Hearing Alain Badiou on Hardtalk: The Bashful Maoist

I’m sorry, I had never had the pleasureof hearing Badiou speak on contemporary politics, or even speak on anything. A funny thing happens when you see the person. Ideas, tones, the very specular sense of a person invades the writing, filling it out. Here in Hardtalk, originally posted by Infinite Thought, Badiou attempts to make himself clear. I can’t say that in presence this is a man bristling with intellectual acuity. Perhaps it is that he is speaking in English, but my sense of him as a thinker is diminished even from the sense that I already had that his ideas were somewhat inflated. Here Badiou’s ideas filtered down to everyday language and deprived of their technical, interlocking workmanship, appear pale and disorganized thought-themes.

Infinite Thought regretfully admits that this is not the most “successful” interview, something she chalks up to the interviewer’s “pure crystallised Anglo intello-Franco-phobia” (my goodness, PURE?). I have to say as someone who is rather intello-Franco-philic, I found Badiou alternately filled with sopping facializations or staid retreats into ambiguities and prevarication. Perhaps one feels that it was the interviewer’s job to try to draw out what is unique and gemlike in Badiou, a showcase…only though if one is a cheerleader, a true believer, it would seem. Badiou brings almost nothing on his own. We must believe that Communism is the “right hypothesis” despite (brutal) 20th century failures, why…because “faith” is sometimes a good thing.  If you have read Badiou you understand why he says this, but without all the terminology, concept-architecture and whatnot, this is pretty much how it all boils down. If intellectuals can’t do better than this, they are to remain essentially what they are, text-producers for a highly selective, and privileged readership.

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