(Theo)poetic Naming and the Advent of Truths

Abstract

This paper attempts to develop a theopoetic reading of Alain Badiou's philosophy, particularly in regards to the role that nomination plays in his four truth procedures. The first section of this chapter provides a brief overview of the basic aspects of Badiou's philosophy, with particular emphasis given to the disjunction he posits between mathematics and poetics, which effectively bans all poetic utterance from ontology. The second part examines in more detail the role of poetics in Badiou's philosophy. Working on the assumption that it is necessary to interrelate Badiou's four truth procedures and from his own claim that the naming of events is always poetic, this chapter argues that Badiou's philosophy, including his ontology, contains an irreducible theopoetic element. The third and concluding section of this paper attempts to draw out the implications of this reading of Badiou, by bringing it into dialogue with Whitehead's view of poetics.