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Why the Family Is Beautiful (Lacan against Badiou)Author(s): Eleanor KaufmanReviewed work(s):Source: Diacritics, Vol. 32, No. 3/4, Ethics (Autumn - Winter, 2002), pp. 135-151Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566448 .
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W H Y T H E FAMILY I S
BEAUTIFUL (LACAN AGAINST
BADIOU)
ELEANORKAUFMAN
The theoryof ethics that can be distilled from the work of JacquesLacanandAlainBadiou bears no resemblance to many commonly received notions of the ethical,
especially any that would link ethics to a system of morality.In fact, ethics is not
necessarilyhe central oncept ntheirwork,eveninLacan'sTheEthicsofPsychoanalysisor Badiou's recent Ethics: An Essay on the Understandingof Evil. If anything, it is
definedvicariouslyandinrelation o othermore centralconcepts,such as theworkingsof desire for Lacan and the fidelity to an event-or truth-process-for Badiou.
Nonetheless,an examination f thenetworkof conceptsheldtogetherunder heumbrella
of theethicalallows for a sharpdistinctionbetween the work of LacanandBadiou,one
that Badiou-himselfavowedly
indebtedto Lacan-is hesitantto make. Where Lacan
elevates the beautiful over the good in his readingof Sophocles's Antigone, Badiou
elevates thetruth-process ver the evil betrayalof suchanevent,drawingon examples
ranging romNationalSocialismtothelove relationbetween wopeople.A truth-processis a situation-specificadherence,or fidelity,to the revolutionarypotentialof an event
thatmaytakeplace in one of thefourrealmsof politics,art,science,and love. PerhapsBadiou's best exampleof a truth-process-what I will also refer to as fidelity to an
event-is one not describedin the text under considerationhere: the apostle Paul's
proclamationf and ierce oyalty o the eventof Christ's esurrection.t is in theparticularformin which the ethicalfidelityto a truth-processmaybe hard odistinguish rom evil
thatI will take issue with Badiou, for bothhis politicalexamplesand his evocation oflove as one of four conduits to a truth-processreflect a difficult inflexibility in his
extraordinarilyucidandprovocative ystem.Lacan,ontheotherhand,usesAntigone's
strange amilyvalues to suggesta moreflexible modelof ethics,one thatis focusedon
the encounterwith the inhumanand the fragileboundarybetween life anddeath.
Lacan'smost sustaineddiscussion of ethics occursin his seminalSeminarSeven
from1959-60, entitledTheEthicsofPsychoanalysis.'Notonlydoes this seminar egistera gradualshift from an earlieremphasison desire to a later focus on the real and the
drive,but t is also a crucialarticulationf whatmightseem forsome to be anoxymoronic
conjunction-psychoanalysis andethics. Such a conjunction,as opposedto a Sartreanor Levinasian model that would situate ethics in relation to the Other,2 akes as its
Withwarm thanks or their assistance to Ben Bateman,KateBloodgood, GordonBraden,Rita
Felski,MarkSanders,and thegraduatestudents nmyspring2003 "PsychoanalysisandEthics"
and spring2004 "Politicsand Theology"seminarsat the Universityof Virginia.1. See especially "TheFunctionof the Good"218-30 and "TheFunctionof theBeautiful"
231-40.
2. See Sartre,Being and Nothingness,esp. the section "TheLook" 340-400; and all ofEmmanuelLevinas'swork,esp. TotalityandInfinity.Whilesome wouldsituate Derrida in the
diacritics / fall-winter 2002 diacritics 2.3-4: 135-51 135
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touchstoneFreud'sstinging critique n Civilizationand Its Discontentsof the biblical
injunction to love the neighbor as oneself. Here it is not merely a question of
understanding hytheneighbormaybeequallyanobjectof hatred,butof understandinghowcontradictoryentimentsarealso to be foundatthe heartof theself, and hencewhya viablesystemof ethicsmust take this intoconsideration.3n otherwords,ethicsis not
to be thoughtprimarilyas a relation to the otherso muchas a nonrelation o the self.4
Thus,when Lacanopposesthegood to thebeautiful, t is preciselythe relationalaspectof the good thathe denigrates.
Lacan inksthegood to thedialecticandto thepowerto depriveothers,situating t
squarely ntherealmof morality.Thebeautiful,bycontrast,marksa spaceof nonrelation
whereit is not so much a matterof two distinctselves but ratherof a single self whose
desireis not its own. InSeminarSix from thepreviousyear,LacananalyzesHamletand
suggests thatthe reason Hamlet does not kill Claudiusis thathe is traversedby his
mother'sdesire.He emphasizesthatHamlet'sdesire is "thedesire not for his mother,
butof his mother."5etweenSeminarsSix andSeven,Lacanshifts his focus from desireto ethics,fromHamlet oAntigone,butretainsa centralconnection.Whethert is termed
desire or ethics, at stake is the humancoming up against the limit of the human.In
SeminarSeven,Lacanwill situate hisconfrontationwithaninhuman imitin therealm
of the beautifulas opposed to the good, andthe ethical as opposed to the moral.By
situatingAntigoneas a more radicalversionof Hamlet'sincorporation f his mother's
desire,Lacan outlinesa theoryof ethics thatis based on strangekinship. By contrast,
Badiou invokes the declarationof love between two people as a model of the ethical
relation.While both thinkersespouse notions of ethics thatare far afield from moral
theoriesbasedon a notionofresponsibility
o theother,
Badiou elaboratesa four-tiered
system with romantic love as one of the hinge points, whereas Lacan champions
perversely nhuman amily values in orderto presentethics as the encounterwith the
unsurpassableimit.
Levinasiancampwithregard o the ethical relationto theOtherI think his overlooksDerrida s
foundational critiqueof Levinas in "Violenceand Metaphysics:An Essay on the ThoughtofEmmanuelLevinas."
3. See Freud,Civilizationand Its Discontents62-67; In the ethicsseminar,Lacanprefaceshis commentaryon thispassage in Freud with a referenceto the apostle Paul: "One must take
one's timeto see thatFreud s tellingus the same thingas SaintPaul,namely,that whatgovernsus on thepath of ourpleasure is no SovereignGood,and that
moreover,beyonda certainlimit,
we are in a thoroughlyenigmaticposition relativeto that which lies withindas Ding, because
there is no ethical rule whichacts as a mediator betweenour pleasure and its real rule.And
behind Saint Paul, you find the teaching of Christ..." Lacan goes on to comment on the
commandmento love theneighbor,concludingwith a characteristically erverse if notSadistic
imperative o thelisteners whomhe so oftenberates: "Try o readthewordsof the manwho, it is
claimed,neverlaughed; readthem or whattheyare. Fromtime to time,you will be struckbya
form of humorthatsurpassesall others"[95-96]. If Lacanplaces Paul in line withFreud and
Sade, thenBadioumightbe moreakinto theman who neverlaughed.Lacan'sdiscussionof the
neighbor is also in directdialogue with Pierre Klossowski'sSade, My Neighbor,the bookthat
almost singlehandedlyusheredin the revivalof Sade in twentieth-century renchthought.See
also Reinhard,"KantwithSade,Lacanwith Levinas"and "Freud,MyNeighbor"4. Thisis a point made in stunningashion in Eric L. Santner'sOn the Psychotheologyof
EverydayLife: Reflectionson FreudandRosenzweig.5. JacquesLacan,SeminarSix,Le d6siret ses interpretations,npublishedmanuscript,rom
thesession, "Disir du ne'vrose." xcerptsrom his lengthydiscussionof Hamlet in SeminarSix
have beenpublishedin Englishas "Desire and the Interpretation f Desire in Hamlet." n his
helpful gloss on Lacan's reading of Hamlet, Jean-Michel Rabate characterizes Hamlet as
"overwhelmed y his mother's ouissance"[64]. See also Rabate'sdiscussionofAntigone[69-
84].
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Nowhere is the problemof the family betterdramatized n the literary-philosophicalrealmthan n thestaggeringcorpusof commentariesuponandrewritingsof Sophocles's
Antigone.Withoutdoingjustice to thewealthof critical iteraturedevotedto thistext, I
wish simply to highlightthe extremerangeof positions thathave been takenup with
respect to the role of the family in this play. In ThePhenomenologyof Spirit, Hegel
famouslyargues hatAntigonerepresentshedivinelaw while herantagonist,heruncle
Creon,represents he state.Indefiantly nsistingonburyingher brotherPolynices,who
has waged war against the city of Thebes andbeen condemnedby Creon to remain
unburiedoutside the walls of the city,Antigone insists on obeying the divine laws of
burialrather hanthe dictatesof the state,and for this facespunishmentby death or her
unswerving loyalty to her brother.Accordingto Hegel, Creon defends the masculine
virtues of the state andAntigonethe femininesphereof religion,thehousehold,andthe
family.Hegel'sanalysis, although t situatesAntigone'sbrother-loyaltys anethicalact
becauseit is untaintedby desire,simultaneouslyopens upanarrayof readings hat end
to pathologizeAntigoneandaboveall herfamilysituation.6JeanAnouilh'sAntigone,writtenduring heoccupationof Paris nWorldWarTwo,
goes to extremesto presentAntigoneas an inflexible andobstinatechild to Creon the
sage and pragmaticruler-Lacan denounces this play as "[Anouilh's] little fascist
Antigone" 250]andcomments hat"onewould haveto haveacharacter hatwasdeeplyout of touch with the crueltiesof our time to attack the subject,if I may say so, by
focusing on the tyrant" 240].Yet even if theydo not go as far as Anouilh in vilifying
Antigone,manyattemptshavebeen madetonormalizeorrationalizeAntigone'sposition.In "Antigoneand the Feminist Critic,"Page du Bois criticizes feminist attemptsto
recuperateAntigoneas
"misread[ing]he extenttowhichshe is bound
upinthe
pollutionof herfamily"[duBois 376]. Here,Antigone'sfailure, ncludingher diseasedlanguage(what du Bois, following Jakobson, diagnoses as an aphasic inability to employ
metaphor),s areflectionof thepathological amilyto which she hasbeen condemned.
In appealingat anotherpoint to the "normal equenceof narrative, amilial,historical
order," uBois impliesthata more normal amilymodelmightindeed be thecorrective
forAntigone [378]. In herconsiderablymoresympathetic eadingof Antigone,Helene
P. Foley contextualizesAntigone's perseverance n buryingherbrotherat all costs by
noting that in certainMediterraneanocieties it was acceptedfor a woman to revengethe death of a blood relation f therewereno survivingmale familymembers,which is
indeedthe case withAntigone [Foley55-57]. In otherwords,Antigone may be actingmore"rationally"han it wouldappear,according o a historicallyspecificmoralcode.
While differing considerably n theirtone andimport,these writingsreflect a marked
tendency opositionAntigonewithinacertainparameter f normal, easonable-indeed
human-family behavior.Suchreadingshighlight heextremityof Lacan'sexplicitmove
to champion he inhumanaspectof Antigone,and moreover o regard his as of a piecewith,rather han anexceptionto, a certain ogic of the family.
Though critical of both Hegel and Lacan for dissociating kinship,in the case of
Hegel, and the symbolic,in thecase of Lacan,too strictlyfrom therealmof the social,
Judith Butler'sredemptivereadingof Antigone as a model for rethinkingnotionsofkinshipas well as the humanis, at least on these counts,closer to Lacan thanalmost
anythingelse is. Butler'sreadingreinforcesLacan'sglorificationof Antigone while
questioningLacan'smethodand ts implications or atheoryof kinship.AlthoughButler
expresslyuses the term"kinship"with itsresonances romLevi-Straussandstructuralist
anthropology,noting earlyon thatkinship s notsynonymouswiththefamily,she never
expresslydelineates how the two aredifferent[Butler5]. Insteadshe uses Antigoneto
6. Fora helpfuldiscussionof Hegel's Sittlichkeitas it relates to Antigone,see Gerhard.
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questionthe norms(suchas the incest taboo)uponwhichkinshiprelationsareusuallybased,and fromthis impliesthatthefamilybe viewed as less intrinsically ootedin the
unit of theheterosexualcouple, thoughwithoutusingthese specific terms[67]. Insofar
askinship s linked o theLacanian egisterof thesymbolic,and hesymbolic s somethingthat n Butler'sreadingof Lacanremains mpossible,thenLacan'stheoryof thefamily
is foundtobe similarly acking.Yet what seemslackingfromButler'saccount s Lacan's
dynamic model of the symbolic and the real, the real being that unlocalizable and
unarticulable notthatboth reinforcesanddisrupts hesymbolic.Withoutexpandingon
Lacan's heoryof the threeregisters thesymbolic,theimaginary,andthereal),I would
simply suggestthatButler'scriticismsof Lacanmightbe revisedbyreinsertinghe real
in itsconjunctionwith thesymbolicasa dynamicrelation hatparallels hatbetweenthe
familyandkinship.In otherwords,thedisjunctionorimpossibilitythata notionof the
family ntroducesntothestructuref kinship s notunlike hedisruptionhat he Lacanian
realbringsto the symbolic.7
WhereButlerand Lacanconvergemoreharmoniously s in theway theybothviewAntigone as posing a radicalcritiqueof the categoryof the human. Butlerwrites, "If
[Antigone]is human, hen the humanhas entered nto catachresis:we no longerknow
its properusage. ... If kinshipis the preconditionof the human,thenAntigone is the
occasion for a new field of the human,achievedthroughpoliticalcatachresis, he one
thathappenswhen the less thanhumanspeaksas human,whengender s displaced,and
kinshipfounderson his own foundinglaws"[Antigone'sClaim82]. In suggestingthat
restructuringinshipallowsfora rethinkingof the limitsof thehuman,Butlergesturesto a paradoxical onjunctionof thefamilyand theinhuman, houghthese are termsthat
shedoes not furtherdevelop.Itfollows from this thatthedisruptionposedto kinshipbya certainnotionof familyis notunlike the disruptivespaceof the realin theregisterof
the symbolic,or the inhuman n the realmof thehuman.Leavingasidethe real and the
symbolic, it seems that both Lacan and Butler use Antigone as a means to suggest a
connectionbetweenthe familyand the inhuman.
Lacan'sreadingofAntigonedevelops hisconjunction f thefamilyandthe inhuman
furtherand more explicitly,andprovocatively inks it to the realmof ethics. This is
developedthrougha considerationof thedifferencebetween thegoodand thebeautiful,which I will examine in some detail. As with manyof the termsLacanemploys, the
good is nowhereexplicitlydefined butinstead ts significanceemerges gradually, f not
belatedly, n the courseof his seminar(s).Nonetheless,he does providea particularlyconcise formulationn The Ethicsof Psychoanalysisat the end of his session on "The
Functionof the Good":
Thedomainof the good is the birthofpower ... It was Freud,not me, who
took upon himself the task of unmaskingwhat this has effectively meant
historically.Toexercise controlover one'sgoods, as everyoneknows,entails a
certaindisorder;hat reveals its truenature, .e., to exercise controlover one's
goods is to have therightto depriveothersof them. .. For this unction of the
good engenders,of course,a dialectic.I mean that thepowertodepriveothersis a verysolid link rom which will emergetheotheras such. [229]
7. WhileButlerpoints out how Lacanworksagainst the imaginary 49], she nowhere inks
this to an opposition of the imaginary o thejunctureof thesymbolic-real.Fora more extended
critiqueofButler's inadequate heorizationof the Lacanianregisters, ee Dean, esp.205-14, and
Zizek, "Class Struggleor Postmodernism?Yes,Please!" For an extendedreadingof Butler's
Antigone'sClaim and its relation to Lacanianethics,see Sjiholm 115-25. Sjiholm's bookwas
publishedafterthedraftingof thisessayand has manysignificantpointsof intersection see esp.theanalyses of beauty97, 101, 141-45].
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Sucha definition-and this anticipateswhat Lacanwill do withethics-clearly flies in
theface of a whole traditionof moralthoughtthatgives the notion of the good a more
positivevalence.What t affirms,however, s thewayin which thegoodis fundamentally
relational,even dialectical,presupposingand in fact determininga relation o a human
other.While Lacanemphasizesthe antagonisticrelationwith the other,the morebasic
point is that the good, and hence the very model of one human in relation to another,falls short of the ethical.
This interrogation f the human s elaboratedmoreclearlyin a second definitionof
the good thatfollows in the next session of Lacan'sseminaron ethics:
Last time we definedthe good in symboliccreation as the initiumthat is the
point of departureof the humansubject's destinyin his comingto terms with
thesignifier The true natureof thegood, itsprofoundduplicity,has to do with
the act that it isn'tpurelyandsimplya naturalgood, the responseto a need,
butpossible power,thepower to satisfy.As a result,the whole relationof mantothe realof goods isorganizedrelative o thepower of theother;heimaginary
other,to deprivehimof it. [234]
Here,the good-not coincidentallyconflatedwith the sphereof goods-is notonly an
agonisticmedium,but it in fact helps shapeand create the very conceptof the other as
anotherpersonwho is in a relationof powerto me. This linkto therealm of the other s
certainlya celebrated enetof Lacanianpsychoanalysis,but it is importanto emphasizethat t is not thesame "other" hat s generally nquestion.Theotherassociatedwith the
domain of thegood
is aclearly
defined humanother in anexplicit
relationofpower
to
me, whereas Lacan'smore standard ormulation orthe Other s another thatI haveso
thoroughly ncorporatedhat I am unableto distinguish t frommy sense of self. Inthis
regard,the good mightbe said to be a low-level or garden-varietyorm of the other,while the second and more dizzying notion of the Other has much more in common
with Lacan's notionof the beautiful.
The beautifuls definedmostsuccinctlybyLacanas"deriv[ing]rom herelationshipof the hero to the limit, which is defined on this occasion by a certainAte"[286]. The
notionof at&,which is sometimesrenderedasruin,disaster,or,as Lacanglosses it, "the
limit thathuman life can only briefly cross" [262-63], would seem to have more in
common with the sublime as it has been outlined in Burke and Kant than with thebeautiful.Yet,as with the notionof the good-and in what we shall see withrespectto
ethics-Lacan turnsanystandardmeaningof the termon its head. ForLacan,beautyis
associatedwithviolence, blindness,transgression, ndespeciallydeath.He linksit, via
Antigone,to at? and also to theFreudiandeath drive:
The violent illumination,the glow of beauty,coincides with the momentof
transgressionor of realizationof Antigone's Ate, which is the characteristic
thatI havechiefly nsistedon and which ntroduced s to theexemplaryunction
ofAntigone'sproblem nallowingus to determine he unctionofcertaineffects.. Thebeauty effect is a blindnesseffect. Somethingelse is going on on the
otherside thatcannotbeobserved. neffect,Antigoneherselfhas beendeclaring
from the beginning: "Iam dead and I desire death." WhenAntigone depicts
herselfas Niobe becomingpetrified,what is she identifyingherselfwith, if it
isn't thatinanimateconditionin which Freudtaughtus to recognizethe ormin which the death instinctis manifested?An illustrationof the death instinct
is what wefind here. [281]
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It should be noted that this "violent llumination" omingfromAntigoneis attributable
to Lacan's poken extratherhan oSophocles'swrittenone. WhileLacan'snterpretationof the text of theplay maybequestionable, f significance s thelinkheoutlinesbetween
the beautifuland the deathdrive.As shepersists n herdefiantdrivetoburyherbrother,
Antigone's disavowal of her life, of her futurerole as wife and mother,of her very
embodiment,ndicatessomethingbeyondtherelationship othe humanother hatLacanidentifiesas boundupwith a notionof thegood. Antigone'sinanimatequality,her drive
to deathorat&,putsher in the realm of thebeautiful,somethingLacanclearlyvalorizes
over the relationaldomain of the good.8If the domain of the good is the spaceof relation to the other,and a moretypical
Lacaniannotion of the otherentails its incorporationntotheself, thenAntigoneis even
moreextreme,in that herdeath drive is so pureas to standapart rom the realm of the
other,even the other that is incorporatednto the self. In thisregard, he heroine of the
ethics seminar clipsesthe heroof theseminar n desire.What s articulatedainstakingly
throughout hedesire seminar s theway in which somethingphantasmatic ppearsoutof a spacethatis neitherentirelyconsciousnorunconscious. It appears rommaterial
that s presentyet notregisteredas such,ofteninvolvinga relationshipo orprescienceof death thatis implicitly acknowledgedbut not explicitly articulated,known yet not
recognized.9Whereasdeathhas a spectralpresence n Hamlet, t is far more in the openinAntigone,and far less linked to the desire of the other:
There s nothingDionysiacaboutthe act and the countenanceofAntigone.Yet
she pushes to the limit the realizationof somethingthatmightbe called the
pureand
simpledesire
ofdeath as such. She incarnates that desire. Think
about it. Whathappensto her desire? Shouldn't t be the desire of the Other
andbe linked to the desireof the mother?The textalludes to thefact that the
desireof the mother s theoriginof everything.Thedesireof the mother s the
foundingdesireof the wholestructure, he one thatbrought nto theworld the
uniqueoffspringthat are Eteocles, Polynices, Antigoneand Ismene;but it is
also a criminaldesire. Thusat theorigin of tragedyandof humanismwefindonce againan impassethatis the same as Hamlet's,exceptstrangelyenoughit
is even more radical. [282-83]
This passageillustratesa certainmovementfrom SeminarSix to SeminarSeven, fromHamlet to Antigone,from desire to ethics. If Hamlet'sdesire is both moreshifty and
more filial, Antigone's desire-and nondesire-is more steadfast and more perverse.
Similarly,whereas desire is the explicit topic of SeminarSix, it is always elliptical,
resistingdefinitionand ocalization.Itis notuntilSeminarSeven, where ethics takes on
the ellipticalrole of desire,that the mostprecisedefinition of desire is formulated,and
in conjunctionwith a similarconcludingrefinementof the definition of ethics.At the
end of the seminar,much in the fashionof his earlierdiscussions of the good and the
beautiful,Lacanproposesanunusualdefinition of ethics:"And t is because we know
better hanthose who went beforehow to recognizethe natureof desire,whichis at the
8. Though rawing n a differentefinitionf thegood romLacan's,MarthaNussbaumneverthelessmakesa characterizationhat bothaffirmsandextendsLacan'sanalysis, drawinga
parallelbetweenAntigoneandCreonas "twooddlyinhumanbeings"[65]. Indeed,it seems that
Lacan'semphasisonAntigone'sinhumanattributescouldeasilybe extended o Creon.
9. This is comparableto whatSlavojZizek,expoundingon DonaldRumsfeld'sexample of"knownknowns, "knownunknowns,"nd "unknown nknowns,"uts orwardas the "unknown
known."eeOrganswithoutBodies:OnDeleuze ndConsequences5;andIraq:TheBorrowedKettle9.
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heartof thisexperience, hatareconsideration f ethicsis possible, thata formof ethical
judgmentis possible, of a kind thatgives this questionthe force of a LastJudgment:Have you actedin conformitywiththe desire that s in you? ... Opposedto thispole of
desire is traditional thics"[314].Andjust after,he reformulates t thus:"Iproposethen
that,froman analyticalpoint of view, the only thing of which one can be guilty is of
having given groundrelativeto one's desire. Whether t is admissibleor not in a givenethics,thatproposition xpressesquitewell something hatwe observe n ourexperience"
[319]. Ethics, then,meansobeyinga law of formrather han one of content.It does not
specifyorprohibit oncreteacts other hanone-acting inconformitywith one'sdesire,
or,alternatively, otgiving wayonthatdesire.10 lthoughwhatthatdesiremaybe is not
always self-evident,the importanthing is not to give up on the quest to encounter t.
Whatis interesting n this regard s thatAntigone,while on the one handepitomizingthisinjunctionwith her deathdrive,orat&,s on the otherhandtraversedby adesire that
is also illegible for being strangelyabsent.As Lacanexpressesit in the passage cited
above, "whathappens o herdesire?"Whatcomplicatesdesire andits relationto ethics is none other than the beautiful.
Although what Lacancalls Antigone's beauty is to a certaindegree the mark of her
uncompromising esire, t alsomarks heabsenceof desirewhereonewould mostexpectto find it. More specifically,and in the passage that is perhapsmost cited and most
confounding nAntigone(leadingtounlikelyspeculations hat t was abelated nsertion
in theoriginaltext),Antigoneattemptsat theend of theplayto explainherself,avowingthat she wouldonly do thesedeeds for abrotherand notfor a husbandora child.Yet in
the courseof this explanationherdesire remainsoddly indiscernible:
[F]or never,had childrenofwhom wasthemotherorhadmyhusband erishedand beenmouldering here,wouldI havetakenon myselfthistask,indefiance
of the citizens.In virtueof what law do I say this?If myhusbandhaddied, I
couldhaveanother,anda childbyanotherman,ifI had lost the irst, butwith
my mother andfather in Hades below, I could never have another brother
10. See Lacan'spublishedessayon KantandSade, "Kantwith Sade."Fora lucid overview
of ethics in Kant, Sade, and to a lesser extentLacan, see Martyn.Following Lacan, Martyn
connectsKantwithSade onthegrounds hatbothshareaformalist approach o ethics that nvolvesfollowing a formal maxim,such as the categorical imperative,ratherthan a specific code ofconduct.Martyn urther links this with ailure: "What s ethical,for Kant asfor Sade, appearsultimatelyas a specifickindof failure,the ailure that ensues whentheattempt o abstract romall contentandto articulatea purely ormal totalityispursuedto a pointof exhaustion hatis at
once the consequenceand the collapse of form" [21]. Martynconcludes with the resoundingdeclaration that or Lacanpsychoanalysis itself is tantamount o ethics:
Toalarge egree,whatwe earn romTheEthics fPsychoanalysiss thatpsychoanalysisisethics.ForwhatLacan escribes s the dealof ethics loselyresembles hathehadearlier escribedstheendof analysis:n bothcases,desire s priedoose or iberated
from heshackles fanegofixated ythe maginary... As inanalysis,thics nvolves
cutting ne'segoloose fromallthoseobjectshesubject magineso bepleasurable,useful,orbeneficial.These"good" bjectsareallessentiallymirrorsf thesubject:theyhavea "narcissisticoundation"ndare"more rless hisimage,hisreflection."
[181-82]
See also AlenkaZupanlic's moreLacanian-inflecteddiscussionof these same problematicsin
Ethicsof the Real:Kant,Lacan,esp. the last chapter "Thus" 249-59]. For a sustainedreadingof Lacan'sconceptof desire as it is articulatedthrough hejuxtapositionof Kant andSade, seeBaas.
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Such was the law for whose sake I did you special honour but to Creon I
seemed to do wrong and to show shocking recklessness, 0 my own brother
And now he leads me thus by the hands, without marriage, without bridal,
having no share in wedlock or in the rearing of children, but thus deserted by
myfriends I come living, poor creature, to the caverns of the dead. [lines 900-
20]
In its privilegingof the role of the sister overthatof the wife or themother,Antigone's
speechreflects a hierarchyof familyvalues thatby manystandardswouldbe strikinglyaberrantf notperverse.Thebrother,becauseirreplaceable,s valued morehighlythan
the husbandorchildren,who areultimately ubstitutable.Antigone's amilialattachment
to her sibling is exalted over any attachmentsbrought under the auspices of an
extrafamilialove relation,andthis is underscoredby Antigone'sdirect addressto the
deadbrother.Antigone's eeming ndifferenceo her oyalfianceHaemononlyreinforces
the exclusive focus on the brother.)Yet the final lines of this passage lament theimpossibilityof the very relationsof wife and motherthat areplacedas secondaryto
that of the sister.And this dualappealto both the function of the sister and that of the
wife/motherunderscores he implacablequestionof whatexactlyis Antigone'sdesire,on the one hand so readableandon the otherso opaque.1"
Lacansignalsthe beautifulas boththe markerof desire'sunreadablity ndas that
whichabatesdesire:
11.It is interestingonotea certainaffinitybetweenLacan'sandHegel'sanalysesofAntigoneprecisely in their respective conjunctionsof desire, ethics, andfamily relation.Althoughthe
possibility of a womanenjoyingan ethical relationis ambiguousat bestfor Hegel, the sister as
exemplifiedbyAntigone is considerablybetterpositioned than the wife. In the section of The
Phenomenologyof Spiriton "TheEthical Order,"Hegel distinguishesthe wifefrom the sister
andimpliesthatthesisterlyrelation,as opposedto thespousalone, is morepure preciselyin that
it is devoidof desire:
Sincethen, n thisrelationshipf the wifetheres an admixturef particularity,erethical ife is notpure;butin so far as it is ethical, heparticularitys a matter f
indifference,nd hewife is without hemoment f knowing erself s thisparticularself in theotherpartner.hebrother, owever,s for the sisterapassive, imilar eingin general;herecognitionf herself n himis pureandunmixedwithanynaturaldesire.n hisrelationship,herefore,he ndifferencef theparticularity,nd heethical
contingency f the latter,are notpresent;butthe momentof the individual elf,
recognizingndbeingrecognized,anhereasserttsright,because t is linked o the
equilibriumf thebloodand s a relation evoidof desire.The oss of the brothersthereforerreparableo the sisterandherduty owards im s thehighest.275]
Thewife is tainted withparticularity,hence notpure, whereas the relationof sister to brother
retainsthispurity.Yet hissister-brother elation s also linked o theindividualas opposedto the
collective,andthis is augmentedbythe sister's lackofdesire or the brotherAlthoughLacan uses
Antigoneto illustrate nhumandesire,herdeathdrive as it were,it seemsthatforboth Lacan and
Hegel,Antigonerepresents space wheredesire encounters ts limit.Moreoveras Hegelindicates
in the irst sentenceof thesectionimmediatelyollowing, "thisrelationships at the same time the
limitat which theself-contained ife of theFamilybreaksupandgoes beyonditself" Here, it is
thesibling relation thatexposesthe limitsof the amily structure, hat best accesses the realmofthebeyond-the realmof thebeautiful-to whichthe amily is singularlyconducive.Formoreon
Hegel,the amily,and thelimit constitutedbythe brother-sister elation nAntigone,see Derrida,
Glas, esp. 145-67; Jacobs, "DustingAntigone";and Geller "Hegel's Self-ConsciousWoman."
For more on Hegel and desire and its legacy in Frenchthought,see Butler Subjectsof Desire.
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There s a certainrelationshipbetweenbeautyand desire. Thisrelationships
strangeand ambiguous.On the one hand, it seems that the horizonof desire
maybe eliminatedrom the registerof thebeautiful.Yet,on the otherhand,it
has beenno less apparent .. that the beautifulhas the effect,I wouldsay, of
suspending, owering,disarmingdesire. Theappearanceof beauty ntimidates
andstopsdesire. .. Moreover, t seems that it is in the natureof thebeautifulto remain,as they say, insensitive to outrage,and that is by no means one ofthe least significantelementsof its structure. . . Thebeautiful n its strange
functionwithrelation o desiredoesn't takeus in,as opposedto the unctionofthegood. Itkeepsus awake andperhapshelpsusadjustto desireinsofaras it
is itself linkedto the structureof the lure. [237-39]12
Lacanrepeatedlycharacterizes he beautifulby the adjective "strange,"both in this
passageand nother ormulations.Thestrangewouldappear o be a functionof beauty's
indecipherability.Yet this very strangenessandopacityelevates the beautifulover thedeceptiverealmof thegood.Inthisrespect,beauty,as themarker fAntigone's"strange"
familyvalues,is bothmoreimpassableandmorestraightforwardhanthe good, for its
strangeness s immediately perceptiblewhereas the good is that which takes you in.
Beauty is closer all at once to death,evil, andultimatelyethics. In this sense, Lacan's
notion of ethics entailsa sortof grittyrealism(to be sure,not the way Lacanwouldputit)where one hasnochoice butto confront hosethingsthatareotherwise oo horrifyingorpainfulto address.It is this proximity o the extremethat for Lacan marks he spaceof theethical,aperhapsparadoxicalandcertainly iminalspacewherethelivingand the
humanconfronttheir limits.
Whatwill becomecrucial n linkingLacan o Badiou s theconnectionbetweenLacan's
notions of the "good"and the "beautiful"and Badiou's continualappeal to "truth."
Clearly, ruthandthegood arenotsynonymous erms,yet,as Lacanpointsout,if beauty
disrupts hegood, thenit also disrupts, n its proximity o radicaldestruction,hepurityof truth.After citing Sade's Juliette andproceedingfrom there to a discussion of the
deathdrive in Freud,Lacanconcludes his lectureon thedeathdrive with thefollowingremarks:
Thetrue barrier that holdsthesubjectbackin ront of theunspeakableield ofradical desire that is thefield of absolute destruction,of destructionbeyond
putrefaction, is properly speaking the aesthetic phenomenon where it is
identifiedwith the experience of beauty-beauty in all its shining radiance,
beautythat has beencalled thesplendorof truth. t is obviouslybecausetruthis notpretty o lookat thatbeauty s, ifnot itssplendor;henat least itsenvelope.
12. Fora furtherdevelopmentof the structureof the lureas it is played out in thefield ofvision, see Lacan's eleventhseminar The Four FundamentalConceptsof Psychoanalysis.Ellie
Ragland inksbeautyto thereal,topuredesire,and to theboundarybetween ifeand deathin the
following threeexquisiteormulations,allfrom "Lacans Theoryof Sublimation:A NewLook at
Sophocles'sAntigone.""Freuddid notunderstandwhatcausessuffering,Lacansays.InLacan s
teaching,the real returns rombehind, nsuffering,as terribleandbeautiful" 111]; "Antigonesa creatureof pure desire,Lacanmaintains. One might say thatpuredesire means the absolutelack or loss of thedialecticalpowerofdesire.As such,puredesire wouldopenonto thevoid,onto
death, onto beauty"[113]; "AgainstAristotle'sargumentthat beauty arises from an orderlyarrangementof theparts of a whole intoaformally beautifulwork,Lacan showsanother order:thatof objectswherenothing ess thanlifeor deathis at stake"[117].
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In otherwords,I will explainnext time ourforwardmarch resumesthat
on the scale that separates us from the centralfield of desire, if the goodconstitutesthefirst stoppingplace, the beautiful orms the second and getscloser It stopsus, but it also points in the directionof the ield of destruction.
That n thissense, when one aimsfor the centerof moralexperience,the
beautiful s closer to evil than to thegood, shouldn't,I hope,surpriseyou verymuch.[216-17]
This explanationof the relationbetween the beautiful,the good, andtruthpoints upboth thedivergenceandthepointsof proximitybetween LacanandBadiou. On the one
hand, n itspositivelycodedvalence,theexperienceof beauty s akintoBadiou'snotion
of truth,andbeautyas the markerof the desirenotgiven up is parallel o what Badiou
will describeas fidelityto anevent.Inthisregard, ruth orBadiouis identifiedmorebyits form thanby its content-it is not so much a specific thingor occurrenceas it is a
declarationof adherenceto a person, thing, or occurrence.It is more a process or aprocedurehana thingin itself.Furthermore,henotion thatbeauty,ortruth orBadiou,
is closer to evil thanit is to some middlecategorysuch as the good for Lacan-or the
contemporarynotion of the multiculturalother for Badiou-highlights a certain
convergenceof theirrespectivelexicons. Indeed,such a convergence s what Badiou
tendsto emphasize,even formulatinghis conceptof fidelity to a truth-processn the
termsof Lacan'sethical maximof notgiving groundon one's desire:"do notgive upon
yourown seizureby a truth-process"Badiou,Ethics47].13
Badiou's work,especially his Ethics, containsmany expressionsof indebtedness
toward Lacan.Ofparticularpertinence
s theway
he situateshis notion of ethics as
followingLacan's n thatboth concern anethic of somethingelse:
Theonly genuineethics is of truths n theplural-or, moreprecisely,theonlyethics is of processes of truth,of the labour that brings some truths nto the
world. Ethics mustbe takenin the sense presumedby Lacan when,againstKant and the notion of a general morality, he discusses the ethics of
psychoanalysis.Ethics does not exist. There s only the ethic-of (ofpolitics, of
love, of science, of art). ... Thereis not, infact, one single Subject,butas
manysubjectsas there are truths,and as many subjectivetypesas there are
proceduresof truths.. . . As for me, I identify our fundamentalsubjective
"types":political, scientific,artistic,andamorous.[28]14
13. ElsewhereLacan would seemto disruptBadiou'scruciallinkingof truth o theevent.In
urginghis listeners to be wary of the chorus in Antigone,Lacan cautions againstjuxtaposingthese two terms: "Thesignifierintroduces wo ordersin the world,thatof truthand thatof the
event. But if one wantsto retain it at the level of man's relationsto the dimensionof truth,one
cannotalso at the sametime make tservetopunctuate heevent.In tragedy ngeneralthere s no
kindof true event. The heroand that whichis aroundhim are situatedwithrelationto thegoal ofdesire" [Ethics 265]. Badiou's
philosophydoes not account or the dialectic of desire when it
encounters the tragic or destructive, as it usually does. A certain transferential and
countertransferentialialectic is itselftakingplace betweenLacanand theaudience nhisseminar,andthisis often iguredinhispejorativecomments n the chorus nAntigone.Lacansubsequently
refersto the "docile chorus . . . , a collection of yes-men" [266], whichparallels the way he
frequentlyaddresses his audience.See esp. 251-54, where Lacan berateshis listeners or their
poor understanding f his lecturesand admonishesthem or not havingthe initiative to go out
and readAntigoneon theirown.Mythoughtson Lacan'ssadistic relationto his audience have
benefitedroman unpublished aper on this topic byDavid Sigler14.Inan interviewwith PeterHallward ncludedas anappendix oEthics,Badiou comments
on his debt to Lacanand on hisfrequentcharacterizationof Lacan as an "antiphilosopher":
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To be sure,Lacanspeaks of an ethics of psychoanalysis,but nowhere does he outline
four fundamental ypes of truthprocedure he does employ four-part ategorizations,
thoughto verydifferentends).Andit seems a stretch o saythatethics does notexistfor
Lacan,eventhough t is a termthat s hard o pindown. I would counter hatethicsdoes
exist for Lacan, at the extremelimit foregroundedby beauty,at the limit of life and
death,of the humanandthe inhuman.Badiou'sproject s immenselydifferent romthatof Lacan,and that differenceresides,amongotherthings, in Lacan's insistenceon the
messinessof things,on ethics as thefunctionthat witnesses to extremestates,whereas
Badiouwould seek to delimitforms of experiencein a four-part tructure,n a perfect
system. Although such codification is admirablyrigorous,it does not allow for the
exceptionthatchangesthe ruleof thetruth-processnsteadof proving t,and tpresumesa subjectwho abidesby therules,who alwaysremainsfaithful.By contrast,what is at
stakeforLacan s the potential orabandoning he system,for confrontingone's desire
at its limit andtherebytransforming verything, ncludingthe system."1
Thoughit is uncharacteristicallynderstated,Slavoj Zizekmakes a similarclaimwith respect to Badiou and Lacan in his chapteron Badiou in The TicklishSubject,wherehehighlights hecentrality f thedeathdrive oLacan,especiallyas it is formulated
with respectto Antigone, and the way this is incompatiblewith Badiou's truth-event,
which, as Zizekand others have pointedout, adamantly ejects anythingrelatedto the
negative,finitude,the dialecticbetweenlife anddeath,or for thatmatter he Lacanian
real.16I quoteZizek at length:
[T]he whole of Lacan'seffortis preciselyfocused on those limit-experiencesin which thesubject inds himselfconfrontedwith the death drive at itspurest,
priorto its reversal ntosublimation. snot Lacan'sanalysisofAntigone ocusedon the momentwhen shefinds herselfin the state "inbetween he twodeaths,"
Anotherthing that grabbed my attention: Lacan declaredhimself to be an
"antiphilosopher."t is partly hanks o himthatI began o askmyself, n a fairlysystematic ay,whatmight edeclaredntiphilosophical,hatwas tthat haracterized
antiphilosophicalhought, hycertain inds fthoughtonstitutehemselvesshostilitytophilosophy.ntheend,my theorys thatphilosophyhould lwayshinkascloselyas possible o antiphilosophy.orallthesereasons, owe Lacana realdebt,despite
havinghad no relation o thequestion f analytic herapy s such.["PoliticsandPhilosophy:An InterviewwithAlain Badiou" 121-22]
Without ddressingBadiou's intricate notionof antiphilosophyand its relationto philosophy,I
think t mightbe assertedthat,to thecontrary,Lacanis indeeddoingphilosophy,butbecausehis
foundationaltext s Freud--andnotHegel, Husserl,orHeideggeras was the case with the French
philosophersof his generation-he doesphilosophyotherwise,andfor this is arguablythemost
original Frenchphilosopherof the twentiethcentury.What s most significantin this context,
however, s the way in which Badiou takes Lacan's declarationthathe is an antiphilosopher
absolutelyatface value. Thisdisplaysa marked ontrast o hisbreathtaking pproach oDeleuze,in whichBadiouopenlyaffirms hemajorfaultlines betweenhis thoughtand thatof Deleuze,but
in this ashion sheds newlightonDeleuze, especiallyDeleuze's relationto Platonism,univocity,and the virtual.It is interesting hat Badiou does not take a similarlyengaged yet critical stance
withrespect oLacan, or inmanyrespectsBadiou'sthought s moreproximate o thatofDeleuze.Forexample,heaffirms hat"Deleuze's hilosophy, ikemyown,moreover s resolutely lassical"
[seeBadiou,Deleuze:TheClamour f Being45].15. Fora brilliant discussionof thewaythat desire at itspurestconfrontsandgoes beyond
the very structureof desire, see Zupancic s reading of Claudelalongside Sophie's Choice in
"Ethicsand Tragedyn Psychoanalysis"in Ethicsof the Real 170-248.
16. See especially Copjec, ImagineThere's No Woman[29], for a discussionof Badiou's
critiqueoffinitude.
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reducedto a living death, excluded rom the symbolic domain? Is this not
similarto the uncanny igure of Oedipusat Colonnuswhoafter ulfilling his
destiny, is also reduced to "less than nothing," to a formless stain, the
embodimentof some unspeakablehorror?All these and other igures (from
Shakespeare'sKingLear to Claudel'sSygnede Coufontaine)arefigures who
find themselves n this void, trespassingthelimitto "humanity" ndenteringthe domainwhichinancient Greekwas called ate, "inhumanmadness."Here,Badioupays thepricefor hisproto-Platonicadherence o Truth ndtheGood:
what remainsbeyondhis reach, in his violent (and, on its own level, quite
justified) polemics against the contemporaryobsession with depoliticized"radicalEvil"(theHolocaust, etc.) andhis insistence that thedifferentacets
of Evil are merelyso manyconsequencesof the betrayalof the Good (of the
Truth-Event),s this domain "beyondthe Good," in which a humanbeingencounters he death driveas the utmost imitof humanexperience,andpays
theprice by undergoinga radical "subjectivedestitution,"by being reducedto an excremental emainderLacan spoint is that this limit-experiences the
irreducible/constitutiveonditionof the (im)possibilityof the creative act of
embracinga Truth-Event:t opens up and sustains the spacefor the Truth-
Event,yet its excess always threatens o undermine t. [160-61]
WhatZizekmakesexplicitwithoutunderscorings how incompatiblea Lacaniananda
Badiouianethicsactuallyare,eventhoughthey might easily be collapsedintomuch the
samething,andthis by none otherthan Badiouhimself.As Zizekpointsout,Antigone
is emblematicof a whole set of literaryfigures, generally from tragedy,that Lacandrawsupon;andwhatunites hesefigures s thewayinwhichtheyencounterheinhuman,
the limit-experiencebeyondthe good. Badiou'sphilosophyleaves no room for such a
beyond, for this realm of the "constitutive"imit-experience s what "remainsbeyond
[Badiou's]reach"and leaves his truth-process, ccessiblethrough he four domainsof
politics,art,science,and ove, entirelyunequippedo deal withanything hat allsoutside
of its sphere.Itis thereforecuriousthatLacanians uch asZizek,Copjec,andZupancic(the lattertwo are cited in the footnotes)-all with nuancedanalyses of ethics andits
inextricableink to desire--drawso positivelyon Badiou'swork,not withoutseemingly
pointedcritiques,such as this oneby Zizekabove,yet theyneverpursue hesecritiquesin a sustained ashion.
WhereasZizek,Copjec,andZupancil
all considerthe questionof radicalEvil in
depth,Badioudismisses his termout of hand."7his is perhapsbestillustratednBadiou's
Ethicsby his continualappeal o NationalSocialismas an illustration f atruth-process
gone awry (a low-level evil, if you will) andhis concomitantdiatribe,mentionedby
Zizek,againstthose who would single out the Holocaustas a sortof pureradicalEvil.
Amongother hings,Badiou'sproblemwithradicalEvil is that tappeals o theHolocaust
as a type of limit, something,as we have seen, thatis not thinkablewithinhis system.
Referring o the Nazi genocide,Badiouwrites:
But then the wholepoint is to situate this singularity.Fundamentally, hose
who upholdthe ideologyof humanrightstry to situate it directlyin Evil, in
keepingwith theirobjectivesofpure opinion.Wehave seen that thisattemptat
thereligiousabsolutizationfEvil is incoherent.Moreover tisvery hreatening,like anythingthatputs thought up against an impassable "limit." ... The
defendersof ethicalideologyare so determinedo locate thesingularityof the
17. FormoreonradicalEvil,see RadicalEvil,ed.Copjec.
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exterminationdirectly in Evil that they generally deny, categorically, that
Nazismwas a political sequence .... Nazipolitics was not a truth-process,but
it was only in so far as it could be representedas such that it "seized"the
Germansituation. [Ethics 64-66]
Nazism,like atruth-process,ried o seize uponanall-inclusiveuniversalism,yetclearlyat theexpenseof those "unfit"or a universal ruth.Thisexamplecertainlyunderscores
Badiou's assertion hat"Evilis theprocessof a simulacrumof truth" 77], andbeyondthat mpliesthatan evil such as NationalSocialismactuallycomes closertoa processof
truth hansomething ike the liberalprogramof tolerance o every sort of particularity
(the paradigmof the multiculturalother thatBadiou denounces).Although Badiou's
work makes a sustainedand rigorous argument or universalismover and against a
liberalparticularism,hefactthattheparticularityf multiculturalismalls so far afield
from a bona fide Badiouian ruth-processmakesone, even one sometimessympathetic
to the critiquesof multiculturalism,want to say, wait a second, maybe I'll take thephilosophically sloppy multiculturalism over the almost-but-not-quite-sufficientlyuniversal National Socialism after all. For what is so disturbinggiven the examplesBadiou employs is the fact that,by his own account,a truth-processs ultimatelyveryhardto define or even identify,and so presumablysuch a truth-process,often only
recognizableretrospectively,would bejust as likelyto turnout to be anexclusive rather
than an inclusive universalism,assumingone grantsthat the latter s even possible.
Oddlyenough, thoughBadioupositions thetruth-processorfidelityto anevent)in oppositionto the logic of radicalEvil, the sublime,and the Platonicsimulacrum,t
seems that this truth-process,n its resistance to definition andpotentialto strayinto
evil and falsity, is not that far removed from the very radical Evil Badiou attacks.'"
However, hefact that the formof fidelityto a truthmayresemblea universalismgone
awry(suchas NationalSocialism) s notin itself whereItakeprimaryssue withBadiou.
It is morenearlythat this similarityof formimplies that the actors who areseized bysuchatruth-processwould becapableof managing tproperly.Rather hanacknowledgethe sublime andterrifyingqualityof sucha situationandthus be potentiallypreparedo
register ts harmfulramifications,Badioucodes thetruth-process urelypositively,as if
to saythat n the handsof therightagentsthetruth-processwilljust turnout for thebest.
As a studentastutelyobserved nthe class in which we readBadiou'sEthics,"thisbook
is written or good people."'9The sameobjectionto Lacan'smaximnotto give groundon one's desire might certainly be made. The difference, however, is that Lacan
acknowledgesthat extremedesires,deathdrives,encounterswith the inhuman,and all
mannerof thingsBadiouwould want to discreditare situatedat the heartof thequestionof ethics. Is it not preferable o have a theoryof ethics thatanticipatesextremestates
rather hanone that holds to the best-case scenario wherehopefully they will not be
relevant?
18. Badiouhimselfmakes muchthesamepoint in Ethicswhen he writes:
For hewell-knownxistence f simulacras apowerfultimuluso thecrystallizationofcrises.Opinionellsme(and hereforetellmyself, orIamneveroutside pinions)thatmyfidelitymaywellbe terrorxerted gainstmyself,and hat he idelityowhichI am faithful ooksverymuch ike-too much ike-this or thatcertifiedEvil. It is
alwaysa possibility,incetheformal haracteristicsf thisEvil(as simulacrum)re
exactly those of a truth. . WhatI am then exposed to is the temptation o betraya
truth.79]
19. Mythanksto Alex Gilfor thisperceptivecommentandfor manyotherinsights.
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While Badiou's most developed examplesof whata truth-processwould look like
are in the realm of politics (suchas FrenchMaoismor the events of May '68) or most
recently in the domain of religion (the apostle Paul's activist fidelity to Christ's
resurrection),20a less-developedandmore difficultexampleis to be foundin the realm
of the love relation.ThroughoutEthics,Badiouuses the exampleof two people fallingin love as one of the sites for the unfolding of a truth-process.Of his four generic
procedures(science, art, politics, love), Badiou dwells least on love, though in his
Manifestoor Philosophyhe does hailLacanas thegreatest heoristof love sincePlato,
notingthat Lacan is morecustomarilycreditedas a thinkerof desire or of the subject.While this seems a very aptobservation,Badiou focuses solely on Lacan'sdiscussion
of the nonrelationof the Two sexes, whose unionthrough ove is itself whatproducesthe notion of sexual differenceas something hatexceeds the law of theOne.As Badiou
translatest into his lexicon inflectedby settheory:"Ishallsayinmy language hat ove
bringsabout,as a nameless orgenericmultiplicity,a truthof the differenceof the sexes,
a truth learlysubtractedromknowledge, especiallyfrom theknowledgeof those wholove each other.Love is theproduction,withfidelityto theencounter-event, f the truth
of theTwo."2'ThoughBadiouis carefulto distinguish his love from romantic ove tout
court,what is striking s thatonly the love of the (presumablyheterosexual)couple is
paradigmatic f anything.22n otherwords,wherewoulda love orfidelitythat s outside
20. The main detailedexamplesthat Badiougives of truth-processes,or events,are in the
domainof politics:
I shallcall "truth"a truth)he realprocessof a fidelity o anevent: hatwhich his
fidelity roducesnthesituation.or xample,hepolitics ftheFrenchMaoistsetween1966and1976,which riedothink ndpractise fidelity o twoentangledvents: heCulturalRevolutionin China, andMay '68 in France .... Essentially,a truth s the
materialourse raced,within hesituation, ythe evental upplementation.t is thusan mmanentreak. Immanent"ecause truth roceedsn thesituation,ndnowhereelse-there is noheaven f truths. Break"ecausewhatenables hetruth-process-the event-meant nothingaccordingo the prevailing anguageand established
knowledgef thesituation... Wemight ay, hen,hat truth-processsheterogeneousto the institutednowledges f thesituation.Or-to use anexpressionf Lacan's-that tpunches "hole"ntheseknowledges.42-43]
See the appendix, "Politicsand Philosophy:An Interviewwith Alain Badiou,"where Badiou
commentson thedifficultyof labelingthe eventsof May '68an event,ultimately eferring o them
as an "obscure vent" 126]. As someonewhoremainsaithfulto the eventof Christ'sresurrection,
founding through his a universaltruth-processhat shuns theparticular the dialectic, and the
law, Saint Paul is the exemplaryigure for Badiou thatAntigoneis for Lacan,but more so [see
Badiou,SaintPaul].It is all the morestriking, hen,thatthistheological example alls somewhat
outsidethe ourgenericsofpolitics,love,art,and science thatare detailed n EthicsandthroughoutBadiou'swork.See esp. hisL'Utre t l'6v6nement.
21. Badiou,ManifestoforPhilosophy83, trans.modified.For a usefuldiscussionof love in
Badiou,see
Hallward,Badiou:A
Subjecto Truth185-91. For a
diametricallyoppositeapproachto an ethics of sexual difference(as Hallwardpoints out), see Irigaray,An Ethics of Sexual
Difference.22. Fora more sustaineddiscussionof love,see Badiou's "What s Love?" Badiou makesa
significantdistinctionbetweenthelove relationandthatof thecoupleper se. Thecouplerelation
is for Badiou a two thatis counted rom thepoint of viewof a three,whereas the superiorlove
relation s afigureof Two ubtractedfromnycount 270-72]. Badiou makesaparallelnumerical
analysisinSaintPaul,but n this case it is a questionof the three(the avoredChristiandiscourse)
preventing he our (themysticaldiscourse) rom collapsingonto the two (theJewishdiscourse)
[53]. Thedenigrationof the Jewish discourse and its equationwitha "logic of signs" is one ofthe mostproblematicmoments n Saint Paul.Badiou's notionof thecouplehas been clarified or
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of this genericfit in? What would Badioudo withsomeonelikeAntigonewho chooses
to die out of devotionto a siblingrather han ove fora husbandora child?Andalreadythat sibling, the brother,bears the mark of the (albeit incestuous) sexual difference.
What about ove for a sister,such as Ismene's love forhersisterAntigone,dismissed as
it is frommost analysesof theplay?23AlthoughLacan s animportanthinkerof sexual
difference, t is not for nothingthat he devotesan entireyear'sseminar o the questionof desire,something,as notedabove,inextricablyinkedtodeath.In thisseminar,Lacan
repeatedly nvokes a phantasmatic pecteror devil that ies behindwhatmightbe seen
as one unified thing or meaning, in fact showing it to be double, but double in a
nondialectical ashion so that hespectraldouble s notbrought ntoa relationof number
butin fact lies ever andillusively outside it. In short,the relationof desire,as opposedto love, does not so much define theTwo, as in Badiou'sexample,butunderscores he
difficultyof determining he difference between the One and the Two (as in Lacan's
sessionin the ethics seminar hatdetails"Antigonebetween the two deaths" 270-87]).
Whatis exceptionalaboutAntigoneis that she cannotbe situatedreadily n the domainof love (or for that matterof politics, art,or science). Instead she encountersa limit-
experienceby conjoining,as it were,theregistersof death,theinhuman,andthefamily.
Antigone emergesin Lacan'sreadingas a figurewho, becauseof heradherence o
the perverted amily (over and above the prescribedregistersof love, marriage,and
children), s capableof an extremepolitical disruption, or with herdeath,theTheban
royal familyis effectivelydecimated.It is interestingn this regard o note that the film
Germany nAutumndepictsthe controversyover whether to air a televised version of
Antigone nthewake of the"suicide"of Baader-MeinhofeaderGudrunEnsslin,whose
story-downto the
fraught relationshipwith her sister-has
striking parallelsto
Sophocles'splay.24 his filmdramatizes he subversivepoliticalpotentialof Antigone's
story, somethingthat Lacan'sreadingalso dramatizeson the level of the psyche. In
both, the potentialfor political disruption(thoughit is a point of debate among the
televisionproducersn thefilm as to whetheror notairing heplayat this time will have
anymeasurable ffectatall) andthe encounterwith thelimit-experiencearefully on the
surface.Badiou's truth-process,by contrast, s not nearlyso readableon the surface;
rather,t is purelypositive yet legible in retrospect. f it turnsnegative,thenit turnsout
that the universal truthhas been betrayed.The Antigone-eventdoes not lay claim to
such a universal status-it does nothope to found a churchor a universalorder-but
rather t openly representsanextremeparticularityhatmayeffect generalchange,andin anycase, it highlightsthe fraughtnatureof ethical action.
meby TracyMcNulty'sdetailedanalysisofboth "Whats Love?"and SaintPaul nherforthcoming
essay "FeminineLoveand the Pauline Universal."
23. My thinkingabout thefunction of thefigures of the sister and the little girl is much
indebtedto twounpublished apers byAnnieWagner,nparticular"LacanandtheImageof the
LittleGirlinSophocles'sAntigone."Formoreon how thesisterfunction s traditionally xcluded,see Juliet Flower MacCannell'sThe Regime of the Brother:After the Patriarchy, sp. 18. She
writes that "thegirl underpatriarchy sfaced with an inhumanchoice: to do withoutan identity,or to identifywith what she is not" [25, myemphasis].InAntigone'sClaim,JudithButlermakes
the incisive observationthat,since OedipusandAntigoneare bornof the samemotherJocasta,
Antigone's ather is also herbrother,urtherpervertingthe unctionof brother-lovesee esp. 61,
67].24. Fora provocativelinking of discoursesof terrorismand twins(especiallysisters) that
readsthis ilm alongsideMargarethevon Trottas MarianneandJuliane,see Beckman.
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