The four domains

There are four and only four domains in which a Truth-Event can occur: science, art, politics and love. There are structural similarities between these events in these different domains, e.g.: an event is a surprise (Badiou’s words), it belongs to l’avenir (Derrida’s words). Nowadays, the only domain where we can fight, where we can work on the creation of possibilities for the new to occur, is in the domain of love. And we are dangerously close to both the retard new age “all you need is love,” and to the Christian tradition on the other side. But we must not be afraid of looking stupid.

In some way, science and politics have become technical problems. So everything will follow its course as a new laptop model appears every year. This means that we are in the domain of le futur, to put it in Derridarean. At the same time (actually, not temporally simultaneous with the other processes) love and art in the twentieth century have become a matter of lifestyle, of free choice (for the ones that can choose, of course), a commodity. What is more, science and politics (under the name of national parliamentarian democracy) are universal and global, while the ways of (making) art and love are local and individual. So local that even in a couple there are two ways of loving, one for each subject. This is certainly not casual. The four procedures have been divided in such a way that there is one and only one way to create (and participate in) a community, namely voting.

Science is made in such a way that l’avenir appears from the old. This is greatly mysterious and provoking since it is the only domain where we have a method to come into contact with the new. This method is, in its base, anarchist, democratic, rational, and liberal. Knowledge stands there waiting to be learnt, regardless of your color, sex, and eating preferences. The first characteristic that strikes the eye in science is the use of a shared language: mathematics, and since the last fifty years, also english.

What is the structural necessity of this division of the four domains in two plus two, two universal versus two local? Produce the new in such a way that everything remains the same (that could be a definition of the capitalist utopia). This is what they tell us: Love, limited to the relation of one person with herself, has lost its revolutionary power. Art, devoid of any transcendence and objectivity and transformed into fashion, is simply a decoration for people’s life styles. Politics, once shaped in the most perfect form of government, namely national parliamentarian democracy, is a technical task. One where the government organizes scientific development in such a way that it benefits the largest number of people. Finally, science inasmuch as a universal activity, warranties a free and just society where anyone in principle can participate. This is the situation that ideology attempts to make natural. They --we--, of course, are wrong.

P.S.: They --we--, will be the subject of a future article.

Photo by Caruba