking head fronting ‘Hard Talk’. Badiou’s politics is obscure – organising an adequate understanding of his position is a testing proposition. However, Badiou is also a political figure and should be more adept at trading in the shallow axioms from which politics is supposed to occur – if it was only as simple as ‘All people who are here, live here!’