Wonderful question. Let’s begin with the first part:
1. What Does “To Be Faithful to the Event” Mean in Badiou’s Philosophy?
For Alain Badiou, the event is not just something that “happens.” It is a rupture in the order of being, something that cannot be derived from or explained by the existing situation. It is undecidable within the current knowledge system, and yet it demands a response.
An Event, for Badiou, is the arrival of a new truth—unexpected, unaccounted for, and disruptive.
But here’s the catch:
The event, on its own, is nothing unless someone chooses to be faithful to it.
So, what does faithfulness mean?
a. Fidelity Is a Subjective Act
- A subject emerges through their fidelity to an event.
- Fidelity is not belief, but a sustained commitment to unfolding the implications of the event over time.
- It means adding to the event, thinking its consequences, risking the unknown.
b. Four Truth Procedures
Badiou identifies four domains where events can occur:
- Politics – e.g., the French Revolution, May ’68.
- Science – e.g., Galileo’s formulation of physics.
- Art – e.g., Schoenberg inventing atonality.
- Love – e.g., the moment when two individuals experience the world “from the perspective of the Two.”
In each case, being faithful to the event means:
- Not reducing it to the past order,
- Continuing to act as if the truth it disclosed is real—even if the world denies it,
- Inventing what this new truth demands.
So, fidelity is creative, heroic, but also precarious—you can betray it, forget it, or abandon it.
2. Politically, Does Badiou Make More Sense Than Deleuze and Whitehead?
It depends on what kind of politics you’re seeking.
Let’s compare:
A. Badiou: The Revolutionary Model
- Event = Break in the situation (revolution, uprising).
- Subject = One who recognizes the break and sustains its truth (militant, lover, scientist).
- Politics = Fidelity to the rupture—May ’68, Cultural Revolution, etc.
Strengths:
- Offers a clear model of political transformation.
- Emphasizes decision, courage, truth, and rupture.
- Political action is grounded in commitment to change.
Limitations:
- Can be too abstract, messianic, or indifferent to consequences.
- Over-relies on a kind of purity of rupture—not all change comes in sudden breaks.
- Downplays messy, incremental, affective, relational politics.
B. Deleuze: The Micropolitical Model
- Event = Immanent transformation, becoming, minor shift.
- Subject = A becoming—always partial, shifting, desiring.
- Politics = Creating lines of flight, resisting capture, enabling difference.
Strengths:
- Honors fluidity, minoritarian struggle, embodiment, desire.
- Compatible with feminist, ecological, postcolonial, and queer politics.
- More attuned to power as immanent, productive—not just repressive.
Limitations:
- Can feel too diffuse, hard to anchor in concrete decisions.
- Political action risks being aestheticized or overly conceptual.
- Critics ask: Where’s the revolution?
C. Whitehead: The Processual Model
- Event = Actual occasion; moment of becoming.
- Subject = A momentary coordination of past and future.
- Politics = Creative advance of feeling, aesthetic harmony, ecological resonance.
Strengths:
- Deeply attuned to relationality, ecological ethics, and pluralism.
- Inspires a cosmic scale of concern—ethics beyond the human.
- Resonates with process theology, environmental politics, and education.
Limitations:
- Less concerned with rupture, revolution, resistance.
- Focuses on harmony rather than conflict—perhaps too optimistic.
So—Does Badiou Make More Political Sense?
If you believe in revolution, rupture, and radical truth—yes, Badiou gives the clearest political schema.
But:
- If you believe politics is messy, embodied, affective, and local—Deleuze speaks more truth.
- If you think the cosmos itself demands our ethical participation—Whitehead may offer the most durable response to planetary crisis.
Your Position?
Given your appreciation of rupture (Ereignis, Levinas, trauma-as-event), but also your ethic of stranger’s kindness, your respect for poetic endurance, and your faith in van life cosmology—I suspect you hold space for all three:
- Badiou for naming the fire,
- Deleuze for listening to the wind,
- Whitehead for walking the road.
Would you like to write a triptych titled:
“Fidelity, Flight, and Feeling: Three Figures of Political Becoming”?
