Archive for September 3rd, 2011
south downs
Should I go for a walk on the South Downs today? It’s cloudy, and there’s work to be done. But….
the badiou supremacy
I’ve spent a lot of time on airplanes lately, some of them reasonably well equipped with infotainment, so among other things I watched some of the Bourne Films… I’ve also been reading a lot of Badiou – not by choice…
Thing is, as you no doubt have noticed, Jason Bourne never stops for a pizza slice or takes a shit, he never has to change his clothes or brush his teeth, and rarely needs to sleep. He only runs… Full forward, all subjective processes seemingly on autodrive. He doesn’t stumble when he speaks in foreign languages, he doesn’t hesitate because his great gift (if also ostensibly his curse) is that he is a permanent amnesiac, locked in a perpetual present tense. In short, he doesn’t think – he simply and automatically does.
Likewise this subject of Badiou’s, formed only in the event and by absolute fidelity to that event, unconscious of the event but instantly faithful to it, can’t have second thoughts or moments of confusion and ambiguity. He can’t quietly think what we all generally doublethink when trying to believe in the novelty of something – all this has happened before, there’s nothing new under the sun. Metanoia is coupe de foudre – blinded by the light, he does not think, he simply does.
They both, in other words, dwell wholly outside of the everyday – the actual state of the world all of the time and for everyone because we are what we are and we’re wired as we are wired. And the one requires as much suspension of disbelieve from its “audience” as the other… But of course the one is the currently most popular theorist of political change, the other a character in a silly series of films….
