Badiou: The Philosophical Act

In 2004, Parisian philosopher Alain Badiou and the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek provided opening comments for their face-to-face staged dialogue.  Much in agreement, the two were very complimentary and ended by referring to the other as "comrade".  This lack of debate was not a problem for Zizek, whose opening discussion was entitled "Philosophy is not a Dialogue".  In it, he asserts, in agreement with Badiou that "philosophy is axiomatic."  He said, "You're sitting in a cafe and someone challenges you: 'Come on, let's discuss that in depth!'  The philosopher will immediately say, 'I'm sorry, I must leave,' and will make sure he disappears as quickly as possible."  The reasons for this are perfectly in line with Badiou's opening comments, which are what I want to present here.

Badiou took time to outline what a philosopher does.  In his theoretical work, he has developed a rich axiomatic theory to explain new developments in politics as well as human understanding and thought in general.  His philosophy can be described as offering a theory of how 'the new' comes to be.  His remarks opening up this dialogue with Zizek give a concise explanation of what his more technical books take pains to outline in overwhelming detail.

The philosophical act is to approach a point of undecidability and, through an inspired moment, assert a new axiom that no previous theory could comprehend.  He gives as an example undocumented workers in France.  The country, given its neoliberal, Capitalist Zeitgeist, is at pains to decide whether these workers are a part of the State or not.  That is, of course they affect the cultural and economic landscape of France, but they are a 'part of no part.'  While existing with the state borders and interacting with the French, they have no legal status.  The same can be said of illegal immigrants in the United States.  Neoliberal, Democractic Capitalism, as it exists in the US, cannot decide whether these economic and cultural contributors are a part or no part of the State.  Badiou argues, "The term 'illegal immigrant' designates the uncertainty of valence, or the non-valence of valence: it designates people who are living here, but don't really belong here, and hence people can be thrown out of the country, people who can be exposed to the non-valence of the valence of their presence here as workers."  You might have conservatives arguing to throw them out, or liberals arguing to bring them in, but neither will happen because its a game played within an institution whose founding ideology can not decide.

The philosophical act does not work within the State's axioms with its problem that is undecidable.  The philosophical act is to assert a new axiom - to invent a new groundwork that can make this decision.  When illegal French immigrants occupied a church in 2002, they were militantly asserting a new axiom.  They worked outside the State's ideology and asserted their place in France.  They demanded they become a part.  They made a decision the State could never come to.

This was simultaneously a philosophical act in a political 'region'.  Other 'regions' where the philosophical act is ripe are in love, art, and science.

To elaborate, Badiou makes the case that philosophers essentially create problems.  He said, "...the philosopher intervenes when he finds, in the present, the signs that point to the need for a new problem, a new invention."  When a philosophical act emerges, a new set of problems occur.  This is because the philosophical act is universal (axioms are not regional or multicultural, but rather assertions - rules that apply to all).  As such, they are incomplete.  They will create their own undecidable points as they are developed.

We see here something essential about Badiou's concept of philosophy: it is positive.  In contrast to post-modern philosophies that condone extreme sensitivity so as not to offend otherness - that is, setting limits - Badiou is interested in tearing down limits and creating new horizons.

Badiou is an outspoken critic of 'human rights', a 20th century phenomenon.  His critique holds that neoliberal arguments for human rights are self-defeating because they are essentially negative.  For fear of violating 'the other', any truly emancipatory, collective project is quickly abandoned.  The fact that a debate ensues over whether or not female genital mutilation is permissible in certain societies, based on arguments for cultural relativism and respect for otherness, is responsible for the lack of mobilization around its eradication.  It's become a point of undecidability according to 20th century human rights declarations.  So, against its motivation to protect people, it has stifled emancipatory projects in light of multi-cultural sensibilities.  This example demonstrates the negativity of the "universal human rights declaration".  The philosophical act will be one that radically dismisses calls for human rights with a new axiom that decides and mandates collective action.  A feature of this act is that it won't debate with an incommensurate theory. Thus Zizek's talk: "Philosophy is not a Dialogue."

We've come to fear such collective, egalitarian action because of the horrors of Stalinism.  Badiou, in agreement with Zizek, argues that Stalinism was a failure, but it was founded on a positive push towards egalitarian reform.  In another text, The Communist Hypothesis, Badiou asks of Stalinism: "Was it a complete failure?  By which I mean: does it require us to abandon the hypothesis itself, and to renounce the whole problem of emancipation?  Or was it merely a relative failure?  Was it a failure because of the form it took or the path it explored?  Was it a failure that simply proves that it was not the right way to resolve the initial problem?"  The essence of communism was admirable and should not be forgotten or dismissed due to its manifestation.  The essence, Badiou would say, was the universal kernel of Communism: egalitarian reform.  We should learn from Stalin's errors and create something new that retains the same drive towards justice.  This is far better, he maintains, than accepting a negative (limiting) foundation riddled with contradictions and critical points of undecidability.

The philosophical act, then, is not deciding between voting Republican or Democrat, but inventing a position that Republicans and Democrats can not possibly incorporate because it's so foreign to their institutional game.  This is, for instance, what the Black Panthers did until they were eradicated by the US government who considered them the number one terrorist threat.  A part of no part, they created their own schools and community kitchens and cultural norms.  As incommensurate with the axioms of the State (axioms that upheld universal human rights except the right for particular groups to organize and become self-empowered), the US government handled them in the only way they could: through violence.  This is the danger of the philosophical act.

On Pilgrimage: The John Muir Trail (Part 4)

The morning I woke up in LeConte Canyon, Anita was still asleep, which was normal.  I never forced an early start on her because she was struggling to get any sleep at all, and the morning was usually a time she finally found her rhythm.  Her sleeping bag was rated for zero degrees, but she froze every night.  That was her one big complaint from the trip.  But the morning I woke up in LeConte Canyon, I made my way down to the river and started filtering water, as I usually did while I waited for Anita to wake.  In front of me was a beautiful river and beyond it, a huge meadow.  On this morning, a deer suddenly popped out of the trees next to me, had no idea I was there, and waded through the river to get to the meadow's side.  I sat in silence, like I was in church.  When the deer was in the meadow, she grazed for a bit, and I could tell she was wanting to come back over.  She still had no idea I was there.  I grabbed the camera in time to catch her wading back to my side with very tall, long strides.  Here's the picture:

Right after I took the picture, as I sat back in disbelief at the luck I had in viewing this amazing scene, the deer promptly squatted and pissed in the water, upstream of where I was filtering.  I was then shaken back into the reality that, as beautiful as it was, I was probably drinking animal piss along the way.

Because Anita and I were way behind our plan, we had to seriously reconsider our food.  We restructured our schedule, knowing that this time, if we didn't make our destination, we would be out of food before Muir Trail Ranch, the place we mailed ourselves a bucket full of grub.  As much as our bodies were being honed into shape, I don't think our pace ever increased.  Walking into the night became customary.  My hope rekindled when we started meeting our goals, and we weren't terribly exhausted at the end of each day, like we used to be. 

Here are some pictures from my favorite pass: Muir Pass.  It's a serene, contemplative climb that we made in two days.  Unfortunately, it got colder and colder as we got higher and higher.  We topped it the morning a big storm was rolling in.  Because of the storm, the top of Muir Trail Ranch was freezing, and snow was likely.  There is an emergency hut up there because it is an exposed pass and weather hits it quickly and harshly.  We didn't want to have to use it.  We knew that the only way to face this storm was to get to a lower elevation, and we hurried down the freezing mountain.  

The night before we topped Muir Pass

Helen Lake, close to the top

The emergency shelter on Muir Pass, as "Winter in August" was rolling in.

Appropriately named after John Muir

The other side, as we're coming down, trying to drop elevation in the freezing cold.

The storm really struck us the following day, just one day before we were going to reach Muir Trail Ranch.  We learned later that it would be called "Winter in August."  We were careful in planning this trek to bring anything we might need, including serious rain gear.  When it started snowing on us, we were glad for it!  Our strategy, which was also good for getting to Muir Trail Ranch, was move, move, move!  If you stop and rest, you get cold.  So as it snowed on us (more like large hail that stuck on the ground), we just kept walking.  

As we were walking alongside a raging river, some deer came against us, using the same trail.  To the left of us was a drop-off to the river, to the right of us a steep incline.  The deer didn't know what to do.  It was a mom and two babies.  They stopped, turned around and ran away from us.  But they really didn't want to go back to where they came from, so they quickly stopped, turned around, and ran straight at us!  We were stunned and we froze.  When they go within about fifteen feet, they suddenly jumped off to the side, up the ledge, and timidly waited in the snow, hoping we would just continue on.  It was one of our more intimate encounters with wildlife!  

The snow stopped just as we found a place to rest for the night, which was really perfect.  I set up the tent without being pelted by hail, and we looked forward to sunnier days ahead.  The next morning, we ate our last food: two bars we packed for an emergency.  We were completely out, but just a few miles from Muir Trail Ranch.  I was skinnier than I'd ever been, but not really hungry.  It was amazing to me how little I ate leading up to Muir Trail Ranch.  That all changed when we got there and found tubs and tubs of unclaimed food, free for our picking.  We had a HUGE lunch of cliff bars and trail mix and breathed a sigh of relief as we packed our food that was waiting for us and prepared ourselves for the next leg of the journey to Red Meadows Resort, where our next tub of food was waiting.  

Things can get hairy out there.

The morning we ate our last bites of food, just outside Muir Trail Ranch.

Muir Trail Ranch - where our food was waiting for us.  There are only two passes north of Muir Trail Ranch, neither even close in elevation to what we'd already encountered.  We knew we had made it past the hardest sections of the JMT (and we weren't going to starve to death)!

On Pilgrimage: The John Muir Trail (Part 3)

Before starting the John Muir Trail, I was working at REI.  I rang up a customer who was going to hike the JMT north to south, the opposite as us.  We figured we would see each other on the trail.  I had forgotten all about it when we crossed paths with a straggly looking dude who asked if I worked at REI.  We shared stories from the trail, and we had this weirdly deep connection as we were talking - a great appreciation for each other's struggles, and a general understanding of why the other one continued on despite the challenge.  He was supposed to walk with his best friend, who had to drop out early.  Neither was really prepared physically, but when his friend couldn't go on, he recognized that this was a unique lifetime opportunity, and he continued on alone.  As three weeks by yourself can be a real emotional challenge, this was truly jumping into tough terrain.  One thing he told us: beware of "The Golden Staircase."  We would later realize that this warning was not to be taken lightly.

My 'friend,' traveling south

This same day, we spent the entire day walking uphill, just to approach Pinchot Pass.  It was exhausting.  If we were going to get over Pinchot, we would be close to getting back on schedule, but we stopped shy with miles to go.  We were starting to ration our food and come up with a new plan.  But we did discover an effective way to plan our daily mileage - don't aim to go over the mountain, get right under it, start your day out with the final thrust, and spend the middle of the day walking downhill.  With this strategy in mind, we re-mapped out route, and determined that, if we were not going to run out of food, we had to stick to it.

Our schedule, more and more, was becoming very serious - we needed to get to Muir Trail Ranch, where we had mailed ourselves food, or we were going to run out.  I started eating one cliff bar instead of two, and Anita and I shared dinners when we were supposed to eat our own.  One thing I noticed was that I was rarely hungry.  I was eating a third of what I normally ate sitting around at home, and I was exercising all day, breathing thin air, carrying 45 pounds on my back, walking eight hours, topping mountain passes.  My stomach was shrinking, and I was working at a subsistence level.  But my body adapted to it, making me realize we eat WAY too much in the comfort of our homes.

Skinny stomach, powerful legs!

After Pinchot, there was Mather Pass.  We labored over this one - just a bunch of switchbacks up the side of a shadeless pile of rocks.  It was an amazing feat that anyone even built these switchbacks - clinging as they were to what seemed like a cliff.  Anita was burning out, but we knew we had to stick to the schedule.  Our stop and go pace had us looking at the top of Mather for hours as we slowly approached.

Anita struggling bravely up Mather Pass

The view on the top of Mather

Going down Mather was just as tough as climbing it.  It was steep and rocky - hard on the feet and the knees and tough emotionally because progress was so slow in the hot sun.  When we reached the lakes below, we took long breaks.  Well behind our goal for the day, we knew we needed to hike into the night.  At dusk, we stumbled upon one of the most breathtaking views on the entire John Muir Trail: the top of the Golden Staircase.

The view atop the Golden Staircase

Below lies LeConte Canyon - plenty of flat ground - something we were looking forward to.  If we were to keep on pace with our new schedule, we would have slept down there.  The Golden Staircase had other plans for us.  We pulled out our headlamps and started the steepest decent imaginable.  We quickly appreciated that we were not going UP this endless set of switchbacks, which were really stairs.  We saw headlamps coming up from below, just to find a group of ultra-athletic go-getters who were finishing up a thirty mile day (it might have been forty, I can't recall).  As we were struggling to maintain 8-10 miles a day, we were impressed and sort of dumbfounded.  About half way down the staircase, Anita's knees gave out.  She couldn't go on.  Fortunately, there were flat patches here and there, and we found one quickly and set up the tent in the dark.  I went to sleep not knowing if Anita's knees would recover and not knowing if we would make it to Muir Trail Ranch before our food ran out.  I considered possibilities for exiting the trail.  

There's a certain amount of faith you need on a trip like this, and I put my faith in Anita's body and mind to get us through this.  Despite my rational concerns over our food and her knees, I had a sort of religious sense that Anita would carry on.  She's such a strong person and had already overcome some of the toughest challenges on the trail.  I had an overriding sense that we were going to make it.  In the morning, we felt exhausted but revived, and we walked the remaining stairs right into the heart of a majestic canyon.

The morning after sleeping in the middle of the Golden Staircase

Cover Song: Rihanna's "We Found Love"

I'm really stoked about this one.  I couldn't stop dancing when I was recording it.  Here is my cover of Rihanna's "We Found Love".  It sounds alright through computer speakers, but REALLY cool in headphones or through some decent speakers and turned UP!



Here's the original:

On Pilgrimage: The John Muir Trail (Part 2)

Click here to read Part I.

My pack was about 50 pounds when we set off in Onion Valley on August 19, 2010.  Anita's pack was likewise packed to capacity.  There's a movement in the outdoor sports world where people pride themselves on carrying as little as possible, often times exposed to the elements with their will and their ingenuity keeping them going.  We were not those people, but I will say that we didn't pack anything that we didn't use.  We started off with what we expected to need for about eight days of hiking.  Eight days on your back is a little hard to conceptualize, but it consists mostly of food, stashed away in boxes that bears can't open.  What wouldn't fit in our bear boxes, we tied up in a tree at night.  Otherwise, clothes for all the potential elements and some sunscreen.

Our first day involved topping Kearsarge Pass at 11,760 feet.

Kearsarge Pass in Onion Valley

We topped it as the sun was setting - a grueling day setting our expectations for the next week.  On the top, Anita felt ill and I felt tired.  The trail was disciplining us.  This is something I expected.  I learned it on the Camino de Santiago.  It's good to prepare yourself - you'll thank yourself for it a thousand times, and it makes your journey safer and more pleasurable.  BUT... whatever you do, the trail will mold you into the shape it needs you to be in.  You don't need to be too concerned - if you are a survivor, a week into any trip, you will be ready for what it has in store for you.  Unfortunately, there is a danger to this logic - we started falling off of our proposed schedule starting on day one when, coming down from Kearsarge Pass, we didn't make it to the John Muir Trail.  We instead camped early at Bullfrog Lake.  As you can see, it was too tempting to pass up.

Bullfrog Lake, our first morning on the John Muir Trail.

We made it to the John Muir Trail the next morning with hopes of making up the couple miles we lost in Onion Valley.  That meant making significant progress over Glen Pass.  That meant topping another 10,000+ mountain.  That was not happening.  At this point, Anita was feeling sick.  Our ascent of Glen Pass was insanely windy, totally exhausting, and extraordinarily beautiful.  On the other side lies Rae Lakes - a huge collection of water.  It looked close from the top, and to get back on pace we had to get well beyond it.  In the end, Anita couldn't go on.  She was totally noxious and we had to set up a sort of emergency camp at dusk.  We simply couldn't descend the mountainside and get to water, but we had enough in our bottles to cook and drink, and we found a spot on the side of the trail to set up our uneven tent to shield us from a vigorous wind.  Anita spent the night fearing that wind was slowly pushing us towards the ledge, working towards a goal of pushing us over to roll our way down to Rae Lakes.  Fortunately, our weight prevented that from happening.  I'll admit, I was a little nervous sleeping there myself.

A black and white showing our tent and the massive Rae Lakes further on down the mountainside.  The wind plus the sloped ledge did not make for a peaceful night.  It was, however, absolutely MAJESTIC to climb out of the tent in the morning.

Anita woke up refreshed and feeling a lot better.  We had to face the harsh reality, unfortunately, that we were now more than a couple miles behind schedule.  Our week of food on our backs was now more than a week's worth of food, even though we didn't add anything to it.  We nervously descended Glen Pass and let the water renew our spirits.  This day was an all-day gradual descent, giving our legs a chance to recuperate.

 Rae Lakes in the morning.

 What more could you ask for?

On Pilgrimage: The John Muir Trail (Part I)

The months before my wife and I set out for the John Muir Trail, I spent time watching Ken Burn's documentary on the National Parks.  Much of the footage is appropriately spent talking about John Muir.  I quickly fell in love with this man - a wild man - ecstatic in nature - a man who literally got so physically ill when he was confined to society that his family had to let him back out into the woods or he would have died.  I fell in love with him and and shortly thereafter, his wilderness.

I had done a fair amount of training for the 3-week hike well into the High Sierra backcountry.  My wife had not.  I felt confident hiking with her because the year prior, when she hadn't trained to top Mt. Whitney (the tallest mountain in the continental United States), she topped it anyways.  She has an iron will.  So, I figured the John Muir Trail was nothing more than a Mt. Whitney every other day.  She did it once, she can do it ten more times in close succession!  And so we went for it.

We hiked, untraditionally, from south to north.  This is a common theme in my pilgrimages - to walk against the wind.  Josh and I road our bikes west to east, thereby enduring terrible weather the entire time.  Wendy, Jenny, and I hiked the Camino de Santiago in the spring, thereby getting rained and snowed on.  I walk backwards.  It's what I do.

We did not cover the entire route.  We started just south of Mt Whitney, because we'd previously topped that and I think Anita swore against doing so again.  We stared in Onion Valley, spending out first day going over a pass just to connect to the John Muir Trail on the other side.  I remember setting off - getting unplugged, getting dirty.  Anita was my fiancé at the time and I wasn't sure she'd marry me after this.  We were plunging into the unknown.  Prior to this hike, Anita had hiked 3 days and I had gone about 5 days in the backcountry.  Now we were set for 3 weeks!

We are slow hikers, and we reached the mountain pass around dusk.  It was a bad sign that we would end the first day of our voyage hiking down a mountain in the dark.  And we were tired - we weren't going to make it to our hoped-for destination.  This would become an all-too-common theme, and we would nearly run out of food.  Regardless, by the time we set up camp that first night, we knew we were in over our heads, and it was only going to get worse the next day.

(To Be Continued...)