> perfectly understandable, if you ask me. i am still trying to nail
> down how he avoids this, as well, except that i think his
> treatment of forcing comes in
I never really got a good grasp on the forcing idea, maybe because I know nothing about math or set theory or any of that. As I remember, though, forcing is the subjective response to the event that allows for the expansion of the situation, that enacts a disruption of the latter's ceaseless repetition. Forcing is the creating/enacting of the "truth" of the event; i.e., the exhibition of one's faithfulness to it. (Does this sound right? It's been a couple years since I've read this stuff and was not sure I understood it in the first place.)
But there's stuff I wonder about. The situation would seem to be a mediating influence between event and subjectivity, but Badiou insists that the subject does not depend on the situation; it is able to form its subjectivity without a constituent relation with the situation. But what then is the function of the situation--is it mere background, a neutral environment? That's not at all satisfying. Why, if it doesn't affect subjectivity, the need to interrupt its state and functioning? Can a subjectivity be formed all on its own, without reference to anything else? This sounds like extreme idealism to me. The only solution to these questions I see is for a subjective decision, and this decision has to be, as far as I can tell, a heroic one. Put differently, it has to be an informed, revolutionary consciousness. A vanguard, in other words.
I suppose Badiou's answer to this charge is that this where the void comes into play. Every situation has a void, and I guess the subject has to find the void to enact the truth of the event. In some ways I like this idea, of finding a space where the situation is inoperative. But I'm not sure it gets us any farther along, or rather, that it argues against the heroic decisionism that I can only see leading to liberalism, Leninism, or worse. In other words, finding the void suspends the operations of situation, but it doesn't give the subject anything to *use*. The void is a nothing, even if it does exist within a situation. (Besides, how do we know, despite Badiou's insistence otherwise, that every situation has a void?)
All of the above is why I prefer Deleuze and Guattari's lines of flight to the errancy of the void. Lines of flight are surpluses that can't be used by the situation (the state and capitalism), excesses that can't be managed or successfully capitalized. They are produced within the situation and are not transcendental to it. Like the void, lines of flight are immanent, but they also give subjectivity something to work with; they can be ridden and used, even though they can result in death just as easily as escape. Undoubtedly there is a kind of decisionism involved here--which lines to ride, when to ride them, etc.--but it's one based on creativity, experimentation, and contingency, not on consciousness, discernment of the correct conditions, and leadership.
Another part of the problem for me is that Badiou's events are big and noisy. What event are we supposed to be faithful to now? Is it 1968? I can't remember the periodization, but in Badiou they are always epochal. Why should I give a rat's ass about 1968, considering it happened a year before I was born. I agree with PiL: "Still the spirit of '68."
But re. faithfulness and camps and the like. If for Badiou we must be faithful to the event, and if politics is universal, and he avers that, say, 1968 is an event, what happens if I'm unfaithful, or insufficiently faithful, to 1968?
> but i think the answer is also partly in badiou's conception of
> the subject and subjectivity. so it's partly about the subject's
> auto-constitution around fidelity to the event (which can only be an event
> in the context of the subject that experiences or even makes it); and on the
> other hand the resistance that the faithful (if you will) must themselves
> maintain to forcing their truth to the degree of the absolute. or something
> like that. honestly i'm kind of winging it. sorry. but it's helpful for me
> to think through, so i'm exercising a little self-indulgence on this. sorry
> if it's trying.
Not trying at all. Indulge away. It seems to me you are correct in everything you say here. I should say I'm sorry for going on at length too.
> but i agree it is an important question, and one that any
> politics invoking a version of authenticity or faithfulness has to answer.
>
> also note the OP is precisely the sort of organization that has no interest
> in compulsion. at least as far as i can tell.
No, not compulsion. But they also don't shy away from a leadership role, which to me is just as bad. Worse maybe.