Badiou and Lazzarato on the Politics of the Event: Formalism or Vitalism?

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of what constitutes a political event through a comparison of the theories of Alain Badiou and Maurizio Lazzarato. Badiou's formalist approach to the event is contrasted with Lazzarato's vitalist, Deleuzian approach. Their different philosophical positions generate not only different perspectives on the nature of political events, but also different perspectives on subjectivity, political organization, and strategic relations to the state. Discussion of the differences between formalism and vitalism has often been pitched at an abstract, philosophical level, but the aim here is more to trace these differences through actual examples, namely Badiou's analysis of the Arab Spring and Lazzarato's analysis of the resistance of cultural workers in France.