After a week back home I have read or reread Badiou’s texts in his Les possibles matins de la politique, Interventions 2016-2020. Two things impress me about his concept for L’Ecole des Actes. First of all, he rejects the notion of the “migrant” or the legal or illegal immigrant, as well as the legitimacy of the nation-state on which the concept of immigration is founded. He refers instead to “nomadic proletarians.” The latter term reflects the true condition of a globalized workforce and economy. The nomadic proletarian is never and always other than legitimate, just as the destitute are without rights. They should never be regarded as “illegal.” Second, L’Ecole des Actes attempts to surmount the barrier separating the formally educated from the uneducated while at the same time serving the educational and artistic needs of the proletarian population. All this is said without first-hand knowledge of the school, a deficiency I hope to correct as soon as I’m back in Paris.
When it comes to Badiou’s theories, I find him stimulating and insightful even when I rather tend to disagree. I say this with an insufficient reading of his work, which I am attempting to get through interlibrary loan now. I’m attracted to his concept of l’évènement since it seems to relate to my interest in the conversion experience in life and politics. But whereas Badiou seems to proceed from an objective happening—ranging from the death and resurrection of Jesus to the May-June events of 1968–I am of a mind that such events are more likely to be constructed after the fact, sometimes long after the fact. I’m inclined to the opinion that what looks like an objective event is actually an interpretation that we’ve read into intrinsically meaningless states of affairs. If there are no longer “events,” no longer any compelling conversion experiences, this is because our imagination and knowledge have been vitiated and numbed. Forgetting the past, unversed in serious literature, stupefied by the images on our screens, we are incapable of the deep and responsive experience that is the true matrix of what Badiou calls “the event.” I cannot suppose that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was a matter of “event” (frankly, no one can know what happened back then), but I am convinced that the profound experiences of the Christian mystics and martyrs presuppose their familiarity with the Gospel, with literature that is. By the same token, we always “create” our pivotal events in our reflective imaginations. The best creations reflect the reading and knowledge of their subjects. We are not reflective enough to “experience events” these days.
This realization came over me in the interval of two weeks when I was also a nomadic worker, albeit a very privileged one. It felt as if my fleeting sense had been confirmed: that only the elimination of national boundaries and of private ownership of the means of production could point the way to the green hills beyond the desert in which we have all been condemned to wander aimlessly. Is that utopian? Yes it is, but a mere two centuries ago abolishing slavery was no less utopian. Slavery was indeed a far more venerable institution, deemed every bit as natural as the nation-state, which for its part, strictly speaking, only goes back in time about two centuries and arose as if to replace the role of legal bondage in subordinating the have nots to the haves. Slavery subordinated lesser beings by keeping them down. National boundaries do so by keeping them out. No one should overlook the impact of the Eastern European Jewish refugees in the rise of Nazism. We exhibit the same reflexes. Badiou seems to recognize that horizon that only teased my eye. Now a sharper eye and a quicker mind than my own have confirmed that those green hills of universal humanity can be seen if we look hard enough. Will we ever get there? Or will humankind lose itself erring about in the wastelands and mirages, as our desert becomes ever dryer and more hostile to life? Who knows. But the green hills are there. They are not a mirage.
Yesterday afternoon I had coffee with S. G., an expelled member of the local Democratic Socialists of America. He had been organizing locally around immigrant and worker rights for over fifteen years. Of all the people I have asked, S. G. had the readiest and most convincing answer to the question of what made him an oppositional activist: it was a matter of knowing migrant workers while growing up, and a matter of involvement in the immigrant rights movement that swelled the streets here after the Iraq War demonstrations. For a place of this size, he has found a lot of practical political work to do. From our conversation, I got the impression that he ran afoul of personal conflicts in the Afro-Socialist caucus, having maintained respectful ties with both sides of a split and thus getting attacked by both sides—expelled at one of the few meetings he could not attend. (He had been criticized for “misgendering” two trans comrades, which he describes as having misspoken without any animus or will to offend.) In general, my impression was that he is well-read, thoughtful, and deeply and actively committed to justice. He recognizes the need for organizing the community of color in which he has roots and has launched initiatives in that direction. If the Badiou approach were implemented here, S. G. would no doubt be part of it. It does not bode well for the DSA that it fails to integrate, retain, and promote one of the most grounded and committed local organizers, instead of expelling him and dissolving itself. One factor at work was the need for financial support and the influence of one financial supporter within the organization. Money gets its way.
Signed,
Andrew (Weeks)
Normal Thoughts 