UNNAMEABLE, REAL, IMPOSSIBLE: THE COMMUNITY IN ALAIN BADIOU’S PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

The article deals with the concept of community in the interpretation of Alain Badiou. The author proves the urgency of addressing Badiou’s works in the context of modern understanding of the community: being generalizing to modern theories, Badiou’s concept is the only one built around the concepts of truth-event-subject. Categorically refusing to accept the assertion that there is nothing but individuals, Badiou constantly returns to the concept of community being understood through brotherhood. The article explores three key characteristics of the community: connection with the real, unnameability, impossibility. It is proved that the statement of the impossibility of community is not limited to indicating the current political situation, but is of some philosophical significance. At the same time, Badiou’s thesis is emphasized that the impossibility of communities does not mean abandoning the imperative of emancipation. The connection between the definition of community and the category of the real is analysed, the main similarities and differences in the interpretation of the real between Alain Badiou and Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek are noted. The insidiousness of Badiou’s concept of community in the philosophical context of the community’s understanding of the future as a dissolved, unrecognized one is revealed. An emphasis is placed on the desubstantiation of the community as the main Badiou’s requirement, emphasizing his rejection of communities united by a certain particular feature as communities. Special attention is paid to brotherhood as a continuous passion and manifestation of «we» of the community. The role and significance of the requirement of unnameability of the community in Badiou’s philosophy are determined, and therefore the consequences of its naming in the form of a simulacrum and catastrophe are analysed. The following consequences of the seam of philosophy and politics that runs through the concept of community are stressed: the «ecstasy of the place», the reduction of various names of politics to one name, the despotism of truths. The task of inventing a factor that can only include in the community without rejecting anyone is problematized. The importance of Badiou’s decision to centre the community on events, being both singular in manifestation and universal in its revealed truth, is emphasized. It is also studied how Badiou derives the idea of a «universal singular» from the teachings of the Apostle Paul about the truth-event. Thus, it is concluded that the community in Badiou’s philosophy is defined by its unnameability and impossibility as a situation’s “the real”.