“Trespassing. Alain Badiou, Politics and Philosophy”

In Badiou’s own classification of his writings, he lists these texts among his “political essays.” That their author considers them as such underscores the importance he attaches to separating philosophy from its “conditions.” But are they not also philosophical tracts? In any event, they are the writings of an eminent philosopher and unfold an original conceptual configuration. Though they cannot be taken as writings on “political philosophy”—Badiou himself is dismissive of such a definition—in what sense then can texts undoubtedly articulating philosophical concepts be called political? What can we take as criterion in marking the divide between philosophy and politics in these texts? Pursuing the answers to these questions will, however, require a rethinking of the entire conundrum. It is precisely the rereading of these writings that prompted me to take this detour, which I would like to offer here in a preliminary way by looking closely at the issue of the relation between politics and philosophy, or, better, between the organizational inventions in modern revolutionary politics and what I shall view as a series of trespassings into philosophy.