Truth Procedure Research Articles

The Possibility of the Possibility of Something New: The Subject and Fidelity to the Event in Love and Politics

Our chapter interrogates the conditions that give rise to the possibility of the Event and proposes a Lacanian-Badiouian perspective to think through conditions for the truth procedures of love and politics. First, we situate the Event, Possibility and Truth in both Badiou and Lacan, which brings forward conceptual tensions between truth and knowledge as presented in the psychoanalytic act. We propose with Badiou and Lacan that the emergence of possibility follows a logic that rupture compulsive repetition and whose effect is precisely the Event which results in knowledge of a savoir faire, of transmissible quality, that grant re-inscription (a new writing of the necessary) and/or a partial inscription of the impossible. The notion of love as beyond narcissism, allows us to discuss how to reimagine politics anew, including approaching it through the problem of ecology.

Time for Love

Alain Badiou offers a distinctive interpretation of time, anchored in his unique metaphysics and philosophy of the event. For Badiou, time is interventional, demarcating a disjunction between two incommensurable sequences of rupture in human history. The concept of disjunction occupies a pivotal role in Badiou’s philosophy of both love and time. This paper provides a comprehensive examination of the temporality of love within the context of Badiou's philosophy. We argue that, when viewed through Badiou’s philosophical lens, love provides an invaluable vantage point for understanding the very creation and transformation of time. As this chapter progresses, a concise exposition of Badiou's metaphysics and his theory of truth procedure is furnished, emphasizing facets that resonate with his philosophy of love. Time is explored from three vantage points: time between worlds, time within a world, and time as difference-as-such. These distinct conceptions of time, when examined in light of love, provide a fertile ground for further developing his concept of time.

THE POWER OF LOVE AS A TRANSFORMATIVE FORCE: ALAIN BADIOU’S THEORY OF LOVE AND CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN THE US

Love is never considered as a transformative force. Love is generally perceived merely as an affective-emotional thing and personal relationship. Love does not have any practical implication in transforming society. Through Alain Badiou’s theory of love, it can be demonstrated that love has the power to impact the world. According to Badiou, philosophy is a truth procedure that is always occurring in the arena. Politics, science, art, and love are the arenas in which philosophy operates. Thus, it is possible to talk about love philosophically. Philosophy aims to change the world since love is one of the arenas where philosophy operates. Based on the descriptive analysis method in interpreting Alain Badiou’s works; Being and Event and In Praise of Love, it implies that love can generate a transformative action. The case of miscegenation marriage between Mildred Jetter, an African-Indigenous American, and Richard Loving, a white male, during the civil rights movement in the US, can illustrate the role of love in transforming the world. Alain Badiou’s theory of love explains that love can transcend personal dimensions, and it is not purely a romantic feeling and personal relationship but also a transformative force. Thus, this study brings a new perspective on love theoretically and practically because love is not merely an emotion but also a force for change with social dimensions in practicality.

Mathematical Science of Being

In the present article, we have demonstrated that it is important to understand the equating of mathematics with ontology in Badiou’s philosophy, taking into account the necessary connection between rational materialism and ontological realism. Only in this way can we truly understand Badiou’s fundamental thesis that thinking and being are the same. Philosophy is not ontology and it is not a true procedure, but a thought that arises by being conditioned with the generic thoughts of all four truth procedures (art, politics, science, and love), which in turn does not mean that it cannot speak in the name of truth and ontology.

The Dialectic of Formalization

This article discusses the philosophy of Alain Badiou from the perspective of a formulation that we believe represents it succinctly: the dialectic of formalization. The main thesis of the article is that Badiou’s doctrine of the four truth procedures (politics, science, love, and art) can be understood as a doctrine of a dialectical realization of new and universal forms in the world. The dialectic of formalization announces a double procedure – an autonomous and creative procedure for the production of a new true form in the world and a process of the formation of continuity in discontinuity. Moreover, the dialectic of formalization represents a connection between Badiou’s mature work and his early writings from the late 1960s. Even though in the 1960s and 1970s Badiou had not yet introduced the concepts of subject and truth in the sense that he understands them today, it is possible to support the thesis that there is an indisputable connection between Badiou’s early concept of formalization and his later concept of generic truth procedure. We will try to show that the dialectic of formalization (Badiou’s own formulation) designates the continuity between Badiou’s early and mature work.

The Anatomy of the World

In this article, we discuss Badiou’s concept of the world through the somewhat unusual metaphor of “the anatomy of the world”. The anatomy of the world allows us to approach the concept of the world through the idea of ​​its constitution, architecture, structure – its anatomy. But as we show in the first part of the text, in order to derive the anatomy of the world, we need a corpse of the world – the world must die. Following the philosophy of Alain Badiou, we demonstrate that the world in its objective existence is indifferent to the question of life and death. Whether the world lives or dies depends only on the realisation of the truth procedures in the world on the basis of which the world is subjectivised. The world suffers from mortifying impulses, as the reactive and obscure forms of subjectivity actively work against the realisation of truths in the world. Through the artistic presentations of anatomy by Rembrandt van Rijn and John Donne, we also elaborate the tense relationship between the corpse of the world (from the perspective of the scientific procedure of truth) and the life of the world (from the perspective of the artistic procedure of truth). Although art often sees science as something that kills the world, our final point is that the world can also come to life through science.

Against instinctual reason: Alain Badiou on the disinterested interest of truth procedures in the post-truth era

According to Alain Badiou, truth’s existence is not dependent upon philosophy because philosophy itself is not a creator of truth. Badiouan thought submits philosophy to the universe of truth through the mediation of truth procedures. Badiou names these procedures love, politics, art and science. In contrast, the instinctual reason of democratic materialism, which Badiou defines as the partnership between parliamentary democracy and neo-liberal pragmatism, replaces love with physical beauty, politics with technical power, art with a marketable talent and science with a competitive genius. These replacements also correspond to post-truth. This article contrasts the concept of “disinterested interest” in Badiou’s truth procedures with “self-interest” reigning over democratic materialism’s reality procedures. Following Badiou, I explain how “self-interested interest” reproduces the human-animal’s instinctual reason, which triggers post-truth politics. Commitment to truth in a post-truth era therefore cannot be sustained by appealing to democratic materialism’s manipulated knowledge but must be guided by disinterested interest. The article argues that knowledge cannot be an antidote to post-truth because democratic materialism often uses knowledge as an instrument or sometimes as a control mechanism, to strengthen the position of post-truth in many circumstances.

NOVEL “ORANG-ORANG PROYEK”: SEJARAH ORDE BARU

This study wants to reveal the truth procedures in Ahmad Tohari's novel Orang-Orang Proyek, as a part of an event and a factor in the presence of a new subject. This research would answer the problem: how was the subjectification of Ahmad Tohari in Orang-Orang Proyek novel as truth procedures? This study used the set theory by Alain Badiou. The set theory explained that within a set there were members of "Existing" or Being and events as "Plural" members. The results proved that the subjectivity between Tohari and New Order events produced literary works: Orang-Orang Proyek. This happened because there was a positive relationship between the author and the event as well as on the naming of the event. Not only as of the subject but also do a fidelity to what he believed to be a truth. The truth procedures or the void—originating from the New Order event—was in the history of the making of a bridge in a village in Java island, Indonesia during the New Order period that filled with corruption, collusion, and nepotism. Tohari then embodied it in his novel. By the presences of the novel, we could know the category of Tohari's presentation as a new subject such as faithful, reactive, and obscure.

Curriculum Leadership and Alain Badiou’s Ethics: A South African Experience

Several curriculum scholars have argued for an ethical turn in the study of curriculum based on concerns about the debunking of ethics in postmodern society. The notion of ethics in curriculum scholarship, with specific emphasis on curriculum leadership, is explored through a narrative of a school principal and contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou’s theory of ethics. The data indicated several conditions (which are by no means exhaustive) for ethical curriculum leadership to transpire. These include a truthful aspiration towards curriculum excellence and deep transformation, a loving encounter as a truth procedure underpinning ethical curriculum leadership, a longing for the truth, developing a collective fidelity, and creating a reflexive aptitude. It is argued that ethical curriculum leadership begins with love, that is, the antidote to acting in one’s own interest. In addition, it is seen as a dialectic between managing school efficiency, building infrastructure and managing talent to enable optimal curriculum enactment, and a continual process of curriculum leadership. This article reports on one aspect of a larger research project titled “Women Leading in Disadvantaged School Communities”.

The Blind Spot of History: Colonialism in Tabu

This article looks at the film Tabu (Miguel Gomes, 2012) as an example of the negative use of cinema for realist ends. The film addresses Portugal’s tainted colonial past by means of a relentless questioning of the film medium and its representational properties, whilst the horrors of colonialism in Africa – the main issue at stake – remain conspicuous by their absence. Indeed, Tabu gravitates around an irresistible, all-consuming black hole, where the sombre legacy of colonialism makes itself felt by resisting representation. This article analyses two opposites, but complementary movements in the film: on the one hand, the foreclosure of history, and, on the other, the grounding of the story in the reality of both the objective world and the medium itself. The aim will be to define a possible truth procedure, as defined by Badiou, contained in the film’s self-defeating fantasy.

Bus Passenger Volume and Origin-Destination Based on Field Surveys Using a Wi-Fi Scanner

Currently, transport survey methods are very diverse. Transportation data retrieval using information technology, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and smartcards, is prominent. This study aims to obtain media access control (MAC) addresses of individual bus passengers by using a Wi-Fi scanner. This Wi-Fi scanner is capable of engaging a probe request mode to capture MAC addresses from mobile devices or other Wi-Fi-enabled modalities without connecting to the internet. This study also describes a new data cleaning procedure that is used to characterize bus passenger volume and travel trends using a combination of MAC address and GPS data. The approach developed in the proposed study is capable of producing outputs, such as an origin-destination (OD) matrix and passenger volume for a bus route section. A comparison between passenger volumes obtained from the Wi-Fi data processing procedure and the data obtained using the ground truth procedure indicates the number of passengers determined using the Wi-Fi data acquisition and processing procedure is less than the number of passengers determined using the ground truth procedure.

The Noble Family as “Singular Multiplicity”? Redefining the Smoczynski–Zarycki’s Totemic Definition of Nobility through the Lenses of Alain Badiou’s Mathematical Ontology

AbstractIn our paper, we redefine the category of “family” denoting the relationship of selected members of a post-noble/post-aristocratic milieu in Poland using Alain Badiou’s terminology. Badiou’s ontology based on a mathematical set theory and a generic theory is the most developed, complex, and revolutionary ontology of the 20thand 21stcenturies. However, it is rarely adapted to new empirical studies probably because of its novelty and complexity. We do not intend to use the empirical case study made by Smoczynski–Zarycki to inform our argument but instead perform a translation of the Durkheim–Lacanian theoretical standpoint from “Totem…” into the category of “singularity” [singularité] in its relation to “the state of situation” [état de la situation] from “Being and Event” (Badiou 2005). This approach seeks to find a universalizing potential of nobility that will allow it to become a relevant subject for truth procedure analysis.

Democracy and the Soul of Politics

In accord with Jean–Luc Nancy and Alain Badiou the article argues for an understanding of the idea of democracy as a “truth procedure” that is instigated by the event of the encounter of at least two persons or peoples. When Nancy states that democracy is “spirit,” “breath,” and “sense” he implicitly links democracy to the idea of the soul. As life principle of the human being the soul instigates a truth procedure which brings humanity into being as an idea that exceeds any concept of citizenship bound to a state or nation. In association with both Giorgio Agamben’s reading of Karl Marx and Jacques Rancière’s concept of politics the article concludes with the statement that the idea of democracy refers to the soul of politics which is the idea of humanity.

Pensamiento complejo y transdisciplina

El siguiente trabajo se encuentra centrado en el recorrido trazado desde las conceptualizaciones del racionalismo y los postulados de la ciencia clásica respecto de la concepción del hombre y de la vida, hacia los paradigmas que se abrieron camino para pensar en los desafíos actuales, que desde la complejidad debaten a las ciencias humanas. Un mundo de disciplinas estudiadas con certeza y propósito metódico requiere de otro mundo que se presente atravesando, cuestionando y reformulando sus postulados desde la emergencia de crisis y grietas. Son estas grietas las potenciadoras de investigaciones en complejidad y darán fundamento a este estudio. La necesidad de delimitar zonas de verdad ha animado el estudio disciplinario y de los diversos modelos filosóficos que, desde el racionalismo, dieron su forma al procedimiento de cada verdad. Es desde ese devenir que el pensamiento de la complejidad avanza con sus conceptualizaciones y paradigmas de reflexión, siendo el objetivo, tanto delimitar los conceptos que cuestionaron los postulados deterministas como ahondar en el significado de la revolución científica del siglo XIX. La entrada de las ciencias en un proceso de devenir rompe con las conceptualizaciones de procesos aislados, apuntando a la comunicación transversal entre lo heterogéneo. Si el desafío es el avance del conocimiento, su progreso anida en la incierta complejidad.

Saving the Absolute: Schelling and an Alternative Onset of Dialectical Materialism

The article attempts to renew materialist dialectics by turning to the thought of Friedrich Schelling. His Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism are used as a framework text to show that both Friedrich Engels’ Dialectics of Nature and Soviet philosophy have promoted a dogmatic version of Marxism, while György Lukács and the Frankfurt School provide a critical version. The task of materialist dialectics is then to resist Marxist dogmatism while addressing those criticisms. In his theory of overdetermination Louis Althusser proposes an origin for materialist dialectic that is an alternative to Engels’ dialectical materialism and Lukács’ critical theory. However, because of his polemical constraints, Althusser fails to complement it with a non-ideological theory of the subject. It is at this point that his endeavors are picked up by Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou. Each of them rethinks Hegel’s dialectics in his own way: the former with the help of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis, and the latter by using mathematical formalization. The outcome of this rethinking is a dualism between Žižek’s death drive and Badiou’s truth procedure - in other words, between substantive negativity and affirmative decisionism. If this dualism is not to cause another dissolution of materialist dialectics (of which speculative realism is one symptom), it is important to return to Schelling’s philosophy of freedom, in which substantive negativity and subjective decision have equal ontological weight.

DELINEATION AND MAPPING OF ALLUVIAL FANS BY THE USE OF LANDSAT/TM AND TERRA/ASTER SATELLITE IMAGES.

The purpose of the study was the precise delineation and mapping of alluvial fans, locating in mountainous areas of Northern Greece, by the use of: a) LANDSAT/TM and TERRA/ASTER satellite images (pixel size 30 m and 15-90 m respectively), b) topographic and geological maps and c) ground truth procedure (visiting the test sites). The digital processing of the satellite images was performed with EASI/PACE software. False Colour Composite (FCC) images, that helped to the better delineation of the fans, were derived by various image processing techniques, such as contrast stretching, ratioing, Principal Components Analysis (PCA),etc. The above processed images were imported into a Geographical Information System (GIS) and they were georeferenced to UTM Projection System. Next, the delineated (on the images) fans were digitized and overlaid to topographic and geological maps. From the above procedure and in comparison to ground-truth observations, it was concluded that the boundaries of the alluvial fans appear more precisely on the satellite images than in geological and topographic maps. The results of this study could be useful to geomorphologists dealing with morphological study and analysis of the alluvial fans. Also, they could be helpful to the improvement and updating of the present geological maps, by defining the boundaries of the fans mere precisely. Finally, conclusions can be drawn concerning the sorting of the materials comprising the fans. This information could be useful to hydrogeologists, since the alluvial fans are usually rich in water content.

Toward a Militant Pedagogy in the Name of Love: On Psychiatrization of Indifference, Neurobehaviorism and the Diagnosis of ADHD\u2014A Philosophical Intervention

(Neuro)psychiatric diagnoses such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a rapidly growing and globally increasing phenomenon, not least in different educational contexts such as in family and in school. Children and youths labelled as ADHD are challenging normative claims in terms of nurturing and education, whereas those labelled as ADHD are considered a (future) risk for society to handle. The dominant paradigm regarding ADHD is biomedical, where different levels of attention and activity-impulsivity are perceived as neurobiological dys/functions within the brain best managed by means of an individual diagnosis and instrumental pedagogy. The majority of those labelled as having ADHD encounter a dominant educational model in the form of what is referred to in this article as neurobehaviorism, which is based on onto-epistemological violence. As opposed to this act of violence against being—and against the psychiatrized subject—a less violent educational model is proposed, based on French philosopher Alain Badiou’s ontological examination of being and his concept of love as a truth procedure. In terms of the latter, the focus is on the potential of the encounter as a ‘Two scene of love’. Here, the encounter is a place where it is possible to create new truths and subjects, instead of taking the individual diagnosis as an axiom which only leads to individuals having fixed identities codified in a hierarchical order. This argument is drawn from the ‘mathematical’ formula 1 + 1 = ♥, which originates from an online forum for people who have come into contact with ADHD in one way or another.

Marx and Mendacity: Can There Be a Politics without Hypocrisy?

Abstract As demonstrated by Marx’s fierce defence of his integrity when anonymously accused of lying in 1872, he was a principled believer in both personal honesty and the value of truth in politics. Whether understood as enabling an accurate, ‘scientific’ depiction of the contradictions of the present society or a normative image of a truly just society to come, truth-telling was privileged by Marx over hypocrisy as a political virtue. Contemporary Marxists like Alain Badiou continue this tradition, arguing that revolutionary politics should be understood as a ‘truth procedure’. Drawing on the alternative position of political theorists such as Hannah Arendt, who distrusted tin; monologic and absolutist implications of a strong notion of truth in politics, this paper defends the role that hypocrisy and mendacity, understood in terms of lots of little lies rather than one big one, can play in a pluralist politics, in which, pace Marx, rhetoric, opinion and the clash of values resist being subsumed under a singular notion of the truth.

Ulak (The Messenger): a mystic fable of Islamic messianism

Although modernity considers religion as a fable, religion has always been part of modern politics. The ‘return of religion’ in global politics, which marks the contemporary political and cultural imagination, accentuates this paradox. Religion has now become indispensible for the idea of truth. In this article, I approach this problematique by discussing the relationship between religion and art in terms of their relation to the idea of truth. In this respect, I focus on a Turkish film, Ulak (The Messenger), and analyze the film’s thought about religion and the link it establishes between the artistic/narrative fable and the idea of truth. The film’s choice of Gnosticism as the language of the dispossessed indicates a political position in relation to both the ‘return of religion’ and the popularity of the cultural turn in politics. On this basis, the article examines the film’s take on the concept of the event as a miracle (in religious messianism), contrasting it with the philosophy of revolution. Thus, it navigates the ambivalent border between art and non-art, between the mystic fable and politics. With modernity, it is said that, art has replaced religion and borrowed its sacredness. A reverse process in place today: a resacralization of art and politics. Art and religion share a common element: illusion. However, art profanes illusion, while religion sacralizes it. On this basis, the article concludes that Ulak is a cinematic form of antiphilosophy. It is a spectacular movie as a critique of institutional religion, yet it is captivated by the understanding of truth as a miracle, by the truth of the fable. Following Badiou, who views art as a truth procedure, one could say that Ulak’s potential to clarify the value of the truth event remains questionable.

Profanation in Spinoza and Badiou: Religion and Truth

This article focuses on two different styles of profanation in Spinoza and Badiou. Notwithstanding the significant differences between them, their shared desire for profanation testifies to an interesting convergence. I deal with this convergence in divergence as a case of disjunctive synthesis through a comparison of the different understandings of religion in Spinoza and Badiou’s truth procedures. It is commonly held that Spinoza operates with three understandings of religion (superstition, the universal faith, and the true religion). But I argue that Spinoza’s thought opens up the space for a fourth understanding of ‘religion’ (which can accommodate instrumental reason and which, for the same reason, can be compared to Benjamin’s ‘capitalism as religion’). Then I discuss the formal similarity between Spinoza’s four religions and Badiou’s four truth procedures. I illustrate this discussion through two diagrams. I claim that Badiou’s truth procedures could be perceived as the Spinozist diagram’s re-entry into itself.