COURSE ON THE ABSOLUTE 1: INFINITY AND WRITING

In the final part of Immanence of Truths, Badiou introduces a certain notion of writing; he does so explicitly in the name of ‘Derrida’, a name not only often silenced but effectively suppressed in the body of Badiou’s mathematical trilogy. In fact, in a note attached to a later edition of Logics of Worlds, Badiou refers to ‘a very long period of semi-hostile distance and sundry incidents’ between the two thinkers and an attempt to ‘patch’ things up that took place just before Derrida’s death. The reference to Derrida in Immanence of Truths might be read in light of this comment. More than mere ‘patching’, what arrives late on is a written version of the absolute: Kunen’s Theorem tells us: The absolute is forever, not without a theory but without a witness. This can also be formulated as: there are absolute truths, in a precise sense, but there is no truth of the absolute. There is only—as Lacan would say—a saying [un dire] of it, always incomplete. Or, as Derrida would say, there is o

In the final part of Immanence of Truths, Badiou introduces a certain notion of writing; he does so explicitly in the name of ‘Derrida’, a name not only often silenced but effectively suppressed in the body of Badiou’s mathematical trilogy. In fact, in a note attached to a later edition of Logics of Worlds, Badiou refers to ‘a very long period of semi-hostile distance and sundry incidents’ between the two thinkers and an attempt to ‘patch’ things up that took place just before Derrida’s death. The reference to Derrida in Immanence of Truths might be read in light of this comment. More than mer