i'm undecided on what it means for badiou to 'be an advocate of direct action'. perhaps from the ivory tower and conference facility provide provocations for others? i gues thats what the abolitionists did for slavery----up in those new england white churches talked it up, and then eventually you got J. Brown (godfather of soul) to do something---talking loud, saying nothing.
...........
This explains a lot and helps me understand your obvious (and often repeated) disdain or distaste for conferences...and perhaps any sort of political activity not directly tied to ceaseless movement. I note that your response to Gar Lipow's post about the upcoming Ecoconvergence Conference was the pithy, "such garbage".
Liza Featherstone, Doug Henwood, and Christian Parenti called this "Activistism". It's described in their instructive essay from a few years back, "Action Will Be Taken":
"We can't get bogged down in analysis," one activist told us at an anti-war rally in New York last fall, spitting out that last word like a hairball. He could have relaxed his vigilance. This event deftly avoided such bogs, loudly opposing the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan without offering any credible ideas about it (we're not counting the notion that the entire escapade was driven by Unocal and Lockheed Martin, the "analysis" advanced by many speakers). But the moment called for doing something more than brandishing the exact same signs - "Stop the Bombing" and "No War for Oil" - that activists poked skywards during the Gulf War. This latest war called for some thinking, and few were doing much of that.
So what is the ideology of the activist left (and by that we mean the global justice, peace, media democracy, community organizing, financial populist, and green movements)? Socialist? Mostly not - too state-phobic. Some actvisits are anarchists - but mainly out of temperamental reflex, not rigorous thought. Others are liberals - though most are too confrontational and too skeptical about the system to embrace that label. And many others profess no ideology at all. So over all is the activist left just an inchoate, "post-ideological" mass of do-gooders, pragmatists and puppeteers?
No. The young troublemakers of today do have an ideology and it is as deeply felt and intellectually totalizing as any of the great belief systems of yore. The cadres who populate those endless meetings, who bang the drum, who lead the "trainings" and paint the puppets, do indeed have a creed. They are Activismists.
That's right, Activismists. This brave new ideology combines the political illiteracy of hyper-mediated American culture with all the moral zeal of a nineteenth century temperance crusade. In this worldview, all roads lead to more activism and more activists. And the one who acts is righteous. The activistists seem to borrow their philosophy from the factory boss in a Heinrich Böll short story who greets his employees each morning with the exhortation "Let's have some action." To which the workers obediently reply: "Action will be taken!"
[...]
full at --
<http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Action.html>
Now, let's quote Eric Beck who, reacting to yet another mart outburst decrying academics (or perhaps any reflection at all) very crisply wrote:
Maybe you haven't noticed, but the world is not the same now as it was when pragmatism was first articulated over a century ago. It's a fine philosophy in its way, but things do change, and I appreciate thought that tries to change with it.
[...]
Which is precisely right.
I want serious political thinkers to sit their asses down and try to help us understand our world of not merely capitalism, but capitalism which commands bio-engineering and high speed communication and GPS. This capitalism which simultaneously resists and seeks profit taking from efforts to mitigate climate change. There are new things afoot in the world. Things which won't be understood by grousing about conferences and philosophers.
I see you now mart. Your word smithy complaints -- which, once parsed, boil down to: why aren't we marching? -- are not helpful.
.d.