love and its potentials

8/4/2019 Love and its Potentials

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At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionaryis guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine

revolutionary lacking this quality... We must strive every day so that thislove of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into actsthat serve as examples, as a moving force. Che Guevara

(Guevara, 2005)


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Introduction

Prologue

This project was born from a series of studies relating to the production of

new ways of being in the world, works that sought to answer back to the

subjection, atomization and increasingly authoritarian conditions of

contemporary capitalism that rule on the premise that our society is incapable

of self-regulation and self-governance (Hardt, 2007). I saw a common project

across a body of thought that was produced in the last decades leading up to

the millennium, a project of resistance, a resistance that began with the

transformation of the subject. One that attempted to operate

on the multiple registers that capitalism now inhabited, beyond but not

exclusive of labour power, a relational resistance that permeated the fabric of

all being. One that became more and more about seeking bonds not based on

sameness or solidarity of interest, but based on difference on a radical level.

A resistance that sought not just a revolution, but a complete transformation of

values.

Fuelled by a faith supported by the events of the past but not captivated or

seduced by them, the authors of this resistance, Incisive and forward-looking

in their trajectory, sought on the one hand to utilize history and on the other to

call in a tactic for and of the future to aid the present situation.

They developed new ontological concepts and produced a new lexicon of

terms and phrases by which to think the human condition; The common, The


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Multitude (Hardt, 2000), The Political Subject (Badiou, 2006), Whatever Being

(Agamben, 2007) and Being as Being-with (Nancy, 2000); But while these

concepts and their associated terminology were not developed in direct

collaboration all seemed pertain to a common notion: the radical operation of

an outward looking togetherness, not based on the summation or fusion of

singularities, but on the recognition of a position of immanent plurality from

which to investigate the potential of the world (Badiou, 2008) and a

recognition of a common truth to which that plurality attested to.

But what truth could hold a multitude together in difference? Or precipitate an

ontological revolution? The answer, according to this dissertation, is Love.

Focusing predominantly on the work of Alain Badiou and Antonio Negri I

choose Love as the subject of this dissertation, because Love, In terms of

Badious thesis, proves itself above all others, to be the least privileged form

of Evental subjectivisation i.e. in comparison to Art, Science and Politics Love

does not depend on training, profession, or circumstance of birth, and can

therefore supplement and subjectivise being in a much more general capacity,

regardless of the pre-subjective situation. Relative to this Love has been

defined by Negris as the militant technology of the common (Negri, 2003,

p.221) and the precondition for all revolutionary transformation.

Love as an event operates on a level of relational affective intensity that

involves the complete individual, both psychical and physical, in a dynamic

process of truth activated in the world between multiple subjects, and in that

sense, has the potential to precipitate a complete ontological transformation.


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This project will seek to develop and defend a synthetic definition of Love, as

a revolutionary and transformative practice, against ideas that would seek to

disarm it, deny it and subordinate it to sex, distraction, commodity and the

taxonomy of knowledge. This project will Not seek to prove Love as universal

but to posit its potential, as an indiscernible generic but situated praxis of

truth, to increase and transform our ability to act in the world (Spinoza, 1996),

not just in the simultaneous subjective evolution of two [the couple] (Badiou,

2008) but in terms of the revolution, evolution, and accession of the multitude

(Negri, 2003) through their manifestation of new potentials.

Methodology: Why Diagrams and Mathemes?

As the purpose of this dissertation is to create an abstract synthetic and

referential philosophical system, it is not my objective to remain solely faithful

to any one of my references thesis, but to integrate and put to work those

elements I see as common and useful in support and development of my own

thesis. Through out the Dissertation, as well as making conventional

reference to my sources by cited quotation using the Harvard system of

referencing, I will make use of diagrams, which I have formulated, to assist in

illustrating the more complex ideas presented both by myself and my

references, and to characterize the hybrid nature of my work in the

development of my argument. These diagrams are instructional aids that

attempt to convey visually, what language often struggles to articulate in a

clear and precise manner. In chapter one I employ the use of set theory in

conjunction with my diagram relating to the work of Alain Badiou, and conform

to its written terminology as detailed in Being and Event(Badiou, 2005a, pp.


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49-52,102). The choice to introduce this mathematical reference in the form of

a matheme was made in order to engage with source material in its own

terms and, once again, to develop from those terms an organic terminology

specific to this dissertation.

Structure:

The first chapter will begin to identify and to unpack the subject of

our study. Examining the work of Alain Badiou in relation to The Subject and

Love as an Event between the couple; emphasizing Badious definition of love

as multiple and simultaneous subjectivisation of singular and disjunctive

positions initiated by the encounter and confirmed by the act of

declaration/nomination (Badiou, 2008). I will then discuss the act of naming in

relation to this declaration of love, and attempt to expand Badious definition

of nomination via Negris notion of naming as marking in space or making

material the thing named. This chapter will continue then to examine affect

and its relationship to encyclopaedic knowledge; where love as a name

maintains a cultural and historic referent while also maintaining the effect of

an Evental transformation of the situation.

In the second chapter, I will begin by discussing the relationship of need and

desire to the loving equation in relation to Badious thesis examining the

implications of a connection between the void and desire via the introduction

of two key diagrams. Continuing to expand the concept of love as a bond not

just between two, as detailed in chapter one, but between many, as I begin to

develop a definition of love in relation to a potentially revolutionary political

praxis. I will introduce the concept of the loving aggregate; the aggregation of


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bodies around singular need or desire as a call for an extra situational or

Evental transformation, relating this aggregation to Badious theory of the

political subject and concepts of co-operation developed by Antonio Negri.

This chapter concludes in the introduction of a spatio-temporal dimension

relative the gathering/positioning of bodies in relation to desire. Through a

comparative study of Badiou and Negri via Bergsons temporal schema I will

attempt to define the present and the body as point of intersection between

the eternal past and the immeasurable potential of the future, and to define

the power of love and the loving aggregate as a faith in the perpetual

transformation of the world and the plenitude of all Being in Time.

The third chapter will continue to expand on the ideas introduced towards the

end of the second chapter; further developing a spatial and temporal

understanding of where and how the loving aggregate might form. I will

discuss issues of chance, choice, faith, knowledge and courage in relation to

the manifestation and maintenance of the loving aggregate as a political

subject. And with the introduction of my final diagram, a further development

of my previous schematic synthesis of Antonio Negris concepts ofkairs,

Bergsons work on memory and Badious theory of the Evental trace; I will

attempt to form a visual representation of loves position in relation to past,

present and future Worlds.

Leading to my conclusion, which will attempt to collate the three preceding

studies into an argument that posits the concept of love as defined by this

thesis as a transformative praxis of resistant alterity in the world today and


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ask questions as to how we might begin to initiate this transformation as

contemporary subjects and if it indeed this is possible.


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Chapter 1.

An Evental Subject

We are seeking only the precise meaning that our consciousness givesto this word "exist," and we find that, for a conscious being, to existis to change, to change is to mature; to mature is to go on creatingoneself endlessly. (Bergson, 1944, p.10)

In this chapter I will introduce the subject of my study, defining it as a being

who recognizes and nominates an event (Badiou, 2005a) whose truth1 has

transformed their conception of the world. The subject of our study is formedin

their choice to institute or activate the truth to which they have borne witness,

making that truth both material and common to the world. It is understood that

it is at the point of choice between recognition/affirmation or denial/negation of

a new Evental truth, or in the retrieval and innovation of a truth from the past

that a being, as defined by this Dissertation, can become subject. And it is

through his/her affirmation of the perpetual transformation of the world via

multiple and successive events that he/she maintains their fidelity to truth and

in that sense their subjectivity as such.

The Event, which forms the subject of this dissertation, is Love2.The subject

here is one who believes in love: the loving subject. While Badiou defines a

Subject as she/he who produces the truth that Two and not only one are at

1Badiou defines truth on the one hand a deductive force that subtracts from knowledge

(Badiou, 2005) and on the other, is a supplementation of being in its exposure to theimmeasurable potential of the void. (Badiou, 2008)2

The love encounter is defined by Alain Badiou as being of the order of the event and differsfrom any form of purely sexual encounter which would be categorised in Badiou terms asbeing of the natural order, that which sturctures the state of the current situation.


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work in the situation (Badiou,1996, p.39) over the course of this dissertation I

will seek to define our subject as one who produces the truth that many and

not just one are at work in the situation, and that to think and to activate a

singular truth that is common is the philosophical and political project of today.

Nomination, Language, and the Common

Having defined the Subject of my thesis as one who affirms the truth of an

Event and seeks to make that truth common by deploying it within the

situation. Iwill begin to discuss language as a tool to deploy an Evental truth

or as a point of access to the common. I will first examine the act of Naming

and making the declaration of Love in the work of Alain Badiou, then, seeking

to form an expanded understanding of what it is or what it could be to name I

will continue on to open Badious primarily linguistic definition of Evental

nomination to Antonio Negris notion of naming defined as marking in

space, which I understand as a much broader terminology that speaks of

making material or existent a previously immaterial or inexistent truth via a

plurality of nominating actions, not bound solely to linguistic forms of

expression but governed nonetheless by what I will define as the

contingencies of language.

Central to Badious theory of the Subject is the notion of nomination and how

language comes to bare in the deployment of an Evental truth in the post-

evental situation. Badiou maintains that while language as a form of

knowledge3, that is counted and structured by the situation will always fall

3The term knowledge pertains, in accordance with Badious definition (Badiou, 2005a) to allthought that has been structured, measured and valued within the state of the situation. If


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short as a tool to express an Evental truth [that by definition originates from

outside the situation] it remains all that the subject has as means to deploy

that truth and thus transform the situation. Badiou maintains that the subjects

task is to force or cobble together (Badiou, 2005a) existing terms of the

situation to form new terms that most closely approximate the truth, and that

the subjects wager is as to whether these terms will prove true in the post-

evental situation. This wager represents what I call the first contingency of

language.

Badiou states:

The one-truth, which assembles to infinity the terms positivelyinvestigated by the faithful procedure, is indiscernible in the languageof the situation. It is a generic part of the situation insofar as it is animmutable excrescence whose entire being resides in the regroupingof termsBecause the subject is a local configuration of theprocedure, it is clear that the truth is equally indiscernible, for him-the truth is global. For him means the following precisely: a subject,which realizes a truth, is nevertheless incommensurable with thelatter, because the subject is finite and the truth is infinite. Moreover,the subject, being internal to the situation, can only know, or ratherencounter, terms or multiples presented (counted as one) in thatsituation. Yet, the truth is an un-presented part of the situation.Finally, the subject cannot make a language out of anything exceptcombinations of the supernumerary name of the event and thelanguage of the situation. It is in no way guaranteed that thislanguage will suffice for the discernment of the truth, which in anycase, is indiscernible for the resources of the language of thesituation alone (Badiou, 2005a, pp.396-397)

For Badiou, to become a subject, rather than a product of the situation we

must recognise the extra-linguistic nature of an evental truth, a truth that is in

excess of the situation, but one that must be activated or deployed in that

knowledge was once a form of truth it has since been integrated; historicized, compiled, andarchived in apartial, hierarchical system of information, named, categorized and added to thetaxonomy of the encyclopedia.


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situation via the creative and experimental gesture of nomination, a gesture

that takes a risk in seeking to make the truth of the event common.

In comparison to Badiou Antonio Negri defines naming in a much broader

context when he states that:

The name marks something in space. That is the first and most simpleexperience of naming. At first sight, the common name also appears toemerge from an experience developed in space. The brain surveys theworld of things and creates a common name for the ensemble of thingsthat are considered, from that height, as common. (Negri, 2003, p.148)

If, via the introduction of Negri, the concept of naming can be expanded to the

definition of a truth marked in space and made common, surly then the

subject has recourse, at least potentially to other non-linguistic forms of

naming/marking a truth as such, forms that could articulate the extra-linguistic

nature of the truth by bypassing language to mark out truth on a completely

different and potentially new register. By that token it could be possible to

mark something in space or manifest a truth in any given situation via visual

non-linguistic form of communication such as art or music [as Badiou has also

discussed (Badiou, 2005a)], or to articulate a truth through action by being

present/being with: aggregating4 [e.g. . sitting in/protesting] or conversely by

being absent or dispersing [e.g. locking out/striking], each giving form to a

truth, making visible or existent that which was previously invisible or

inexistent, And while verbal and written language may be the predicate of

post-modern communication perhaps it could support a platform or be

supported by a platform where other registers of marking in space could be

produced, innovating the process of naming the truth.

The singular relation of the subject to the truth whose procedure it

4The subject of aggregation will be developed in chapter two.


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supports is the following: the subject believes that there is a Truth,and this belief occurs in the form of knowledge. I term this knowingbeliefConfidence. What does confidence signify? By means of finiteenquiries, the operator of fidelity locally discerns the connections anddisconnections between multiples of the situation and the name of

the event. (Badiou, 2005a, p.397)

Relative to this argument I posit an expanded definition of the term language

to include all actions that could form systems of communication between

subjects. And that It is through a tenacious process of faithful enquiry [enquiry

carried out in fidelity to the event] (Badiou, 2005a) that the subject attempts to

fashion new terms from all elements of the situation combining languages [art,

music, demonstration, annunciation] to form a name. I would maintain that

faithful enquiry now consists of the testing of combinations of communicative

registers that in the right configuration could most closely approximate the

extra-situational truth of the event, and succeed in making it material: marking

it in space and time, so that it can be seen, heard and felt, with the hope of

transforming the situation.

However even this expanded definition of language as a point of access to the

common remains aleatory in nature, in the sense that not only can the subject

never be certain that the term they have fashioned will prove itself to be true,

they also have no certainty as to whether they have been fully understood and

whether their terms are identical in value and meaning to those of any other

subject they encounter. I define this exposure to the uncertainty of

interpretation as the second contingency of language.

What then is the body of the common truths when the names, inmaking themselves common, expose themselves to the risk of the to-come? That is, when the consistency of that which has been opensitself to an always new experimentation[inconsistency]?.(Negri, 2003,

p.169)


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It is precisely the risk of nomination and the unstable nature of any interface of

communication [the contingency of language] that points us towards the

question of the possibility of a communion of multiple subjects via set of

common terms, and it is here that Love as a revolutionary Event becomes

central to our study.

Because the word Love like the word revolution is already a common term,

with an historical referent in the situation, Language functions differently here

than in any other form of Evental nomination, here forcing is the aleatory

relation between a ready established name or set of terms within the situation

and the indiscernible truth to which the subject believes it bears relation.

This is because a term of the situation exists that both belongs to thattruth (belongs to the generic part which is that truth) and maintains aparticular relation with the names at stake in the statement. Thisrelation is determined by the encyclopaedic determinants of thesituation (of knowledge). Forcing (in this case) is a relation verifiable byknowledge, since it bears on a term of the situation and a statement ofthe subject language (whose names are cobbled-together from themultiples of the situation) what is not verifiable by knowledge iswhether the term that forces the statement belongs to the indiscernible.Its belonging is uniquely down to the chance of the enquiry (Badiou, 2005a, pp.401-403)

Love as a common/previously existent term, is used in the declaration of truth:

I love you or the nomination of the event: I am in Love, each occurring in

the present tense based on an affective knowledge or confidence (Badiou,

2005a) which I would differentiate but not segregated from encyclopaedic

knowledge. For while an affective belief can be supported by some elements

of encyclopaedic knowledge they are not its primary source nor would a

scarcity of supporting encyclopaedic knowledge quell the affected subjects

convictions.


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It would seem that confidence in Love is an affective knowledge or

recognition, corporeal, or sensori-motor, its truth is recognized and activated

via the body in a complete sense, the body understood here as a composite

of the physical and psychical elements of being and where Love is as much

felt as a sensation as it is known to be a truth.

The power of knowledge is defined by the interweaving of intelligenceand affect, of brain and body that becomes concrete in the ontology oflove. (Negri, 2003, p.213)

Looking at the concept of affective knowledge from a neurological

perspective, the brain is known to be inscribed by chemical patterns [known

as engrams] where there have been sustained levels of psychological/

emotional intensity. Like pathways that can be traced back to events that

triggered profound and transformative affective responses; the event

becomes inscribed/ named/ known in the history of the subjects body. It

becomes a memory. While this is a concept we will return to in-depth in the

coming chapters it is enough to say here that the equation of Love is that

which includes a connection to an already named/inscribed affect, or category

of emotion that resonates with the subjects recognition of an indiscernible but

palpable affect that can only be descried as new. What occurs between these

two forms of knowledge is the associative decision to nominate the new affect

in approximation to the subjects understanding of what love is.

In this way the present-tense confidence of the declaration of love leaves itself

open to contingency; where the word Love operates, or stands in for, a set of

affective truth procedures that cannot be entirely understood, or in language

and that appear completely differently to each of the subjects involved. What

binds them together is the mutual recognition that a powerful yet indiscernible


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process of transformation is in effect, a transformation that each can

approximate to their understanding of what it is or what it might be to love.

The Formation of Love

For Alain Badiou love is a process of truth activated in the world in two

different directions. For Badiou Love is the Multiple and simultaneous

subjectivisation of singular and disjunctive positions through the encounter

and the declaration of Love.

The Diagram (Fig.1) illustrates Badious presentation of these disjunctive

positions as the two sexed positions of male and female, represented by the

sets M and W in our diagram. It must be understood here that by disjunction

Badiou maintains that there is absolutely no point of commonality between the

two positions and emphasizes that these representations do not signify

empirical gendered positions but rather subjective difference at its most

fundamental level (Badiou, 2008); while Badiou could be criticized for his

hetronormative use of examples it could be maintained that in order for the

difference between the sets and their predicates to be indicated clearly the

use of different genders or more specifically different letters in this case

maintains clarity in the introduction of his primary concepts.


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Fig.1

The diagram (Fig.1) can also be expressed in terms of set theory as:

[U W & U M] T.

In the diagram seen here we note the sets marked M and W do not intersect

directly at any point but rather are connected via the set marked U and

contained with in the set marked T.

Here Badiou equates the singular connection of {U}5 with universality

/ubiquity. Describing {U} as an un-analyzable determination without

descriptive multiplicity that attests, by its presence to the possibility of a

desiring connection while maintaining the differences/disjunctions of the two

positions. {U} is a positive set that shares elements with both {M} and {W}.

According to Badiou the obscure object of desire, which is supported by {U}

and located in the other, guides the Love Encounter. But love as love is not

focused on any one element of that other but goes directly to the complete

5The appearance of the letters U, M, W, T in brackets { } defines them as a set. i.e. {U} = the

set U. (Badiou, 2005a)

U = universality,Ubiquity, a positivebut analyzable termthat supports the

indiscernible objectof Desire.

M = Man

W = Woman

V = Void

T = Situation


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individual, who as a total being is seen to mysteriously support the object of

desire Love for Badiou is the difference between the object as cause for

Desire, recognized in the other [in the case of lust or sexual attraction] and the

a complete being as a subject of love who supports desire in its very being as

such [in the case of true love]. (Badiou, 2008)

Returning to Fig. 1 and the set marked T which in accordance with Badious

thesis represents the world or the situation and it is within this sphere that I

place Language as system of communication between multiple disjunctive

and fragmented positions, a commons that operates via a mutual recognition

or intelligibility of fundamental difference, but one that is accepted by each not

as a point of connection itself but rather as an inadequate but necessary

interface that moderates between singularities.

It is clear form the diagram that the two positions do not come into direct

contact in the situation but merely exist within it simultaneously, and that it is

the chance occurrence of the encounter that connects and activates each

simultaneously yet in their own individual direction, through their activation

and intersection with the set U (Badiou, 2008).

Love activates U in two different directions; a love encounter is what

attributes Eventaly a dual function to the atomic and un-analyzableintersection of two sexed positions. It is the function of the object bywhich desire finds its cause and the function of a point from which the 2produces its unity in the form of a process of investigation of the worldfrom the Point of view of the two. (Badiou, 2008)

Badiou maintains that here love creates an arena where the presentation of

an immanent or proper 2 as 2 is possible. The use of the word immanent

here, confirms that Badious 2 is not the result of Summation 1+1 or of fusion

2 becoming 1 but rather a 2 in excess of its self. For Badiou love is


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understood as the supplementation of a non-connection rather than its

dissolution [or reconnection]. (Badiou, 2008)

Here, as I have stated previously, love is different from friendship or solidarity,

which are often based on similarity, mutual interest (Hardt, 2007) and the

summation of a consensus. But Love by the definition of this thesis operates

on a greater level of affective Intensity and as articulated by Agamben6 and

Badiou respectively, is not based on a specific characteristic but rather

indiscernible excess, beyond the summation of its subjects parts. Love is an

acceptance of the intelligible yet indiscernible inconsistency of the loved one;

Love is the love and production of difference, an affirmation of the

inconsistency of existence and its perpetually transformative nature.

Love is never directed toward this or that property of theloved one (being blond, beings mall, being tender, being lame), butneither does it neglect the properties in favour of an insipid generality(universal love): The lover wants the loved one with all of its predicates;it is being such as it is. The lover desires the as only insofar as it is such-this is the lover's particular fetishism. Thus, whatever singularity (theLovable) is never the intelligence of some thing, of this or that quality oressence, but only the intelligence of an intelligibility. the movementthat transports the object not toward another thing or another place, buttoward its own taking place. (Agamben, 2007, p. 2)

6Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community (2007) is a text that seeks to form a new

definition of community where Singularity is thus freed from the false dilemma that obliges

knowledge to choose betweentheineffabilityof the individualand the intelligibilityof theuniversal. (Agamben, 2007, p.1) And engages with many of the concepts [including love]visible in both Badiou and Negris preceding works.


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Chance, Timing, Naming, Existing

Returning to Negri I will now introduce the concept ofKairs7 and to the idea

of the generative/transformative simultaneity of the naming and becoming of

an evental truth in relation to the formation Love.

Kairs is the instant, that is to say, the quality of the time of the instant,

the moment of rupture and opening of temporality. It is the present, buta singular and open present. Singular in the decision it expresses withregard to the void it opens upon. Kairs is the modality of time...in

kairs, naming and the thing named attain existence, at the same

time, (Negri, 2003, p.152)

Latent in kairsopening up of temporality within the present is the potential of

the future. Love in the singular present ofKairs is named and attains

existence simultaneously in the nomination or declaration I am in love/I love

you. But by that same token love is subject to chance; loves risk lies not in

the veracity of its name but in its exposure to the inconsistency of two

indeterminates:

1. The indiscernible relation U W & U M, which represents the loving

equation between the couple.

2. The multiple the variations of the set T: which represents the

successive fragmentation of the world [the situation] (Badiou, 2008).

and the subjects courage in their negotiation of those indeterminates in

relation to one another.

Love in terms ofkairs is a generative temporal rupture that gathers from the

past and projects into the future, as subjects who know love know/confide that

7Kairs is a term Negri borrowed from the classic Geece that described a qualitative and

indeterminate temporal register, alternate to sequentialquantitive Chronos.


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they can love more and love better; turning a love between two subjects

outward to a love of the common that can go on creating itself endlessly. in a

movement of dilation of the common. (Negri, 2003, p.185).In concurrence

with Negri Badiou states that the true praxis of Love can be understood as a

process of Contraction between the intimate relation of U W & U M, and

Expansion, to {T}: the externalization of love towards the world, or the Turning

of the Evental truth of love towards the situation. Badiou states: the

rhythm/movement of Love is that of a diastole of which {T} is the limit of its

expansion and a systole that has {U} at the centre of its contraction (Badiou,

2008). In a sense, the praxis of true Love mediates between what has been

defined in classical terms as Eros, or romantic love and Agape, which is a

love of mankind/the world. Alternatively, the contraction and dilation between

the truths of an intimacy between two subjects based on difference and an

activation of that truth in the in relation to all of mankind.

Through generation love gives subjective determination to time byprojecting it in the common. There is not solitary love: love constructstools, languages and politics of being within the common...commonbeing is generated setting out from a multitude of singular existences,and the eternity of the common is a sky whose stars are singularities ,Love continuously illuminates the stars of this common sky.(Negri, 2003, p. 211)

In the next chapter I will begin to define and discuss the potential of a

common nexus of love that locates forms and cooperates around the abstract,

affective and aggregative forces of need and desire8 [e.g. {U}]. One that has

8Desire here is not to be understood in the Lacanian sense as a desire for death/annihilation

but on the contrary as Spinozist desire for life: Conatus. It must also be noted that I do notconflate the terms need and desire in their totality but simply contend that in desiring our

own existence and improvement we must identify and strive to satisfy our needs, and that thiscan be understood as the foundation of more complex questions of ontological freedom. Theterms Desire/need or Need/desire as they will appear through out this dissertation refer to a


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the ability to produce itself on a multiple level as a political subject that

generates its own values and relations independent of the systems that

dominate and structure the situation .

call for that which is not present or in-exists in the current situation, a call for thesupplementation of life so that it may to evolve/transform and flourish.


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Chapter 2.

The Local occurrence of the Void, a manifestation of Desire/Need, anaggregation of Being.

The Biopolitical horizon of the world is plural. The multitude is anirreducible ensemble of singularities, and singularity (as an instance ofexposure to the beyond measure) is the production of new pluralities,of new multitudes. Situated at the edge of time every productive nexusbetween singularities in the core of the multitude, and between singularmultitudes, is a communicative nexus. In this context, production is theproduction of subjectivity. (Negri, 2003, p.230)

In this chapter I will attempt to develop an understanding of the loving bond in

the context of the multiple, examining how love as an indiscernible and

unprecedented manifestation of desire/need produced by an exposure to the

void/the immeasurable can form a nexus of co-operative singularities and in

that sense form a political subject body.


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Fig.2

Fig. 2 is a development of the diagram detailed in chapter one, while each

character holds the same value as before, here Badious thesis on the love

encounter between two subjects has been expanded to a co-operation of

multiple subjects, we see that the truth of this encounter is that many and not

just one are at work in the situation: this diagram (Fig.2) posits the potential of

an affective connection, indiscernible in its totality, that can be formed

between multiple subjects. Here once again each connection is unique, each

subject holds nothing in common with the other bar this singular connection of

desire and his/her part in the formation of this aggregate body of individual

loving subjects within the situation. I term this formation, illustrated in Fig.2,

the loving aggregate.

Co-operation is the constellation of differences in the heart of themultitude; it is that clinemen that productively organises the chaos ofthe multitude. We speak here of constellations, where others havespoken ofdispositifs or assemblages. This is only the first step.. inwhich we seek the reason and /or the dynamic force of thisprocesslove as the constitutive power of every constellation (Negri,

2003, pp. 230-231)

U = universality,Ubiquity, a positive

but analyzableterm that supportsthe indiscernibleobject of Desire.

M = Man

W = Woman

T = Situation


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Negris choice of the term co-operation underscores the simultaneous nature

of subjectivisation that occurs in the aggregative love encounter detailed in

the diagram (Fig.2). On the one hand the term [co-operation] articulates a

group that operates or goes to work together and at the same time, and on

the other hand, a group that is affected or operated upon at the same time.

The loving aggregate is formed as it is affected by the event and co-operates

as it works to institute the truth of that event, in a singular and simultaneous

movement: each subject activated in their own direction (Badiou, 2008). It

must also be considered that co-operation as a social mechanism pertains to

a common desire or need that cannot be achieved by one body alone, a

desire or a need that initiates the formation of an organisation of bodies in

common.

Negri states that the mutuation of Love reveals that the common is not an

abstraction of individual interests, but a circulation of singular needs (Negri,

2003, p. 216), needs I would contend that are not contained by the count of

the situation but held by an inconsistent grouping of subjects that hold need in

common, and though that need or desire may not be the same for each

member of that group/aggregate, the existence of a need as such forms a

common bond or a productive constellation (Negri, 2003, p.231)

A productive constellation is formed where the power differences of themultitude co-operate, creating new power. A constellation is moreproductive than the sum of the productive singularities (takenseparately) that co-operate with in them. It is thus for this reason thatthe singularities endeavour to co-operate and the singular multitudesform constellations, because in that away they may produce more; orbetter still, they can continuously move beyond the singular measure ofproductivity and can open themselves increasingly to theimmeasurable.(Negri, 2003, p.231)


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What Negri describes as a productive constellation and what I have equated

as the loving aggregate, could also be compared to what Badiou defines as

the political subject. In his writing on the Paris Commune in the English

translation ofPolemics, published in 2006, Badiou defined the political subject

as one that forms a meta-state within the state; a pure presentation of

elements which belong to the situation, irrespective of all cultural predicates,

that organise and seek radical independence and self determination in the

form of a complete rejection of all classifications and nominations that

structured the state of the preceding situation, and in the formation of new

names and values (Badiou, 2006, p.xvii ). Badiou states that: A political

rupture is always a combination of subjective capacity and an organization-

totally independent of state. 9 (Badiou, 2006, p. 289)

This meta-state/organisation/aggregation succeeds in rupturing the current

state and transforming the logic, which structures it; by virtue of both its

subjective strengths and its ability to organise, to co-operate and to co-

ordinate those strengths in relation to the truth and the situation. The political

subject/ constellation/ aggregation transforms the values and appearance of

its elements through the declaration of its own existence (Badiou, 2006) and,

as I discussed in chapter one, the formation of new terms. The diagram above

(Fig.2, the loving aggregate) can be understood in these terms; as a meta-

state/set that declares itself/names itself/counts itself by virtue of its existence

i.e. through its presence it marks itself in space, creates its own logic

internally, and bears its own relationship to the world via its own criteria of

9A term introduced in Being and Event: The state/The State dictates the count/structure ofthe situation. (Badiou, 2005)


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affinities and values, which are generated by its participants through what

Badiou has termed a collective political discipline. Put in terms of the diagram:

the aggregating subjects {M}s and {W}s project their own values in to the

world {T}.

However I must add that to those that do not form part of this

collective/aggregation the names and values they generate seem empty or

worthless, because as terms they lack a referent beyond the internal logic of

the meta-state of their origin, and thus to the outsider, who is disconnected

from their truth these terms appear to make up a conent-free-langauge

(Badiou, 2005, p. 398). Badiou states:

Hence any revolutionary politics is considered to maintain utopian(ornon-realistic) discourse; a scientific revolution is received withscepticism, or held to be an abstraction without base in experiments; andlovers babble is dismissed as infantile foolishness by the wise. (Badiou,2005, p. 398).

Badiou maintains that transvaluation10, or the transformation of values and the

production new meaning is characteristic in the formation of the political

subject in as much the production of new language attests to the formation

of an organised, co-operative and self determined group that embodies the

possibility of a new and working alternative to the state of the preceding

situation, not by virtue of its unity or oneness, but by virtue of its being as a

heterogeneous multiplicity drawn together or localised by the affective

resonance of an evental truth.11

10A term previously used by Nietzsche to describe the transformation of all values in relation

to Christianity in his 1888 publication The Antichrist. Negri used the term Transvaluation todescribe the ontological transformation that occurred when the values of the pre-Eventalsituation were totally transformed and the units of measure that supported those valuesdissolved to give way to a new set of values determined by the need/desire of the common.11

While I note this definition does not totally conform to what Negri thesis on the common or


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Aggregation {U} and the void: Desire and the Void,

In the first chapter I indicated in Fig.1 the connection between what Badiou

named The Void/the proper name of being/ inconsistent multiplicity and the

obscure union {U}; also described as universality/ubiquity which supports the

object of desire in the other (Badiou, 2008). It would appear that, as the void

is the sub set of any set (Badiou, 2005, p.88), its connection with {U} in this

case, while indiscernible, creates the effect of belonging i.e. the void is a

subset of {U} , {M}, {W} and {T} and in that sense is a their common term,

there for the voids appearance in connection with {U} establishes {U} as set

that manifests what is indiscernible and common between all sets.

(Badiou, 2005a).

In this diagram (Fig.2) {U} is a positive12 unanalysable set (Badiou, 2008) that

acts as an interlocutor13 between the unpresentable void and humanity. The

presentation of {U} is manifested by the subjects call for something that dose

not exist with in the situation; an inexistence14 in the current structure, an

inexistence that can only be supplemented by the restructuring power of an

his deffinition of a productive constellation which is not necissarily predicated on the chanceocurrence of evental subjectification, but rather emerges from a self-valoursing realisation ofones own potential in co-operation with others. However I maintain that at its core it theconcept of a tranformation of values initaited by the emergence of a new socio-politcalformation founded on love.12

Positive meaning it is not the void/[zero]13I choose the term interlocution here to articulate the dialogic position of {U} inrelation to the void and humanity, its appearance in the Love encounter as theindiscernible object of desire is Evental.14I use Badious term here to differentiate an inexistence from a lack. For while alack is a known deficiency or absence of something needed or desirable and requiresthe missing element to restore a situation, for Badiou an inexistence requires asupplementation or excess of the situation, bringing something that was notpreviously existent or known to be absent to the situation. (Badiou, 2008)


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event, in this case the event of Love, a Love that is engendered in the

multiple connection illustrated in Fig. 2.

The power of the concept of an aggregation around the ineffable paradoxically

articulates a common call for transformation from within the situation via what

Negri called povertys exposure to the immeasurable or what Badiou has

described as the limit of the situation or the edge of being. This aggregation

can be understood as a marking in space or a naming of a truth [e.g. need]

in itself.

While I could place the limit of the situation in literal relation to the limit of

recourses or the limit of a particular political regime. In developing an abstract

schematic system in this dissertation it is my intention to articulate the concept

of a worlds limits on an abstract level, marked out as a physical and temporal

space occupied by a subject, and in doing so allow, via that abstraction, for

this system to be tested in relation to multiple situations in which a limit of any

kind could be seen to exist.

Desire, Time, The body and The Void: Negri & Bergson

Kairs becomes relevant here once more, not just in the naming/ declaration

of love between two or more subjects but in the capacity of understanding the

origin of need/desire within the situation and how the nexus of subjects comes

to form around it; placing the subject body as a whole at the interlocutory point

between the eternal past, the immediate present and the immeasurable

future.

When the body reflects, it is on the one hand immersed in the materialfield (the before), and on the other hand, it is open to innovation (the


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after). If the before is the eternal and the after is the to-come, the body

reflects the eternal by putting it in contact with the to-come, because

even if this relationship is immeasurable, it is still, at the same time,

production. (Negri, 2003, p.174)

This quote by Negri resonates with a theory of time developed much earlier by

Henri Bergson (Fig.3). Bergson like Negri placed the body at the interlocutory

point between the pure pastand the perpetually shifting present. For Bergson

voluntary memory (Bergson, 1991) was how the human mind utilized a

coextensive past to aid the moment at hand, as it evolved. Those memories

or elements of the past that were most useful or necessary were closest in

proximity to the thoughts of the subject. The subject then physically acted on

these thoughts producing the present. Bergson states:

My present consists in the consciousness I have of my body, havingextensions in space, my body experiences sensation and at the sametime executes movements. Situated between the matter whichinfluences it and that on which it had influence, my body is a centre ofaction, The place where the impressions received choose intelligently

the path they will follow...thus it indeed represents the actual state of mybecoming, that part of my duration that is in process of growth. Moregenerally, in that continuity of becoming which is reality itself, Thepresent moment is constituted by the quasi-instantaneous sectioneffected by our perception and this is precisely that which we call thematerial world, our body occupies. that part of which we directly feelthe flux, in its actual state matter is to be defined as a present that isalways beginning again. (Bergson, 1991, p.138)

It is important to note here that while Bergsons ontology as a whole differs

quite distinctly from the more abstract and political projects of Negri and

Badiou, and pertains predominantly to our relationship with the past, it is

Bergsons philosophical and diagrammatic articulation (Fig.3) of the concept

of a coextensive space-time, graduated in its proximity and indiscernible in its

totality, to which all Being bears a relation, and from which the material word

is constituted via the interlocution of the body, that gives me cause to


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introduce this aspect of his work at this time; bearing in mind that it is not the

objective of this dissertation to hold fidelity to any single theorist but instead to

test and put to work those elements of each that furnish and support the

development of my own synthetic theoretical system.

Fig.3 (Bergson, 1991, p. 162)

This dissertation seeks to expand Bergsons notion of the single body as the

temporal intersection between past and future, to a multiple and simultaneous

aggregation of bodies that each in their own way accesses a coextensive

temporal plain in order to aid and sustain themselves as a whole.

P = PresentSituation

S = The body/

sensory motor

A-B = The Past atgraduated levels

of proximity/utility


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Fig.4

Fig.4 is a hybrid or synthetic diagram, which utilises Bergsons schema to

visually present the origin of the set {U}. It attempts to illustrate {U}s

connection not just to the pure past in Bergsons terms, but to an expanded

notion of the immeasurable/eternal spatiotemporal dimension of all being.

Here {U} manifests a truth that was previously inexistent in the situation, a

truth that is needed/desired by the subjects for the transformation and

evolution of the situation, but remains indiscernible in its totality. In this

Diagram the truth is manifested in the situation via the subjects mutual

attraction and connection with {U}, they name, or mark that truth in space via

their aggregation, transforming the structural values of the situation via the

formation of a new co-operative singularity i.e. e. the political subject body.

This transformative and aggregative truth can be resuscitated from the past,

where an evental truth is retroactively recognised, innovated and put to work

{U} = Supports themanifestation of desire as

an Aid to the situation,but an aid that remainsindiscernible in itstotality/singular needs

{U} can connect to oraggregate multipledisjunctions around a

generic but localizedaffect.

{U} is Manifest throughthe local occurrence ofthe void and is amanifestation of aDesire/Need for that

which in-exists.

{U} is located at the point

of intersection betweenpast and future i.e. ThePure present


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in the present [in its new context the past can rupture or create a gap in the

present where a future can take form] or it can arrive from an immeasurable

exteriority, a concept I will expand upon in chapter three.

I would contend in relation to this diagram that relative to time and space the

truth is without delineation [the truth is infinite] and that it only comes to be

measured in these terms at its point of intersection with the world/situation via

the body. In concurrence with this Negri defined the material field of the

production of being as corporeal and the world as an ensemble of bodies or

monads ofkairsthat bring the eternal past into contact with the

immeasurable future through a praxis of time that involved both reflection and

action. (Negri, 2003, p.170).

Negri states:

If ontological reflection on the materialist field is posed by Kairs, and if

it is the body that caries out this reflection, it will have to first accept theimmeasurability that exists between the eternal and the to-come. Infact, the corporeal field of ontological reflection is eternal and the fieldthat is determined by Kairs is absolutely open. But if the body is the

bearer (Tger) ofkairs, it will not be easy for it to sustain this

relationship. Yet it does so because the body in so far as it is power ofdetermination that lives in the singularity of the materialist field, is asthough nourished by the gap that generates the immeasurable.As we have seen, the key to the production of new being is indeedlocated in the gap of ontological temporality. The body reacts to thegap by producing new being. Given that the body is inserted in the

materialist field of the eternal, it leads the eternal itself--the eternal in itsentirety and entirely in the single instant--to the gap and regenerates it,testing itself out--itself, as body--in the form of praxis of time. In the firstplace, corporeal reflection is thus an ontological immersion thatactivates the eternal through it is opening on the edge of being, on thepoint of the to-come. (Negri, 2003, pp.173-174)

In concurrence with Bergson, Negri positions the key production of new

being in this temporal interstice between past and future, as the kairs of

bodies...create truths through praxis (Negri, 2003, p.176). In a sense the


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body transmutes time to form space, through thought /reflection and action,

and in this way the body makes tangible or material the resistance offered by

the inconsistency of Being [i.e. the void] to the consistent structure of the

situation or in other words; the body gives finite form to an infinite truth so that

is can be put to work in the transformation of an equally finite world, or put

simply: through a physical and psychical practice of reflection and creative

experimentation in space and time the subject can create new ways of being

in the world.

In all love the body lingers in the gap of this exchange between finite and

infinite: the body and the truth, and it remains in this moment of mutuation,

whose sustaining quality is that of a durational intensity that persists as long

as need/desire presents itself as a call for that which is beyond the situation.

The body is the material power to answer this need through testing and

innovation, or, to return to Badious terms: the pursuit of faithful enquiry

(Badiou, 2005a) a process in which the Subject, as one who has borne faithful

witness to the truth event and named it as such, seeks effective means by

which to act on that truth via the exploration of courses of action that may or

may not prove veridical/true to the event. Faithful enquiry leads to the

formation of a generic procedure and the generic procedure is the institution

of an Evental truth and the transformation of the situation via a new form of

praxis.

It would appear that for both Negri and Badiou Subjects are formed and

aggregate at the edge of being; in povertys exposure to the immeasurable.

Drawn together by need and held together by love; they experiment [faithful


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enquiry] and develop [generic] procedures in fidelity to the truth of their

existence; the truth that they are many, that they are together, and that they

can love and produce themselves differently.

The experience of poverty introduces one to the constitution of thecommon; the experience of love is an activity of construction of thecommon. If the common is the incarnation of love, then povertyprovides the corporeal basis of this relation. From this perspective, onecan say with out any doubt that the relation between poverty and loveis configured as an eternal return of the power of love to the location ofpoverty. And it is a creative return that installs itself in the physical andethical context of the fall of atoms of life, yet it breaks the linearity oftheir fall and so generates the common, it is the figure of the clinamen,but in subjective form; it is the chaos of the eternal cosmos, but brought

back to subjectivity. The common is animated and given subjectivedetermination when borne of the creative relation between poverty andlove. It is for this reason that, in order to nourish the desire of thecommon, one must be, or one must make oneself poor; and if onewishes to construct the common, one must love. (Negri, 2003, p.210)

In this quote Negri like Badiou seeks to transform how poverty is perceived.

Turning away from notions of fear, powerlessness, subjugation and death and

instead presenting poverty as the physical and psychical state of necessity

and bare subjectivity that can produce love amongst the multitude. A place of

perpetual inconsistency, where those who have nothing to loose but their

chains (Marx, 2008, p.48) aggregate in dynamic co-operation and restructure

their world according to their need/desire to live.

Using the analogy of the figure of the Clinamen Negri articulates the necessity

of inconsistency and collision in the unpredictable fall of atoms that is the

formation of life. This analogy can be developed to further articulate our

diagram as the collision or falling together of singularities or subjects attracted

or held together in the common operation of truth or a simultaneous

recognition of the void with in the situation or the inconsistency at the centre

of all life: to Co-operate is to operate in common, this is the power that the


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poor posses in their co-operative aggregation. This power threatens the state

of the situation, because the poor by virtue of their need articulate a call from

within the situation for that which is beyond its limit, and there for cannot be

satisfied or indeed pacified by anything that is produced within it [the

situation].

It is here that an understanding of charity orCaritas or aid can be exemplified

as a misconception of love. Caritas objectifies poverty (Hardt, 2007) and

attempts to give a measure to the immeasurable need/desire that poverty

articulates.

A natural measure is imposed upon the slave [the poor]; a measure ofthe exploitation of work is imposed on the proletariat; everywheremeasure, against the immeasurableness of the practice of the eternalby the poor; a hierarchy against the common; the rational of wealth,against those of creativity. (Negri, 2003, p.197)

This can be understood as an attempt by the state to maintain itself via an

internally produced solution to the problem presented to it by a set of subjects

whose need/desire articulates the inadequacy of the current systems of that

state.

Relative to this I present a brief example in the statement Food, water &

medicine will solve Africas problem, while this statement is true in the terms

of the situation, the arrival of food, water and medicine in Africa will not

transform the ontology of the situation, but simply create for the poor yet

another structure of dependence that supports the current situation rather

than in Felix Guattaris terms, precipitate a total transformation of the situation

that would have the people put in place their own power formations which

affirm themselves with in new relations of forces. (Guattari, 1995, p.124)


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In summary, it would seem then that the power of the poor is produced

through their faith in the plenitude of Being, or in their practice of the eternal.

In its incommensurability with the state and its structuring units of value and

measure, poverty, according to Negri, becomes a category of political

resistance.

Residing in that gap between the situation and the void the poor aggregate

and co-operate as they transform and generate for themselves a world

independent of the state, forming, what we have defined in Badious terms as,

a political subject.

The next chapter of this dissertation I will continue, with the support of my

references, to expand on the points made here, and will attempt to develop a

new schema by which we can understand and articulate the spatio-temporal

position of the poor in the form of the political subject /loving aggregate and

discuss the mechanics of their formation relative to time and space.


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Chapter 3

In this chapter I will attempt, with the help of the diagram I have formulated in

Fig. 5, to continue to develop and describe in greater detail the mechanics of

the loving aggregate/political subject, schematizing its relationship to time and

space; articulating the present on the one hand as an intersection where two

immeasurable voids [past and future] become measured as they are made

material through retroactive logic and reasonable estimation [the production

and dissemination/projection of knowledge] and on the other hand as an

opening to the eternal truth of the past and the pure potential of the future [the

formation of a new lived ontology15]. Relative to this I will examine the

[political] subjects connection to the past event through the introduction of

Badious concept of the Evental trace, discussing its relationship to memory

and the future as it shapes the decisions and consequences that determine

the fate of the of the loving aggregate point16 by point in the formation of the

present.

Time and Space

The first fundamental dimension of the experience of the world is thatof time: love must therefore become the temporal construction of theworld. Now, being is indeed constructed in accordance with the arrowof time that advances without conclusion. But temporality is unable toemancipate itself from the eternal and open itself to production i.e. toaugment the eternal, opening it constitutively to the to-come except

15This terms references both the Psychical/attitudinal transformation as well and the physical

transformation of the socio-political landscape via the formation of the loving aggregate.16 By point, I understand here simply what confronts the global situation with singular

choices, with decisions that involve the yes and the no (Badiou, 2009,p.51)


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for when it is sustained by love. It is generation that augments theeternal that innovates being (Negri, 2003, p.211).

In this quote, Negri states that time is the primary dimension of our experience

of the world and that in order to transform that experience we must transform

the way we see, use and measure time by expanding our practice of love in

relation to temporality. Relative to what I discussed in chapter two, I

understand this notion of love in time to be based in a change of attitude

towards time and a shift in values which frees humanity from the limitations of

knowledge constructed purely from the past, by opening that knowledge up to

the possibility of future truths that can arrive without precedent.

Negri maintains that this temporal application of love is the foundation to

generation and the augmentation of being, or what Badiou might call an

ontological supplement. This supplementation occurs when the truth of the

eternal [the past] is augmented through its exposure to the immeasurable

to-come [the future], an excess. This exposure of the before to that which is

in excess of all measure the after creates the possibility of the production of

a something new in the present. (Negri, 2003)

The second fundamental dimension of the experience of the world isthat of space: love must therefore become the spatial constitution ofthe world. But why does love construct space? Because love seeks the

common, both the eternity of the common (i.e. the already generated)and the to-come of the common (i.e. that which is to be constituted onthe edge of time). Space is the projection of the accumulation ofexperience constitutive of being produced by love within the temporalitythat is rendered immeasurable between eternity and the to-come.(Negri, 2003, p. 212)

Here once again [as in chapter two, p.31] Negri ascribes the temporal

application of love with an accompanying spatial manifestation. For Negri

space is the empirical projection of temporal love as it seeks to produce itself


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in the common, a projection that names/marks the constructive intersection of

past experience and future potential in space.

It would seem that in terms of every day existence Negris outline of the

spatial and temporal dimensions of love speaks to a concept of speed or pace

of life [speed being the relation between time and space] and with regard to

this I present two comparative examples:

My first example is the current state of contemporary capitalism: which could

be seen to operate in terms of measure/quantity, domination and subjection,

and employs systems where an atomized hyper mobility and an attitude that

prioritizes an efficient use and management of time, information and

recourses in relation to consumption/production is highly rewarded e.g. free

trade. It is important to note that here we also see a minimization of affective

connection in production and exchange via the use of technology,

bureaucracy, and law. And where love, irrespective of sexual orientation, is

both subordinated to sex or sentimentality and normatively maintained

between the couple and/or the family rather then being recognized as a

relational structure that could extend to the multiple permutations of human

relations that can form around a common truth.

My second example presents the alternative that aggregative love17

(Fig.4),

as an affective socio-political construct defined by this dissertation, could

produce; a different ontological structure where time is measured qualitatively

rather than quantitively [i.e. Kairs] and where difference, affective resonance,

aggregation, and co-operation are manifest in a kind of lingering in

17As articulated in Chapter 2


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communion that acts as the foundation of production and exchange on all

levels of society.

I would add here that it is perhaps not simply a comparison of speeds: fast

capital and slow aggregative love, but rather a comparison of levels of

attention to time and space, where contemporary capitalism creates transient

atomized spaces, multiple brief connections, constant stimulus and demands

for action and reaction, the loving aggregate as a system requires a practice

of sensitivity, patients and dynamic attention to our surroundings, it asks us to

remain, in order to form co-operative connections; as being together in

difference it allows the form of a society to come forth on its own terms via the

decisions the subjects make at each juncture and the relation their fidelity

bares to the terrain they must negotiate day by day18.

As to when an alternative structure like aggregative love could come into

being, I would contend that perhaps it is the case that when the current state

exhausts itself, or the systems of production and consumption that structure it

are in some way disrupted [e.g. an economic crisis/depression], the engine of

contemporary capitalism stalls, and idleness, unemployment and disorder

follow, that a window/gap in time and space can appear, a space that calls for

restructuring, a space of need that underscores the inadequacy of the

situation and the systems that have sustained it. Perhaps it is here in a time

when what is unknown has become apparent and minds are left still enough

to think of truth, to name their needs/desires and consider their surroundings,

18I will discuss the concept of decision in regards to fidelity and the Evental trace in detail

under the heading The Trace and Decision.


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that the loving aggregate could find its form through practice and initiate the

practice of a new lived ontology.

To return to Badiou what remains now is the question of mediation, decision

and consequence in the political subjects/loving aggregates practical relation

to time and space in the formation of this new lived ontology, and how this

relationship might be schematized relative to the preceding work of this

dissertation.

The Trace and Decision

Fundamental to Badious theory of the political subject is the relationship of

the trace19

to the production of a new [post-Evental] present20

. In Logics of

Worlds, publishedin English in 2009, Badiou uses the Spartacus revolt in

ancient Rome as an example to describe not just the form of the political

subject body, but how it sustains itself as an aggregation of multiple

singularities. Here Badiou maintains that the success of the [political]

subject/loving aggregate is determined through its management of decisions

and consequences [points]: through its fidelity to the Evental trace, its

engagement with chance and the combination faith and aptitude21 that

constitute its ability maintain its independence and to institute the truth;19The Trace is The Events residue in the situation, or in terms of the diagram (Fig.5) thesubjects faithful memory of the event. I call the trace 'what subsists in the world when theevent disappears. It is something of the event, but not the event as such; it is the trace, amark, a symptom.(Badiou, 2005b)20

Relative to this I contend that The Event offers a glimpse of a potential future (see Fig.5) in

the form of a truth that that will only prove itself in an anterior space-time (future situation).The subject, in fidelity to their memory or The Trace, then endeavors to activate or makematerial/common, that truth in the post-Evental present, thus producing the future that theevent attested to.21

Here I refer to the subjects ability to manage facts relative to the state of the situation e.g.terrain, skills, numbers, weaknesses, internal tensions, sensitivities etc. i.e. the application ofknowledge to aid the successful institution of the truth.


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essentially how it moderates between the consistent and inconsistent

elements of life.

This institution of the possible as present is typically a subjective

production. Its materiality is constituted by the consequences drawn dayafter day from the events courseit is clear that the body here issubjectivated to the extent that it subordinates itself to the novelty of thepossible. This amounts to a subordination of the body to the trace, butsolely in view of an incorporation into the present, which can also beunderstood as a production of consequences: the greater the number ofescaped slaves, the more the Spartacus-subject amplifies and changesin kind, and the more its capacity to treat multiple points increases.(Badiou, 2009, p.51-52)

Badious example of Spartacus and the escaped slaves can also be

understood in terms of any aggregate body, or group whose need/desire for

freedom, and the possibility of a new present, subordinates/holds them in co-

operation, and as the number of co-operative singularities multiplies so does

their capacity to engage with the multiple decisions that will dictate their

success, and thus transform their world. For Badiou it is through this

mechanism of subordination to the desire/need of the possible [the case of

Spartacus, the possibility of freedom and the right to return home], the

multiplication in numbers and the co-operation of skills that the faithful/political

subject or loving aggregate can generate a new [post-evental] present. In

relation to the diagram (Fig.5) each subject within the loving

aggregate/political subject body (Fig.2) undergoes their own exchange

between the evental trace and the future and thus the subject body as a

whole creates the present. Likewise the individual strengths and weaknesses,

knowledge and ignorance, skills and short comings, of the members of the co-

operative/loving aggregate determine its success or failure, thus the greater

the number of the aggregation the greater the permutations of possible

outcomes for better of worse, as each singular subject contributes to the


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formula of the [political] subject body as a whole.

Such a subject realizes itself in the production of consequences, which iswhy it can be called faithful faithful to the Evental trace, and thus tothat vanished event... The product of this fidelity is the new present

which welcomes, point by point, the new truth. (Badiou, 2009, p53-54)

According to Badiou, The production of consequences or the making of

choices is how the subject body forms its present and actualizes its truth, this

production is considered faithful by Badiou in the sense that it is always in

reference to the trace and therefore always in reference to the event. In the

diagram (Fig.5) we see that at every point of decision the subjects thoughts

return to the Evental trace via the red loop of memory as they act in fidelity to

it, the consequences of which informs and transforms the present and

facilitates the institution of the new truth.

I posit the loving aggregate, in accordance with Badiou, as the physical

manifestation of truth [the marking of temporal love in space22] and the

material consequence of a choice; their choice to remain in the singular union

of co-operation; At every juncture choosing love in response to their

desire/need, their thoughts always returning to the event, the trace remaining

fixed in their memory as their faithful connection to the truth of their existence.

The Diagram

The mechanics of this faithful connection are schematized in my final diagram

Fig.5. This diagram attempts to map the connections between the event, the

Evental trace and the treatment of points (the process of decision making)

relative to three temporal dimensions Pure Past (the eternal), Post-Evental

22See p.38-39 (Negri, 2003, p. 212)


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Present and Future Potentiality. This diagram integrates Negris concepts of

Kairs\temporal love and the Bergsonian schema in the form of two open

horizontal cones [that indicate distance in time via proximity to their apex]

representative of the pure past and potential future respectively, which

intersect, via their apex, on a central diagonal line, the present situation and

interlocutory position of the subject body, i.e. between the eternal [past] and

the immeasurable [future] (Negri, 2003).

Below is a numerical index to explain in further detail the meaning of the

terms used in the diagram and connect them with the terminology adopted

throughout this dissertation.

Represented in this diagram are 3 temporal spaces:

1. Pure Past: The realm of memory and encyclopaedic knowledge or the

registration of human experience. However it is important to note that

this space also represents pre/non-history, the unknown past and it is

therefore described as the eternal space of being, and in that sense is

a void.

2. Present Situation:

A point in time that cannot be fixed, as it presses ever forward

into the future,

An intersection where two immeasurable voids [past and future]

become measured as they are mapped the through retroactive

logic and reasonable estimation.

[The production and dissemination/projection of knowledge]


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An opening/portal to the eternal truth of the past and the pure

potential of the future [the formation of a new lived ontology].

3. Future Potentiality:

The immeasurable; realm of truth and of pure potentiality.

Reflects the infinite and inconsistent potential permutations of

being that cannot be known until they are manifest in the

present; this is also a void and remains consistent with Badious

definition of the term the void.

Within these temporal dimensions I have marked two important moments

In the Pure Past we find:

1. The Evental trace: A point that acts as a retro-attractor, a remnant of

the void and a possible future that made itself visible in the moment the

event took place, a moment that now exists only in the memory of the

faithful subject.

In the Present Situation we find:

2. The post-Evental present: An unfixed point that presses ever forward

into the future, a future [in] formed/made material by the Evental trace.

These moments are connected respectively by two colour-coded loops/relays

representing a reciprocal temporal relationship:

1. The red relay/ loop, which connects the Evental trace and the post-

Evental present.

2. The blue relay/loop, which connects the event/trace to the

immeasurable potentiality of the future. It is this excess unknown

potential that creates the fissure of a new Evental truth in the situation.


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Fig.5


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Having laid out the schematic representation of the trace and related its

position to the process of decisions/choices that can determine the success of

failure of the loving aggregate, what remains to be emphasized is the

avoidance of dogma23 in fidelity; that radical aggregative love is a practice,

and as a practice it takes a chance or makes a leap, not only in the form of

fidelity to one truth and one event, but via a fidelity the to the inconsistency of

being24

as such, and the potential manifestation of multiple and successive

truths in accordance with the perpetual transformation of being through out

time.

I would contend and that is it only in the practical application of the ontological

paradox of faith in inconsistency, that the loving aggregate, as political

subject, can hope to survive the successive fragmentation of the world

(Badiou, 2008) and maintain its freedom and aptitude to manifest the infinite

truth in the finite context of our world.

23A practice of faith in knowledge rather than faith in truth.

24

Manifest in dynamic attention to our surroundings, the affirmation and production ofsingular difference within its formation, and in the affirmation of existence as transformation(Bergson, 1944)


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Conclusion

Over the course of this dissertation I have attempted to build a synthetic and

abstract philosophical system based on the premise that if love as an event

can be identified as the multiple and simultaneous subjectivisation of singular

and disjunctive positions through the encounter and the declaration of a truth

that is then activated or turned outwards towards the situation (Badiou, 2008),

then what is to say that this encounter could not occur on a multiple level.

If love is an aggregation of bodies in affective resonance with an indiscernible

desire, then the number of those bodies could be manifold and the breadth of

their influence boundless.

Summary:

In the first chapter of this dissertation, I began with the introduction of a

schematic diagram to illustrate love in relation to the work of Alain Badiou,

introducing both his theory of the Subject and of love as an event. I presented

Badious definition of love as the simultaneous subjectivisation of singular and

disjunctive positions that experience their encounter in completely different

ways yet affirm its truth together in the declaration of love while activating that

truth each in their own singular direction thus multiplying the number of faithful

connections to that truth in the world. Following this section I then began to

discuss the act of naming in relation to this declaration and activation of love

with in the situation, and, via the introduction of the work of Antonio Negri I


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attempted to expand Badious definition of naming to include non linguistic

forms of annunciation/communication, placing the emphasis on what Negri

termed marking in space or making material the truth named, expanding the

subjects spectrum of communication to include visual, sonic non-verbal

languages and physical presence or absence as possible permutation of what

it could be to name a truth. Continuing then to examine affect in relation to

knowledge; where love as a name maintains a cultural and historic referent

while also maintaining the affect of a transformative revelation characteristic

of the extra situational event.

I continued in the second chapter to discuss the status of desire within the

loving equation as defined in chapter one in accordance with Badious thesis.

I examined the implication of the connection Badiou posits between the Void

and Desire and from there began to form a definition of Desire as a call for

something that does not exist within the situation, a recognition and

affirmation of the void, but not in the sense of a life for death as Lacan might

term it but in the sense of a life for life, an apetite for ones own existence and

enhancement. Then with the use of my second schematic diagram I

attempted to expand the concept of love as a bond not just between two, as

detailed in chapter one, but between multiple singularities, as I began to

develop a definition of love in relation to revolutionary political praxis, creating

the connection between what I had described as the loving aggregate and

Badious definition of the political subject in his writing on the Paris Commune.

Developing the concept of an aggregation of bodies around singular need/

desire as a call for an extra situational or Evental transformation into the

foundation of emancipatory political movements, I Introduced concepts of


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cooperation developed by Antonio Negri that confirmed Badious definition of

the political subject as one that forms a meta-set, completely independent

from the state of the situation that maintains its own values and produces its

own relation with the world. This chapter then concluded with the introduction

of the question of the spatial and temporal register of need and of truth in

relation to the aggregative positioning of bodies around such indiscernible

manifestations of the void. Creating through a comparative study of aspects of

Henri Bergson, Negri and Badiou a third diagram that defined the present and

the body as point of intersection between the eternal void of the pure past and

the immeasurable void of the potential future, I sought through the

introduction of this schema to begin to develop an understanding of how the

loving aggregate as a subject body might shape a new world, where their

vision of their future might originate. I defined the power of love and the

loving/political subject body as the confident belief in the persistence of life

and the infinite plenitude of being.

The third chapter continued to develop my theory of the spatio-temporal

register of love. I discussed the notion of speed and attention in relation to

contemporary capital and the potential alternative offered by the loving

aggregate, addressing questions as to where and how the loving aggregate

formed, survived and maintained its independence from the state and its

fidelity to the truth of its foundation. I took Badious writing on the Spartacus

revolt as an example and discussed the implications of the aggregation of

disjunctive subjects in relation to chance, decision and consequence,

highlighting the multiple permutations that can support or dissolve the


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formation and maintenance of a loving aggregate / political subject by virtue of

its being an assembly of singular and disjunctive subjects.

Then with the introduction of a fifth diagram I placed the loving aggregate in

relation to time once again in a dialogic synthesis of Antonio N

love and its potentials

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