On Badiou

In his respose on Badiou, Kemal has focused on the first part of Badiou’s essay. What I would like to do is mostly focus on the other parts of his essay.

The essay starts with the argument of Badiou, cinema is an ontological art, and passes to the notion that cinema is a “mass art”. Than he defines and explains the words art and the mass, reaches the point that the notion of mass art is in a way paradoxical. This is the point that he goes true to the ontological art via five examples.

Till that point I would like to discuss some points starting with the notion of “genetic popular”. Badiou states that millions of people goes to the cinema, and cinema has a wisdom that subtracts humanity from its differences. What he mean by that is more or less cinema has same representative value for different cultures and ethnic groups. More controversially he states that this claim is true not only for comic or burlesque genre, but for other as well.

Than what is in my mind in this point is if it was the same thousands of years ago. What I mean is it is not the same thing for the tribes and metropolitans to watch a movie like Office Space. The point seems to me like the globalization and post industrial societies, in which all different societies seems like a bit different from a common culture of all societies. And I believe this notion of generic humanity was not as true as today in the time of Chaplin. The example he gives, Chaplin, is not the same with the example of lets say Hababam Sınıfı. The second is neither funny or popular in other countries. Therefore the notion of generic humanity is not that strong even for cinema.

Than Badiou passes to the notion of “mass” and states that it is a category of communism however art is more aristocratic rooted. Therefore the syntagm “mass art” is has a paradoxical relation in itself because of the two words.

Later on he states that all the art works of twentieth century is avant-garde. It this point I have a critic especially on music. I believe after the use of mp3, there is no difference between the popularity of music and cinema. Millions of people listens to Michael Jackson even the Eskimos. He is missing a point in this point, while putting cinema as only mass art. Therefore later connections which sees cinema as only mass art is not that reliable in my point of view. It is mass culture that makes art mass and especially music is in it as cinema, as a part of generic humanity.

And than the essay passes to “five different ways of entering into the problem : to think cinema as mass art”. First one is on image; that is to say cinema is the final mastery of the metaphysical cycle of identification, because identification occurs with semblance whose height is cinema. In this first attempt, the problem is in seeing cinema as the height of the visual offered by the semblance. When I think of the video and the highly developing new technologies, I can not be sure about correctness of this assumption. Second attempt is “on time”, which means cinema is a mass art because it transforms time into perception. It is the most powerful becoming visible of time. Third attempt is, the series of arts, in the mean of cinema takes parts of other arts, that are at generic humanity. This part is important for Badiou’s article, however it didn’t convince me at all. Cinema takes sometimes more from music, but less from theater or vice versa. I am not sure it is that easy to reach the conclusion that Badiou did. Fourth way is impurity. This part mostly based on the property of cinema that it is in the border of being art and non-art. And cinema reaches purity through impurity. However my question is what about pop art? Anyway this is the most convincing part of this series of ways in my point of view. And the final attempt is ethical figures. Cinema is an art of the great figures of humanity. It is where this figures and the most classic struggles are still on scene, like good and evil. However this part seems to me a sub-cathegory of the one before, impurity. Because, this heroic nature is the reason of banality of the cinema, that makes it non-art and sometimes more art.

Final words for me is, the essay of Badiou is contraversial but clever as his other essays. There are a lot of point that I would like to discuss widely, but after finishing the text, I had an essay in my mind that I can refer time to time.

Ozan Kamiloğlu

On Badiou a bit

In the first two paragraphs of his article Cinema As A Democratic Emblem, French philosopher Alain Badiou tries to give an account of philosophy through cinema. In this account, middle term enabling the account is paradoxical relations. For Badiou, philosophy only exists insofar as there are paradoxical relations and cinema offers us paradoxical relations. So without a difficulty, it can be inferred that cinema has a vital role for the existence of philosophy.

Although it is problematic, I do not disagree with the claim that since it offers paradoxical relations, cinema is crucial for the possibility of philosophy requiring paradoxical relations. But in order to say that philosophy only exists insofar as there are paradoxical relations [italic is mine], one should show that without these paradoxical relations, philosophy does not exist. Or if he argues that cinema alone can manage to offer paradoxical relations, he should not base his claim on the idea that there is a clear requisitioning of philosophy by cinema or vice versa, because via this additional claim, his argument seems to be circular.

Moreover, although cinema’s offer of paradoxical relations requires some kind of requisitioning, I think, it is not requisitioning of cinema by philosophy, but rather requisitioning of philosophy by cinema, because it is cinema which offers paradoxical relations, argues Badiou.

Meanwhile French philosopher makes a strange definition of philosophy stating that philosophy is the violence done by thought to impossible relations. Although it is also worth mentioning, strangeness of the definition above is not due to the use of the word impossible instead of the word paradoxical as if they are synonymous, but rather due to the use of the word violence which has negative connotations. But it is used in sense that since it is done to impossible relations having also negative connotations, the word violence seems to get rid of its pejorative sense.

Apart from my views concerning the definition, via it, Badiou refers to Deleuze. Although thinking seems an intentional act which is under our control, Deleuze maintains that we do not think, but thinking happens to us surpassing our anatomy of choice or beyond our morality. Violence of thinking or thought implies this situation as a kind of necessity (Colebrook, 2006, p. 38).

For Deleuze, since it demands a reconsideration of both time and image, cinema also offers a reconsideration of both becoming and life. As far as cinema transforms it, philosophy remains open to life and in this respect cinema’s offering of an image of time is crucially important (Colebrook, 2006, p. 29). So   the expression of “after Deleuze” which is followed by the statement there is a clear requisitioning of philosophy by cinema is the only expression about which I am not skeptical in the first two paragraphs of Badiou’s article.

Since they are both short and yet dense, these first two paragraphs have quite indirect character. More than this, Badiou does not convey his prior arguments and justification causing the remarks that he expresses. So they are difficult to make sense of.

As far as I understand, in the fourth paragraph, Badiou posits cinema as an ontological art in the sense that cinema offers a more fundamental relation, namely the relation between being and appearance, than the relation between the virtual and the actual. At this point, in my opinion, it is important to note that Badiou avoids using the concept of reality, but instead he prefers using the concept of being. Since the concept of being along with the concept of event is crucial in Badiou’s philosophical project. So it is important to understand what being means to Badiou for further elaboration.  Anyway the fundamental relation offered by cinema stems from a kind of simultaneity between the copy of reality and the artificial dimension of this copy. But prior to articulating his proclaim as cinema as an ontological art, Badiou uses concepts such as real, artifice and false in such a way that he ends up with devastating statements for my mind. The false copy of a false real or the real artifice of the copy of a false copy of the real are some illustrations.

After stating it is an ontological art, Badiou offers a new definition for cinema: Cinema is a mass art. With its emphasis on “at the very moment of their creation”, Badiou’s definition is relevant as well as interesting. I think cinema’s being a mass art is directly related with the concept of generic humanity. Since, though not always, cinema can offer a view of humanity which is devoid of its differences, it can be liked millions of people from different social and cultural backgrounds. If “at the very moment of their creation” will be taken as the main criterion for the masterpieces of mass art, cinema as a mass art has no opponent.

When Badiou further elucidates his notion of mass art, why cinema offers various paradoxical relations become more apparent. Since the syntagm of mass art itself is paradoxical in its own. Although I am still not sure about the meaning of paradoxical in Badiou’s lexicon, the contrast between mass and art, i.e. democracy and aristocracy makes sense.

Colebrook, C. (2006). Gilles Deleuze. New York: Routledge.

M. Kemal İz