ALAIN BADIOU'S CINEMA: FROM STUPIDITY TO HOPE

For Badiou our society is one of "democratic materialism", whose constitutive principle is that
there are only bodies and languages. This world is the reign of clichs and stereotypes, of common
images and of (individual and collective) particularisms. hat Badiou!s philosophy elaborates
begins from this world " the only orld " and does not deny it, but adds that there are also Truths
that we can accede to and #deas that we can be incorporated into, thus losing our particularistic
identities and gaining universality.There is no pure world of #deas, and so our world is doubly
impure$ a mi%ture of bodies and languages, which is remi%ed with #deas and Truths.
The cinema, as Badiou analyses it, would seem to be the most appropriate art&form to present
and describe such an impure world, and also to adapt us to its situations, and to the decisions that
must be made therein. 'inema is not didactic (top&down) in the sense of imposing an #dea from
above, but rather pedagogical (bottom&up), in that it ta(es us from our immersion in democratic
common identities and raises us to more aristocratic perceptions and emotions. 'inema thin(s by
means of its impurity, Badiou tells us$ its basic material is stereotypic and identitarian, but it can
ta(e us from identities to #deas, from stupidity, where the )tate and its categories have won, to hope,
where love and e*uality have gained enough sporadic victories to show us that "+ll is not lost" (cf
page ,-.).
#t is not necessary to (now the details of Badiou!s philosophical system to read with profit this
collection of his writings on the cinema. For Badiou the cinema is an impure and pedagogical art
that lifts us immanently from the world of stereotypes and clichs to the world of #deas. '#/01+,
the boo( that +ntoine de Baec*ue assmbled out of Badiou!s dispersed writings on the cinema,
incorporates this same movement. The boo( is a heterogeneous assemblage, of approaches and
perspectives from different epochs of his life, and of ideas and analyses from different phases of his
philosophical development, that do not *uite cohere into a philosophy of cinema. 2uite fran(ly,
much of what Badiou has to say about the cinema is not all that new, nor does it present a
completed picture. Badiou admits that he is not writing as an e%pert, in the mode of (nowledge, but
as a cinephile affected by films and as a philosopher see(ing to e%press the effects for thought of
these films, in a poetic and meditative mode.
#t is useful to (now that art (called by Badiou the "poem") is one of the four conditions of
philosophy, along with science (the "matheme"), politics and love. These are the conditions of
philosophy rather than its ob3ects, as philosophy does not itself produce truths, but rather gathers
together those produced by the four conditions into a common conceptual space (the historical
"con3uncture"). +rt is a condition of philosophy because it thin(s and produces truths on its own,
without the aid of philosophy. This is the principle of what Badiou calls his "inesthetics". Thus
cinema is not properly spea(ing an intellectual ob3ect for philosophy to thin(, but a mode of
thin(ing producing its own thoughts, or "cinema&ideas", that philosophy can rethin( as part of its
configuration of the #deas of an epoch.
#n 'hapter .4 Badiou analyses the cinema in terms of three movements (global, local, and
impure), but these same movements structure the boo( itself. e can read '#/01+ for the global
movement of his philosophy of the cinema, in which case we can turn to the synoptic interview in
'hapter ., where he discusses the various phases of his thought on the cinema in chronological
order. 5r we can go directly to 'hapter ,6 ("'inema as 7hilosophical 0%perimentation") to find the
most complete, but neither final nor fully coherent, statement of his ideas. #n this movement we go
from cinema as a cultural, then political, then poetic then philosophical situation, to cinema as a
"metaphor for contemporary thought". This last phase allows Badiou to condense in a single
formula his synthesis of cinema!s cultural, political, poetic and philosophical dimensions.
e may be more interested in following the local movement of Badiou!s analysis of particular
films. #n this case we can refer to 'hapter ,, on +ntonioni!s Identification of a Woman, 'hapter ,8
on 9odard!s Tout va bien, or 'hapter -. on 'lint 0astwood!s A Perfect World, amongst many other
e%amples. Badiou has interesting and insightful things to say about a wide variety of particular
films. The empirical pedagogy of his encounters with singular wor(s is doubled by the dialectical
pedagogy that Badiou discerns in each wor(!s treatment of its impure material (lived situations,
music, painting, theatre, architecture, melodrama, circus, cabaret), not negating the material but
transforming it from within. For Badiou cinema is a form of alchemy which ta(es the base material
of the spectacular, the violent, the obscene and the stupid, and that sublimates it into a new and pure
simplicity.
+longside the global and the local movements and traversing them, Badiou distinguishes a third
type that he calls the "impure movement", and that he considers to be the source of the "poetics"of
the cinema. The basis of this impurity lies in the "parado%ical relations" that constitute the cinema
as it 3u%taposes figures and modes of e%istence that have nothing in common, and forces us to create
new syntheses that overcome metaphysical dualism. "1etaphor" is a name both for the cinematic
language that unma(es the dualism between sensible and intelligible, and for Badiou!s language
when it follows the same movement. #n '#/01+ Badiou uses his philosophical meta&language in a
freer, more fluid, more poetic style than in his more systematic wor(s. Being, event, multiplicity,
and truth are employed in a way not incompatible with his system but that resonates more widely.
:erein lies the distinctive contribution of '#/01+ both to Badiou!s oeuvre and to contemporary
thought. The boo( allows him to traverse various ideas and e%periences of the cinema, and to
elevate them to a poetic beauty and a synthetic power that move us both affectively and
intellectually. #f cinema is a "metaphor for contemporary thought", and if we are contemporary with
a movement towards "philosophy as cinema", as Badiou concludes, then Badiou!s philosophy is
itself a metaphor for that thought, a synthesis of diachrony and multiplicity which we may call
"cinematic pluralism".