Negation and Politics: A Reply to Matthew Sharpe on Alain Badiou

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Abstract:

Underlying Matthew Sharpe’s ‘Resurrecting (Meta-)Political Theology, or the Abstract Passion of Alain Badiou’ is the intersection of philosophy and the Left. ‘If the Left is not to repeat … those moments of its history that today provide such ammunition for the “there is no alternative” chorus from the Right’. The problem Badiou’s thought rests on is how we can think against the state under the condition of the state. I agree with Badiou that it is in making this gap a force within our situation that the subject of a new politics can emerge. Philosophy is simply charged with what it is always charged: to set out the possibility of thinking against the state under the condition of the state; for Adomo, ‘not to play along’.

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