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position only in the political because only there is the process itself
the deliberation on the possible (and thus on the infinity of the
situation).
3. Finally, what is the relationship of the political to the state of the
situation, more particularly to the State, in the sense of the term
simultaneously ontological and historical?
The state of the situation is the operation which, in the situation,
codifies its parts, its subsets. The state is a sort of metastructure
which has the power to count over all the subsets of the situation.
Every situation admits a state. Every situation is a presentation of
itself, of what composes it, of what belongs to it. But it is also given
as a state of the situation, that is to say as internal configuration of
its parts or subsets, and thus as re-presentation. In particular, the
state of the situation re-presents collective situations since, in these
collective situations, the singularities are not re-presented, but
rather
presented.
I
refer
on
this
point
to L'tre
et
l'venement (meditation 8). 1
A fundamental given in ontology is that the state of the situation
always exceeds the situation itself. There are always more parts
than elements; the representative multiplicity is of the type always
superior to the presentative multiplicity. This question is in fact that
of power. The power of the State is always superior to that of the
situation. The State, and thus also the economy, which is today the
norm of the State, are characterized by a structural effect of
separation and of excess power in relation to what is simply
presented in the situation.
We could show, mathematically, that this excess is not measurable.
There is no response to the question of knowing how much the
power of the State exceeds the individual, of how much the power of
representation exceeds that of simple presentation. There is
something errant in this excess. The simplest experience of
relationship to the State shows, moreover, that one can relate to it
without ever being able to assign a measure to its power. The
representation of the State through power, in the case of public
power, indicates on the one hand its excess, and on the other the
indeterminacy, or errancy, of this excess.
power of the State as being very weak and thus inferior to the power
of the simple collective presentation.
On the other hand, the Maoist choice of the prolonged war and the
encirclement of villages by the countryside prescribes to the State a
still strong measure, elevated by its power, and calculates with
precaution the free distance to this power. It is the reason Mao's
question is still: why does the red power exist in China? Or: how can
the weakest carry on more strongly in the long run? This means that
for Mao,
( ), the prescription as far as the State is concerned,
remains greatly superior to the infinite
of the situation, such that
the political procedure organizes the convocation.
The three beginning components of numeration, the three
infinites
, are affected at each political sequence and have
no type of fixed determination except that of their relationships.
Every political event in particular proceeds to its own post-event
prescription under the power of the State: it is, in substance, the
creation, in the wake of the swell of the event, of the political
function .
At the moment that the political procedure exists, up to the point of
the prescription on the State, then, and then only, can the logic of
the same be deployed, that is to say the egalitarian maxim, proper
for every politics of emancipation.
The egalitarian maxim is effectively incompatible with the errancy of
state excess. The matrix of inequality is precisely that the excess
power of the State cannot be measured. Today, for example, all
egalitarian politics are rendered impossible and declared absurd in
the name of a necessity of the liberal economy without measure or
concept. But what characterizes this blind power of unchained
Capital is precisely that at no point is this power measurable or
fixed. What one knows is only that it weighs absolutely on the
subjective destiny of collectives, such as they are. Consequently, in
order that a politics can practice an egalitarian maxim in the
sequence opened by an event, it is absolutely necessary that the
state of the situation be put at a distance by a rigid calculation of its
power.
through
the
say we have here the writing of democracy. Our two examples show
that this formula had singular names: "Soviets" at the time of the
Bolshevik revolution, "liberated zones" in the Maoist process. But
democracy had other names in the past. It has some in the present
(for example: "assemblage of collectives of undocumented workers
in the foyers and in the political Organization"). It will have others in
the future.
As rare as it may be, the political, hence democracy, existed, exists,
will exist. And, with it, under its exacting condition, metapolitics:
what a philosophy declares, for the ends of its own effect, as
deserving of the name of "the political." Or yet: what a thought
declares to be a thought, on condition of which it thinks that which is
a thought.
Notes:
1. Badiou, Alain, L'tre et l'vnement, coll. "L'ordre philosophique," Paris:
Seuil,
1988.
2. Badiou, A., Conditions, coll. "L'ordre philosophique," Paris: Seuil, 1992.
translated by BARBARA P. FULKS
lacan.com
1997/2005
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