St. Paul among the Philosophers

1 St. Paul, Founder of the Universal Subject

27 The Figure of Our World What is the figure of our world?· On the one hand, we have the constant extension of the automatisms of capital, which fulfills Marx’s brilliant prediction: the configuration of the world as a global market. This is a figure of abstract homogenization, that is, a generalization of the count unit. In short, it is a singularity that allows for no singularity. All this is nothing else but a singularity of the homogeny that is situated by the paradigm of the general equivalent.· On the other hand, we have a process of fragmentation into closed identities. These identities are drawn from two sources: (1) the insignificance of reality—identity comes to signify insignificance; and (2) the over-significance of mythic imaginary, for example, racial identity, which is the absolute insignificance of the corporal trait, or else the mythic over-significance of religion or origins. But each identification, whether a creation or a contrived fabrication of identity , creates a figure which becomes the material for its being invested by homogenization. The semblant of a non-equivalence is necessary for equivalence to be itself a process of identity. This leads us to a major correlation: any construction of identity is destructive. Capital needs destruction, and even massive destruction, to redevelop. A correlation exists between the process of homogeny and the process of identity: that of the destructive submission of identity to homogeny. Thesetarticulatedhereisorganicallywithouttruth.Ineffect,anyprocess of truth is at variance with the figure of the same. It interrupts the repetition One St. Paul, Founder of the Universal Subject Alain Badiou 28 · Alain Badiou and cannot then be sustained by homogeny. No truth can be sustained by the expansion of homogeny, but neither can it be by the construction of identities, for singularity is universalizable. But universalizable singularity is necessarily at variance both with the singularity constructed from identity and with homogeny. The world is the arena for the play of both axiomatic homogeny (market, capital) and mythological identity. We might say that the world is, in part,aninterplayofthesymbolicandtheimaginaryinresponsetothecollapse of the real. And this eliminates the event, and so fidelity to the event, which is the subjective essence of the truth. The world is then hostile to the process of truth insofar as it resists the universal of identity through homogeny or the adhesion to constructed identities. The symptom of this hostility is an effect of the overlapping of names: where the name of a truth procedure would have its place, another name appears which expels it in the direction of homogeny. The name “culture” thus obliterates the name of “art,” for the cultural can be inscribed within the market. The name “technique” obliterates the name “science ,” as Heidegger said. The word “management” obliterates the word “politics .”Theword“sexuality”obliterates“love.”Thissystemofculture,technique, management, sexuality is the superposition of the registers of homogeny. Take the problem from the point of view of identity. In the case of art, we have a superposition of culture, but since the culture of the group is selfdestined , it is un-universalizable. In the case of science, we have a superposition of the technical; in the case of the political, a superposition of religious determination as “fundamentalism”; in the case of love, the superposition of marriage, of the conjugal. The two systems mirror each other; each is legitimated by the discredit of the other. In fact, there is no superiority of the cultivated, the competent, the managerial, the sexually liberated, over the fanatic believer, submitted to a hypocritical morality. Paul and the Topic of the Discourses Our question is then, Where and how can we hold forth that universal singularities exist? With respect to this we must call on St. Paul, because his question was not different from ours (which explains his conflicts concerning Jewish identity, including that of Christ). For him, if an event has taken place, and if the truth consists in declaring it (and subsequently being faithful to it), it must be held that the truth is evental when it occurs and that it is singular (neither structural, nor axiomatic, nor legal).1 It must also be held that, for the same reason, this truth cannot be reserved only to some, but that St. Paul, Founder of the Universal Subject · 29 it is offered to all, universal, destined to each and every one with no identitary definition.2 It favors no origin. The singularity of the event...