But there is actually nothing new here, right? I mean it is basically the sense that Marx saw in Feuerbach's species being, i.e. being aware of yourself as a member of a species, of the entire human species:
e.g. "Only a being to whom his own species, his characteristic mode of being, is an object of thought can make the essential nature of other things and beings an object of thought."
http://marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/essence/ec01_1.htm
I'm attracted to this as well as a sort of rational subversion of theology, but in advocating for it, Badiou seems to forget the movement that claimed the mantle of Marxism in between the movements he mentioned, which is the one that eventually ruined the term humanism for everyone, i.e. Stalin and the idea of Humanism as critiqued by Badiou's buddy Althusser.
Maybe in the remainder of the article he makes this point, and maybe bringing it up as a sort of political as opposed to ontological project has some other potential, but here this just sounds like a more intellectual version of Obama. In fact, though he appeals to the idea of unity amongst the laboring classes, he doesn't advocate any change in the current configuration--Africans will be in the kitchen, Morrocans will be digging the holes, women (veiled or otherwise) will be caring for children: but you see, we'll realize that they are all human, just like Badiou. And why? Because they also inhabit the same geographic entity called "the world." They share space with Badiou and must also eat, sleep and shit. Once we/he realizes that...what? We'll make sure they aren't shitting in the same room that they cook my food? I mean I try very hard to practice this in general--to interact with everyone as another human being. But what does this do other than make that interaction slightly more civil than other wise? I think someone critiqued an earlier incarnation of this by mentioning something about changing the world.
For this, it seems that Badiou is speaking to the wrong audience. What would be more reasonable would be for him to go into the kitchen and remind this hypothetical African that the people he is serving are humans just like him and ask why he's subordinating himself to them. He'll likely say he has little choice, he might even feel some Weberian sense of pride in his work, etc. But pointing out the miserable aspects of his condition, maybe even making him feel guilty as a human for allowing himself to subsist in this way while others ate the rich food at Badiou's table, contemplating their common humanity with the plebs in the kitchen. And that guilt would likely be far more productive than the brand of liberal guilt Badiou seems to be peddling: though in this case, productive might also mean more dangerous.
In this, I think the idea of Feuerbach that realizing our individuality is only possible through our consciousness of our species being is more eloquently stated (and the means of its realization more forcefully advocated) by Oscar Wilde in his essay, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism." [apologies if this is some fantastic faux pas in the history of Marxian debates, but I like the essay] After criticizing charity as the "use [of] private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property" he speaks of what would be better about socialism. The first part is just a nice passage of Wilde's wit, but I am mostly thinking in general about his declaration that "Socialism itself will be of value simply because it will lead to Individualism" and his demand that people be told that their lives are relatively miserable (or at least that people are getting rich off their backs) if they don't already realize it.
BLOCKQUOTE: At present, in consequence of the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to develop a certain very limited amount of individualism. They are either under no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to choose the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them and gives them pleasure. These are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the men of culture - in a word, the real men, the men who have realised themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation. Upon the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor, and amongst them there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or civilisation, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life. From their collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity. But it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is poor is in himself absolutely of no importance. He is merely the infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes him: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he is far more obedient.
Of course, it might be said that the Individualism generated under conditions of private property is not always, or even as a rule of a fine or wonderful type, and that the poor, if they have not culture and charm, have still many virtues. Both these statements would be quite true. The possession of private property is very often extremely demoralising, and that is, of course, one of the reasons why Socialism wants to get rid of the institution. In fact, property is really a nuisance. Some years ago people went about the country saying that property has duties. They said it so often and so tediously that, at last, the Church has begun to say it. One hears it now from every pulpit. It is perfectly true. Property not merely has duties, but has so many duties that its possession to any large extent is a bore. It involves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless bother. If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it. The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg. No; a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and rebellious is probably a real personality, and has much in him. He is at any rate a healthy protest. As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid. I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under these conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.
However, the explanation is not really so difficult to find. It is simply this. Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them. What is said by great employers of labour against agitators is unquestionably true. Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation. Slavery was put down in America, not in consequence of any action on the part of the slaves, or even any express desire on their part that they should be free. It was put down entirely through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in Boston and elsewhere, who were not slaves themselves, nor owners of slaves, nor had anything to do with the question really. It was, undoubtedly, the Abolitionists who set the torch alight, who began the whole thing. And it is curious to note that from the slaves themselves they received, not merely very little assistance, but hardly any sympathy even; and when at the close of the war the slaves found themselves free, found themselves indeed so absolutely free that they were free to starve, many of them bitterly regretted the new state of things. To the thinker, the most tragic fact in the whole of the French Revolution is not that Marie Antoinette was killed for being a queen, but that the starved peasant of the Vendee voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of feudalism. END BLOCKQUOTE
http://libcom.org/library/soul-of-man-under-socialism-oscar-wilde
Perhaps he gives a bit too much credit to the agitators, but in any case, if there is a group that Badiou should be preaching about common humanity to it isn't the exploiters--who'll likely just see it as either a charming philosophical quandary or further shocking proof of the need to build those walls higher--but the exploited, that is, if he hopes to do anything more than practice a thought experiment with us. I understand fully the cultural problems of this--i.e. the imposition of a certain "western" notion of standards, for instance, that activists asking for labor and environmental standards in trade agreements are imposing their belief system on a different culture. But since this kind of claim is usually made alongside the imposition of a model of wage labor, export oriented commodity production, and finance driven foreign direct investment, it seems like a bit of a disingenuous critique.
I find it strange that, despite his supposed attention to the problem of capitalism in labor, the difference he sees between himself and the people who are serving him is in terms of everything but economic class: "These people, different from me in terms of language, clothes, religion, food, education..." I'm not saying that should be the only category, but it does seem odd that he'd leave it out.
I obviously wasn't writing enough on my dissertation today.
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