Perhaps there's context here that would make this make a different, better kind of sense. I read a different translation here http://www.lacan.com//thesymptom/?page_id=1031
But it is deeply confused, and perhaps worse. Renouncing "the West" and its tutelage while at the same time invoking Marat and the French Revolution? I have absolutely no problem with excoriating critiques of colonial arrogance, democracy or the inclination to manage uprisings back into forms of restoration. I don't even, quite, have a problem with invoking the Paris Commune and the claim of an absence of leaders (though I see that he hesitates before the question of whether this might be a good or a bad thing). And while I don't entirely eschew the significance of the evental, and I like the emphasis on movement, Badiou's messianic rendition of "the people" and "universal history" gets a bit more than creepy when I read: > with a woman-officer slapping him to make and > We see young female doctors, who have come from the > province to treat the wounded, sleep in the middle of a circle of > fierce young men, and they are more at ease than they've ever been, > knowing that no one will touch a hair on their heads. I cannot say whether the cop being a woman was significant for anyone other than Badiou, to what extent if any this element circulated to give meaning or generate anger. Every other discussion of the suicide that I have read and seen has taken it up as a question of a younger generation (across the Middle East and northern Africa) increasingly impoverished by conditions that are all too clear. On this there's an interesting post here: http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=360 But I will say that an approach which begins this as the story of the humiliation of a man at the hands of a female cop and then proceeds to effuse about women in caring work being protected by "fierce young men" does not suggest to me a desire for revolution. It betrays a desire for restoration. Whatever freedom and equality mean to Badiou, they are certainly overwhelmed by his attachment to fraternity. best, Angela -- //angela.mitropoulos | +61 (0) 413 637 467 | skype: s0metim3s # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
