[Reader-list] Alain Badiou on what is "the political"

[abir bazaz]

When and under what conditions can we say that an event is political? To what extent is the "what is happening" happening politically?
      We propose that an event is political, and that the procedure which it employs reveals a political truth, under certain conditions. These conditions are attached to the subject of the event, to infinity, to the relationship to the state of the situation, and to the numeration of the procedure.
1. An event is political if the subject of this event is collective, or if the event is not attributable to anything other than the multiplicity of a collective. "Collective" is not a numerical concept here. We say that the event is ontologically collective inasmuch as this event conveys a virtual requirement of the all. "Collective" is immediately universalizing. The effectiveness of the political emerges from the assertion according to which "for every x, there is thought." 

[...]