Notre mal vient de plus loin: penser les tueries du 13 novembre by Alain Badiou (review)

Reviews 251 Badiou, Alain. Notre mal vient de plus loin: penser les tueries du 13 novembre. Paris: Fayard, 2016. ISBN 978-2-213-70099-1. Pp. 63. 5 a. On 23 November 2015, Badiou gave a speech about the terrorist attacks that had occurred in Paris on Friday, 13 Nov.At least 130 people were killed, and over 300 were wounded, after bombs and gunfire were used against the public by ISIS operatives at le Stade de France, le Bataclan, three restaurant/bars, and two exterior locations in the 10th and 11th arrondissements. Similarly to the way in which Emmanuel Todd’s Qui est Charlie? challenged the Je suis Charlie movement that had developed in Jan. 2015, after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, Badiou’s work, a transcription of his 23 Nov. speech, counters the common interpretation of the 13 Nov. attacks. Instead of seeing ISIS operatives responsible for those attacks, as being the initial perpetrators of violence against the French, he sees the attacks as the response of a minority disenfranchised by what he calls le capitalisme mondialisé (17, 19). Samir Amin had explored this concept in his 2004 work, The Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World. Not only does 1% of the world possess 46% of its resources, with 50% possessing almost nothing, and not only do France and the United States regularly kill civilians in the Middle East with drones, but the media in the West tends to minimize violence committed against people in the Third World (30, 50, 52). In this sense, Badiou sees the Nov. 2015 attacks as a symptom (Notre mal) of a phenomenon that treats Westerners as human beings, and people in the Third World as functionally meaningless (11). Badiou sees this disregard for people in the Third World as part and parcel of le capitalisme mondialisé of the last 30 years, thus coming from plus loin (17). Badiou’s work has been criticized for seeming to downplay the responsibility of those who committed the attacks, and at times, it does seem that he mostly represents their plight, and not that of those victimized by them. Yet, the consequences of economic inequalities across the globe cannot be denied, nor can the violence inflicted by the West in the Middle East, in direct violation of the standards that the West expects other countries to follow. However, the supposition that the West exploits people in the Third World, and minorities living in the West, through militaristic, economic, and discriminatory means, and the reprehension that ISIS and other terrorist groups deserve for the attacks in the West, are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, Badiou’s controversial work is as necessary as Todd’s, in opening our eyes to the injustices experienced by Muslims in France and worldwide, and in provoking the examination of what Raymonde Carroll calls our évidences invisibles. Even though the injustices resulting from capitalist hegemony cannot be rectified by any one person, perhaps over time, the value of Badiou’s work will be recognized by those in positions to alleviate the severity of its consequences. Jamestown Community College (NY) Michele Gerring ...