Can Politics Be Thought?

Description

InCan Politics Be Thought?—published in French in 1985 and appearing here in English for the first time—Alain Badiou offers his most forceful and systematic analysis of the crisis of Marxism. Distinguishing politics as an active mode of thinking from the political as a domain of the State, Badiou argues for the continuation of Marxist politics. In so doing, he shows why we need to recapture the emancipatory hypothesis of Marx's original gesture in order to actualize its radical potential. This volume also includes Badiou's “Of an Obscure Disaster: On the End of the Truth of the State,” in which he rebuts claims of Communism's death after the fall of the Soviet Union. Contents......Page 4 Translator's Introduction by Bruno Bosteels......Page 6 Can Politics Be Thought?......Page 32 Threshold......Page 34 I. ON HISTORICAL REFERENTIALITY......Page 45 II. SOLZHENITSYN AND SHALAMOV......Page 50 III. THE END OF VICTORIES......Page 58 IV. THE UNIVERSAL MEANING OF THE POLISH WORKERS' MOVEMENT......Page 60 V. THE REACTIVE MEANING OF CONTEMPORARY ANTI-MARXISM......Page 63 VI. DESTRUCTIVE SUBJECTIVIZATION AND DELOCALIZATION......Page 65 VII. THE FIGURE OF THE (RE)COMMENCEMENT......Page 69 VIII. THE (RE)TURN OF THE SOURCES......Page 72 I. THE EVENT. EMPIRICAL TRAJECTORY......Page 75 II. DEFINITIONS AND AXIOMS......Page 83 III. REFUTATION OF IDEALISM......Page 85 IV. GENEALOGY OF THE DIALECTIC......Page 88 V. FORMALISMS 1: FORBIDDEN/IMPOSSIBLE......Page 94 VI. FORMALISMS 2: DISCRIMINATING INTERVENTION AND INTERVENTION BY WAGER......Page 99 VII. INTERVENTION AND ORGANIZATION. POLITICS. THE FUTURE PERFECT......Page 104 VIII. WHAT IS DOGMATISM?......Page 108 IX. DE-SUBLIMATION......Page 110 I. THE “DEATH OF COMMUNISM”?......Page 116 II. THE "TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY"?......Page 128 III. LAW, STATE, POLITICS......Page 135