A central claim of Deleuze’sDifference and Repetition is that we only ever create something new through repetition. Here, then, we might encounter a fundamental difference between Badiou and Deleuze (or is it a proximity between the two?). For Badiou the new is created as a result of a truth-procedure that is evoked through fidelity to an event. Wedon’t, in fact, have toawait events as people sometimes suggest of Badiou; for there are plenty of events that have already occurred throughout history. It is not the event that produces newness in Badiou’s universe, but rather fidelity to that event and the transformation of a situation or world in terms of what is uncounted by the encyclopedia of that situation. One can continue to pay fidelity to the Paris Commune or May of 68 (if the latter was an event) today, unfolding its consequences in the present.

In…

A brief post before dinner for thoughts that need to be developed in greater detail.  In an interview somewhere or other I vaguely remember that Derrida says that his project, from beginning to end, is an interrogation and deconstruction of narcissism.  Given Derrida’s profound critique of the logic of identity, this comes as no surprise, for while identity is a postulate at the heart of Western philosophy (consider Parmenides or even Plato’s divided line) that functions as a logical axiom of truth and being (A = A), it also goes to the heart of our being as egos.  In this connection, we could say that the thinkers of that beautiful French moment (Derrida, Deleuze, Irigaray, Foucault, and perhaps Lyotard), the thinkers of difference, are each in their own way addressing the problem of narcissism and its political effects.  Here I cannot help but think of Lacan and his analysis of…