Course Encyclopaedia--Even MORE
Badiou, Alain. Being and Event. Trans. Oliver Feltham. London: Continuum, 2007.
The Multiple
"In sum, the multiple is the regime of presentation; the one, in respect to presentation, is an operational result; being is what presents (itself)" (24). The multiple, as a presented element, is also counted. Thus, a mulitple is what gets counted in the count.
"There is another way of putting this: the multiple is the inertia which can be retroactively discerned starting from teh fact that the operation of the count-as-one must effectively operate in order for there to be Oneness" (25). To me, this makes the most sense mathematically. If we consider set theory as mathematicians do, sets are sets of numbers that are grouped according to a common rule (or two or three). These numbers in the set (what B calls "multiples") must fit into the rule to make the set "true"--to fit the definition. If we say "the set of all odd integers", we are giving not only a structure to the set, but anticipating what will be in the set. If we were mathematicians, we'd say that the set of all odd integers is represented by 2n +1--and the formula given allows for an infinity of multiples, and allows us to anticipate what is to come. The count is an effect of this formula, since the formula itself is what first determines what belongs to the "set of all odd integers". Of course, this formula itself can be counted, and the set of all odd integers has other subsets within it (including the elusive "set of all prime numbers"). In math, structure and the count are both easily represented formulaically, and we can predict easily what belongs once that formula can be found (except for the prime numbers one. Damn). Humans are not so easy to order with shorthand.
The One
"The one is not" (23). In "deciding" upon the problem of Western metaphysics ("what presents itself is essentially multiple; what presents itself is essentially one"), Badiou declares that the One--that is, the essence of Being, the unpresented Platonic Ideal, is not. Or, in English, that the unpresented Whole, is not available to us without first there being the parts (multiples) which are presented, which present "being" by there mere presence in our field of vision. Or hearing. Or some other method of witnessing.
"The fact that the one is an operation allows us to say that the domain of the operation is not one" (24). The one is a function of the count in that in counting what is present, we are presented with presentation--which is being itself.
"I term situation any presented multiplicity.....Every situation admits its own particular operator of the count-as-one. This is the mpost general definition of a structure it is what prescribes, for a presented multiple, teh regime of its count-as-one" (24).
"Yet there is no situation without the effect of the count, and therefore it is correct to state that presentation, as such, in regard to number, is multiple" (25).
Count-as-one (compter-pour-l'un)
See Situation, above. The presented multiples must be counted. The count-as-one also forms the structure of the situation, is a definitional operation. It includes or excludes.
Presentation/Unpresentable/Re-presentation
"Structure is what obliges us to consider....that presentation is a multiple...and what authorizes us, via anticipation to compse the terms of the presentation as units of a multiple" (25). The structure, the formula, is what enables us to see that the set of all integers (the One, being) is Not--that there is only the multiples that occur after the count, after the presentation of examples (multiples, elements) that belong to a given set.
"...for presence is the exact contrary of presentation" (27). Presence is the Being that Plato imagines--being qua being. Presentation, however, is one step removed; it's the expression (interesting word, considering B avoids talking about the symbolic) of that ultimate Being. Presence's definition contains within it the idea that it cannot be presented--the English term uses the past participle for a reason, to show some kind of transformation has taken place, some displacement occurs from the original (Present) to the new form (presentED). Further:
"If there connot be a presentation ofbeing because being occurs in every presentation--and this is why it does not present itself--then there is one solution left for us: that the ontological situation be the presentation of presentation" (27). The situation (the count of, the structure of) being must have presentation within it, but what is it presenting, if not being itself (since being can't be presented?) It is presenting the very idea of presentation--which, again, contains within it the idea of some original Presence somewhere. Or when.
The Void
"...every situation implies the nothing of its all. But the nothing is neither a place nor a term of the situation. For if nothing were a term that could only mean one thing; that it had been counted as one" (54). Every situation contains within it this void because "there is a being of nothing, as a form of the unpresentable" (in order to include, there must also be an exclusion. Every presentable, counted element of a situation also has an unpresented, unpresentable part that is the Being, the one, that is the operational result of the count-as-one) (54).
"The 'nothing' is what names the unperceivable gap, cancelled then renewed between presentation as structure and presentation as structured-presentation, between the one as result and the one as operation" (54). See my above comment.
"By itself, the nothing is no more than the name of unpresentation in presentation" (55). As we discussed in class, the void has only one element--it's name, which names all of the unpresentables as unpresentable.
"I term void of a situation this suture to being. Moreover, I state that every structural presentation unpresents 'its' void, in the mode of this non-one which is merely the subtractive face of the count" (55). The void is a result of a subtraction ( 0 only exists as x - x), the subtraction of the inconsistent multiple from the consistent--or is it the other way around?
"It is essential to remember that no term within a situation designtes the void" (56). It's not surprising, then, that the state is unable to name revolutions as such.
"The void is what bounds the inconceivable, and thereby forecloses itself from any other relation, including its self-identity" (Barker. Alain Badiou: A Critical Introduction. London: Pluto Press, 2002, P. 5).
Event
And names: "The event has the nameless as its name: it is with regard to everything that happens that one can only say what it is by referring to its unknown Soldier" (205). The event, at the edge of the void, cannot be recognized by the state, for fear of the unpresented mass of the void. The name of the event is important, then, for what it can tell us about the multiples involved.
And the state: "The event occurs for the state as the being of an enigma" (208). The state, again, cannot recognize the event for what it is because the situation does not count the unpresented.
The evental site is "an entirely abnormal multiple, that is, a mulitple such that none of its elements are presented in the situation" (175). None of the elements of the site are presented, are not part of the legitimated count--thus, this is the space of possibility.
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