Saturday, March 3, 2012

the nomad's forced march -- philosophical interlude 1

"A place is ecstatically proclaimed (the West), a name is sacralized as unique (the Market, Democracy) and terror is exercised against that which ought not be -- the impoverished planet, the distant rebel, the non-Western and the immigrant nomad that radical abandonment drives towards enriched metropoles."

That's Alain Badiou on the error of totalizing philosophy--and, by extension, the political disaster of the modern world--from his book Conditions. Badiou calls for asserting "the local existence of truths" rather than "offering ecstasy at the place of truth."

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