Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Badiou Alain
Title : Polemics
Year : 2006

Link download : Badiou_Alain_-_Polemics.zip

Translator's Introduction. Steve Corcoran. This collection of Badiou' s political essays brings together sorne of his pointed contributions to the resistance to today's general ideology, and to the preparation of the ground for future political invention. What general ideology ? The rampant promotion of neo-liberal economies and the ethics of human rights, to be sure. The double discourse on democracy that says democracy is bad when it allows itself to be corrupted by demands for the equality of al! and good when it rallies individuals to the war chant to spread itself across the globe, of course. 1 But also the ideology that says a political movement cannot be grounded in any reference to metaphysical truths or a priori universals, that philosophy cannot have a bearing on politics. The notion that the experience of our century, having proven that such references lead to totalitarian social consequences, that the Enlightenment results in the Gulag, requires that we accept, humbly, that in our complex 'risk societies' the only appropriate politics is one of the dialogue of interests, strategie judgement and expert management, precluding al! notion of politics as the application of cognitive insight. On the contrary, Badiou maintains, it is fully possible, 'even' in today's conditions of global contingency, to revive a politics of universal truth. ...