> And his point is worth taking seriously, though few people want to do so, fixating either on his choice of words or his celebrity instead.
What are its implications for his earlier suggestion that slum-dwellers might be the leading candidates for "the position of 'universal individual'”?
Then, he pointed to the fact that they are" "'freed' from all substantial ties, dwelling in a free space, outside the police regulations of the state" in elaboration of "how many features of slum dwellers fit the good old Marxist determination of the proletarian revolutionary subject."
"what if the new proletarian position is that of the inhabitants of slums in the new megalopolises? ... While, of course, one should resist the easy temptation to elevate and idealize the slum dwellers into a new revolutionary class, one should nonetheless, in Badiou’s terms, perceive slums as one of the few authentic 'evental sites' in today’s society – the slum-dwellers are literally a collection of those who are the 'part of no part,' the 'surnumerary' element of society, excluded from the benefits of citizenship, the uprooted and dispossessed, those who effectively 'have nothing to lose but their chains.' It is effectively surprising how many features of slum dwellers fit the good old Marxist determination of the proletarian revolutionary subject: they are 'free' in the double meaning of the word even more than the classic proletariat ('freed' from all substantial ties, dwelling in a free space, outside the police regulations of the state); and they are a large collective, forcibly thrown together, 'thrown' into a situation where they have to invent some mode of being-together, and simultaneously deprived of any support in traditional ways of life, in inherited religious or ethnic life-forms." http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2007/2007-March/005216.html
Ted