alexi kukuljevic the politics of being

THE POLITICS OF BEINGAlexi Kukuljevic

In this essay I take up the question of how toconstruct the space of the disjunctive synthesisthat binds Deleuzes and Badious image ofthought. They share an orientation to philoso-phy that Eric Alliez has recently expressedtheorematically as follows:

Deleuze and Badiou conceive of ontology onlyqua politics of being, and they regard this stanceas a fundamental requirement of contemporarythought. Thus, if it is not unfounded to posittheir respective metaphysics as the two ex-treme, and absolutely hostile poles which nev-ertheless constitute the contemporary philo-sophical field in its materialist necessity, itwont be so much a question of politicalconsequentiality and verification (what doespolitically mean, for one and the other?) butrather of radical antecedence of politics tied totheir respective metaphysics.1

My concern here is not with the disjunctof their disjunctive synthesis but with thesynthesis which Badiou has articulated astheir shared conviction that it is imperative forthe future of thought (of philosophy) to cedenothing to the hegemonic theme of the end ofphilosophy, whether in its pathetic version,which ties it to the destiny of Being, or itsbland one, which binds to the logic of judge-ment.2 This shift in the philosophical con-juncture toward an affirmation of metaphysicsbeyond the figure of its closure (which Badioudescribes as a shift in philosophical epochs)3 isin the last instance political. With the crisis ofMarxism, the materialist image of thoughtcannot be sustained by either the hermeneutic,analytic, or postmodern philosophical orienta-tions since they stand united in the final analy-sis, as Badiou has argued, in their assent towhat Reiner Schrmann designated most hon-estly the hypothesis of closure, or the end ofmetaphysics.4 The end announced byHeideggers dismantling of the metaphysics ofthe One, no doubt registers an event (that of theirreversible irruption of the multiple onto thestage of history),5 but it is an event that can

only be thought if philosophy sustains its locusclassicus: the great figure of the metaphysicalproposi t ion (IF 45) . The axiom ofHeideggerian thought, which hinges on in-scribing the difference between thought andphilosophy, must be undone.6

For the event that proscribes that philoso-phy think the metaphysical irruption of themultiple remains related to that of nihilism, butnihilism is not to be thought in terms of machi-nation (Machenschaft), but chiefly in terms ofCapitals singular potency to dissolve allsacralizing representations (MP 56).7 Theevent of Capital releases the multiple from thehegemonic figure of the One. And it is thisevent in my view that conditions the philo-sophical projects of both Deleuze and Badiou:Our time indubitably sustains itself with akind of generalized atomism because no sym-bolic sanction of the bond is capable of resist-ing the abstract potency of Capital.8 What is atstake in the return to metaphysics is the resus-citation of a thought capable of thinking inlevel terms with Capital. The philosophicalwager that Badiou acutely articulates concernsthe paradoxical thesis that philosophy has notknown until quite recently how to think in levelterms with Capital, since it has left the fieldopen, to its most intimate point, to vain nostal-gia for the sacred, to obsession with Presence,to the obscure dominance of the poem, todoubt about it own legitimacy (MP 58). Forthis reason, we can state the two central thesesthat any contemporary metaphysics must de-fend: 1) the ontological primacy of the multi-ple (or multiplicities), and 2) the intrinsic real-ity of events (the real occurrence of the new).For Capital only introduces the multiple ontothe ontological stage through the maintenanceof the illusion of the new, the illusion of inno-vation, thus reintroducing the figure of thesame (the One) through that of the multiple.Thus, if Capital is to be resisted by a form ofthought, philosophical thought must maintaina constitutive relation to the reality of the eventwithout allowing the One to be reintroduced atthe precise point at which it falters (TW 101).9

PHILOSOPHY TODAY SPEP SUPPLEMENT 200894

Only the return to metaphysics can providethought with the means to adequately resist thepresent.

These are the contemporary stakes of ontol-ogy for both Deleuze and Badiou and the rea-son for their resolutely classical turn. The turnto metaphysics should be understood as an in-tervention in the philosophical conjuncture,conforming to the following Althusserian the-sis: Philosophy is the practice of political in-tervention carried out in a theoretical form.10The stakes of the return to metaphysics accom-plished serenely by Deleuze and blusterouslyby Badiou thus are political in the last instance.

This turn has already produced ideologicalreactions and the most common accusation isthat of Dogmatism, reinstalling that mostepistemological of philosophical require-ments: that of the criterium legitimating theclaim posited. If Badiou and Deleuze offend somany philosophical tastes, it is doubtless inlarge part due to their brazen abjuration of theCopernican revolution, a turn whosedoxographical self-evidence has become theveritable reflex of a new philosophical com-mon sense. What I want to present here is a de-fense (a preemptive strike) to prevent any devi-ation from their constitutive ontologicalframeworkoffering what to many mayappear grotesque: a defense of Dogmatism inphilosophy.

In order to counter the attack that this turntoward metaphysics in Badiou, and perhaps byproxy Deleuze, condemns their thought toneo-classicism, falling into a reactionary mod-ernism surpassing Heideggers Being andTime in its rigouran attack recently leveledby Peter Osborne.11 We must see how this turnto metaphysic is nonetheless Newnew in theprecise sense that in Deleuze and Badiou wecan find a new practice of metaphysicsapractice that does not leave the essence of themetaphysics they practice theoretically un-affected. To mime a formulation of Althusser:What is new in Deleuze and Badious contri-bution to philosophy is a new practice of meta-physics. Their philosophy is not a (new) meta-physics of praxis, but a (new) practice ofmetaphysics.12 By thinking the practice ofmetaphysics we can see how their respectivemetaphysics separates in metaphysics itselfprecisely that which has led the philosophicalorientations of the last century (in particular

the hermeneutic and postmodern) to declare itsendturning the very reason for its overcom-ing into the reason for its perseverance.Everything hinges therefore on theconstruction of the concept of practice.

Let me begin this strange detour through thethought of Althusser, leaving behind the workof Deleuze and Badiou, while neverthelesskeeping in view that this detour throughAlthusser serves the purpose of thinking theirrespective affirmations of the metaphysicalproposition. I will focus on Althussers self-critique which is already underway in the latesixties, tracing the manner in which Althussersubjects his early determination of philosophyto what Badiou in the essay What does LouisAlthusser Understand by Philosophy? callsits de-epistemologisation (dspistm-ologisation de la philosophie).13 As Badioumaintains, this tendency in Althussers laterthinking is never explicitly declared, nor doeshis thought secure its de-epistemologisation.Nevertheless we can assert that the whole ofthe becoming (devenir) of his thought, whenconsidering the problem of philosophy, is ani-mated by this tendency. By locating this ten-dency in Althussers self-criticism, we can seehow the turn to metaphysics is undertaken outof political exigency.

IThe whole of Althussers thought is placed

under the condition of thinking the event ofMarxs thoughtits radical singularity and itsirreversibility. Althusser infamously marksthis event not in the early Marx, but withMarxs attempt to critique his old philosophi-cal conscience. The theoretical event inaugu-rated by Theses on Feuerbach and The Ger-man Ideology is the invention of historicalmaterialism: the science of history. The thesisthat then guides the rest of Althussers thoughtis the paradoxical claim that Marxist sciencecontains the seeds of a philosophydialecti-cal materialismwhich nonetheless has yet tobe produced as philosophy. A central thesis is:that philosophy is conditioned by thepreexistence of science. The Platonic event isconditioned by Thales discovery of the conti-nent of mathematics, the Cartesian event byGalileos discovery of the continent of mathe-matical physics, and likewise the Kantian

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event is conditioned by Newton. According toAlthusser, Marx opens up the continent of his-tory. The task of philosophy (as dialectical ma-terialism) is to elaborate the theory that Marxpracticed. Althusser writes, It is this theoreti-cal necessity that gave birth to dialectical ma-terialism, the only philosophy that treatsknowledge as the historical process of produc-tion of knowledges and that reflects its new ob-ject at once within materialism and within dia-lectics.14 The practice of the science ofhistorical materialism, like all sciences, is atheoretical practice, which produces the truththrough its practice and, by apprehending thistruth, philosophy can expose the errors ofideology. Marx thus enables us to think theorymaterially, i.e., as a practice that has specific,determinable conditions. Althusser definestheoretical practice as follows:

To know is to produce the adequate concept ofthe object by putting to work means of theoreti-cal production (theory and method), applied to agiven raw material. This production of knowl-edge in a given science is a specific practice,which should be called theoretical practiceaspecific practice, distinct, that is, from other ex-isting practices (economic, political, ideologi-cal practices) and absolutely irreplaceable atits level and in its function. (PSPS 15)

The labor involved is not the labor of the uni-versal (Hegel), but as Althusser develops inclose proximity to Maos On Contradiction,to quote For Marx, labour on a pre-existinguniversal, a labour whose aim and achieve-ment is precisely to refuse this universal theabstractions or the temptations of philosophy(ideology), and to bring it back to its conditionby force.15 The practice of a science does notreflect the sensuously given, nor is it basedupon a lived experience (Erlebnis), for the pro-duction of a new truth challenges the variousmanners in which the lived or the sensuouswas spontaneously taken up and understood.Althusser writes, The important point is that ascience, far from reflecting the immediategivens of everyday experience and practice isconstituted only on the condition of callingthem into question, and breaking with them, tothe extent that its result, once achieved, appearindeed as the contrary of the obvious facts ofpractical everyday experience, rather than as

their reflection (PSPS 15). To quote Balibar,For Althusser, as for Bachelard and above allfor Canguilhem, science is identified with thescientific process of destroying obviousness orinitial abstractions; its problematic is con-structed in and by the break.16 Philosophyconceives the break, which science effectswith what we may for shorthand call doxa, butdoes not think.

The infamous epistemological break re-fers to the difference produced by science ofhistory and the thought specific to philosophy(dialectical materialism) which separates sci-ence (the event of Marxs thought) from Ideol-ogy (pre-Marxist thought)transforming phi-losophy from an ideology into a scientificdiscipline (PSPS 10). For the practice of sci-ence transforms the raw material of Ideol-ogy (the abstractions of lived-experience aswell as the classical assumptions of politicaleconomy) by producing new concepts (e.g.,mode of production, social formation, infra-structure, superstructure, ideology, classstruggle, etc.) that expose the transcendentalillusion of classical political economy. ThusMarxs science similar to the Galilean hypoth-esis of the mathematization of nature poses aprovisional truth that opens up a new do-main infinite in scope and a new truth that ret-roactively enables one to grasp ideology asideology (since Ideology presents itself astruth). So defined, philosophy is a theory ofknowledge. However, it is released from itsideological construal as a guarantee of cogni-tion. Philosophy is not a theory of the guaran-tee of knowledge, but a theory of the practiceof knowing: theoretical practice. Marxist phi-losophy exists, yet has never been produced asphilosophy.17

Knowledge for Althusser is not a matter ofreflection, adequation, or any other classicalfigure of cognition; it is a matter of production.The true is not measured by any external re-lation or plane of reference, but can only begrasped through the effects it induces in a sys-tem of knowledge. For example, the effect thatMarxs thought induces in philosophy is thatof a break or rupture (coupure or rupture).Althussers guide in reading Marx is Spinozasfamous claim that what is true is a sign of it-self and of what is false.18 Philosophy sepa-rated from ideology becomes the theory of thehistory of knowledgethat is, of the real con-


ditions (material and social on the one hand,internal to scientific practice on the other) ofthe process of production of knowledge. Thetheory of knowledge, thus understood, con-stitutes the heart of Marxist philosophy(PSPS 8). A Marxist philosophy must graspthe difference in philosophy itself betweenideology and sciencea difference that canonly be grasped by accepting the notion of thebreak. As Balibar suggests, there is thus acertain undecidability concerning whether thebreak is produced by Althusserian thought oruncovered by it.

Yet, what remains unthought in definingphilosophy as a theory of knowledge is the dis-tinctive practice of philosophy. If the event ofMarxs thought consists in a new practicewhich induces a break in the continuity ofphilosophy itselfseparating it from its ideo-logical pastthen what is the function of phi-losophy, its peculiar operation? Is philosophya theory or a practice? What is its ideologicalfunction and what is its role after Marxs cri-tique of ideology? To treat philosophy as thetheory of theoretical practices risks repeatingthe very ideological deviation that the turn totheoretical practice presumably occludes. Inother words, the theorization of practice risksreintroducing into philosophy precisely thestructure that Marxs thought had critiqued:the philosophical suppression of practice andtherefore of politics.

IIIn Lenin and Philosophy, Althusser under

the constraint of Lenins Materialism andEmpirio-criticism attempts to theorize philos-ophy itself in order to preemptively resist itsspontaneous, almost natural, impulse to negatepractice/politics. Such resistance can only besecured by thinking the distinctive practice ofphilosophy. The danger of failing to do so liesin claiming that philosophy, by thinking theevent of Marxist science, can lay claim to be-ing the science of sciences, which is of courseperfectly consonant with philosophys self-un-derstanding prior to the event of Marx. Assuch, philosophy rather than being condi-tioned by the event of Marxist science be-comes the enunciator of its truth in a mannerthat undoes the truth of its event (namely, thepriority of practice). Practice is then re-subor-

dinated to theory, which the move to theoreti-cal practice was supposed to obviate. One canclaim that philosophy too is a theoretical prac-tice, but, unless the distinctive practice of phi-losophy is thought, philosophy and science be-come isomorphic and in the final analysisundifferentiable: what Althusser callstheoreticism.19

Yet, the renewed attempt to allow practiceto irrupt into philosophical tranquility necessi-tates a break of Althussers own in which phi-losophy is separated from theory of knowl-edge and history of knowledge. We cannow begin to see the strange alliance betweenDeleuze, Badiou, and Althusser. In the periodof Althussers self-critique, already underwayin 1967 with the crucial series of lectures titledPhilosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophyof the Scientists, philosophy will be definedas an ahistorical practice, differentiating thepractice of philosophy from that of scienceproper. With this turn in his thinking,Althusser begins the movement that we calledabove its de-epistemologization.

In the theoreticist version, philosophy likescience is defined by its objectthe objectproduced by a distinctive theoretical practice.The break is made clearly in Lenin and Phi-losophy, in which Althusser claims: The ob-ject of philosophy is radically subtracted fromthe domain of proof. The domain of proof is re-stricted to science (an ideal and demonstra-tive discipline [LP 41]). Philosophy is sub-tracted from knowledge because philosophystrictly speaking has no object, in the sensethat a science has an object (LP 56). Thephilosophical object of thought is not an ob-ject strictly speaking but a tendency (eithermaterialist or idealist). Since these tendenciesare not objects, they cannot be proven (LP56). Their ultimate principles are a matter ofthetic affirmation, and in this sense are sub-tracted from the domain of proof. The ulti-mate principles of either materialism or ideal-ism cannot become objects of knowledge.Further, since philosophy has no object, and,as Badiou puts it, since all history is normed[norme] by the objectivity of its process, phi-losophy qua philosophy has no history.20 His-tory is always the history of a constituted ob-jectknowledge of which [the sciences] canincrease (LP 57). Althusser writes, As phi-losophy has no object, nothing can happen in


it. The nothing of its history simply repeats thenothing of its object (LP 57). Philosophy isnothing but the interminable conflict (theKampfplatz) between tendencies (materialistand idealist), which are revealed by thehierarchic order philosophy establishesbetween the two terms or tendencies:

What is at stake in philosophy in the ultimatecategories which govern all philosophical sys-tems, is therefore the sense of this hierarchy, thesense of this location of one category in thedominant position, it is something in philoso-phy which irresistibly recalls a seizure of poweror an installation of power. Philosophically, weshould say: an installation in power is withoutan object. (LP 58)

The distinctive task of a philosophy thereforeis not to comprehend an object, but to stake outa claim. We can now see how philosophy sepa-rates itself from science and in so doing sepa-rates philosophy from the theoreticist tempta-tion that treats philosophy as a science or thescience of sciences, which is precisely theideological function of philosophy. Let us nowturn to the ideological function of philosophy,which Althusser locates in its hegemoniccharacter.

III

Turning to the peculiar structure of philoso-phy, Althusser attends to how philosophy itselfcan be interpreted as a distinctive theoreticalpractice in the sense that philosophy mustproduce itself as philosophy. Philosophy asa distinctive discourse (which can neither beconfused strictly speaking with literary genresor science) produces itself by means of theconstitution of an object that is neither objectof science nor that of literature. Philosophythus is conditioned by science, gleaning fromscience its scientificity, distinguishing itselffrom religion, myth, rhetoric, etc. by means ofadopting a rational discourse which philoso-phy models on the rigorous discourse ofexisting sciences (PSPS 244).

Yet, even though philosophy is conditionedby science (in general by mathematicity), theunique and instituting gesture of philosophy asdiscourse is to subordinate its conditions to it-self. Philosophy inverts its conditions, trans-

forming itself into the science of sciences(prote philosophia). Althusser writes,

The singular and highly contradictory bonduniting philosophy with the sciences (this oper-ation that transforms philosophys conditions ofexistence, and hence those of the sciences, intodeterminations subordinated to philosophy it-self, and through which philosophy, declaringthat it alone possesses their truth, installs itselfin power over the sciences, which supply themodel of its own rational and systematic dis-course)this forms part of the production ofphilosophy as philosophy. (PSPS 245)

Philosophy is the science of the whole as thescience of sense (phenomenology). Thus, phi-losophy has no special object and can speakto all objects insofar as each can be assigned aplace within the legitimating discourse of phi-losophy. Philosophy speaks the Truth aboutall human practices and ideas (PSPS 246).

The object of philosophy is intra-philo-sophical in the sense that philosophy producesits own object in the strong sense. Philoso-phy is related to social practices (practical andtheoretical). They provide the raw material ofthe philosophical operation that decomposesthese practices, selecting only that which is vi-tal for its enterprise. Philosophy thusreconfigures the social practices in light of theelements extracted from them, recomposingthem in the image of the philosophical enter-prise.21 The philosophical system is thus asystem of domination that imposes a law orTruth upon the social practices, which is nei-ther external nor internal to them. This processof phi losophical deformat ion andrecomposition of practice produces philo-sophical objects that resemble real objects, butare different from them (PSPS 253). Philoso-phy invents special objects (Truth, Oneness,Totality, theory of knowledge, transcendentalsubject, being, etc.) that cannot be discernedoutside of the conditions of philosophical intu-ition, which enable philosophy to place thewhole of social practice under its providence.Philosophy in its classical formation consti-tutes an inside (comparable to Kantian imma-nence) that assigns a meaning (order, place) tothe elements extracted from an outside suchthat philosophy can reverse its subordinationto social practice.


The event of Marxgrasped as the irrup-tion of practice into the field of philosophyconstitutes at base a radical critique of thatclassical form of the existence of philosophywhich I have defined as the production of phi-losophy as philosophy (PSPS 248). Practiceis opposed to Greek contemplation, and theobject form of philosophy. Althusser writes,Practice is a process of transformation whichis always subject to its own conditions of exis-tence and produces, not the Truth, but rathertruths (or the truth, let us say, of results or ofknowledge, all within the field of its own con-ditions of existence). Practice is a processwithout subject or goal (PSPS 249). The dan-ger lies in seeing in Marxs philosophy aphilosophy that does not revolutionize the pro-duction of philosophy, leaving its hegemonicdetermination of objects intact. Practice isprecisely what philosophy has repressed radi-cally throughout its history, being the un-thought of philosophical history. For philoso-phy to know itself in theory, it must grasp itselfas practice and it can only do so by affirmingthe following: philosophy has to recognizeitself as a certain investment of politics (LP33).

However, Althusser stresses that it is insuf-ficient to simply critique philosophy (a cri-tique carried out by Nietzsche, Heidegger,Levinas, et al., all of whom discover in phi-losophy the archetype of power, the model ofall power (PSPS 251). One must go furtherby introducing the scandalous fracture ofpractice into the very heart of philosophy(PSPS 252). To understand philosophicalpractice it is necessary to deemphasize the he-gemonic structure of philosophy in favor ofmarking the manner in which it decomposesand recomposes the sphere of social and theo-retical practice. Althusser writes, Whatmakes [philosophy] significant is not that phi-losophy dominates its object but that it decom-poses and recomposes them in a special orderof internal significance (PSPS 252). Philoso-phy has power and certainly exercises it overthe domain of object which it constitutes, orderand hierarchizes, but as Althusser declares,power never signifies power for powerssake for power is only what one does with it.The power of philosophy which lies in its in-determinacy (philosophy has no object) entailsthat philosophy can be put to use. Philosophy

is not science but politics in theory. In declar-ing the void of the object, philosophydeclares the void of the whole, of totality andthus of Truth with a capital T. Philosophy doesnot contemplate or apprehend but intervenes inthe battlefield (Schlachtfeld).

The irruption of practice, which takes phi-losophy from behind, forces philosophy toacknowledge an exteriority (a condition) thatis interior to the practice of philosophy as such.Marxs central contribution, according toAlthusser, consists in unmasking philosophyas a system of dominationas a most seri-ous game whose effects are not merely infra-logical. Marx allows us to stateeven if henever explicitly does so himselfthe role thatphilosophy plays once its classical pretensionas a search for truth has been exposed, simi-larly to Nietzsche, as a will to truth. Marxshows us what this little private conceptualmatter has to do with history (PSPS 254).Althusser writes,

It is not by chance that philosophy survives, thatthese sacred abstract texts, interminably readand reread by generations of students, inces-santly commented upon and glossed, canweather the storms and high seas of our culturaluniverse, to play their part in it. And since it isnot the love of art that inspires their reading orfidelity to their history, if such texts survive,paradoxical as it may seem, it is because of theresults they produce; and if they produce re-sults, it is because these are required by the soci-eties of our history. (SPSP, 254)

Althusser maintains that the virtue of philoso-phy lies in its impossibility to accomplish pre-cisely what it has asserted since its inception asits chief enterprise. In the words of Kant, phi-losophy aims at completion, at bringing all dis-putes to an end in the name of Truths simpleenunciation. However, despite this goal phi-losophy interminably returns to the battle-ground from which each philosophy soughtto escape. Thus philosophy, as Althusserwrites, (and with an insistence and a con-stancy so striking as to reveal its nature) is aperpetual war of ideas (SPSP 255). Yet, thewar is not for idle fancy, for the whims andpleasures of a petty-bourgeois intelligentsia.Althusser cuttingly remarks, The innumera-ble sub-philosophers, rule-of-thumb philoso-


phers, or tear-out-your-hair philosophers (asMarx used to say), who entered the war out ofsheer contrariness, as failed authors spoilingfor a fight, have left no traces in history (SPSP255). The battlefield is a theoretical battle withpolitical stakes.

The act of philosophy is that of seizure orinstallation in power, in which certain thesesare declared as a practice of intervention inthe theoretical domain (LP 61). The power ofphilosophy lies in its capacity to intervene.Philosophy is an act of intervention thatdraws the dividing line in theory betweenthe chief tendencies in philosophy. Badiouwrites, That is to say that philosophy is not thecognitive appropriation of particular objects,but rather an act of thought, whose categoriesplace the gap (cart) of the operation, the inter-val of seizure or of effectuation (QAP 34). Assuch philosophy is the imposition of a thesis orits declaration (QAP 3435). In short, philoso-phy is pure affirmation without an object. Mostremarkable about Althussers critique of phi-losophy is that he exposes the ideological di-mension of the philosophical dispositif with-out exiting philosophy, without inscribing itslimit. Furthermore, one arrives at a positionfrom which one can situate the desire to exitphilosophy within philosophy itself. The de-sire to exit philosophy cannot but reintroducethe ideological tendency of philosophy, whichsubordinates philosophical practice to itstheorization.

If philosophy is to separate itself fromknowledge/science, while nonetheless re-maining conditioned by it, and thus short-cir-cuit the hegemonic temptation of philosophyto totalize its conditions, it must separate itselffrom the criterium of knowledge/judgment.Yet if philosophy accomplishes the break fromthe criterium, how can philosophy evaluate theefficacy of thought? The Marxist event de-mands that philosophy transform its hege-monic power by separating it from the domainof science (knowledge)thus becoming a po-litical act while nonetheless being an act ofpure thought. In abandoning the survey of theentire field of knowledge, philosophy isthrown back upon the immanence of its posi-tional theses. Yet, what distinguishes philoso-phy after Marx is that it must affirm thepositionality of its thesesan affirmation thatdeprives philosophys hegemonic tendency

of its efficacy. By saying the affirmation andnot simply doing it (as does all philosophy),Althusser separates philosophy from philoso-phy (PSPS 75). By saying what philosophyhas always done or effected, one transformsthe theoretical act of philosophy into a prac-tice. Rather than turning to a theoretical sur-vey, a philosophy now affirms or declares itspositional status within a field of theoreticalbattle. Philosophy is not the enunciator of aTruth of the whole, but a truth: a singular uni-versal that resistsbeing both a sign of itselfand the falseby drawing a line between sci-ence (the production of truth) and ideology(doxa). The new measure of this truth is not itssusceptibility to justification; rather, it lies inthe effects of freedom that the thesis itselfproduces. Althusser writes,

The truth of a philosophy lies entirely in its ef-fects, while in fact it acts only at a distance fromreal objects, therefore, in the space of the free-dom that it opens up to research and action andnot in its form of exposition alone. This formcould be systematic or not, but in any event itwas in itself dogmatic to the extent that everyphilosophy posits, not without reason but with-out any possible empirical verification appar-ently arbitrary theses, which in reality are notarbitrary, since they are a function of the spaceof freedom (or servitude) that the philosophyintends by its effects to open up at the heart ofthe space of theses already posed by existingphilosophies with a given philosophical con-juncture.22

The space of freedomradically incommen-surate with narrowly defined requirements ofconditions of knowledgedefines the spaceof philosophical thought.

Thus, contra Kant, Althusser opens up thedistinction theorematic to contemporary phi-losophy between knowledge/judgment andthought. There is philosophical truth that can-not be known but that can be produced as aneffect of the marking of theses that produces animmanent, dogmatic system (Spinozistic im-manence contra Kantian immanence), and notas in the Kantian tradition (broadly construed)through the transgression of the limit.


IVWhat links Althusser, Badiou, and Deleuze

is a certain commitment to subtractingif youpermit me Badious idiomthought from theheritage of Kantian critique, or what we canmore general ly descr ibe as theepistemological determination of philoso-phy.23 Badiou has most insistently announcedthis contemporary turn against Kantian cri-tique, drawing common cause with a certainHeidegger, the late Althusser, and Deleuze andGuattari. To trace the abstract line that bindstheir respective projects, each attempts to re-orient philosophy by means of its de-epistemologisation. For each of them, in quitedifferent ways, the catalyst for this break isSpinoza. As I here suggest, Spinozas notion oftruth. But, and this is profoundly significant inmy view, it is a Spinoza read after Heidegger,for the truth produced must be separated fromknowledge/judgment. The task that Badiousthought sets for itself is to challenge the hege-mony of epistemology (anti-metaphysics andultimately anti-philosophy) without fallingback upon the resources of religious-spiritual-ist tradition (Deleuze in the last instance re-mains determined by this tradition, accordingto Badiou). Althusser for Badiou, despiteAlthussers innovations, ultimately fails to ac-complish the break between truth and knowl-edge. The trace of the French epistemologicaltraditionand thus of his own beginning

can still be discerned in Althusser, as Badiouinstructs us in his identification of knowledgeand truth (connaissance and vrit) (QAP 44).The refusal of this distinction barsphilosophical access, according to Badiou,to the thought of the event as such (QAP 44).

To conclude, the practice of metaphysicscan be seen as a positioning within a definitephilosophical conjuncture, which I have iden-tified as the end of metaphysics. Althussersaccount of philosophical practice when trans-posed to metaphysics allows Deleuze andBadiou to take up a position within metaphys-ics while nonetheless separating metaphysicsfrom the idea that metaphysics is the science ofsciences. Metaphysics is separated from itsclassical definition and from its hegemoniccharacter of enunciating the Truth of thewhole, while nonetheless maintaining its clas-sical vocation of constructing the position of athesis. Philosophy must remain Dogmatic lestit perish from itself.

Rather than being authoritarian (symp-tomatic of being a reactionary avant-gardeas Peter Osborne claims), the dogmatic re-sumption of ontological thesesin their affir-mation and as a practicecarves out a space offreedom without strategically attempting toprevent the philosophical exit from the battle-ground. It is an affirmation of philosophy asinfinite strugglean authorization to philoso-phize without being authoritarian. In short, ametaphysics without being metaphysical.

ENDNOTES


1. ric Alliez, Badiou: The Grace of the Univer-sal, trans. Ashley Kind and revised by AlbertoToscano. Polygraph 17 (2005): 268.

2. Alain Badiou, One, Multiple, Multiplicities inTheoretical Writings, ed. and trans. Ray Brassierand Alberto Toscano (New York: Continuum,2004), 67.

3. Alain Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamour of Being,trans. Louise Burchill (Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 2000), 3.

4. For Badious description of the hermeneutic, ana-lytic, and post-modern orientation to philosophy,see Philosophy and Desire in Infinite Thought:Truth and the Return of Philosophy, ed. and trans.Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens (New York:Continuum, 2005), 4250. Henceforth cited as IF.

5. I cannot here think through the real proximity indistance between Badiou and Deleuze andHeidegger. At present suffice it to say that forBadiou, Heidegger is the first to show that thequestion of being today can only be posed by be-ginning from the separation of being from the one(the ones metaphysical domination of being[Theoretical Writings, 40])a separation, how-ever, that can only be effected within Heideggerianthought by entering into the destinal apparatuswhich opens philosophical history (i.e., metaphys-ics) to its unthought through the thought figuresof delimitation and transgression. A strategywhose woeful inadequacy is the starting point inmy view of Deleuzes and Badious respectivespeculative metaphysical projects. See Alain


Badiou, The Question of Being Today, in Theo-retical Writings, 3948. For an account of the op-eration of delimitation and transgression, seeJohn Sallis, The End of Metaphysics: Closureand Transgression, in Delimitations: Phenomen-ology and the End of Metaphysics (Bloomington:University of Indiana Press, 1995), 1728. For anaccount of Badious project situated vis--visHeidegger, see Peter Hallward, Depending onInconsistency: Badious Answer to the GuidingQuestion of All Contemporary Philosophy,Polygraph 17 (2005): 1125, and Bruno Bosteel,Vrit et forage: Badiou avec Heidegger etLacan, in Charles Ramond, ed., Alain Badiou:Penser Le Multiple (Paris: LHarmattan, 2002),25993.

6. What I am here calling the axiom of Heideggersthought, which in a Deleuzian register orients hisimage of thought, is aptly expressed by PhilippeLacoue-Labarthe: In speaking of Heideggersthought, one grants no less, indeed, than the dif-ference between thinking and philosophizing.This difference is never simple. It is neverthelessupon it, as we know, that Heideggers entire strat-egy concerning metaphysics is organized.Obliteration, trans., Thomas Trezise, in TheSubject of Philosophy, ed. Thomas Trezise (Min-neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993),63.

7. Alain Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, trans.and ed. Norman Madarasz (Albany: SUNY Press,1999), 56. Henceforth cited as MP. For Badiou,the event of Capital can only be construed as nihil-ism from a thought that remains nostalgicallybound to the figure of the bond and thus of theOne. Thus, thought must release itself from thefigure of nihilism so as to articulate the positivedimension of the dissolution of the One, which,according to Badiou, opens thought onto thegenericity of the true (ibid., 57).

8. Ibid., 55. For an account of how Capitalism func-tions as a quasi-condition transversal to the fourdomains of truth (Love, Science, Art, and Poli-tics), as the over-eventof universal unbinding,see Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Remarks onSubtractive Ontology and Thinking Capitalism,in Peter Hallward, ed., Think Again: Alain Badiouand the Future of Philosophy (New York: Contin-uum, 2004), 5058.

9. It is for this precise reason that Badiou situates theontological dispute with Deleuze in terms of theOne. The metaphysical problem that animates

both of their constructions concerns how to best di-vest thought of the constitutive power of the One.

10. Louis Althusser, Lenin Before Hegel in Leninand Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. BenBrewster (New York: Monthly Review Press,1971), 107. Henceforth cited as LP.

11. See Peter Osbornes acerbic, rigorous, and splen-didly written, Neo-Classic: Alain Badious Beingand Event, Radical Philosophy 142 (March/April2007): 1929.

12. Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy in Leninand Philosophy and Other Essays, 68. The origi-nal reads, What is new in Marxisms contributionto philosophy is a new practice of philosophy.Marxism is not a (new) philosophy of praxis, but a(new) practice of philosophy.

13. Alain Badiou, Quest-ce que Louis Althusserentend par philosophie, in Sylvain Lazarus, ed.,Politique et philosophique dans loeuvre de LouisAlthusser (Paris: Presses Universitaire de France,1993), 34. Hereon cited as QAP.

14. Louis Althusser, Theory, Theoretical Practiceand Theoretical Formation: Ideology and Ideolog-ical Struggle, trans. James H. Kavanagh, in Phi-losophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of theScientists and Other Essays, ed. Gregory Elliot(New York: Verso, 1990), 11. Hereafter cited asPSPS.

15. Louis Althusser, For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster(New York: Verso, 1969), 183.

16. Etienne Balibar, Althussers Object, trans. Mar-garet Cohen and Bruce Robbins, Social Text39 (Summer, 1994): 163.

17. Louis Althusser, The Transformation of Philoso-phy, trans. Thomas E. Lewis in Philosophy andthe Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists, 243.

18. See Louis Althusser, Notes sur la philosophie incrits philosophiques et politiques: Tome II (Paris:STOCK/IMEC, 1995), 301. Also, Philosophy andthe Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists, 10.

19. See Louis Althusser, Notes sur la philosophie incrits philosophiques et politiques: Tome II (Paris:STOCK/IMEC, 1995), 330.

20. Badiou writes, The immediate consequence ofthis point is that philosophy has no history, sinceall history is normed (norme) by the objectivity ofits process. [Sans rapport quelque objet reel quece sout, la philosophie est telle que, proprementparler, il ne sy passe rien] (Politique etphilosophique, 34).

21. See Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophyof the Scientists, 253.

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22. Louis Althusser, Part I: Spinoza, trans. TedStolze, in The New Spinoza, ed. Warren Montagand Ted Stolze (Minneapolis: University of Min-nesota Press, 1997), 4.

23. This is also Lenins position, according toAlthusser. In the Notebooks, Lenin writes, Kantdisparages knowledge in order to make way for

faith: Hegel exalts knowledge, asserting thatknowledge is knowledge of God. The materialistexalts the knowledge of matter, of nature, consign-ing God, and the philosophical rabble that defendsGod, to the rubbish heap (as quoted in Lenin andPhilosophy, 116).

alexi kukuljevic the politics of being

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