Alain Badiou, _Manifesto for Philosophy_, trans. Norman Madarasz

 FROM 1989–THIS translation was published ten years later. I wanted to look at this mainly because of Lacoue-Labarthe’s mentioning Badiou’s idea of “The Age of Poets” in Heidegger and the Politics of Poetry, so I read only that chapter and two others, “Heidegger Viewed as Commonplace” and “Sutures,” skimming a bit elsewhere.

Let’s start with the “suture.” Badiou posits that philosophy has four conditions: (1) the poem, (2) the matheme, (3) the political, and (4) love. That is, it might explain things through analogy, parable, and metaphor (the poem), or through strictly logical statements (the matheme), while concerning itself with establishing a just and flourishing polity (the political) or the ideal grounds for relationships among persons (love)—that’s how I would gloss it, in any case. A “suture” occurs when the practice of philosophy identifies itself too narrowly, “delegates its functions” as Badiou puts it, to one of the four conditions. A suture works to the advantage of the condition but leads to the “suppression” of philosophy.

A suture to the matheme leads to, for example, logical positivism and a lot of what gets called “analytical” philosophy, which benefited the theoretical understanding of the natural sciences but did not much advance (Badious thinks) philosophy. A suture to the political leads to, for example, Marxism. A suture to the poem leads to Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger…a lot of the key figures from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

This was great for poetry—hence the Age of Poets in that same span. Badiou identifies seven by name: Hölderlin (“their prophet and anticipating vigil” from the early 19th century), then Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Georg Trakl, Fernando Pessoa, Osip Mandelstam, and Paul Celan.

Badiou (unfortunately, I think) does not explain why he picked these seven. I wouldn’t challenge any name on the list, but I was a bit cheesed at the omissions. Could we not put Blake, Wordsworth, and Shelley alongside Hölderlin as distinguished precursors? How about Yeats and Eliot? Stevens? If English language poets are ineligible for some reason, why aren’t Rilke and Valéry on the list?

Oh, well. Moving on.

The suture to the poem was helpful in plucking loose the Descartes-to-Kant suture to the matheme. It’s a great move for poetry, opening up fruitful disturbances both in the notion of the Subject and in the notion of the Object. Unfortunately, this suture also produces Heidegger (the chapter “Heidegger Viewed as Commonplace” deals with the downsides of this development). Celan brings the Age of Poets to a close when he sees through this particular problem and shuts that traffic down.

Speaking just for myself, the suture to the poem sounds like a great idea. Philosophy produced by the suture to the matheme, by contrast, leaves me thinking, “is that all there is? Who cares?” On the other hand….Heidegger. Most of Heidegger seems powerfully right to me, but then I hit a toxic patch and think, God, please, no. 

I now think Lacoue-Labarthe’s book may have been looking for ways philosophy can stitch a suture or two into poetry without turning into an apology for totalitarianism.