Alain Badiou on The Possibility of a New Real

Nexus Conference 2012 'How to Change the World?'
Keynote Lecture by Alain Badiou, part 1
December 2012, Amsterdam
Revolution is of all times. Man in revolt, who fights against the injustice of those in power and aims for a better world, has always existed. In our world, we see the rekindling of the revolutionary fire: movements such as Occupy, the Arab Spring and the South European indignados rebel against the powers that be. The same goes for populist political parties and groups like the Tea Party. Which ideal is worth fighting for? And why should the world be changed?
During the 2012 Nexus Conference, prominent international speakers discuss the question how we can change the world. Is a better world really possible? Is man truly free, or does he allow those in power to manipulate him, and commercialism to corrupt him all too easily? How can change be achieved? And what should our world come to look like?
www.nexus-instituut.nl

[@RYBATUGA]

Going beyond such separation is directly linked to the Symbolic taking into account Ranciere’s distinction between sociological class and symbolic class. Therefore, the Event produces a change in the Symbolic precisely as Wittgenstein said in Tractatus about the only real possibility of change being the change of limits.

[@pascalmassie4706]

Most interesting (at least to me) is Badiou's assumption that the event reveals a reality that was already there in hiding. If it is construed as revelation, the "new" is then never truly a disruption. The event presupposes itself. Isn't it a case of the retrospective illusion of the possible Bergson talked about?

[@danielsacilotto6235]

I think it is a gloss on the actual ontology/phenomenology. Ontologically, an event concerns the interruption with the state of the situation and the beginning of a truth procedure, which in set-theoretical terms implies the construction of the generic, which imposes an infinite task identified with a process of subjectivation. Thus, the subject is defined as a finite part or local enquiry in what is an infinite truth procedure. Phenomenologically, an event is a strong singularity, which implies the transition of a multiple in a world (an object) from appearing with minimal intensity as the 'inexistent' of a world to maximal intensity (the truth produced by the event).

[@user-ni5gx3pf5q]

Deleuze.

[@AMN3SiAc20]

It is not a revelation, it is a bringing into the surface of the world, something that was there but with minimal existence..I guess closer to the notion of sublation. this bringing in the surface is a disruption. And in any case I think that the event is not the most important point here, but its consequences.