The Incident at Antioch

by Alain Badiou

  So this can be summarized in a very simple manner: The beginning of the construction of a new truth is an event; the subjective process of that sort of construction is the organization of the consequences of the event; and the product, the final product, is something that’s universal in a precise sense, which I won’t explain right now, but we can really define in what sense the result is universal. These same three points are explained in a very pure way by Paul. First, an event: the resurrection of Christ. Then a subjective process: faith, faith in that sort of event. And then the organization of the consequences of the event, which is a subjective construction, that is, a debate, maybe an objective one, in the form of the Church. So it’s the big discussion in the field of Christianity. And the universality of the results, which is very fundamental in Paul, that is, the new faith is for everybody: it’s not for Jews, it’s not for Romans, it’s not for Greeks, it’s not for males, it’s not for females, it’s really for everybody, i.e., the advance embodied in Paul’s very famous sentence: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female.” All categories, social differences are dissolved from the point of view of the construction of the truth.

  So we can understand this theory as a particular new religious thought, certainly we can. But we also can understand this theory as an abstract formalization of what the process of the truth is, with religious words naturally, but the general formalization is good enough for any truth. And it’s not a contradiction, because when you interpret all that as a new religious construction you assume the formalization itself. You assume, in fact, that the new religious conviction involves an event at the beginning, a subjective process with faith at the heart of the process itself, and a universal result. And so it’s not a contradiction but a clear difference of interpretation that we have a common path, we assume we have something in common with the religious interpretation that is a formalization. And so it’s the same idea, the same abstract or formal idea concerning what a new truth is. It’s not the opposition between the Catholic interpretation and the Protestant interpretation; it’s the difference between an interpretation that assumes the signification of the words themselves, “the resurrection,” “God,” “the son,” and so on, and an interpretation that’s at a purely formal level, which says that Paul is not only the apostle of a new religion but is also the philosopher of the new formal conception of what a universal truth is.

  WB: One final question about political Paulinism. I mentioned earlier these lines in my introduction to this conference, lines that have been haunting me from your essay Rhapsody for the Theatre: 4 namely, that “events always involve the surprising emergence of a strange grouping of characters” and also that genuine political theater always stages something like “a heresy in action.” So for the readers of this text, or for the audience of this text’s future performance, what do you hope the performance of Paulinism can incite today?

  AB: That’s a political question, directly: What is the new grouping of today? I can say something about that concerning the situation in France perhaps, the political situation in a more limited sense. You know, I think that our societies, the societies of the Western world, the rich societies are becoming increasingly poor today. They’re exposed to disaster. But in their general existence, I think there are four groups—I don’t use the word “class” because it’s too classical here—four components, if you like, of our societies, which can support some possibilities of revolt. There are four groups that are able, in some circumstances, to play a role in the direction of real change, the form of a movement of revolt. First, the educated youth, the students, in universities, on campuses, in high schools, and so on. Second, the youth in the banlieues, the poor suburbs. Third, what I’ll call the ordinary workers, the great mass of people who are not absolutely poor, nor are they at all rich, who work hard, experience precariousness at times, and so on. And fourth, the workers who come from other countries, immigrants, including undocumented workers, and so on.

  We can say that, in France, there exist different movements with respect to these four groups: for example, many student demonstrations about many issues, riots by youth in the banlieues, with cars burned and so on, a sort of violent revolt without any continuity. There are the big demonstrations of ordinary workers—in December 1995 in France, for example, with millions of people, lasting many weeks. And there are also organizations and big demonstrations by immigrants and workers. So all four of these groups are capable of revolt. But the point is that that sort of revolt is practically always the revolt of one of these four components. And so I’d say that something like this is your idea of a new grouping. I name “revolt” or, simply, “movement,” when there are demonstrations, riots, and so on of one of these groups. But politics begins when we have something that’s not reducible to revolt or movement because there are two, three, or four components or groups involved in the movement. So politics is really the construction of a new grouping that’s not reducible to the four groups. And politics always involves creating a passage, a passage between one group and another group.

  So a “surprising grouping” is a mixture of two, three, or four groups that are representative of the components of our society. One by one we have only revolt or movements, but when we have something beyond one by one we have a political possibility. A very important part of the action of the State is to create the pure impossibility of something of that sort, to create the impossibility of an alliance between two or more components of the social organization. On this point I have proof. I have the proof that many laws, many decisions of the State, many activities of the police, and so on are entirely organized not only by the possibility of preventing a movement, and so on, but more important, by creating the impossibility of politics, if we name “politics” the creation of a passage between two different groups. So the situation today is that, in opposition to that sort of activity of the State, politics involving two components sometimes exists—in France at least; I can’t say anything about here—for example, an alliance, limited but real, between some students and some workers who come from other countries. The movement of undocumented workers in France, which is a significant movement, with enormous difficulties, is really a movement that’s a mixture, an alliance between some intellectuals, some students, and some workers from Africa, and it’s something that has existed now for more than ten years; it’s not something that has come and gone. Sometimes there’s also a relationship between a fraction of the students and ordinary workers; that’s been the case for the past three years.

  So the relationship between two groups, which is the beginning of a new grouping, hence the beginning of politics, exists in a limited way, but exists. The union of all four groups would be the revolution, naturally, which is why the State creates the absolute impossibility of such a union. I don’t know any circumstances in which the union of all four components really exists. Maybe it’s only in extraordinary circumstances that something like that is possible—war, for example. This is a lesson of the past century, because the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the various popular liberation movements, and so on, were all in the form of war. So the question is also: What is revolutionary politics when it’s not war but peace? And we don’t know, really. We don’t have any example of a complete union of the different popular components of the situation without that sort of terrible circumstances, exceptional circumstances, like war.

  So the political problem today is really, first—I agree with you—one of a new grouping, and the problem is probably how to go from two to three, something like that. Two exists in some limited fashion, but there’s the question of the passage from two to three, and three perhaps creates the possibility of four, the possibility of global change. So my answer, my complete answer is that we can define precisely what the beginning of politics is, which is always to create a small passage from one group to another group, and thus a small, real novelty in the organization of politics. But we
also know what the current stage of all this is: the passage from two to three, in my opinion. Four is an event. Four is the number of an event. And three is the number of new forms of organization. One is nothing, movement and revolt. Two is the beginning of politics. Three is the beginning of new forms of organization. And four is change. So we can hope.

  NOTES

  1. This interview, which has been edited for publication, took place at the Western Infirmary Lecture Theatre, University of Glasgow, on February 13, 2009, and was conducted as part of “Paul, Political Fidelity, and the Philosophy of Alain Badiou: A Discussion of The Incident at Antioch,” a conference at the University of Glasgow, February 13–14, 2009. The interview was immediately preceded by the first public reading of scenes of the play in English.

  2. Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 1.

  3. Saint Paul, 1.

  4. Alain Badiou, “Rhapsody for the Theatre: A Short Philosophical Treatise,” trans. Bruno Bosteels, Theatre Survey 49 (2008):187–238.

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  INDEX

  Page numbers refer to the print edition but are hyperlinked to the appropriate location in the e-book.

  Aeschylus, xxv

  Ahmed Gets Angry (Ahmed se fâche; Badiou), viii, xxi

&nb
sp; Ahmed the Philosopher (Ahmed philosophe; Badiou), viii, ix, xxi, 134n4

  Ahmed the Subtle (Ahmed le subtil; Badiou), vii, viii, ix, xxi. See also The Pumpkins

  Almagestes (Badiou), xxi

  Amphitryon (Plautus), ix

  Antigone, xliii

  Antioch, xv, xxviii, 132n18; incident at, xi, xxix, xlvi, 123n1

  Aperghis, George, vii

  Arianism, xxxi

  Aristophanes, ix

  Arnim, Bettina von, 130n62

  atheism, xi, xxxix, 128n52, 134n1, 143

  Athena, 128n46, 130n65

  Auden, W. H., xxxix

  Avare (The City), xxxvii–xxxviii, xli–xlii, 124n14

  banlieues (poor suburbs), xiv, xv, xl, xlii, 123n3, 148

  Barnes, Djuna, 130n62

  Being and Event (Badiou), xxxiv, li, 123n13, 138

  Benjamin, Walter, xxvii, xxxvi, 122n9

  Bérénice (play; Racine), 124n7

  Besme, Isidore de, xxxvii, xli

  Besme, Lambert de (The City), xxxvii–xxxviii, xli, xliii, xlvi

  Bible, xiv, 124n9; Corinthians, xxx, 121n2(Intro.), 133n24; “incident at Antioch” in, xxix, xlvi, 123n1

  Blanton, Ward, ix, 142–50

  Boyer, Élisabeth, viii

  Break of Noon (Partage de midi; Claudel), xxxi, 121n3

  Brecht, Bertolt, xxxvi

  Britannicus (play; Racine), 126n24

  Calme bloc ici-bas (Badiou), xxi

  Camille (Incident), xiv, 126n27

  Cantor, Georg, xxxiii

  Caravaggio, Michelangelo da, xliii, 127n41

  Catherine the Second (Catherine the Great), 130n62