[-empyre-] screen and desire/stepping out of the frame

[Aristide Antonas]

Dear Johannes,

Yes, I believe that Badiou usually disregards facts; he privileges events;
he disregards norms in order to prioritize the exceptional: his concept for
the "fact" is always represented as part of a finished archived past. His
"event" as the exception to any such archiving: it would always stay open
to an undetermined future. Nevertheless any exception is linked to the norm
it overcomes. Outside the game, outside the frame Badiou finds the field of
exception as the one that concerns politics. I do not agree. I think that
it is more challenging to invent norms, not exceptions. The culture of
gaming may help to understand this remark and orient towards this direction
new concepts of the political.

Excuse me for delaying my response. I am still considering your questions.
They are not easy to answer. I try to suggest an urgent constructive
awareness towards new communal norms; we may enter a phase where the
political may be again identified to inventions of the normal; it seems
that this will be the political task for tomorrow. We used to understand
the political as a simple attitude of resisting the hegemonic. The
hegemonic structures are less and less visible. Norms cannot anymore be
stabilized through the function of a state, the state legislative platform
seem already more and more old, unpractical and dysfunctional. Most
governments cannot even act anymore within the field of their laws. Pressed
by the banking system, the states succumb to demands related to the value
of the citizen; the states cannot react anymore to a barbaric "lessez
faire".