EDITED BY EDUARDO CADAVA,
PETER CONNOR, JEAN-LUC NANCY
ROUTLEDGE
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
Jean-Luc Nancy
1 Another Experience of the Question, or Experiencing
the Question Other-Wise 9
Sylviane Agacinski
2 On a Finally Objectless Subject 24
Alain Badiou
3 Citizen Subject 33
Etienne Balibar
4 Who? 58
Maurice Blanchot
5 The Freudian Subject, from Politics to Ethics 61
Mikkel Barch-Jacobsen
6 Voice of Conscience and Call of Being 79
Jean-Franr,;ois Courtine
7 A Philosophical Concept. ... 94
Gilles Deleuze
8 "Eating Well," or the Calculation of the Subject:
An Interview with Jacques Derrida 96
Jacques Derrida
9 Apropos of the "Critique of the Subject" and
of the Critique of this Critique 120
Vincent Descombes
10 Being and the Living 135
Didier Franck
11 Who Comes after the Subject? 148
Gerard Granel
12 The Critique of the Subject 157
Michel Henry
13 Love between Us 167
Luce Irigaray
14 Descartes Entrapped 178
Sarah Ko/man
15 The Response of Ulysses 198
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
16 Philosophy and Awakening 206
Emmanuel Levinas
17 Seisus communis: The Subject in statu nascendi 217
Jean-Franr;ois Lyotard
18 L'Interloque 236
Jean-Luc Marion
19 After What 246
Jacques Ranciere
Name Index 253
About the Editors and Contributors 256
On a Finally
Objectless Subject
Alain Badiou
What does our era enjoin us to do? Are we equal to the task? It
seems to me too
easy to claim that the imperative of the times is one of completion, and that,
as
modern Narratives linking subject, science and History are foreclosed, we must
either explore the formless dis covered this foreclosure bequeaths us or
sustain�
turning back towards the Greek origin of thinking�a pure question. I
propose
instead the following hypothesis: what is demanded of us is an additional
step in
the modern, and not a veering towards the limit, whether it be termed
"post
modern" or whatever. We know, thanks in particular to mathematics, that
making
an additional step represents a singularly complex task as the local status of
problems is often more difficult and muddled than their global status. The predication of an "end" is an enjambment that prohibits resolution when one
is unaware
of how to proceed on to the next step. Rather than ask "what is
there beyond?"
because of methodical distrust of the beyond, I will formulate the question as
follows, on the basis of the hypothesis that modern thinking requires
its continuation: what concept of the subject succeeds the one whose trajectory can be
traced
out from Descartes to Husserl, and which wore thin and fell into ruin between
Nietzsche and Heidegger, as well as throughout the whole of what should be
called
"the age of the poets" (Holderlin, Hopkins, Mallarme, Rimbaud, Trakl,
Pessoa,
Mandelstam, Celan)?
Which amounts to asking: can
we think an objectless subject? In the twofold
sense in which, concerning such a subject, one can neither designate its
correlate
in presentation, nor suppose that it answers to any of thought's objectives. I
would
argue that the process of the destitution of the subject has, over the course
of a
complex history going back at least as far as Kant, been confused with t he
ineluctable process of the destitution of the object. From within the modern
imperative�
to which the predication of an "end" opposes but a dissipated torm
ent�we must
base what succeeds on the fact that thc form of the object cannot in any way
sustain
possible to de-objectify the space of the subject?
If it is possible: What is
thus beyond the subject if not the very same subject
dissociated or subtracted from reflexive jurisdiction, un-constituting, untied
from
all supports unrelated to the process of a truth�of which the subject would be
but
a finite fragment?
I call subject the local or
finite status of a truth. A subject is what is locally born
out.
The "subject" thus
ceases to be the inaugural or conditioning point of legitimate
statements. It is no longer�and here we see the cancellation of the object, as
objective this time�that /or which there is truth, nor even the desirous
eclipse of
its surrcction. A truth always precedes it. Not that a truth exists
"before" it, for a
truth is forever suspended upon an indiscernible future. The subject is
woven out
of a truth, it is what exists of truth in limited fragments. A subject is that
which a
truth passes through, or this finite point through which, in its infinite
being, truth
itself passes. This transit excludes every interior moment.
This is what allows me to deny
that it is necessary�"truth" henceforth being
disjoined or dissociated from "knowledge"�to suppress the category
"subject."
While it is impossible in our era to identify "truth" with a status
of cognitive
statements, it cannot be inferred that we can thereby go beyond what modern
thought (post-Galilean or post-Cartesian) has designated as its own locus using
the
term "subject." Granted: the meaning of the word "truth"
may h an g on the question
of being; still it seems more apposite to make this meaning depend on the
supplementation or exceeding-of-being that I term "event." Does it follow
that the "subject' ' is obsolete? That would be to confuse the classical/unction of the
subject (as
transparent punctuality on the basis of which the true or its limit is
established)
and being, which props up this function (i.e., the finite that, since
Galileo, must
endure truth's infinite nature).
Let us dissociate this being
from its hereditary function.
An irrevocable step forward
has been made through the critique of earlier
concepts of the subject, a critique thoroughly based on the notion that truth
is not
a qualification of knowledge nor an intuition of the intelligible. 1
One must come to
conceive of truth as making a hole in knowledge. Lacan is paradigmatic on this
point. The subject is thus convoked as a border-effect or a delimiting fragment
of
such. a hole piercing.
To conceptualize the subject
outside of any object position makes no sense except
from the point of view of a doctrine of truth that has been so completely
recast as
to go well beyond the critique of correspondence theories of truth, and to out-
radicalize hermeneutics of unveiling. Such a doctrine cannot be laid out here
in its
ontological complexity. I will simply summarize it in four theses, fully aware
though
I am that in philosophy
summary is impracticable; one would better conceive of it
as an axiomatic shortcut. The four theses that follow must thus be solidly
founded
as everything else depends upon them.
(a) A truth is always
post-eventual. 2 Its process begins when a supernumerary
name has been put into circulation extracted from the very void that
sutures every situation to being�by which it has been decided that an
event
has supplemented the situation.
(b) The process of a
truth is fidelity (to the event), i.e., the evaluation, by means
of a specific operator (that of fidelity), of the degree of connection between
the terms of the situation and ihe supernumerary name of the event.
(c) The terms of the
situation that are declared positively connected to the
supernumerary name form an infinite part of the situation, which is suspended on
a future, as this infinity only comes into being through a succession of finite evaluations, and is thus never presented.
(d) If this infinite part
will have avoided (we have here the future anterior as
truth's own temporal regime or register) coinciding with what knowledge
determines as known, consistent, or discerned sets in the situation�if,
thus, the part in question is indiscernible for knowledge, i. e., absolutely
indistinguishable or generic then we will say the post eventual procedure
produces a truth. A truth is therefore, in substance, a procedure of post-eventual
fidelity that will have been generic. In this sense, a truth (indiscernible within knowledge), is the metonymy of the situation's very being i.e.,
of the pure or unnamed multiple into which this being is resolved.
Let us call
"subject" every finite state of a generic procedure.
Negative
Delimitation of the Concept of the Subject
From the preceding definition,
we can infer a whole series of negative conse
quences that make it clear that we are proceeding (th rough discontinuous
continuity)
forward from the classical concept of the subject.
(a) A subject is not a
substance. If the word substance has a meaning, it
designates a multiple that is counted as one in a situation. The intrinsic
indiscernibility into which a generic procedure resolves excludes a subject's
being substantial.
(b) Nor is a subject an
empty point. The void, which is a proper name of being,
is inhuman and a subjective. It is an ontological concept. In addition, it is
clear that a truth is realized as multiplicity and not as punctuality.
(c) A subject is in no
.sense the organizing of a meaning of experience. It is not
a transcendental function. If the word "experience" means anything,
it
designates presentation as such. Now a generic procedure, hinged as it is
on the event that a supernumerary name qualifies, in no way coincides with
(d) A subject is not an
invariant of presentation. The subject is rare in thai the
generic procedure runs diagonally to the situation. One could add that each
subject is rigorously singular, being the generic procedure of a situation
that is itself singular. The statement "There is subject" {il y a du
sujet} is
uncertain or haphazard: it is not transitive with respect to being.
(e) A subject is neither
a result nor an origin. It is the local status of the
procedure, a configuration that exceeds the situation.
Let us now examine the twists
and turns of the subject.
Subjectivization:
Intervention and the
Faithful Connection Operator
The subject is at the core of
a problem of twofold origin concerning fidelity
procedures. We have the name of the event, which I say results from an
intervention,
as well as a faithful connection operator that regulates the procedure and
institutes
truth. To what extent does this operator depend upon the name? And doesn't the
emergence of this operator constitute a second event? Let us tak e an example.
In
Christianity, the Church is that through which connections to and
disconnections
from the Christ event, originally called the "death of God," are
evaluated. As
Pascal says, the Church is thus verily "truth's h i story," as it is
the faithful connection
operator sustaining "religious" generic procedures. But what is the
link between
the Church and Christ? or between the Church and the death of God? This point
is continually under debate and (like the debate concerning the link between
the
Party and the Revolution) has given rise to all kinds of schisms and heresy. One
suspects the faithful connection operator itself of being originally unfaithful
to the
event in which it takes pride.
I will call
subjectivization the emergence of an operator that is consecutive to
the interventional naming that decides the event.
Subjectivization takes the
form of the Two. It is oriented towards the intervention
in the vicinity of the eventual site. But is also oriented towards the
situation by its
coincidence with the rule of evaluation and proximity that grounds the generic
procedure. Subjectivization is the interventional naming from the point of
view
of the situation, i.e., the rule governing the intrasituational effects of
putting a
supernumerary name into circulation.
Subjectivization, i.e., the
singular configuration of a rule, subsumes the Two of
which it consists in the absence of meaning of a proper name. St. Paul for the
Church, Lenin for the Party, Cantor for ontology, Schoenberg for music, but
also
Simon or Claire, should they declare their love, are all designations�made by
the
"one" of a proper name�of the subjectivizing scission between the
name of an
event (the death of God, the revolution, infinite multiples, the destruction of
the
tonal system, or an encounter) and the setting into motion of a generic
procedure
(the Catholic Church, Bolshevism, set theory, serialism, or singular love). The
proper name here designates that the subject, qua situated and local
configuration,
is neither the intervention nor the fidelity operator, but rather the advent of
their
Two, i. e., the incorporation of the event into the situation in the form of a
generic
procedure. The absolute singularity of this Two, dissociated as it is from its
meaning, is shown by the un-signifying nature of the proper name. But
this un
signifying nature also clearly recalls that what the interventional naming
convoked
was the void which is itself the proper name of being. Subjectivization is the
proper
name in situ of this general proper name. It is an instance of the void.
The commencement of a generic
procedure grounds, as its horizon, the collecting
of a tnith. Subjectivization thus is that which makes a tnith possible. It
turns the
event towards the situation's truth for which this event is an event. Thus the
proper
name bears the trace of both the event and the situation, being that by which
one
comes to be for the other, qua generic trajectory of a truth. "Lenin"
is at once the
October Revolution (the eventual component) and Leninism�true-multiplicity of
revolutionary politics for half a century. Similarly, "Cantor" is at
once the madness
that requires the conceptualization of pure multiples and articulates and
relates the
infinite prodigality of being-as-being to its void, and the process of total
reconstruc-
tion of mathematical discursivity (up until Bourbaki and even beyond). The fact
is
that the proper name contains both the interventional naming and the faithful
connection rule.
Subjectivization�as the
aporetic nexus of a name-too-many and an un-known
operation�is what traces in situ the becoming multiple of the tme,
starting from
the nonexistent point at which the event has convoked the void and interpolated
itself between the void and itself.
Randomness, from
^^ch Every
^^th is Woven, is the Subject's Material
If we consider the local
status of a generic procedure, we notice that it depends
on simple encounters. The faithful connection operator prescribes if one or
another
term of the situation is linked or not to the supernumerary name of the event. It
in
no way prescribes, however, that we examine one term before, or rather than,
another. Thus the procedure is regulated in terms of its effects, but entirely
random
in its trajectory. The only empirical evidence in this respect is that the
trajectory
begins just at the outskirts of the eventual site. Everything else is lawless.
There
is thus an essential randomness in the procedure's itinerary. This randomness
is
not visible in its result, which is a truth, for a truth is an ideal
collecting of "all"
the evaluations: it is a complete part. of the situation. But the
subject does not
coincide with this result. Locally there are only illegal encounters, for
nothing
ordains�neither in the name of the event nor in the connection operator�that
one
term be evaluated at a certain moment and in a certain place. If one considers
the
subject's material to be the terms submitted to the fidelity operator, this
material�
as multiple�has no assignable relationship with the rule dividing the positive
results (where connection is established) from the negative ones (where disconnection is established). Conceived of in its operation, the subject is
qualifiable
though singular: it breaks down into a name (of the event) and an operator (of
fidelity). Conceived of in its multiple being, i.e., in the terms that figure
in the
actual evaluations, the subject is unqualifiable in that these terms are
arbitrary
with respect to its twofold qualification.
Of course, a finite series of
evaluations of terms encountered by the fidelity
procedure is a possible object of knowledge. But the active element of the
evaluation�its evaluating�is not, as it is only accidental that the terms evaluated
therein
by the faithful connection operator turn out to be presented in the finite
multiple
of the evaluations. Knowledge can retroactively enumerate the components of
this
multiple, as they are finite in number. As knowledge cannot, at that very
moment,
anticipate any meaning whatsoever of their singular regrouping, it cannot
coincide
with the subject whose whole being is in the encounter with terms within a
random
trajectory. Knowledge never encounters anything.3 It presupposes
presentation,
representing it in language by discernment and judgment. That which, on the
contrary, constitutes the subject is the encounter with its material, though
nothing
in its form (the name of the event and the fidelity operator) orders this
material. If
the subject has no other being in-situ than the multiple terms it encounters
and
evaluates, its essence�having to include the randomness ofthese encounters�is
rather the trajectory that links them. Now this incalculable trajectory comes
under
no determination within knowledge.
There is, between the
knowledge of finite regroupings, their principled discernibility, and the subject of the fidelity procedure, this indifferent-difference
that
distinguishes the result (finite multiples of the situation) from the partial
trajectory
of which this result is a local configuration. The subject is
"between" the terms the
procedure regroups, while knowledge is the retrospective totalization of these
terms.
The subject is neatly
separated from knowledge by randomness. It is randomness
vanquished term by term, but this victory, subtracted from language, is accomplished only as truth.
Subject and Truth:
Indiscernibility and Nomination
I axiomatically stated that
"a-truth"�infinitely gathering the terms positively
evaluated by the fidelity procedure�is indiscernible in the language of the
situa
tion. It is a generic part of the situation.
As the subject is a local
configuration of the procedure, it is clear that truth is
equally indiscernible "for it." For truth is global. "For
it" means exactly that a
subject that effectuates a truth is nonetheless incommensurate to it, the
subject
being finite, truth being infinite. Moreover, the subject, being within the
situation,
can only know (i.e., encounter) terms or multiples presented (counted as one)
in
this situation. And finally, the subject can only construct his idiom
[langue] out of
combinations between the supernumerary name of the event and the language [langage] of the situation. It is in no way assured that this idiom will
suffice to
discern a truth, a truth being in any case indiscernible by the resources of
the
language of the situation alone. One must absolutely abandon every definition
of
the subject that would assume that it knows the truth or is adjusted to it. Being
the
local moment of the truth, the subject fails to sustain its global adjunction. Every
truth transcends the subject precisely because its whole being consists in
supporting the effectuation of that truth. The subject is neither consciousness
nor unconsciousness of the true.
The singular relationship of a
subject to the truth whose procedure it supports is
the following: the subject believes that there is a truth, and this belief
takes the
form of knowledge. I term this educated belief confidence.
What does confidence mean? The
fidelity operator locally discerns connections
and disconnections of multiples of the situation with or from the name of the
event.
This discerning is an approximative truth, for the terms positively
connected are
yet to come�in a truth. This "yet to come" is the distinctive
characteristic of the
subject who judges. Belief here is the yet-to-come that goes -by the name
of truth.
Its legitimacy derives from
the fact that the name of the event, having supplemented the situation with a paradoxical multiple, circulates in the evaluations
as
that on the basis of which the void�as latent and wandering being of the
situation�
has been convoked. A finite series of evaluations thus possesses, in a manner
at once
effective and fragmentary, the being-in-situ of the situation itself. This
fragment
materially pronounces the yet-to-come for, though it is locatable by knowledge,
it
is the fragment of an indiscernible trajectory. Belief consists merely in the
fact that
the encounters' randomness is not vainly gathered up by the faithful connection
operator. Held out as a promise by the event alone, belief represents what is
generic
of the true as possessed in the local finitude of the stages of its trajectory.
In this
sense the subject is self-confidence, in that he does not coincide with the
retroactive
discernibility of these fragmentary results. A truth is posited as the infinite
determi-
nation of an indiscernible of the situation, the latter being the
intrasituational global
result of the event.
That this belief may take the
form of knowledge results from the fact that every
subject generates namings. Empirically, this point is born out. What one
can most
explicitly connect with the proper names that designate a subjectivization is
an
arsenal of words that make up the deployed matrix of fidelity marks. Consider
"faith," "charity," "sacrifice," and
"salvation" (St. Paul), or "party," "revolution,"
and "politics" (Lenin), or "sets," "ordinal
numbers," and "cardinal numbers"
(Cantor), and everything that then articulates, ramifies, and stratifies these
words.
What is their particular function? Do they simply designate terms presented in
the
situation? In that case they would be redundant as concerns the established
language
of the situation. One can in fact distinguish ideological sects from truth's
generic
procedures on the basis of the fact that whereas the words used by such sects
only
replace�through meaningless shifts�those declared appropriate by the situation,
the names used by a subject in supporting a generic truth's local configuration
generally have no referent in the situation. They do not thus double
over the
established language. But what purpose do they then serve? They are words that
clearly designate terms, but terms that "will have been" presented in
a new situation,
one that results from the adjunction of an (indiscernible) truth of the
situation to
that same situation.
Belief is sustained by the
fact that with the resources of the situation�its
multiples and its language�a subject generates names whose referents are in the
future anterior. Such names will have been assigned referents or meanings when
the situation will have come to be in which the indiscernible, which is only
represented (or included), is finally presented, as a truth of the former
situation.
On the situation's surface, a
generic procedure draws attention to itself above all
by the nominal aura that surrounds its finite configurations: the
subject. He who is
not involved in extending the procedure's finite trajectory�who was not
assessed
positively regarding his connection to the event�generally considers the names
to
be empty. He obviously recognizes them, as these names are fabricated on
the basis
of terms of the situation. The names with which a subjectsurrounds himself are
not indiscernible. But the outside observer, noticing that the names are mostly
lacking in referents in the situation as it is, considers that they make up an
arbitrary
and contentless language. Which explains why revolutionary politics are always
thought to involve utopian (i.e., unrealistic) elements, scientific revolutions
are
greeted with skepticism or viewed as nonexperimentally confirmed abstractions,
and lovers' babble is cast aside as infantile madness by prudent people. Now
these observers are, in a certain sense, right. The names generated�or rather
composed�by a subject are suspended, as concerns their meaning, upon the yet-
to-come of a truth. Their local use is to sustain the belief that the terms
positively
polled designate or describe the approximation of a new situation in which the
truth
of the actual situation will have been presented. Every subject is thus
locatable by
the emergence of a language inside the situation, whose multiple referents are,
however, conditioned by an as yet uncompleted generic part.
Now a subject is separated
from this generic part (of this truth) by an infinite
series of random encounters. It is entirely impossible to anticipate or to
represent
a truth, as it comes to be only in the course of evaluations or connections
that are
incalculable, their succession being solely ruled by encounters with the terms
of
the situation. It follows that, from the subject's point of view, the
referentiality of
the names remains forever suspended upon the uncompletable condition of a
truth.
It is only possible to say that if such and such a term, when it will have been
encountered, turns out to be positively connected to the name of the event,
then
such and such a name will be likely to have a certain referent, for the
generic part
that remains indiscernible in the situation will have such and such a
configuration
or partial property. A subject is that which uses names to make hypotheses
about
truth. But as it is itself a finite configuration of the generic procedure from
which
a truth results, one can equally maintain that a subject uses names to make
hypotheses about itself, "itself' meaning the infinite of which it is the
finite. An
idiom[1a langue] here is the fixed order in which a finitude attempts to
postulate�
within the condition of the finite effectuated by the finite�a referentiality
yet-to-come. Finitude is the very being of truth in the combination of current finite
evaluations and the future anterior of a generic infinity.
One can easily show that this
is the status of names such as "communism,"
"transfinite," "serialism," or names/nouns used in a
declaration of love. Let us note
that these names can support the future anterior of a truth (be it religious,
political,
mathematical, musical, or existential) in that they combine local evaluations
(predications, statements, works, addresses) and (re)appropriated or recast names,
already available in the situation. They slightly shift the established
meanings so as
to leave the referent empty, the referent that will have been filled if the
truth comes
to be as a new situation (the reign of God, the emancipated society, absolute
mathematics, a new musical order with a range comparable to that of the tonal
order, a thoroughly amorous life, etc.).
A subject is that which fends
off the generic indiscernibility of a truth�a truth
it effectuates in discernible finitude by an act of naming that leaves its
referent in
the future anterior of a condition. A subject is thus, by the good graces of
names/
nouns, at once the real of the procedure (the assessor of the
assessments) and the
hypothesis of that which its unachieved result would introduce once again
into
presentation. A subject emptily names the universe yet-to-come that is obtained
from the fact that an indiscernible truth supplements the situation. It is
concurrently
the finite real, the local stage of this supplementation. Naming is only empty
insofar
as it is pregnant with what its own possibility sketches out. A subject is the
antonym4
of an empty idiom [langue].
Notes
1. For the
"axiomatic" theses on truth, I refer the reader to my book L'etre
et Vevinement (Paris: Seuil,
1988) of which this article is in many respects a fragment.
2. "Eventual"
will always be used here in the sense of "having to do with an
event."
3. One would have to
follow this up, using the notion of a "return to knowledge,"
by the study of the
dialectic truth/veridicality whose subject is the forcing point.
4. A term in discourse
that designates itself.