Alain Badiou: Reflections on the Recent Election

“we have the pop­ular frus­tra­tion, the feel­ing of an obscure dis­order, in the pub­lic opin­ion of many people, and prin­cip­ally the poor people, the people of pro­vin­cial states, the peas­ants of many coun­tries, and also the work­ers without a job, and so on — all that pop­u­la­tion, which pro­gress­ively is reduced by the bru­tal­ity of con­tem­por­ary cap­it­al­ism, to noth­ing at all, which has no pos­sible exist­ence, and which stays, in some places, without jobs, without money, without ori­ent­a­tion, without exist­en­tial ori­ent­a­tion. And this point is the third very import­ant term of the glob­al situ­ation today. The lack of ori­ent­a­tion, of sta­bil­ity, the feel­ing of the destruc­tion of their world, without the con­struc­tion of another world; so a sort of void destruc­tion.” – Alain Badiou: Reflections on the Recent Election