What is an Event for Badiou?

Question

Badiou is known for his theorisation of the Event, for example in his book Being and Event; it's clear though that it's not an event in these term:

smiles, walks, dances, weddings, explosions, hiccups, hand-waves, arrivals, departures, births and deaths, thunder and lightening: the variety of the world seems not only to lie in its ordinary citizens - animals, and physical objects, and perhaps minds, sets and abstract particulars but also in the things that happen to, or are performed by them

and

Material objects, such as stones and tables are said to exist; events are said to occur

It seems, somehow, closer to how Vaclav Havel, in his collection of essays, Living in Truth, wrote:

That the same holds for non-specific knowledge is shown by many historic instances of an unprecedented cultural, political and moral upsurge throughout society, where the original nucleus of crystallisation or catalyst was an act of social self-awareness carried out, and indeed directly and 'physically' percieved, only by a quite a small and exclusive circle. Even subsequently, that act may have remained outside the apperception of society at large, yet it was still an indispensable condition of its upsurge.

Is this a useful characterisation of how Badiou thinks through the notion of event? And is it a notion with earlier antecedents?

Answer 1

The precise definition given for the Event evolves from Being & Event up to Logic of Worlds. So depending on what period one is reading of him, the presentation of this concept may be more or less complex.

The most complete definition, given in Logic of Worlds presupposes different levels of "happenings" (my term not his) in a World (at a site):

• The most primary level: modifications
• Next level : facts
• Next level : weak singularity
• Final level: events (strong singularity)

Each of these things represent on occurence at a "site", where a site is defined in the following manner :

Take an object (A, Id) in a world m. It is a site once it comes to be affected by the ontological relation A ∈ A (self-belonging) and, consequently, by a transcendental evaluation of existence* of the type Id(A, A), that is EA = p.

So what distinguishes these types occurrences are both degree of existence (think intensities of existence) of the site and the appearance of something previously inexistent at the site.

He defines degree as ‘measures’ of identities, differences or existences relative to a determinate world.

• If the degree of intensity remains lesser than the maximum, it is a fact.

• If it is equal to the maximum, it is either a weak singularity or an event.

Maximums are defined in the following manner:

Given an order-relation* over a set T, we say that it admits of a maximum, or of a maximal element, if there exists an element of T which is greater than or equal to every element of T. This element is written M, if it exists. We can then write that, for x ∈ T, we always have x ≤ M.

What distinguishes a weak singularity from an event are consequences.

An event makes the inexistent* proper to the object* in question pass from the minimal* transcendental value to the maximal* value. A weak singularity is incapable of doing this. We will say that an event absolutizes the proper inexistent of its place. The trace* of the event, often written ε, is the prior inexistent maximized (or absolutized, relative to the world* in question).

Think of May 1967 and May 1968. The brewing of turmoil in 1967 was not yet real transcendentally. It only became absolutized when the inexistent proper to the the brewing passed to a maximal value such that consequences (traces of the event) are forever left behind.

By "transcendentally" I'm using his terminology, which designates the constitutive capacity of every world to assign to what abides there, in that world, variable intensities of identity vis-à-vis what also abides there.