UnBadiou: A Seminar on Alain Badiou with Jamieson Webster and Evan Malater – Part II – Fidelity to the Event

“To be faithful to an event is to move within the situation that this event has supplemented, by thinking (although all thought is a practice, a putting to the test) the situation ‘according to’ the event.  And this, of course – since the event was excluded by all the regular laws of the situation – compels the subject to invent a new way of being and acting in the situation.”  Badiou, Ethics, p. 41

“Essentially, a truth is the material course traced, within the situation, by the evental supplementation.  It is thus an immanent break.  ‘Immanent’ because a truth proceeds in the situation, and nowhere else – there is no heaven of truth.  ‘Break’ because what enables the truth-process – the event – meant nothing according to the prevailing language and established knowledge of the situation.”  Badiou, Ethics, pp. 42-43.

What is the event of Unbehagen?  How can an encounter with Alain Badiou, the philosopher of the New, of the Event, help us to think and name what is coming into being under the name of Unbehagen?  For our seminar, we will read two key texts of Badiou, Ethics and St. Paul: The Foundations of Universalism, along with a few secondary sources.  Our aim will be to apply Badiou’s thinking on the Event to Unbehagen, to questions of the institutionalization of psychoanalysis, and to the practice of being an analyst more generally. According to Badiou’s model this would mean a consideration of what it is to create something new in psychoanalysis today and to maintain fidelity to this aim.

After these two reading seminars, Simon Critchley will speak about his 2007 book “Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance”, in particular the ethical stakes of commitment to an infinite demand which can be linked to the conditions under which an oppositional egalitarian politics might take shape. Critchley writes:

‘It is at this intensely situational, indeed local level that the atomising, expropriating force of neo-liberal globalisation is to be met, contested and resisted. That is, resistance begins by occupying and controlling the terrain upon which one stands, where one lives, works, acts and thinks. This needn’t involve millions of people. It needn’t even involve thousands. It could involve just a few at first. Resistance can be intimate and can begin in small affinity groups. The art of politics consists in weaving such cells of resistance together into a common front, a shared political subjectivity. What is going to allow for the formation of such a political subjectivity – the hegemonic glue, if you will – is an appeal to universality, whether the demand for political representation, equality of treatment or whatever. It is the hope, indeed the wager, of this book that the ethical demand – the infinite responsibility that both constitutes and divides my subjectivity – might allow that hegemonic glue to set into the compact, self-aware, fighting force that motivates the subject into the political action.’

Critchley’s work is important for thinking through our situation. In the last year of Unbehagen we have heard from many speakers— notably Otto Kernberg and David Bell— who recognize the sterility and reification, corruption and inequity, pervasive in our field. And yet, there is palpable resistance to thinking beyond or outside the institutional structure (seen as necessary for regulation and quality control) that Unbehagen names as a point of ill-ease. Unbehagen thus situates a local site of discontent and resistance, seeking through work to generate a new way of being together as clinicians in fidelity to psychoanalysis.

Reading
Badiou, A. (2002). Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (Peter Hallward, trans.). London: Verso (original work published in 1993).
Badiou, A. (2003b). Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Ray Brassier, trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press (original work published in 1997).
Critchley, S. (2007) Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance New York: Verso.
Hallward, P. (2003) Badiou: A Subject to Truth Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Supplementary Reading
Badiou, A. (2005) Interview with Alain Badiou The Ashville Global Review http://www.lacan.com/badash.htm
Badiou, A. (2012) Introduction to the Philosophical Concept of Change (Video Lecture) European Graduate School https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBxf_hncrN8
Badiou, A. (1999). Manifesto for Philosophy (Norman Madarasz, trans.). Albany, NY: SUNY (original work published in 1989).
Lacan, J. (2007) Seminar XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis New York: Norton
Norris, C. (2009) Badiou’s Being and Event: A Readers Guide London: Continuum Books
Zizek, S. (2007) Philosophy: Spinoza, Kant, Hegel and… Badiou! http://www.lacan.com/zizphilosophy3.htm
DVD (2008): Democracy and Disappointment: On the Politics of Resistance (Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley in Conversation) Philadelphia: Slought Books.