Badiou on summit protests
Not really, but if I ever write anything at length on why we _do_ summit protests, I hope I’ll be able to work in this quote from ‘Politics as Truth Procedure’:
> Egalitarian politics can only begin when the State is configured, put at a distance, measured. It is the
> errancy of the excess that impedes egalitarian logic, not the excess itself. It is not the simple power of
> the state of the situation that prohibits egalitarian politics. It is the obscurity and measurelessness in
> which this power is enveloped. If the political event allows for a clarification, a fixation, an exhibition of
> this power, then the egalitarian maxim is at least locally practicable.
And the preceding paragraph is just great whatever way you look at it:
> Non-egalitarian consciousness is a mute consciousness, the capitve of an errancy, of a power which it
> cannot measure. This is what explains the arrogant and peremptory character of non-egalitarian
> statements, even when they are obviously inconsistent and abject. For the statements of contemporary
> reaction are shored up entirely by the errancy of state excess, ie the untrammelled violence of
> capitalist anarchy. This is why liberal statements combine complete certainty about power with total
> indecision about its consequences for people’s lives and the universal affirmation of collectives.
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