| |
|
From a blog, here is interviewed on TV. I've copied across the transcript as well:
The host Frederic Taddéi begins by introducing Badiou as the intellectual in France “most criticised” and also perhaps “most feared” – redouté, feared with a connotation of respected, like redoubtable –
Taddéi: You are feared on account of your influence, though you’re not on television, you don’t reach the mass public usually, but you have influence with students, with intellectuals, you’re professor of philosophy in Paris, you teach philosophy across Europe, also in North and South America, and you are accused of or one suspects you are the last – you’re compared often to Robespierre or Saint Just, that you are last revolutionary thinker.
Badiou: You’re aware I haven’t had anyone’s head chopped off –
Taddéi: Not yet! Your adversaries would say “not yet” –
Badiou: But it’s a comparison - in some ways it’s an honour especially for a philosopher today – you say I am feared, perhaps that’s all the better. Perhaps. Perhaps, I’m not really conscious of it, I pursue my work, I develop my thinking, I assert what I believe is true, etc, it's my job as a philosopher.
Taddéi: …but when you’re compared to Robespierre and Saint Just, this is to say, Alain Badiou, you’d be capable of having people’s heads cut off and that, really, this is in your written works.
Badiou: I don’t get the impression that in reading my work you’d get an immediate urge to cut off heads, no, not really, the the work is for the most part somewhat complex, philosophical, conceptual, it’s perhaps more in the tradition of Plato, or Descartes, or Hegel, but finally the truth is something a bit fearsome, it's that perhaps which inspires fear, more than I do.
Taddéi: You declare, this truth is the return of violence, does this mean that you favour it?
Badiou: No, I don’t announce the return of violence. What I say is that violence is present now. That’s not the same thing. Contrary to what we’re told, our society is a society of violence. I’m involved daily with undocumented workers, with people in the lowest classes in society, and I can tell you they live in a climate of permanent violence that’s done to them, therefore, our society is not peaceful, and the world is even less so. After all, extremely bloody and violent wars are happening on the African continent, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, et cetera, so I assert that violence is here. Violence is here. And one can’t act as if it were not. And therefore, as much in politics as in philosophy, we have to reflect on this present violence.
Taddéi: But are you saying that this quotidian violence that afflicts the oppressed should be responded to with an even greater violence?
Badiou: That’s not exactly what I say, rather that the oppressed, really, have only one weapon. And this is their discipline. They don’t have anything, they have no money, no arms, no power, the only force that they possess is their organisation and discipline. So it’s not for violence that I’m appealing, but for cohesion, organisation and unity.
Taddéi: You’ve also been suspected of anti-Semitism – you organised a conference “on the word Jew”.
Badiou; First of all in fact it’s a lie I never organised any conference on the word Jew, and secondly, this is somewhat serious. The accusation of anti-Semitism is, to my mind, a calumny that is absolutely unbearable. It’s not a word like dogmatic or septic or whatever. It’s a genuine affront, and I’ll tell you I consider those who accuse me of anti-Semitism to be people who seriously insult me. Voilà.
Taddéi: Okay, Alain Badiou, you’ve published a book entitled What is Sarkozy the name of? It’s a question you ask, and not a book really about Nicholas Sarkozy but you ask this question what is Sarkozy the name of and answer it at once, it is the name of fear and war. Fear of whom and war against whom?
Badiou: Well, I think it’s the name of a society that is feaful, in effect, and asks to be protected. I sense in this society a demand for a Master Protector who is of course truly capable of using violence against those of whom one is afraid. This fear arises, I think, from the fact that France, today, after a long glorious history after all, has become a sort of middle rank power, although of course one with substantial riches, still a middle rank power, in a world dominated by emerging giants like China, and India, or the considerably stronger power, the US. And for this reason the future of France is uncertain. We don’t know, nobody knows where this country is headed, it knows it has a history of greatness, it doubts that it has a future of greatness. And in effect this creates a sentiment of fear, a sentiment of entrenchment, protection, and Sarkozy is one of the names of this phenomenon, this demand for protection.
Taddéi: And the war?
Badiou; The war – there is a war on two fronts, today, there is a war waged abroad, we see more and more clearly that Sarkozy is the progressive alignment of France with the wars waged across the globe, involvement in Afghanistan, the progressive submission to the US’s wars notably in Iraq, and a war within, reinforced, a war against the weakest.
Q: Which is to say…?
Badiou: Which is to say those who don’t have papers, who don’t have money, those for whom work is hard and unrewarding, those who come from elsewhere because they can’t live where they’ve come from; all these people become targets of new regulations and oppressive laws, the CESEDA law concerning foreign residents, it’s a law I wouldn’t hesitate to call criminal, a law of segregation, a persecutory law, and we have to demand its abrogation, and organise against it, so in any case Sarkzoy is the name of all this. Before running for President he was after all for a long time the chief of police.
Taddéi: - Interior Minister.
Badiou: As I said.
Taddéi: Fear and war, you say, is Pétainisme –
Badiou: Pétainisme has been a fundamental fact in France since the Restoration of 1815. There are people who prefer vassalisation to internal conflicts; the reaction of people who are afraid of what is happening within the country and to fend off this fear accept constraints, segregations, new persecutions. That's Pétainisme in the most general sense. The case of Pétain incarnates in a particularly pronounced way this general trend because clearly it concerned people who were terribly frightened of the Popular Front and who in the end preferred the German occupation to the continuation of the struggle. At bottom, Pétainisme, it’s the politics of fear. Sarkozy is the soft version.
What do we think of this? |
|
|
