Alain Badiou's transitory theatre - Loughborough University

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Title………………ALAIN BADIOU'S TRANSITORY THEATRE……………………………………………..
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ALAIN BADIOU'S TRANSITORY THEATRE
A Doctoral Thesis
by
FRÉDÉRIC DALMASSO
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the award of
Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University
October 2011
© Fred Dalmasso 2011
CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY
This is to certify that I am responsible for the work submitted in this thesis, that the
original work is my own except as specified in acknowledgments or in footnotes, and
that neither the thesis nor the original work contained therein has been submitted to this
or any other institution for a degree.
……………………………………………. ( Signed )
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Alain Badiou’s Transitory Theatre

Table of contents

List of abbreviations 2

Introduction 4

Methodology 23

I - Risks of suture between theatre and philosophy 29

II - Badiou’s theatre dialectics

1) Badiou’s Mallarméan subtractive path 54

2) Theatrical State 63

3) Ethics of play 82

4) Theatre-idea 108

5) Spectator-subject and ideation process 120

III – Badiou’s militant theatre

1) Collective subject in L’Écharpe rouge 160

2) Withdrawn politics in Incident at Antioch 199

Conclusion 228

Bibliography 234

1
The following abbreviations have been used to refer to Badiou’s work:

AS = Ahmed le subtil1
AP = Ahmed philosophe
ASF = Ahmed se fâche
BE = Being and Event
CN = Conditions
CCBT = ‘Can Change be Thought’
DIA = ‘A Discussion of and around Incident at Antioch’
DO = D'un Désastre obscur sur la fin de la vérité d'état
DPAP = ‘De la philosophie à l'art et à la politique’
ER = L’Écharpe rouge
ET = Ethics, an Essay on the Understanding of Evil
CH = The Communist Hypothesis
IA = Incident at Antioch
ID = De l’Idéologie
IN = Handbook of Inaesthetics
IT = Infinite Thought
LC = Les Citrouilles
LW = Logics of Worlds
MT = Metapolitics
MFP = Manifesto for Philosophy
OB = On Beckett
OS = ‘On a Finally Objectless Subject’
OT = ‘Un opérateur théâtral’ (interview)
PkP = Pocket Pantheon
PPP = Peut-on Penser la Politique ?

1 The titles in French refer to texts which have not been translated into English when this thesis went to
print. Unless otherwise stated, the quotes from these texts are my translation.
2
QPP = ‘Que pense le poème?’
RT = Rhapsody for the Theatre
RT2 = Rhapsodie pour le théâtre (suite)
SMP = Second Manifesto for Philosophy
SP = Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism
STTO = Briefings on Existence: A Short Treatise on Transitory Ontology
ThC = Théorie de la contradiction
TC = The Century
TP = ‘Théâtre et Philosophie’
TS = Theory of the Subject
TO = ‘A Theatre of Operations’
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Alain Badiou’s Transitory Theatre Introduction!
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Introduction
In an addendum to his Rhapsody for the Theatre ([1990] 2008),
contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou declares, “the playwright is the
philosopher’s lieutenant.” (RT2, 16) Mostly known for his theory of the event, Badiou
is also a playwright, a theoretician of theatre, and an active militant in politics. When
it comes to the relationship between theatre and philosophy, as a playwright, one
might say that Badiou is therefore his own lieutenant. Also, while Badiou rejects the
term ‘political philosopher’ - the reasons for this will be explored in due course, his
philosophy is permeated by his militantism, which is in turn intrinsically linked to his
involvement in theatre since for Badiou, as I will demonstrate, theatre is political by
essence.
To build on Badiou’s analogy, his philosophy, theatre and politics can be
described as forming a triumvirate of which he is at once the strategist, lieutenant
and foot soldier. This thesis addresses the relationship between philosophy and
theatre through Badiou’s theory of theatre and engages with Badiou’s theatre
practice to reflect upon the relationship between theatre and politics in his work.
Ultimately, it provides answers to two main underlying questions: how does
Badiou’s reflection upon theatre amount to a philosophical operation eluding
aesthetics? How does theatre, as a thinking process, amount to politics as defined
by Badiou as ‘thinking in action’?
Before going further, it is fair to delineate Badiou’s work as an attempt to
renew Marxism by developing a new theory of the subject. In his Theory of the
Subject ([1982] 2009), Badiou is clear on this point: “We demand of materialism that
it include what we need and which Marxism, even without knowing it, has always
made into its guiding thread: a theory of the subject.” (TS, 182) So far, studies of
Badiou’s philosophy have largely focused upon his theory of the event as developed
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Alain Badiou’s Transitory Theatre Introduction!
!
in Being and Event ([1988] 2005), but instead his work could be described as a
theory of the subject.1 Following Badiou, the notion of subject will be a guiding
thread throughout the whole thesis. As a preliminary remark, it is important to note
that Badiou’s conception of the subject departs from other philosophers’ theory of
the subject to date. Nonetheless, Badiou has undoubtedly been influenced by the
philosophy of Louis Althusser and the writings of Jacques Lacan (besides others,
including Jean-Paul Sartre) and he refers to both thinkers as his masters.2 However,
Badiou’s theory of the subject greatly differs from Althusser’s conception of the
subject. Not only does Badiou refute Althusser’s views on ideology and history as a
process without a subject, but he also distances his theory from Althusser’s concept
of interpellation. For Badiou, subjectivation is rather based on a proposition. He
argues that “[there] is an event, an encounter with something, something which is
outside the individual and which is like a proposition.” (DIA, 4) Yet, to an extent,
Badiou draws from Althusser the idea that the subject is not a given but a process
and perhaps also the notion of the subject of politics as marked by inexistence.3
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1 This is, in particular, the point of view of Bruno Bosteels who emphasises the notion of subject in his
work on Badiou’s philosophy. See, for example, ‘On the Subject of the Dialectic’, in P.Hallward (ed.),
Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy (London: Continuum, 2004), pp. 150-164;
‘Alain Badiou’s Theory of the Subject: The Recommencement of Dialectical Materialism? Part II’, PLI:
The Warwick Journal of Philosophy 13 (2002), pp. 173-208; ‘Alain Badiou’s Theory of the Subject: Part
I. The Recommencement of Dialectical Materialism?’, PLI: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy 12
(2001), pp. 200-229.
2 Despite being labelled an antiphilosopher by Badiou, Lacan has exerted a strong influence on his
work. See for example, the section “Anti-antiphilosophy” in Peter Hallward’s A Subject to Truth (2003,
20-24). Hallward analyses the differences between Badiou and Lacan’s theory of the subject in a
section on Badiou’s subject and explains in particular that Badiou and Lacan share the notion of the
subject as decentred in relation to the individual but diverge on the nature of this ex-centricity.
(Hallward: 2003, 139-151) Badiou’s Rhapsody for the Theatre broaches the question of the
relationship between spectatorship and desire. However, to an extent, evoking the role imparted to
desire in theatre serves as a foil for the spectator’s connection to thought, which remains the focus of
Badiou’s essay and consequently of this thesis. Therefore, I will not engage with Lacan here.
3 In Metapolitics, Badiou analyses Althusser’s position towards the subject in a chapter entitled
“Althusser : Subjectivity without a Subject”: "For Althusser, all theory proceeds by way of concepts. But
'subject' is not a concept. […] For example: the concept 'process' is scientific, the notion 'subject' is
ideological. 'Subject' is not the name of a concept, but that of a notion, that is, the mark of an
inexistence. There is no subject since there are only processes." (MT, 59) Against Althusser, Badiou
precisely conceptualises the subject as a process.
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