Friday, February 04, 2005

Badiou

(Marx’s critique of abstract equality) + (Sartre’s notion of seriality) =

If you are born in Africa you will probably live for around 30 years, whereas the figure is around 80 if you are born in France. Such is the ‘democratic’ contemporary world. But at the same time (and this is what keeps the democratic fiction alive in the people’s hearts and minds) there is an egalitarian dogmatism, that of an equality of their placement in front of commodities. The same product is offered everywhere. Armed with this universal commercial offer, contemporary ‘democracy’ can forge a subject from such abstract equality: the consumer; the one who, in his or her virtuality opposite the commodity, is ostensibly identical to any other in his or her abstract humanity as buying power. Man as shopping. As man (or woman) is the same as everyone else insofar as he or she looks at the same window display (that he or she has less money than others, and thus unequal buying power, is a secondary and contingent matter..)

Badiou