The violence of the new: Badiou's subtractive destruction and Gandhi's satyagraha

Abstract

This article examines the changing relation between politics and violence in Alain Badiou's theory of the subject. It is argued that, emerging from his early Maoism, Badiou initially entertains the notion of a ‘creative destruction’ but that, in his later work, he moves towards a ‘subtractive destruction’ which is logical rather than ontological. As a result, he moves away from the Leninist instrumentalisation of violence. On this basis, it is claimed that an emancipatory relation between politics and violence can be envisaged as long as violence is subtracted from the dominant Statist version of violence, which has at its core the trope of the vulnerable individual but also social body. The last third of the article applies this renewed theory of violence to Gandhi's satyagraha movement. It is shown that Gandhi's form of ‘non-violence’ is in fact a mode of ‘progressive violence’ in the Badiouian sense, but also, that the trope of the vulnerable body remains central to its logic, and that it is this that has enabled the cycle of violence witnessed in post-Independence India.