Scattered Speculations on Badiou

This is not going to be popular. But I'm going to say it anyway.

1. Badiou's four ontologies basically just tell 'us' what we want to hear (this 'us' would appear to be the constituency Badiou seeks to critique - what we might call university-type Guardian readers): primarily, that 'Art' is really good - actually, more than this: that 'art' has an important ontological status. This, of course, justifies our already-held prejudices, preferences, predilections and pass-times - loving 'art', going to the art gallery, to see the challenging installation ('ooh, isn't that thought-provoking', etc). I mean, think about it: who really likes Badiou? Art PhD students. I wonder why. Why would they love a philosopher who philosophically legitimates art?

2. At the same time, of course, Badiou critiques the middle-class university-type Guardian-readers. As such, he appeals to our shared middle-class university-type ressentiment and sense of our own distinction and difference. That is, 'I' enjoy Badiou critiquing those others that I see every day reading the Guardian and in art galleries next to us at weekends... Of course, it doesn't apply to me, the true, faithful militant art lover...

3. Badiou's four ontologies are cosy, familiar, comforting and ultimately overall conservative: art, maths, love, militancy. Yeah, right.

4. Badiou appears to be radical. But, in this, he's just like Zizek. His radicalism is a rather weak championing of the most traditional of things (art, maths, love, militancy).

5. Badiou is an 'excellent' philosopher. His criterion is 'consistency'. In this, his is the philosophy of the 'university of excellence' (cf Bill Readings): it is non-referential and bears no necessary relation to reality or the real.

6. Badiou reads like a 'lite' introduction to Lacan and Foucault. But the problem is that his Foucault lacks the institutional critique, he hasn't quite got the point about the constitutively political dimension of institutionality, it ignores the argument about 'discourse' (substituting instead 'truth' versus 'opinion', and so on) and his Lacanianism is too quick to put the word 'fidelity' where really one should really put 'phantasy'.

7. Badiou, with his four numbers and types and immortals, etc., is a modern day Jung.

8. Badiou's 'political' philosophy could not sustain even a cursory Bourdieuian critique. Certainly not a deconstruction. Of course, it relies heavily on deconstructive categories and operations. But these are wrenched from a political orientation into the safe terrain of a-contextual disciplinary Philosophy.