What is politics for Alain Badiou? On the acontecimental recomposition of Marxism and some of its paradoxes.

Abstract

This article aims to clarify Alain Badiou's conception of politics in relation to what he himself called the "recomposition of Marxism". That is to say, we are interested in showing how Badiou, without leaving aside an objective of social emancipation, dissociates himself from the conception of traditional Marxism which resulted, among other things, in a mechanistic vision of history, in the substantialization of the political subject as proletariat and in the conception of communism as an inexorable future. For this Badiou elaborates, from his first texts, a philosophy of hazard and of the event that breaks with any linear determination of time and, therefore, with a predetermined specification of the subjects and the political procedures. However, although Badiou emphasizes the eventual and, therefore, novel character of politics, conceptually he starts from preconstituted concepts such as those of proletariat and communism, which leads to tension in his work, beyond the redefinition to which he submits them. In this way, we want to detail Badiou's political position around this tension and even indecision where, simultaneously, the notions of proletariat and communism are summoned and disrupted. For this purpose, starting from a chronological analysis of the French author's works, we divide the article into four sections. In the first one, we point out how this philosophy of hazard arises. In the second, we delve into the difference between the political and the political, and how the concept of the proletariat is situated in this disjunction. In the third, we touch on the thorny issue of communism. Finally, we offer some conclusions in which we ask ourselves if it will not be necessary to delve deeper into the radical character of political events, in such a way that the notions, and even the words of proletariat and communism, would have to be further disrupted.