The fate of the generic

Marx with Badiou

Bruno Bosteels

pp. 211-226

in: Jernej Habjan, Jessica Whyte (eds), (Mis)readings of Marx in continental philosophy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Abstract

Alain Badiou opens one of his most recent books, The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings, with an affirmation that to many of his long-time readers may have come as a surprise: "Here, without concerning myself with opponents and rivals, I would like to say that I too am a Marxist — naively, completely and so naturally that there is no need to reiterate it." (Badiou, 2012b, p. 8) To readers of his older works this affirmation indeed may seem surprising insofar as Badiou devotes many pages in these works to a sustained reflection upon the undeniable crisis of Marxism. Such a reflection not only takes the form of a critique of Stalinism, marked by Badiou's notorious fidelity to Maoism, it also goes much further to declare a certain end of the referentiality of Marxist discourse in general. For example, in Theory of the Subject, which corresponds to Badiou's seminar between January 1975 and June 1979 and which, when it is finally published in 1982, constitutes a belated summa of his peculiar version of French Maoism, he writes: "Yes, let us admit it without detours: Marxism is in crisis; Marxism is atomized. Past the impulse and creative scission of the 1960s, after the national liberation struggles and the cultural revolution, what we inherit in times of crisis and the imminent threat of war is a fragmentary and narrow assemblage of thought and action, caught in a labyrinth of ruins and survivals."

Cited authors

Marx Karl

Badiou Alain