Alain Badiou: Live Theory (review)

Oliver Feltham’s Alain Badiou: Live Theory is one of a number of important works published in recent years which explore Badiou’s thinking and interrogate its significance within the field of contemporary European philosophy. Like Peter Hallward’s Subject to Truth (see FS, 58 (2004), 576–77) it aims to present both an introduction to Badiousian thought and a more advanced critical-philosophical engagement with its fundamental tenets. The book is structured around a broadly chronological approach with Badiou’s work being separated out into three distinct periods: the early period of materialist epistemology, the Maoist period, and finally the current period of Badiou’s philosophy, which, for Feltham, opens with the publication of Peut-on penser la politique? in 1985 and L’Être et l’événement in 1988. The guiding thread of Feltham’s analysis is ‘the relationship between the thought of multiplicity and the thought of change’ (p. 3). This focus allows for a sustained engagement throughout with two key aspects of Badiou’s thinking: its formalist approach to the ontological question of multiplicity and its sustained commitment to a transformative politics. Feltham’s approach succeeds well in highlighting the originality of Badiou’s mathematical ontology and its power to think being rigorously in terms of unity and multiplicity. It demonstrates the way in which this appropriation of mathematics develops from Badiou’s early problematization of questions relating to structure, topological consistency and the possibility grounding of heterogeneity within structure. At the same time Feltham defends Badiou’s approach vigorously against potential charges of abstraction and empty formalism by showing the way in which mathematical schematization allows for an engagement with that which is most ‘concrete’ in any situation and for an identification of an emergence of the new. Issues such as the emergence of the new and the need to think being neither as object nor form are arguably common within the field of late twentieth-century French thought and in this context Feltham does much to avoid the excesses of Badiou’s polemic against ‘anti-philosophy’ and the Heideggarian inspired thinking of finitude (he acknowledges, for instance, similarities between Badiou and, say, Derrida or Lacoue-Labarthe (p. 91)). The problems with Live Theory lie more with issues of style and presentation. For instance, although the book openly declares itself to be an introductory work the discussion sometimes relies upon key doctrines of Badiou’s philosophy which have not yet been presented. This may leave the reader who genuinely requires an introduction to Badiou rather mystified. At the same time Feltham’s identification of distinct ‘voices’ in Badiou’s thinking (those of the Eagle, the Mole, and the Owl respectively) can a appear a little abrupt and could benefit from further discursive presentation. One might also question whether the publication of Logiques des mondes (Paris: Seuil, 2006) does not open a subtly different period of Badiou’s thought which can be differentiated from the period of L’Être et l’événement. There is much here for critical debate amongst experienced readers of Badiou and this work certainly stands alongside Hallward’s Subject to Truth as a valuable and welcome contribution to the reception of this important contemporary philosopher.