Engendering Zero (Part 2)

As stated at the beginning of Part 1, the title of this entry refers to a reading of Alain Badiou's mathematics and Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory - and specifically my reading Sam Gillespie's The Mathematics of Novelty; as well as reading secondary sources on Lacan, notibably Savoj Zizek and several others. How is it that these thinkers can speak of engendering zero: calling forth or bringing forth what? Precisely Nothing. Engendering zero implies generation and bringing into being in relation with the Void as it were. Why and how the Void? That has been my question.

Part I restricted the exploration to Badiou's ontology=mathematics. I think we made a minimal beginning (perhaps discussing about the first 13 pages of Gillespie's book). I will recap what was my personal concern, my learning as it were, keeping in mind this should not be conclusive - in fact there is a self-questioning going on:

(a) Epistemology encompasses the whole domain of thought itself, knowledge as such. Ontology would encompass the domain of epistemology inasmuch as thought, knowledge would not be separate from being qua being; however, thought and new thought are always coming into being and do not encompass what is not known . Being qua being is where thought is situated, namely in the Void.

(b) What I think I know is, if thought is the virtual past, thought of the new is not the new. I am predisposed to think any part of thought would be based on memory and therefore the past. Furthermore, would not the thought of the Void, which is not, be essentially a virtual past?

(c) The "count as one" is a reference to Badiou's application of set theory; the terms or elements of a situation form the set, are included in the set. One knows them as such, it is knowledge, it is thought in the domain of epistemological order. It is unified or consistent presentation.

(d) The term "Situation" is used to signify a set of consistent presentation. The thought of the Void as in (b) above is not the Void, it is part of consistent presentation. The unthinkable Void in nonetheless experienced as that which escapes the "count as one" - multiplicity within the situation plus inconsistent multiplicity are signified by the term "State".

(e) Applying the language of set-theory: new situations (consistent multiplicities) which are not, that which are possible because of inconsistent multiplicity, are possible being sutured in the power set of that situation because it includes the empty set as well as all subsets generated by its presented elements.

(f) Novelty for Badiou is engendered from the Void (a name for that in excess of presentation). We are to understand this with reference to his conception of the Event (which by chance occurs because it is possible). The situation in any State has its presented truth, the Truth of the Event (emerging by virtue of inconsistent multiplicity) engenders transformation of the situation, engenders a novel situation and a novel State.

(g) The Event then must be pure operation. The situation can be seen as a "subtraction" from the State. In the condition for the new is a "subtraction from the subtraction" - or a "plus-one", a novel situation and its truth. The Truth procedure inaugurated by the Event is an operation from the Void.

(h) This operation occurs in the experience of the Subject - the subtraction and the subtraction from subtraction are related to the two categories of human experience. The consistency of the situation and the State is one register of human experience, another register is inaugurated by the Event.

(i) We are all individuals. As such, we participate in a given State as an individual Subject in that State. A novel State then, would logically require a transformation of the situation of at least one individual. In terms of this blog and its thesis, the process of allegiance to Truth is a revolution of the mind.

(j) This idea of allegiance or fidelity in Badiou is a matter of atheistic faith. If indeed an Event occurs it manifests as a rupture in the situation, and the mind of the individual(s) subject in that situation, who for a period of time are directly acting in response to that rupture until the novel situation is established. That an Event has occurred is thus known in an anterior sense to have taken place. In the interim, the transforming individual is functioning in relation to inconsistent multiplicity.

The above is a very sketchy schematic of what I think I know about Badiou's ontology=mathematics. This was discussed in greater detail in Part 1 of this series. Important to add is that in Badiou's theory the truth (small t) in situations is categorized as existing in basically four quadrants: love, science, art and politics. The latter is obviously the primary domain of revolutionary practice. Important to Badiou and the thinkers featured in this blog is that the current political situation in the world at this time is established in the authority of capitalist power - and that the Event which is rupture in this situation is the advent of the communist hypothesis.

I think it is clear that this topic focus is on the nature of subjectivity, our personal relationship to the Void - which is also the focus in reading Lacan's engendering of zero in psychoanalysis - and so we turn to the content for Part 2:

I spoke a couple of posts ago, in leading in to this current series, that the original work of Lacan is not easily accessible to those of us who do not know French and who are not professionally schooled and experienced psychoanalysts. Badiou was deeply influenced by Lacan as is well known and he has been a secondary source on Lacan's system for me. Even more so I have read Savoj Zizek on Lacan and I will get to that soon enough. There are some other good writers I have been reading, also secondary sources on Lacan whose thoughts I want to reference - but also writings about Zizek on Lacan, which will be my starting point.

A very good introduction to Zizek is Zizek: A Primer by Glyn Daly. Having established Zizek's background and getting to his psychoanalytic stance rooted in the idea of Death Drive (itself rooted in Zizek's reading of Hegel), the article then says:

"It is neither a cancellation nor any kind of physical death but is rather a certain excessive impulse that persists beyond mere existence or biological life. As Zizek argues: 'Human life is never just life, it is always sustained by an excess of life' (Zizek, 2001b: 104). The human being is precisely that entity that is sustained by a "more than human". It is this "inhuman" excess - born of a fundamental alienation - which is the death drive and which is constitutive of humanity as such. Death drive is a constant impulse to resolve the gap, or heal the wound, in the order of Being; to overcome dislocation and establish the full presence of subjectivity by finding its ultimate name/place in the world."

So let me anticipate already where I am going in my thesis conflating Badiou and Zizek on Lacan: order of Being (ontology, being qua being) exists not just as our mere biological life (our situation), but is sustained by an excess of life (inconsistent multiplicity); the fundamental alienation / death drive (the fundamental Event) is a constant impulse to heal the wound (establish a novel situation).

The questioning going on in me has to do with the perhaps repetitive and therefore non-novel resolution characteristic of thought itself in the thought of subjectivity as an ultimate name/place in the world. As I understand it, Lacan as per Zizek, posits this very impossibility of thought encompassing all of experience - that the subject as the thought of one's place in relation to the world is not the Subject. Glyn Daly does not provide this gloss on Zizek with application of the capital "S", but otherwise what she says lends to my thesis:

"Zizek insists on the validity of the notion of [S]ubject (Zizek, 1999: 158-59). The [S]ubject is neither a positive entity nor an identifiable locus but is thoroughly de-substantialised - it is precisely 'this empty nothing' of which Hegel speaks. This is why the Lacanian mark for the subject is $ (S-barred, the empty place or void that cannot be filled out in an ultimate sense)."

So we begin Lacanian algebra with $ (S-barred). What follows in the article text is a continuation of the Hegelian theme:

"Subjectivity [small s I say] will be more or less stable according to context. Under the impact of a traumatic experience, however, we experience a certain 'night of the world'[Hegel] where coherence and cohesion become radically undermined: that is, the condition of subject."Here it is hard to say small s because we are speaking I believe of the situation under assault of the Subject whose domain is inconsistent multiplicity.

Glyn Daly then states the Lacanian idea $ (S-barred), having traced Zizek's evolution on the same concept:

"We might say that the subject gets caught in an impossible attempt to produce a framework of [S]ubjectivity (to find its name/place), but from which it is already ontologically excluded. In this sense, the subject marks the site where an irresolvable economy of lack and excess are played out."

I want to put it this way: I know I exist and I know the world exists - isn't this our common experience as human beings? I mean this is the framework of daily existence. We can actually for a period observe this duality - and then experience that we forget to observe this fragmentation in the field of thought. Nonetheless, such observation provides an insight that the knower is the known in that the subject and its objects in the world are in the field of thought. We then say this is "my insight" so continue subjectivity (small s). We continue to experience ourselves as a subject with external objects as comprising the total unity of life. But the fact is that however we experience the subject there is some excess to the subject from which this experience is occurring - this would be the Subject (a name for no thing of thought - of Nothing, of the Void).

My point is that the subject itself in the field of thought along with thought of that separate from the subject comprise a situation which is a subtraction from the State which would include the excess, the Subject. These are my ideas and I may learn that I am not seeing this clearly.. I want to find out. Returning to the text of the article we have the introduction of another Lacanian algabraic symbol "a" as she continues on "an irresolvable economy of lack and excess":

"This economy is perhaps best illustrated by the relationship between subject and its 'objects a'(objets petit a - objects small Other). Lacan's object a refers to the object-cause of desire: that which is in the object more than the object and which makes us desire it in the first place. It alludes to the originally lost object (the missing element that would resolve drive and 'restore' fulfilment) and, at the same time, functions as an embodiment of lack; as a loss positivised (Zizek, 1997: 81; Zizek, 1999: 107).. Object a bears witness to an empty structure of desire - a structure that can never be filled out. Desire is always elsewhere and alludes to an absence whose central reference is a fundamental void around which drive constantly circulates and constantly misses its target. Zizek refers to object a in terms of a Kantian 'negative magnitude': something that acts as a stand-in for Nothingness (Zizek, 1999: 107). There exists a metonymy of lack whereby any empirical object can act as this stand-in. Object a is doubly paradoxical in that it refers to an original "lost" object (of completion/unity) that never existed, and also in that its own existence depends on its very unattainability."

In Badiou we saw how what I have called "engendering zero" consisted in production of a novel State composed of a new relationship of consistent multiplicity, the situation, with inconsistent multiplicity, being qua being. The situation, with its modalities of love, art, science and politics exists as a consistent multiplicity, but always in relation to the possibility of the Event. It can be said I think that inconsistent multiplicity is that excess in relation to which the situation always lacks. Lacanian psychoanalysis appears to approach analysis by positing the human psyche as a situation, its consistency maintained by the subject $ in relation to object a. The death drive arises with desire for the excess which is unattainable, the from which it is subtracted. I am speculating and questioning, but this is what I make of the statement later in the text:

"The 'manyi identifications and forms of collective objective life are made possible through the persistence of the "one" of radical negativity. The infinitude of signification is the result ultimately of the one true signified...void.

Glyn Daly's article is indeed a comprehensive primer on Zizek. She goes on to discuss much more of Zizek's Lacan, then how that is foundation to his political philosophy. This effort begins with a sketch of Lacan's psychoanalysis:

"The persistence of radical negativity is what the later Lacan generically characterised as the Real: the ultimate 'signified' around which all signification is constituted and simultaneously finds its limitation and inexorable failure. As is well documented elsewhere (e.g. Fink, 1995), the Real is inextricably linked with the registers of the Symbolic and the Imaginary and together these form a basic triadic structure for all (human) Being. In general terms, both the Symbolic and the Imaginary may be said to belong to the order of signification. While the Symbolic refers to the (potentially) infinite uses of signification through language and symbols, the Imaginary refers to the particular ways in which signification becomes arrested around certain fundamental images of ourselves that offer a sense of coherence and place in the world. It is through the Imaginary that we achieve particular forms of identification and which enable us to resolve the basic question(s) of who we are for the Other; we "narrate" ourselves around certain basic images with which we identify and/or wish to project."

I have to leave it at that for now. I barely scratched the surface of Badiou in Part 1, and I fear I did even less in beginning to explore Lacan in Part 2. Its a long process.. I rather think I can spend the rest of my life adding parts now and then. My intention is to continue working through Gillespie's book while also going back to further study of Zizek's How to Read Lacan. Its really hard to clearly express how this study is affecting me. I can just say certain insight seems to be growing from it about both life and death. I closing I want to relate a story I heard from someone very wise I was lucky enough to know - the story has come to mind lately while writing these posts and maybe it will be obvious why.

The story is one about Abraham Lincoln. I don't know if I have all the facts straight but the point will be made anyway. Lincoln it seems was always fascinated by the question of whether there was such a thing as immortality. As he often had the chance to meet and speak with many great intellects, it was known that he would sometimes chose to pose a question such as "Do you believe in immortality and if so why? It seems he never got a satisfactory reply. One day however he put the question to a famous Shakespearean actor (I forget his name). The actor replied "Yes I am sure of it!" Of course Lincoln pressed him as to why. "Because I cannot conceive of nothing without myself as witness of that nothing." Lincoln leaps to his feet exclaiming "That's the philosophy for me!".

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Obama Slama Inaugurama!

"Photo" by Juan Rafael Santos
Really, sorry if this photo conveys some cynicism.. it's not exactly that I am feeling about the inaugural extravaganza. I'll get to the picture caption and source shortly, but first I want to say my sentiments on the new pres are much in agreement with Savoj Zizek's comments in the article Why Cynics Are Wrong:

"The true battle begins now, after the victory: The battle for what this victory will effectively mean, especially within the context of two other much more ominous signs of history: 9/11 and the financial meltdown. Nothing was decided by Obama’s victory, but his victory widens our freedom and thereby the scope of our decisions. But regardless of whether we succeed or fail, Obama’s victory will remain a sign of hope in our otherwise dark times"

Dark times indeed. In particular the recent long nights in Gaza. The caption for the picture is "Obama Inauguration Thru Gazan Eyes". It was sent by a reader of Paul Street's (an article from whom will be cited below), who in turn posted it in a comment Street made on Noam Chomsky's submission "Exterminate all the Brutes": Gaza 2009 Chomsky produces again a very well documented expose of the criminal terrorism of the U.S.-Israel axis of evil. Some overview of that will follow, but sticking with the Obama Slama theme I cite this - Chomsky refers to a point a few days before the inauguration (to many days left for the attack on Gaza to actually be stopped given the opportunity prior to the new presidency):

At the United Nations, the United States prevented the Security Council from issuing a formal statement on Saturday night calling for an immediate ceasefire,' the New York Times mentioned in passing. The official reason was that 'there was no indication Hamas would abide by any agreement.' In the annals of justifications for delighting in slaughter, this must rank among the most cynical. That of course was Bush and Rice, soon to be displaced by Obama who compassionately repeats that 'if missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that.' He is referring to Israeli children, not the many hundreds being torn to shreds in Gaza by US arms. Beyond that Obama maintained his silence."

And so we see the Star of David on the ties in the picture, the pin in the lapel (where he forgot to put the American flag). But the striking feature is the bipartisan crowd. WTF are they laughing about? Well. I'm sure the photoshop genius had in mind the span of pres that has consistently vetoed world consensus on UN resolutions that would have ended the mutual slaughter years ago. Chomsky goes into that ruthlessly. The author of the picture shows more than he knows perhaps (I allude to Zizek's "unknown knowns" in his gloss on the amateur philosophy of Donald Rumsfeld - "there are the known knowns," etc.). The complicity of the Democratic and Republican parties in the ideological apparatus they have maintained with regard to the Palestinian issue is merely symptomatic of the situational fact that the U.S.electoral system effectively excludes dissent:

"An initial factor was the way in which the outcome affirmed the manifest powerlessness of any genuinely emancipatory programme within the electoral system: preferences are duly recorded, in the passive manner of a seismograph, but the process is one that by its nature excludes any embodiments of dissenting political will." from Alain Badiou - The Communist Hypothesis

OK, I confess, the quote is Badiou on the Sarkozy election in France, but as I have argued in an earlier entry, McBama? No, the Communist Hypothesis, the same applies to the U.S. and many other places that are part and parcel to what Badiou calls "capitalo-parliamentarianism

So there are two thematic elements in the set of my topic: first, the fact of our choices regarding the persons and their actions composing our governmental situation being merely a formal freedom of choice within the coordinates of established elitist power; then the particular manifestation of this ideological state apparatus (Althusser) in the political management of our choices involving the mutual slaughter continuing between Israel and the Palestinians. On the latter we return to commentary and excerpts on Chomsky from "Exterminate all the Brutes": Gaza 2009 beginning with his general thesis:

"Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus' -- blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel, which flatly and explicitly reject the right of Palestinians to self-determination.

As Chomsky painfully details, this policy will no doubt continue into the Obama regime. The dark nature of this rejection of self-determination, in the proclaimed defense against terrorism, is revealed as essentially a rejection of Palestinian society - the truth Chomsky quotes early in the article:

"Like others familiar with the region, Middle East specialist Fawwaz Gerges observes that 'What Israeli officials and their American allies do not appreciate is that Hamas is not merely an armed militia but a social movement with a large popular base that is deeply entrenched in society.' Hence when they carry out their plans to destroy Hamas's 'social wing,' they are aiming to destroy Palestinian society."

The invasion of Gaza just witnessed,a mass slaughter of defenseless civilians, a large percentage of them children, trapped with nowhere to flee, thus makes some kind of perverse sense to the U.S.-Israel elite. In fact, the invasion of Gaza, that may at first seem a radical new element of policy, is actually an extension of a long standing practice:

"In the West Bank, Israel can pursue its criminal programs with US support and no disturbance, thanks to its effective military control and by now the cooperation of the collaborationist Palestinian security forces armed and trained by the US and allied dictatorships. It can also carry out regular assassinations and other crimes, while settlers rampage under IDF protection. But while the West Bank has been effectively subdued by terror, there is still resistance in the other half of Palestine, the Gaza Strip. That too must be quelled for the US-Israeli programs of annexation and destruction of Palestine to proceed undisturbed...Hence the invasion of Gaza."

Chomsky goes deeply into a long history of explicit examples - the core of the issue is that the violence perpetrated by the U.S. and Israel is simply a matter of choice:

The reactions to crimes of an occupying power can be condemned as criminal and politically foolish, but those who offer no alternative have no moral grounds to issue such judgments. The conclusion holds with particular force for those in the US who choose to be directly implicated in Israel's ongoing crimes -- by their words, their actions, or their silence. All the more so because there are very clear non-violent alternatives - which, however, have the disadvantage that they bar the programs of illegal expansion... Israel has a straightforward means to defend itself: put an end to its criminal actions in occupied territories, and accept the long-standing international consensus on a two-state settlement that has been blocked by the US and Israel for over 30 years, since the US first vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a political settlement in these terms in 1976. I will not once again run through the inglorious record, but it is important to be aware that US-Israeli rejectionism today is even more blatant than in the past. The Arab League has gone even beyond the consensus, calling for full normalization of relations with Israel. Hamas has repeatedly called for a two-state settlement in terms of the international consensus. Iran and Hezbollah have made it clear that they will abide by any agreement that Palestinians accept. That leaves the US-Israel in splendid isolation, not only in words.

So it can be seen clearly from Chomsky's entire detailed account that there has been an on-going historical suppression, denial and brutal disregard of the political will of the vast majority of people in the world by the capitalo-parliamentarian elite of the isolated U.S.-Israel block. Can we really expect Obama to change this if he is a member of this elite and has been ensconced as pres by this very power structure? There is a hope, but there is reason to believe change will not come from the man himself; yet perhaps from the gaps in the more open situation of his regime. The real Obama, not the dream Obama many voted for, is something we might appreciate to some extent nonetheless; but a sober analysis should guide our vigilance. Such an analysis is provided by Paul Street (who posted the photo to Chomsky) in his article How Obama Happened: The Real Story - some excerpts and observations beginning with his general thesis:

"..the real story is also and equally about advantages of birth and socialization, remarkable ambition, astonishing good luck, and --- last but not all least --- the pursuit and landing of sponsorship from rich and powerful elites who rain down good fortune on their carefully Chosen Ones."

That Obama was less than truly disadvantaged as his propaganda suggests:

".. family used its more-than-negligible financial resources (his maternal grandmother was a banking executive) and family connections to given young "Barry" an elite private prep-school education at Honolulu's posh Punahou Academy. They paid for his undergraduate education at Occidental College in Los Angeles and Columbia University in New York City.. Young Obama matured amidst considerable cultural capital at home and school.. "

That Obama from early on demonstrated caution and calculation as a political player primarily following his self-interest:

"..Numerous accounts of Obama's Springfield tenure (1996-2004)indicate a calculating conservative and accommodating side that was more than consistent with the centrism that has concerned some of his current day liberal-left supporters..

..sponsored.. campaign finance "reform" bill..set no limits on contributions from corporations or the exaggerated campaign spending..

..joined Republicans and conservative Democrats and opposed much of the black Illinois legislative delegation by supporting the imposition of "work [punitive low-income wage-labor] requirements" on single mothers receiving family cash assistance..

..helping the insurance industry kill legislative efforts towards universal health coverage in Illinois.. worked to water down the state's "Health Care Justice Act".. the state's progressive health-care advocates had high hopes.. for passing a bill that would have made it official state policy to ensure that all Illinois residents could access 'quality healthcare at costs that are reasonable.' Insurers expressed their fear that such language would lead to a 'government takeover of healthcare.' By the time the bill became law, containing three amendments written by Obama, the legislation merely established universal healthcare as a policy goal.

Obama claimed to be a staunch champion of abortion rights. He strongly criticized a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding a controversial ban on a late-term abortion procedure..In the Illinois legislature, however, Obama voted "present" instead of "no" on seven bills restricting abortion."

In description of Obama's calculations in being a low-risk progressive:

"..There is little risk involved in.. seeming to take.. progressive positions in predominantly black voting districts. Running and legislating to some extent as a nominal progressive in such a district would be entirely consistent with higher political ambitions hitched to a more conservative, "vacuous to repressive neoliberal" (left black political scientist Adolph Reed Jr.'s description of Obama in 1996) world view. After all, one has to show their capacity to win elections in order to be taken seriously by the power brokers who control access to more elevated elected positions.."

"And that's why Obama was nowhere to be seen around the great Chicago marches held against the actual (no longer just planned) beginning of the U.S. assault on Iraq on the evenings of March 19 and March 20, 2003. It's also why his subsequently famous October 2002 speech (an oration that tellingly called Bush's planned war "dumb" but NOT criminal or immoral)..

On Obama at Harvard Law School:

..where he utilized his willingness to give editorial power to arch-conservative members of the Republican Federalist Society to win election to the highly prestigious position of president of that school's law review..that came between his community organizing and legal careers.. consistent with the goal of making the elite connections required to make a serious run for the upper reaches of U.S elective office. It would prove very useful in the fall of 2003 and early 2004, when Obama received an early "audition" with the national money and politics class.. "

Street quotes extensively from John Judis'essay titled "Creation Myth: What Barack Obama Won't Tell You About His Community Organizing Past" - excerpts below:

"In truth, however, if you examine carefully how Obama conducted himself as an organizer and how he has conducted himself as a politician, if you consider what he said about organizing to his fellow organizers, and if you look at the reasons he gave friends and colleagues for abandoning organizing, then a very different picture emerges: that of a disillusioned activist who fashioned his political identity not as an extension of community organizing but as a wholesale rejection of it. Indeed, the most important thing to know about Barack Obama's time as a community organizer in Chicago may not be what he gained from the experience - but rather why, in late 1987, he decided to quit."

Then Street goes on to add to Judis' comments:

"..Also deleted by Obama's marketers was the fact that he practiced little if any actual "civil rights law" after graduating from Harvard. It appears likely that he spent more time dealing with mundane aspects of real estate litigation (including work on behalf of his early sponsor and "slumlord" Tony Rezko) than with anything related to civil rights.."

The next part of Paul Street's piece covers the creation of the Obama "brand" once he reached Washington as a Senator. He quotes extensively from, Tribune Washington Bureau reporters Mike Dorning and Christi Parsons in an article entitled "Carefully Crafting the Obama Brand." which details a history of Obama's marketing by and with his closest advisors - from this article:

"The way to get there, they decided, was by carefully building a record that matched the brand identity: Obama as a unifier and consensus-builder, and almost postpolitical leader.."

Street:

"It was an important and revealing report on numerous levels. The term "brand Obama" is of course deeply suggestive of the commodified nature of a U.S. political culture that tends to reduce elections to "carefully [corporate-] craft[ed" marketing contests revolving less around significant policy and ideological differences than competing candidate images packaged and sold by corporate consultants and public relations experts like Obama's well-known media manager and former Tribune reporter David Axlerod.. The image of Obama as a humble and hardworking rookie who got along with his colleagues across partisan lines was a crucial part of their marketing strategy.. They were naturally unconcerned about the authoritarian implications of the concept of a 'postpolitical leader' --- a commercialized trademark who would rise above democratic and ideological contestation on the path to ultimate authority atop 'the most powerful nation in history.'"

Street then provides a devastating enumeration of team Obama's deceit in the marketing of the pres:

* His false claim (in a speech to black civil rights veterans in Selma, Alabama in March 2007) to owe his biracial conception to Deep South Civil Rights struggles in Birmingham (1963) and Selma (1965). (Obama was conceived in relatively racially tolerant and multi-cultural Hawaii in 1960).

* Obama's false claim to reporters that that he asked Jeremiah Wright not to give a prayer before Obama announced his presidential candidacy (in December of 2006) out of a desire to "protect" Wright (Obama was obviously trying to protect his presidential viability).

* Obama's false promise to abide by the spending limits imposed by the public presidential election financing system if he ran against a Republic opponent who pledged to do the same thing (John McCain tried sincerely but unsuccessfully to take Obama up on his public financing pledge)

* Obama's false claim that his private fundraising system amounted to "a system of parallel public financing." (He actually set new records for corporate sponsorship).

* Obama's related and repeated reference to the fact that 91 percent of his contributions came from small donors - a technically accurate detail that deleted the more significant fact that Obama received only a quarter of his total money take from small donors, just like George W. Bush in 2004.

* Obama's repeated false claim in the Iowa campaign to have passed a bill tightening federal regulation of nuclear plant leaks after an emission incident took place at a Braidwood, Illinois nuclear plant in 2005.

* His recurrent efforts in the presidential campaign (especially in the primaries) to sell himself to progressive voters as a peace candidate, something that was flatly contradicted by his many brazenly imperial and militarist statements to elite foreign policy bodies (and by his political and policy behavior in regard to Iraq and Afghanistan).

Such an ambitious and calculated approach, highlighted in the end by a campaign of deception is still not enough to secure a run for the presidency. We come at last to what Street has to say that converges with the theses of this post:

".. how his remarkable personal ambition and skills brought him into the chance-narrowing realm of power elite politics. In the actuality of American 'democracy' , officially 'electable' candidates for top offices (like U.S. Senator and President) are vetted in advance by what the left author and activist Laurence Shoup calls 'the hidden primary of the ruling class'. By prior Establishment selection, most if not all 'viable' contenders are closely tied to corporate and military-imperial power in numerous and interrelated ways. There's little if any room for mere luck to propel a risky --- an excessively 'populist' or even left --- presidential candidate past the nation's corporate-imperial gatekeepers of power."

What ensues is actually an expose of the completion of the creation of a president by elite coordinates of power.. beginning with his selection for the seminal keynote address (when most of us dummies first heard his funny name) onwards:

"As Ken Silverstein noted in an important Harper's article in the fall of 2006, 'If the speech was his debut to the wider American public, he had already undergone an equally successful but much quieter audition with Democratic Party leaders and fund-raisers, without whose support he would surely never have been chosen for such a prominent role at the convention [emphasis added].'"

"A national corporate, financial, and legal vetting of Obama, with an emphasis on the critical money-politics nexus of Washington DC, began in October of 2003. That's when Vernon Jordan, the well-known power broker and corporate board-member who chaired Bill Clinton's presidential transition team after the 1992 election, placed calls to roughly twenty of his friends and invited them to a fund-raiser at his home. That event," Silverstein noted, 'marked his entry into a well-established Washington ritual—the gauntlet of fund-raising parties and meet-and-greets through which potential stars are vetted by fixers, donors, and lobbyists.'"

"'On condition of anonymity,' Silverstein reported, 'one Washington lobbyist I spoke with was willing to point out the obvious: that big donors would not be helping out Obama if they didn't see him as a ‘player.' The lobbyist added: ‘What's the dollar value of a starry-eyed idealist?'"

Obama would demonstrate his "reasonable" nature over the next few years, helping himself become the most prolific corporate fundraiser in American political history. He received more than $33 million from "FIRE" --- the finance, real estate, and insurance industries ---- and got nearly $900,000 just from the super-powerful Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs... This was part of the deeper plutocratic reality beneath his deeply misleading claim to have developed 'a parallel system of public financing' during the presidential campaign."

So much for Obama the man, better though he may be now we are out of the Bushes. But really it is from within the new situation that something novel can arise - as Zizek said above, from the new scope of our personal decisions. This is a much more profound and performative requirement for us once we are awake to the tragedy of our mere formal freedom. The spectacular advent of Barak Hussein Obama in the existing coordinates of power may evoke at least a paucity of hope to be found not in the person, but in the gaps of the new situation he rules - openings for our greater scope of action; a critical analysis of the suppressed reality of the Palestinian situation may enable us to see beyond the illusions we are fed under the ideological signifiers such as "democracy"; but these are but examples within a greater systemic problem. A truly eloquent expression of the idea of world emancipation from the confines of the current "global" situation may be described in continuing to quote from Badiou:

"Contemporary capitalism boasts, of course, that it has created a global order;.. The ‘one world’ of globalization is solely one of things—objects for sale—and monetary signs: the world market as foreseen by Marx. The overwhelming majority of the population have at best restricted access to this world. They are locked out, often literally so... The price of the supposedly unified world of capital is the brutal division of human existence into regions separated by police dogs, bureaucratic controls, naval patrols, barbed wire and expulsions. The ‘problem of immigration’ is, in reality, the fact that the conditions faced by workers from other countries provide living proof that—in human terms—the ‘unified world’ of globalization is a sham... The simple phrase, ‘there is only one world’, is not an objective conclusion. It is performative: we are deciding that this is how it is for us.."

What we will do is indeterminate in Badiou's analysis. A repetition of the communist phases of the past is certainly undesirable, yet the hypothesis remains as Badiou defines it:

"..the logic of class—the fundamental subordination of labour to a dominant class, the arrangement that has persisted since Antiquity—is not inevitable; it can be overcome.. a different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of wealth and even the division of labour. The private appropriation of massive fortunes and their transmission by inheritance will disappear. The existence of a coercive state, separate from civil society, will no longer appear a necessity: a long process of reorganization based on a free association of producers will see it withering away."

Blog Guide: A discussion of blog features and primary topic content may be found at the initial entry. The first few entries give a good idea of how best to use the blog, especially for the tagging and social bookmarking at my external Delicious site, and for instructions regarding the Stefandav TV widget.

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Engendering Zero (Part 1)

The blog entry title refers to a reading of Alain Badiou, on Jacques Lacan' s psychoanalytic theory that was introduced in the last entry. As I said there, I am slowly making my way through Sam Gillespie's The Mathematics of Novelty (MON), as well as reading secondary sources on Lacan by Savoj Zizek and several others that were introduced. This is a long term project. I am sharing the journey and probably will make many wrong turns.

Zero gets defined as a mathematical element that when added to a number yields the same number. Historically, it took a long time before zero was even posited as a numeric element. It was hard to say zero should be in the company of that designating quantity. When we consider it is exactly zilch, zip,nada, nil and so on it gets a reputation for being at best a quantity of no importance. Indeed, the empty set signified as {} supplies not even a "0". Then to speak of engendering zero: to call forth or bring forth what? Precisely Nothing. The word implies generation and bringing into being in relation with the Void as it were. Yet these thinkers, (Badiou, Lacan, Zizek, and others al.) who I have come to appreciate from their political activism and historical analysis and/or other registers of thought, can, it seems to me, be conflated in their engendering of zero. That is to say there is plenty of scope for fusion and confusion. I need to understand. I thought this first post in the series should be mostly about what I have been reading on Lacan; but I will get to that in a later posting, first a bit on the beginning made in reading about Badiou's ontology=mathematics.

Alain Badiou: Being Qua Being and the Void

Badiou expresses ontology as "being qua being" and, as I see it, this is his engendering of the Void. When we consider the googled definition of ontology, we encounter reference to the nature, the meaning and the essence of being. One also finds the definition as having to do with presentation and representation of existence. I found it most helpful to look at the contrast of ontology with what it is often juxtaposed, that is in contrast to epistemology. Definitions from the net suggest epistemology generally means the study of how we know what we know - and the foundational sources of knowledge.

I may be wrong in expressing it this way, but whatI understand is that epistemology encompasses the whole domain of thought itself, knowledge as such. Ontology would encompass the domain of epistemology inasmuch as thought, knowledge would not be separate from being qua being; however, thought and new thought are always coming into being and do not encompass what is not known. Being qua being is where thought is situated, namely in the Void. I can try to trace support for my understandings from my reading of Gillespie in Mathematics of Novelty (MON); that is, as I work my way though the structure of the book I can't expect to convey adequately what is said there - but I can tell about what is said there and provide excerpts with commentary on my personal experience with the effects of the information on my thinking.

To be clear then, this series is a commentary on a learning process composed of studies on both Lacanian psychoanalysis and Badiouan ontology, finding the bridge from the Void. We are proceeding first on the latter for the time being. In telling you about what Sam Gillespie writes, the first section of the book "1. Conditions of the New" makes distinctions between the conditions of novelty for Badiou and those of Gilles Deleuze, one of the most influential and prolific French philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. Why:

".. Badiou shares with Deleuze the fundamental convictions that philosophy as a project is far from over, that being is inherently multiple and is irreducible to the tenets of language, that philosophical novelty proceeds from an event, and that, despite its different manifestations in the world, being in and of itself is inherently univocal." (MON pg. 3)

Yet being qua being has unequivocal meaning in Badiou distinctly different than that in Deleuze, and the distinctions also extend to the shades of meaning for multiplicity and the event. This is what Gillespie's writing is about in this first section of his book. The essential distinction to put it in terms of my own thesis here is that unlike Deleuze, Badiou engenders the Void. This creativity, the emergence of the new or novelty, the conditions of this are the question. Both Badiou and Deleuze do not see philosophy as seeking discovery of the eternal unchanging One, rather they posit being as pure multiplicity, states of irreducible differences. Instead of a unifying unchanging abstraction of oneness, they see continuous change, the creation of the new. So from here we learn how they differ in the practice of philosophy.

Sam Gillespie explains that for Deleuze the concept of creativity is engendered from..

".. a free act of the philosopher that operates alongside the concept's self-positing.."

and in this correspondence, the philosopher's..

".. subjective capacity to generate concepts is the concept's objective potential to exist.." (MON pg. 2)

The text the goes on to quote Deleuze on this ".. auto-poetic characteristic.." whereby ".. the most subjective will be the most objective..". What is most significant here for my thesis, congruent with that of Gillespie, is that though Deleuze departs from the point of multiplicity, this multiplicity has this auto-poetic characteristic; while Badiou does not assume the creative power of being..

".. but rather that to think being, we need nothing more than a formal assertion that nothing - that is the empty-set or zero - exists.. having in itself no descriptive properties or content.. then the being it formalizes is simply nothing, void. As Badiou puts it.. 'the sole term from which ontology's compositions without concept are woven is inevitably the void'.." (MON pg. 3)

The impasse between the two thinkers of the multiplicity, then, is precisely on the issue of the conditions of the new. Deleuze posits the multiplicity in its entirety and conceives novelty as its creative capacity of difference in repetition of the whole of the past. Problematic is the question of there being a novelty, a creation, if what is posited as new is repetition. Still, it would be something emerging from something - as opposed to Badiou's conception of something new from nothing. The beginning of resolution of this impasse, for me, came with the first line of the second part of the first section (1. Conditions of the New, II. Badiou's Novelty - following I. Deleuzian Novelty):

"On the basis of the above, Badiou is led to conclude that for Deleuze, 'the thought of the new plunges the latter into that part of it which is its virtual past'." (MON pg. 7)

The emphasis here is on the nature of thought itself. I am going to discuss what I anticipate based on what I think I know. Later we will see how Badiou will utilize the axioms of set theory launched from the axiom of the empty set, but for now I focus on the issue of temporality to which set-theory will return. What I think I know is, if thought is the virtual past, what Badiou may mean in the above statement is that thought of the new is not the new. I might venture to say that part of thought which he suggests exists, not the past, has particular significance. I would not attribute it to Badiou, but I am predisposed to think any part of thought would be based on memory and therefore the past. Furthermore, would not the thought of the Void, which is not, be essentially a virtual past? I take this thought forward in learning what Badiou says about being qua being and the Void. The next key sentences from Gillespie (for me) are a page later:

".. Badiou divides the domain of experience into two distinct categories.. there is the situation.. unified presentation (the 'count as one'); consistency (an order to the multiple terms that appear within it); and [secondly] representation."

I would relate this to what I said earlier about epistemology and thought. The "count as one" is a reference to Badiou's application of set theory; the terms or elements of a situation form the set, are included in the set. One knows them as such, it is knowledge, it is thought in the domain of epistemological order. It is unified or consistent presentation. The empty set {} is axiomatically said to exist. Presentation of a situation is symbolized in set theory as the order of the situation's elements {A.B,C,..}. As for representation:

".. can be said to supplement the situation.. to render the gap between consistency.. and inconsistency (the void that escapes, or exceeds, the count for one).." (MON pg.8)

These two categories of experience can be distinguished in set-theory by the axiom of the power set. The elements belonging to set are simultaneously terms of subsets included in the set - the power set is the set of all subsets of a given set. I provided a somewhat more detailed discussion of Badiou's application of set theory last month in the entry entitled The Stupid Christ (Part 2) wherein the following was quoted from an entry at the blog The Parallel Campaign:

“.. the Void as Badiou sometimes calls it, cannot be presented, but it founds all possible presentation. The empty set is therefore what Badiou calls a pure, or empty name, it is not the presentation of the Void but its name. Therefore inconsistent and consistent multiplicity are linked through this axiomatic naming through the application of the count for one, the empty set sutures the presentation of consistent multiplicities, which are not, to inconsistent multiplicity, which is: Æ, the empty set, is the proper name of being. It also has a strange universal property; it is included in every set but never belongs. Therefore every set represents the void, but it is never presented and its universal property does not amount to much, it is simply the representation of nothing..”

Novelty then, for Badiou, is engendered from the Void (a name for that in excess of presentation). We are to understand this with reference to his conception of the Event. In the above quotation there is depicted the action of suturing: new situations (consistent multiplicities) which are not, that which are possible because of inconsistent multiplicity, are possible being sutured in the power set of that situation because it includes the empty set as well as all subsets generated by its presented elements. The aphorism from Badiou:

"All radical transformative action originates in a point which, from the interior of a situation, is an evental site." (Being and Event pg. 197)

This procedure, which Badiou terms a "Truth" procedure results in a novel situation. Prior to the Event (unpredictable except as a possibility, arising by chance - aleatory) being qua being consists in the situation (which should be understood to be the power set of all situations or any presented number of elements known as a set), which is consistent multiplicity, which is the count as one; and in addition to the situation is the empty set . This is the "State" of the situation in Badiou's lexicon, the actual existing of the situation and the Void naming inconsistent multiplicity. The situation in any State has its truth, the Truth of the Event engenders transformation of the situation, engenders a novel situation and a novel State.

The Event then must be pure operation. The situation can be seen as a "subtraction" from the State. In the condition for the new is a "subtraction from the subtraction" - or a "plus-one", a novel situation and its truth. The Truth procedure inaugurated by the Event is an operation from the Void. This operation occurs in the experience of the Subject - the subtraction and the subtraction from subtraction are related to the two categories of human experience. The consistency of the situation and the State is one register of human experience, another register is inaugurated by the Event.

We are all individuals. As such we participate in a given State as an individual Subject in that State. A novel State then, would logically require a transformation of the situation of at least one individual. As Gillespie writes, it is from the ..

".. appearance of an event that something anterior to the presentative immediacy of the known or discerned [the epistemological paradigm I want to say] can appear.. events do not signal the advent of a truth; rather they inaugurate subjects who intervene in a situation to the extent that these unique individuals remain faithful to an event by seeing its consequences through to a restructuring of the situation.." (MON pg. 9)

Novelty then, is expressed in the anterior future tense as it is known to have taken place. In terms of this blog and its thesis, the process of allegiance to Truth is a revolution of the mind. This revolution, from its overarching register of Truth may also be taken to pertain to different types of situations while remaining inconsistent Void in being qua being:

".. there is the empty category of Truth (with a capital T), and there are local truths (plural, small t) produced in the situations that are unique to the conditions.. where these truths are effected. There are four such conditions for Badiou: art, science, politics and love.. No single condition can be determining for philosophical truth [Truth] in itself." (MON pg. 9)

Sam Gillespie's The Mathematics of Novelty develops its theses from this beginning. Much of what I read from and about Badiou concerns issues of art, science, politics and love; the energy from this attention derives from a revolutionary practice that confronts the coordinates of power in these four domains of human experience. It is a revolution of the mind as it gains insight inaugurated by Events that are to transform the coordinates of power in given situations. As Badiou writes in St.Paul: The Foundation of Universalism:

".. where the name of a truth procedure should obtain, another which represses it holds sway. The name 'culture' comes to obliterate that of 'art'. The word 'technology' obliterates the word 'science'. The word 'management' obliterates the word 'politics'. The word 'sexuality' obliterates 'love'. The 'culture-technology-management-sexuality' system, which has the emmense merit of being homogeneous to the market, and all of whose terms [elements of that situation's set] designate a category of commercial presentation, constitutes the modern nominal occlusion [occlusion by the existing coordinates of power] of the 'art-science-politics-love' system, which identifies [T]ruth procedures typologically." (SP pg. 12)

So as I say, this concerns revolutionary practice - and obviously from the above quote the questioning of capitalist power and its authority. It is enough in this beginning to have established Badiou's philosophy in the context of engendering zero. I think it is clear that this topic focus is on the nature of subjectivity, our personal relationship to the Void - which is also the focus in reading Lacan's engendering of zero in psychoanalysis, as we shall see in a later part of this discussion.

Blog Guide: A discussion of blog features and primary topic content may be found at the initial entry. The first few entries give a good idea of how best to use the blog, especially for the tagging and social bookmarking at my external Delicious site, and for instructions regarding the Stefandav TV widget.

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Revolution of the Mind (Subject of Nothing)

Reading and writing for the blog last month was characterized by rather divergent aspects. The writing aspect was focused on Alain Badiou's ideas on St. Paul as a revolutionary figure, an appropriation of his Christian radicalism as exemplary of Badiou's theory of the Event and the creation of new subjectivity, novelty that emerges in individuals acting in fidelity to the virtual Truth of the Event, verifying it, actualizing that Truth. This is expressed in the future anterior sense, the grammar of that tense. The commentary and poetry offered on the topic has been provided in the three part series beginning with The Stupid Christ (Part 1).

While the writing was going on about St. Paul, along with analysis of the articles from which I found segue, I started reading Sam Gillespie's book on Badiou's ontology=mathematics. One of the articles on Badiou's St. Paul made deep reference to Badiou's ideas on set-theory as was discussed. This exemplifies how Badiou uses set-theory to clarify, or at least to avoid verbal confusions about, his concept of the Event. From Gillespie's The Mathematics of Novelty I hope to get a much better grasp on the logic of set theory, founded in the axiom of the empty set, and the distinguishing unique qualities of Badiou's philosophical application of mathmatics. Here is an early exerpt from the book to illustrate what I want to get at:

".. Badiou will pose the mathematical empty set as the single term from which the most complex infinities are generated. Where we depart from then, is not an assumption that being exists as a creative power, but rather that to think being, we need nothing more than a formal assertion that nothing - that is, the empty set or zero - exists. If the empty set is a pure formalization of being - having in itself no descriptive properties or content of any kind - then the being it formalizes is simply nothing, void. As Badiou puts it.. 'the sole term from which ontology's compositions without concept are woven is inevitably the void'."

Perhaps it is clear why this month's recap of the blog state is subtitled "On the Subject of Nothing". Nor do I have a lot to say about it. The exposition of Badiou's philosophy in description of his minimalist mathematics by Sam Gillespie is 175 pages of dense and exacting reading. I find as I continue to read and re-read I hear what is said differently and my confusion evolves, not from incomprehension to understanding but from understanding to understanding that clearly subsumes the incomplete yet not wrong understanding of the earlier phase. Logically there is no right or wrong understanding of the void, as I get it, it is a matter of clearly resolving illogical comprehension of a formal description of being which is at stake.

To say anything clearly, I sense one may not speak really of the void, but only from the void. Formally, one can speak of the subject who speaks, but in regard to the Subject of Nothing, an individual could be said to know more than she knows - the unknown known. So this duel aspect of inquiry is where I find myself. The "Nothing" I am learning about in a formal sense by the discussion of the empty set and the subsequent axioms and mathematical concepts derived therefrom (the axiom of extension, the power set axiom, the axiom of choice - the mathematical concepts involved, such as the continuum hypothesis, the distinctions of membership vs inclusion, then the issue of decidability vs undecidable sets - infinity and the positing of zero as a number, etc.). This is the presented focus in Sam Gillespie's book. But of course, the "Subject" and the apprehension about that is also very much at stake.

I did last month also provide some commentary on Savoj Zizek as he his perceived and misperceived as a cultural theorist. In our daily life we are not (for the average normal person) at all concerned with ontology as mathematics. Our subjective life is in the cultural melieu, in our relationships wherein we see reflections of ourself. If we are proactive in cultural relationships we might therein be said to be participating politically, facing that way we are extending our experience of subjectivity to include others. Looking inwardly we may also understand something more of our subjectivity, perhaps this is the domain of psychoanalysis. For many of us, Zizek is a powerful resource for examining daily life, the predominating cultural and political events of our world today.

In the commentary I wrote, In Defense of the Deadly Jester, some speculation was provided concerning the nature of his close alignment yet difference with the philosophy of Badiou. Both Badiou and Zizek have deep association with Marxist-Leninist-Maoist lines; certain affinities also with Cantor, Frege, Godel mathematical thought; some affinities in their appreciations and interpretations of Plato, Decartes, Kant, Hegel and other major philiosphers; and perhaps most significantly they are both deeply influenced by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Now, it is from study of Lacan that one may begin to explore deeply inner subjectivity. Again, in this is another daunting but important personal goal - to begin to understand much more deeply what psychoanalysis is and isn't. Recently some study in this direction has also come to the fore.

Badiou and Zizek both make reference to Lacan often in their writings on political and social issues. Zizek has authored "How to Read Lacan" which I have been through a couple of times so far. Lacan himself it seems mainly wrote for psychoanalytic clinicians. He employed French in what is reputed to be at a very sophisticated level. Even in translation, what I have read of him is very interestingly and provocatively written, full of puns and allusions and of course rather obtuse to me having no training as a clinical analyst. I am not a scholar, an academic or a scientist - I stand guilty of getting my education as it is from secondary sources, like Zizek and Badiou. One thing is very clear about Lacan: truth is found in relationship to the Void. I think it is on this point that we see convergence of Zizek and Badiou - though of course we can find plenty of divergence from there. Another important secondary source on Lacan is Jacques-Alain Miller, a contemporary psychoanalyst - but also a very tough read. Miller is the son-in-law of Lacan and actually it was Miller who served as analyst to Zizek in Zizek's psychoanalytic training. Some taste on Lacan from Miller published in the major online organ Lacanian Ink - The Symptom:

"Relation of Subject and Signifier In effect, what in Lacanian algebra is called the relation of the subject to the field of the Other (as the locus of truth) can be identified with the relation which the zero entertains with the identity of the unique as the support of truth. This relation, in so far as it is matrical, cannot be integrated into any definition of objectivity - this being the doctrine of Lacan. The engendering of the zero, from this not-identical with itself under which no thing of the world falls, illustrates this to you."

I am writing here about Lacan, because it is at the first of the month I try to recap some of the themes of my own study and writing and what has been the nexus of this in the recent period. I can hardly hope to provide any more than some hint of the directions being explored. So I mentioned about Badiou and St. Paul, Gillespie and Badiou on the empty set, Zizek and cultural theory and finally Lacan because these have been recent things in the reading and writing. To close I just want to inform you that the quarterly edition of articles has not too long ago come online at The International Journal of Zizek Studies. The edition is comprised of six very interesting articles on the topic of Zizek and Lacan. I have made a first reading. Oh boy, more secondary sources on Lacan. Obviously there are a lot of different takes on Lacan and Lacan according to Zizek.

Perhaps someday soon I will venture trying to put some overview of what I have been learning about Badiou's mathematics of novelty and Lacanian psychoanalysis. These are difficult, but the theoretical struggle is part of what I need to engage with my practice - revolution of the mind as I engage the political and social/cultural world in which I function. This is foundational to analyzing and contributing to the exchange of ideas and actions in social revolutions ongoing in many domains - Nepal is a primary example.

Blog Guide: A discussion of blog features and primary topic content may be found at the initial entry. The first few entries give a good idea of how best to use the blog, especially for the tagging and social bookmarking at my external Delicious site, and for instructions regarding the Stefandav TV widget.

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