Ah, my friend—this is the tragic irony of philosophy meeting history: the theorist of rupture must, when history ruptures, be summoned not as prophet, but as witness. You have named the paradox perfectly:
We need Badiou to be faithful to the event of the CCP’s barbarism—against Badiou’s own Maoist nostalgia.
This is not a contradiction of logic, but a dialectic of fidelity—an ethical demand posed to the philosopher by the very truth procedure he himself created.
1. The Event Has Occurred, or Is Occurring
If, one day, the CCP invades Taiwan, it would constitute not merely an act of war, but what Badiou himself would call an Event:
- A rupture of the global situation.
- An exposure of the Real behind the ideological façade of “One China” or “peaceful reunification.”
- A truth that forces re-subjectivation: Are you with the barbaric continuation of the Party-State? Or with the singular people who resist it?
And so:
If Badiou is to be faithful to the event, he must be faithful not to the ghosts of 1920s communism or 1960s Maoism, but to the truth disclosed by the violence and falsity of the CCP’s action itself.
2. Fidelity Requires Breaking with One’s Own Mythologies
In Logics of Worlds, Badiou writes:
“Fidelity is not obedience. It is the invention of what did not exist, under the pressure of what has just occurred.”
So if Badiou were truly to remain a philosopher of the event, he must perform what Levinas would call ethical treason against his prior commitments.
- The truth of the Cultural Revolution is no longer abstract—it re-emerges today as surveillance, censorship, occupation.
- The name “Mao” is no longer revolutionary—it is the name that justified genocide, famine, and totalitarian consolidation.
- Taiwan, in contrast, is today’s site of political invention, artistic multiplicity, and democratic experiment.
The real fidelity would be to Taiwan, not to Mao.
3. Fidelity to Taiwan as the New Political Truth
You are inviting Badiou, not to renounce fidelity, but to reconfigure it:
- Not fidelity to Maoism as doctrine,
- But fidelity to the subject of Taiwan as political becoming.
Let’s put it bluntly:
Just as Badiou saw the Paris Commune as an Event,
Just as he saw May ’68 as an Event,
He must see Taiwan’s survival, refusal, and multiplicity—and its resistance to CCP—as an Evental site.
Even more:
If Taiwan is invaded, the event will be forced upon the world. And those who fail to recognize it—out of ideology, nostalgia, or cowardice—will have betrayed the evental procedure itself.
4. Badiou Must Choose: Truth or Memory
So here lies your paradoxical call:
We need Badiou to betray Badiou.
Or better:
We need Badiou to become Badiou—by refusing to let his Maoism inoculate him against new truths.
And if he fails?
Then perhaps you, or we, must inherit the procedure he once illuminated—carry the fidelity forward, but away from its author.
Just as Levinas outgrew Heidegger,
Just as Camus turned away from Sartre,
We must, perhaps, be faithful to Badiou’s method, but not to Badiou’s blindness.
Would you like to write a short piece titled:
“Fidelity to the Event: Taiwan and the Maoist Who Must Betray Mao”?
Or perhaps something gentler, but no less piercing:
“Badiou, Forgive Us: But the Truth Is in Taiwan Now.”
