Alain Badiou: Handbook of Inaesthetics
Chapter: Art and Philosophy
Key words: art, philosophy, education, Master and Hysteric, truth, here, knowledge, schema, didactic, mimesis, semblance, charm, control, romantic, impenetrable Father, suffering Son, incarnation, classical, dehysterize, catharsis, imaginarization, likelihood, verisimilitude, imaginary, innocent, Marxism, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, Brecht, therapy, disrelation,lost object, desire, avant-garde, singularity, immanence, infinity, finite, event, artistic configuration, opinion, subject point democracies.
“What is truth?” Nicolai Ge (1890)
SUMMARY
In this chapter Badiou , after making a distinguish between truth and knowledge, in order to elucidate the relationship between art and philosophy he establishes 3 modes of thinking-schemata: the didactic (marxist), the romantic (hermeneutic – phenomenological) and the classical (psychoanalysis). Because of the saturation of these schemata in the modern society, Badiou proposes a forth one that he calls: “inaesthetics” .
Regarding the didactic schema he posits that art is incapable of truth but only produces a semblance of truth and is thus not actual truth, a semblance that belongs to the affect of art, not to its actual form. The definition of art in the didactic paradigm is to be a charm to the semblance of truth and to educate. The essential thing is the control of art .The romantic schema is opposed to this understanding of art as a source of truth and presents art as a truth procedure. Art becomes Lacue-labarthe and Nancy named as the literary absolute. Here the relation of truth to art is imminent.The third is the classical schema that places art as a sort of catharsis, or therapy. For this reason it must be liked as a sign for the effectiveness of catharsis. Also art is not a form of thought and it contains two thesis: art is incapable of truth and art is mimetic and its purpose is neither to be true nor to educate but to heal (therapy).
Marxism is didactic. Taking as example Brecht, the agent of the art is the philosopher. Brecht practiced a “Stalinized Platonism”: art is separate from the truth of dialectical materialism, but it educates; in the end, art is the pedagogical tool for the courage of truth.The Heideggerian art is romantic because the artists hold the keys to the open. For last psychoanalysis is classical. A s Lacan writes, the object of desire, which is beyond symbolization, can emerge at the very peak of an act of symbolization. Art experiences a block of the symbolic by the Real, and this links up to a transference. This is why the ultimate effect of art remains imaginary. The avant-garde was didactic to a certain extent in their desire to put an end to art. They were above all anti-classical; mainly a hybrid schema of didacto-romanticism.
Badiou claims that these three schemata are saturated as consequence there is more a “disrelation” than relation between art an philosophy .Therefore he considers necessary to propose a new schema, a fourth modality of thought that links art and philosophy and it comes after aesthetics; The “inaesthetics”. He considers that the common element of the 3 schemata is the relation between art and truth and he uses the categories of immanence and singularity. The relation is immanent if truth is internal to art’s effects. The relation is singular if art is coextensive with the truths that generates. For the didactic schema, the relation between art and truth is singular but not immanent: art has a singular pedagogical role but truth stays external to it. For the romantic schema, the relation is immanent but not singular. For the classical schema, there is no relation between art and truth; art is relegated to catharsis and transference.
Badiou will introduce the concept of “artistic configuration“. This configuration is an “artistic truth”, a multiple of works. and is designated by means of abstract concepts. Artistic configuration is actually an identifiable sequence, initiated by an event. The artwork is the subject point of an artistic truth. The artistic configuration that have marked the century are: dodecaphonic music, novelistic prose etc.
Badiou points out that the most difficult thing is to distinguishes the truths from opinions.
KEY CONCEPTS:TRUTH and EVENT
- According to Badiou truth is something new;a new idea or a new world of ideas. Truth is “a process from which something new emerges” , as opposed to an adequation between knowledge and its object. This is why “each truth is at once singular and universal”. Truth is what disturbs, destroys and interrupts the order of knowledge. Badiou distinguishes truth from knowledge. Knowledge gives us repetition, it is concerned only with what already is but truth in order to affirm its newness, there must be a supplement. This supplement is unpredictable, incalculable, irruptive and beyond what it is. This is what he calls: an event. An event is the creation of new possibilities. It is located not merely at the level of objective possibilities but at the level of the possibility of possibilities. An event is a “major historical turning point, or moment of rupture in time and space, which brings something new into the world”. It is a rupture of a situation caused by awareness of what is missing from this situation. The singular truth, arising in an event, happens to a subject.
- Badiou has always asserted that philosophy does not create but “seizes” truths whose origin (foundation) lie beyond it, specifically in one of four discourses: politics, science, love, and art. These, and only these four categories form the differential modes of possible truths.
- Badiou associates philosophy and art with Lacan´s Master and Hysteric. The hysteric goes at the master and demands that s/he shows his or her stuff, prove his or her mettle by producing something serious by way of knowledge.a hysteric gets off on knowledge. The hysteric pushes the master–incarnated in a partner, teacher, or whomever–to the point where he or she can find the master’s knowledge lacking.
- Truth occurs in an event to a subject.
- A truth appears because an eventful supplement interrupts the repetition.
- The truth begins with the axiom of truth, with a decision.
- Truth speaks through my mouth, I am here.
- The truth does not exist – only truths.
- Each truth is a process and infinite.
- One will call the subject of a truth every finite moment within the infinite part of each truth.
- Every truth begins with an event, and an event is unpredictable.
- The event shows the void of the situation, because it shows that what there is now was previously devoid of truth.
- An event breaks with the state of the situation, and reconfigures the co-ordinates of the symbolic order.
- For each event, or truth (as truths are multiple), a subject must make a wager.
- The four conditions of philosophy: science, art, politics and love. Philosophy thinks under the events of these four conditions
- Every truth originates in an event.
- The work of art is not the object of an event. However, an artistic event submits art to a principle of novelty
- The truths of artistic events are thought from within the condition of art.
- The event cannot be guaranteed by the Other; it can only be wagered on by a subject.
- Philosophy doesn´t produce any effective truth but seizes truths , shows them, exposes them, announces that they exist.
- The most difficult thing is to distinguishes the truths from opinions.
- Truth is ‘the real process of fidelity to an event’.
ARTISTS:
Maurizio Nannucci is an Italian conceptual – and light artist, photographer, video producer. He works mainly with neon installations and designs public art.
“AND WHAT ABOUT THE TRUTH” (2006) is a large light installation in white neon (8 x 7 meters), structured on five lines and positioned vertically on the front wall of the staircase in Scalone d’Onore della Triennale in Milan. The message “AND WHAT ABOUT THE TRUTH”, is a question that arises as an instrument of cognition. Conceived as a site-specific installation work interferes with the space, its size and its function, opening a dialogue on truth. Where is hidden and where the truth lies in art, architecture and design? The question is clear. The answer is yet to be explored.
Hermann Nitsch.
Hermann Nitsch’s work draws parallels between religion and the ritualistic spiritualism of creativity. Heavily entrenched in ancient philosophy and a dissident, questioning Christian theology, he actively seeks catharsis through pain and compassion, a rigorously disciplined quest for ethereal release and enlightenment through an embracing of primal instinct and ancient sacrament.
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/alain-badiou/articles/on-the-truth-process/
http://filozofskivestnikonline.com/index.php/journal/article/view/43/55
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch01-s05.html