OOO and Badiou

There are a number of glaring differences between the two approaches, of course, but it is occasionally striking to discover how many features they share in common. On the whole Levi saw this more quickly than I did, but there is one especially jarring congruence in Theory of the Subject— namely, Badiou’s use of indirect presentation and his corresponding use of ‘allusion’ (cf. ‘allure’), a term he draws from Mallarmé. (Anyone who’s read my book Guerrilla Metaphysics will remember the key role of allusion/allure there.)

Consider this statement from page 72 of the delightfully readable Bosteels translation of Theory of the Subject, which would not be out of place in my essay ‘On Vicarious Causation’:

“A term is that which presents the vanishing term to another term, in order together to form a chain… To function as a combinable element amounts to presenting the absent cause to another element.”

“Presenting the absent cause to another element” is exactly what “objects” do for me.

Or on the same page:

“the effect of its lack lies in affecting each written term, forced to be ‘allusive,’ ‘never direct’…”

In my model, of course, all thought, all language, and indeed all relation whatsoever (even between inanimate terms) can only be indirect.

These are very nice passages from Badiou, though there are still a number of flat-out incongruities between the two positions that I’ll be writing about in the near future. To give just one example of a difference, the two dialectics described by Badiou have nothing to do with the two axes of the fourfold that I describe (despite the rampant occurrence of quadruple structures throughout Badiou’s thinking). Badiou’s “structural dialectic” is a horizontal strife between placed forces in the world, while his “historical dialectic” is a vertical one in which the outplace affects structure. There doesn’t seem to be enough going on within the outplace to suit my tastes; the role of the outplace is to mess up structured situations, not to have much internal articulation in its own right. In short, this is not quite an object-oriented model, but another Lacan-inspired model in which the excess or real behind presentation is used as an alibi to cover for what is actually still an idealist position. (Even Meillassoux in my interview of him in the Edinburgh book makes the criticism that just as wobbly chairs are still chairs, wobbly subjects are still subjects.)

The root of the problem may simply be Badiou’s insistence that what is unknown will eventually be known. This is what prevents his ‘outplace’ from being Heidegger’s ‘concealment’.

Nonetheless, I’m generally inclined to say that Theory of the Subject is my favorite book by Badiou.

All right, that kitten is crying again…