[b]»... it is the fate of all problems raised to be reduced to slogans«1[/b]
(Michel Foucault)

So there was supposedly a »French moment of philosophy« between 1934 and the end of the 20th century. That is how the old newcomer Alain Badiou sees things, with all due modesty: »I would like to put forward a historical and national thesis: there was - or there is, depending on where I position myself – a ›French philosophical moment‹ that took place in the second half of the 20th century«. From the early Satre of »Being and Nothingness« to late Deleuze, this »moment« spans seventy whole years and includes names like Gaston Bachelard, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan – in other words, the Who’s Who of structuralism and post-structuralism -, and perhaps Alain Badiou himself: »Time will tell. If there is a ›French moment of philosophy‹, my specific position may be that of its last representative.«

It is worth posing a few questions with regard to Badiou’s text, entitled »Panorama de la philosophie française contemporaine«,2 especially in view of the fact that, throughout, he almost fails to give us the promised clarification of his position at the outermost edge of this »moment« - or at least he is rather coy about it. A strategy otherwise employed by Jacques Derrida as a deliberate delaying tactic. In the case of Badiou, this »dissémination« has to do with something else – but more about this later. So, first of all, we have before us a number of highly qualified names: »This group, to my mind, represents a new, unique and singular, but at the same time universal moment of philosophy.« It is in the nature of such a view of things that the list could be continued at will, and the omissions are nonetheless revealing. At any rate, this group should also include: Maurice Blanchot, Pierre Klossowski, Jean Genet, Félix Guattari, Jean-Luc Nancy, Etienne Balibar, Guy Hocquenghem, Jacques Rancière, Michel de Certeau, Roland Barthes, Paul Veyne, Fernand Braudel, Daniel , George Bataille, Emanuel Lévinas, Pierre Bourdieu, Paul Virilio, Guy Debord, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Leiris and many others. In Badiou’s selection there is a mechanism, a scheme, at work that steers the selection, independently of the compression necessary in a short text. This scheme is already overcoded and differentiated by the term »philosophy«. Some are simply not philosophers, because they are historians, sociologists, writers, dromologists, situationists, gay activists, psychoanalysts, ethnologists, Marxists or simply post-modernists. But this also applies explicitly to Foucault, Lévi-Strauss, Althusser and Lacan. And while we are busy name-dropping, what about Simone de Beauvoir, Hélène Cixous, Sarah Kofman, Luce Irigaray, Monique Wittig and Julia Kristeva? In the case of these omissions, the question of the field of expertise carries even less weight. Completely leaving them out of the group is quite simply tendentious. As a friend of set theory, Badiou should know that feminism and philosophy do not form distinct sets, but have a variety of intersections. To understand this lacuna, we must take a closer look at the definition of the »philosophical moment« with regard to form and content. And, even though Badiou does not use the term explicitly, it can be said without exaggeration that the philosopher as a friend of wisdom and »master thinker« is a male figure. No sister! While Badiou could probably agree with Deleuze that Spinoza – though he’d probably prefer Plato – is the pure embodiment of the philosopher and that his »Ethics« represents an inexhaustible source of philosophy, Luce Irigaray, for example, points out that with Spinoza substance is a masculine concept and thus a clouded source. Foucault tended to link his philosophical pathos to police files, and Derrida was simply too careful for such conclusions – however, he indirectly joins in with this line of thought when he calls his obituary for Deleuze »We all loved philosophy« and notes that they had the same enemies. The enemies of the philosophers are the enemies of philosophy.

But what exactly qualifies these specific philosophers as »maître-penseurs«? Or, as Badiou asks: »What happened around these some dozen names cited above?« The answer: philosophy itself, »it addresses itself to all ›without exception‹. […] Philosophy is thus a universal striving for reason, and at the same time one that manifests itself in completely unique moments.« Its aristocratic appearances are extremely rare. Although it addresses itself to all, it cannot be practised by all at every time. Accordingly, such moments occurred between 5 BC and 3 BC from Parmenides to Aristoteles, between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century from Kant to Hegel, and finally in the second half of the 20th century from Sartre to Deleuze/Badiou – »relatively speaking«, of course. There are of course hierarchies between extraordinary philosophical moments, to which socio-cultural milieus as widely different as the Greek slave-owning society, the Prussian state and the second revolutionary Paris served as backgrounds.

So much for the formal definition. But what goes to make up this unique moment? Badiou isolates four basic operations: »The aforementioned ›French philosophical moment‹ thus consisted first of all in a new appropriation of German philosophical work, secondly in a creative view of science, thirdly in political radicality and, fourthly, in a quest for new forms in art and life. […] All of these philosophers have endeavoured to develop a new style, to invent new ways of writing; they wanted to be writers. In the works of Deleuze or Foucault, for example, you find a completely new movement in sentences; there is a completely original relationship between thought and the movement of the sentence, […] there is an affirmative rhythm. […] Reading Derrida, on the other hand, we find complex and patient relationship of language to itself. […] and thought takes place precisely in this work of the language on itself. In Lacan, finally, we encounter a spectacularly complex syntax that can only be compared with the syntax of Mallarmé.« There is nothing to disagree with here. But the »stroboscopic writing style« (Deleuze) of Hélène Cixous, as well as the styles of Sarah Kofman, Luce Irigaray, Monique Wittig and Julia Kristeva, should have a place in any redefinition of ways of working with language, and, taking this as a basis, could be related to the aforementioned operations. Revolt, she said. The fact that Badiou simply lets them go by the board shows very clearly that the qualification »for all« is too general. It deliberately overlooks the fact – for the definition could not stand otherwise – that a distortion of perspective takes place between the claim to universality and the singular place of its articulation. When using our own, socially located name, we cannot speak in the name of »all« without being caught in the snares of representation. So if one supplements one’s description with all the other names and operations, the picture of the »moment« is not only completed, but changes its character. One would then have to show how, under the purportedly united surface, a complex, antagonistic space opens up in which universality turns into a conflict.3

However, because Badiou is obviously concerned with reconciliation in his article, he gives only marginal attention to aspects that run contrary to his procedure. One could namely also show that many of the theorists dealt with here followed an extremely anti-Platonic or anti-Hegelian impulse and radically called into question Hegel’s »concrete universal«.

[b]Putrescence of the absolute spirit[/b]

However striking, strange and interesting the density of »French thinkers« during this period may seem, it remains questionable whether the retro-active synthetisation of philosophy as »French« is not too artificial and, in the final analysis, counter-productive. Badiou knows this himself, of course, and his texts, which are currently being translated and published in German in quick succession, give detailed information on this. The fact that Badiou can with some justification count himself among this group is obvious. It is however more interesting to ask why, at the same time, he does not belong to it and is able so artfully to claim a position at the end for himself, one that extends beyond the group. For this to be the case, however, the group has to be extended. In a »debate« more resembling the cooing of lovers, Badiou and Slavoj Zizek agree that, as in Plato’s time, present-day philosophers have to be protected from sophists of every kind (there is a similar idea in »What Is Philosophy?« by Deleuze/Guattari).4 The significance of Badiou’s self-positioning at the edge of this philosophical »epoch« is to partly cancel out its basic problems and to rehabilitate laboriously deconstructed patriarchal patterns that are inherent in Western philosophy, or at least their gestures.

This guarantees him, Zizek and others a kind of eclecticism that makes it possible to present »philosophy« as a rapid and mutual exchange among »master thinkers« over the centuries, from the Greek inventors of philosophy and German idealism to the French philosophers. And, see there, they write each other postcards (Derrida and Plato), let off barbs (Nietzsche and Foucault), bring a fresh breath of air (Spinoza and Deleuze), or send each other greetings (Marx and Althusser). It is unnecessary to reiterate that the philosophers are, without exception, male, more or less white, but not necessarily »straight«. The »operation« that Badiou carries out here succeeds because it is not applied from outside, but is inscribed into philosophy. This does not mean that we are dealing with a purely macho world here – although Zizek’s Lacanian act and Badiou’s Platonic truth event come very close to it -, for some members of the group, namely Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault, tried in very different and often contradictory ways to »go beyond philosophy using philosophical means« and to achieve the paradox of affirmative criticism. Badiou, too, seeks a form of affirmative criticism, but he seeks it in philosophy and under the flag of a strangely absolute claim to truth. Even if Badiou’s claim were correct that Deleuze is not, as cliché would have it, a thinker of the singular, different and multiple but of the one, it must still be admitted that he does not include events in the truth.

On this point, Badiou is extraordinarily suggestive in a theoretical sense. He lays claim to considering multiplicity as such without any superstructure and defends the claim of philosophy to universality against the anti-Platonists. But if the alleged particular interests of feminism, queer activists or cultural studies stand in the way of the truth of the political project, as Badiou and Zizek maintain with a touch of paranoia, then this truth cannot be worth anything. And it is precisely here that they represent a step backwards with regard to the »French moment of philosophy«. But perhaps, in the end, philosophy cannot be really separated from its claim to truth.

For one cannot rid oneself of the feeling that the ballast of the history of philosophy, from which all these operations and manoeuvres take their respective material, massively stands in their way as well. In brief: you cannot escape Hegel! Because the absolute spirit can always be distilled from »toolboxes«: »It is however an interesting event we are dealing with: the putrescence of the absolute intellect« (Karl Marx, »The German Ideology«). Badiou’s position at the edge consists simply in the fact that he wants to amalgamate and reconcile the tools with the absolute spirit.

I believe it was Etienne Balibar who drew attention in an interview to the fact that Foucault – the »philosopher with the mask«, who would have preferred to write anonymously and reviled the universalistic megalomania of the philosophers – was one of the few of his generation to leave behind a philosophical »body of work« of classical format. Foucault’s work does indeed permanently vacillate between the demands of the academic world, which he met with unsurpassed virtuosity, and the fights on the street, to which he sometimes gave a new aspect. The zeal to publish that gradually brings Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida to completeness and causes secondary literature to expand without bounds is only one sign of the alleged end of this philosophical moment, and nothing would seem better to express the negative dialectics of the figure of the French »maître-penseur« than the blurb on the back of the four-volume opus magnum »Dits et Ecrits«, which brings together all the interviews, articles and short texts that Foucault ever published. On Volume One, there is a quote from his friend, the historian Paul Veyne: »Foucault’s work seems to me to be the most important intellectual event of our century.« Others would give Derridan precedence or, like Badiou, favour Deleuze as a contender for this place. Volume Two is adorned with a quote by Foucault himself: »I would like my books to be scalpels, Molotov cocktails or mine belts and for them to fall to ashes after use like a firework.« The book on which this sentence is printed resembles a brick and is still available for use. Volume Three has Foucault say: »Who is fighting against whom? We are all fighting against each other. And there is always something in us that is fighting against something else in ourselves.« How true! On Volume Four he asks us: »What is happening today? What is happening now? And what is this ›now‹ within which we and the others are and that defines the moment in time in which I am writing?« That is precisely what we would all like to know in the present moment.

At the end of his text, Badiou does finally decide to be part of the group he has determined upon and gives a melancholy answer to the question: »I believe that we desired something very particular, and in fact problematic: We wanted to be adventurers of the concept.« The »problematic« highlights the dialectic turn: »After an era of the adventure, there is generally an era of order. That is the problem. This may be understandable - this philosophy had a piratical side to it, or as Deleuze would say, a nomadic one. Yet ›adventurers of the concept‹ might be a formula that could unite us all …«

The next »philosophical moment« is sure to eventuate, perhaps in five hundred years. But the spaces left for radical thought and action are growing smaller, and enemies are shooting up like mushrooms in the form of »freedom«, mini-thinkers, straight minds, neo-capitalists, fundamentalist and military-industrial and curatorial-cultural complexes. So we will soon again have to take the »toolboxes« out of the ashes or from the book shelves and open them.

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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