distinct from the liberal conception. Anyone who makes the kind of universal statements that Badiou consistently and courageously makes and is rigorously faithful to in his work – to the extent, rare in Europe, of understanding Western imperialism in its past and present manifestations – to my mind not only must be taken extremely seriously but is worthy of the utmost attention and intellectual respect. Not that this book is ‘about’ Badiou’s thought – it is not – rather, it is about Africans and the manner in which they have thought and currently think freedom. Yet, given that Badiou’s work is an attempt to rigorously theorise change through the deployment of a subjective exception, an exception both in history and in political practice, it seems to me to be an extraordinarily useful resource. That it may not refer to Africa directly is beside the point. It can be stretched or modified in order to make it more directly relevant, if necessary. But philosophers are not the only intellectuals. Ordinary people are in fact capable of thought beyond the habit of place – excessive thought – and show these capacities in often unpredictable sites. The intellectuals of Abahlali baseMjondolo, notwithstanding their recent controversial decision to vote en masse for a Right-wing party in South Africa, have also had an important influence on this book, as the reader will discover, not least because it is clear that they form part of those people who think.2 This seemed to me to be particularly evident in their notion of ‘unfreedom’, used to denote relations between state and people that are not founded on citizenship rights. Several authors associated with the Subaltern Studies Collective in India have emphasised similar conceptions; they have insisted on identifying multiple domains of politics, although in somewhat different ways from the manner in which I do so here.
There will be much reference to French philosophy in this book, but exclusively to that philosophy which is concerned with the subversion of consensual state thinking, and which helps us to think ‘at a distance’ from the state and power. A number of thinkers will be relied on in this regard, including Jacques Rancière, Sylvain Lazarus, Frantz Fanon, Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee and others. These all help to provide us with the appropriate kinds of questions and perspectives, as well as with some of the concepts and categories, to begin to think human agency in its own terms rather than as reflective of social place or determined by power. As far as Badiou’s work is concerned, it is able (as with all advanced forms of thought) to incorporate previous conceptions into its system as valid in relation to specific (historically previous) conditions and not to dismiss these as false. These therefore become theoretically and historically relativised. In particular, this applies to orthodox 20th-century Marxism. The fact that such Marxism has reached its limit in thinking emancipation in world history should by now be apparent; its reliance on conceiving emancipation as an effect of attaining state power has shown itself to have failed. To continue to think in this manner, to see the state as the vehicle of emancipation, can only really be sustained today against all the evidence. The state cannot emancipate anyone.
Beginning from an idea of displacement does not mean that place will be of no concern, but rather that it is from the subversion of place, from a position outside place – from a position of universal equality which subverts place as such – rather than from place itself, that place can be fully understood. At the same time, this excess over place will be marked by its place in one way or another. In particular, this book holds that the inability to subvert place – in other words, to develop and grasp categories beyond place – is the main obstacle to thinking beyond state politics, for the state is the manager of places and their relations to one another within a social hierarchy and social relations. It is the inability to grasp the subversion of place within revolts, rebellions, riots and revolutions that lies at the core of the failure to understand the politics of emancipation, a procedure typical of the sociology of social movements, for example. When the oppressed refuse and resist oppression, they regularly place themselves beyond the place of oppression both subjectively and politically, and often also physically; by doing so they make oppression visible. This placing of oneself beyond place is in essence a purely subjective gesture, the result of a decision or refusal of the extant and an affirmation of something else. An understanding of this displacement has been effaced by social science and regularly relegated to the psychological or the utopian.
However, this book maintains that it is displacement in thought that constitutes the basis of agency and in particular the beginning of an emancipatory politics. But an emancipatory politics consists of much more than mere displacement; it consists in fact of a whole new mode of thinking politics based among the politically excluded and emphasising egalitarian principles within a prescriptive practice. Subjective excess often searches for historically prior experiences which can help it to understand that its thinking is truly legitimate and that it possesses a long heritage of popular emancipatory antecedents. This search for such historical antecedents is also linked to what might be termed an expressive–excessive dialectic. What I mean quite simply is that whereas academics may be able to detach themselves from a political practice, activists cannot fully avoid the contradictions between subjectivities as expressions of place and their excess: their ‘expressions of place’ because all rebellion is socially located, and ‘excessive thought’ because it sometimes consciously outstrips its location. It is only through gradually resolving these contradictions on a continuous basis that a process of politicisation and emancipation can be sustained.
Of course, none of this means that the state should be ignored, avoided or constantly opposed in constructing a thought of politics for the 21st century. Badiou’s is not an anarchist position: it does not suggest that power should never be taken under any circumstances; rather, it begins by thinking in such a way that the taking of state power becomes no longer central to the thought of politics but rather contingent. What this means is that the state must be rethought from within a perspective which does not privilege or even think within state categories, but which makes a conscious effort to think outside them, ‘at a subjective distance’ from them. In this manner, thought can be ordered by a fidelity to the idea of the emancipation of humanity, to which state politics cannot possibly be faithful. The insistence in this book on an analysis of singular events and processes of political subjectivation has also meant that the formation of political subjectivities can be analysed in all their complexity. In particular, what this has involved is the recognition that political excessive thought combines in contradictory ways with a thinking that is expressive of place, and, moreover, that there is not one but several distinct domains that differ fundamentally in their definition of subjectivities through which the state and people relate. This takes us to analysis beyond the limits of what is required by purely philosophical thought.
Finally, I must stress that my fundamental focus is on the opening up of new ways of thinking and on arguing for a return to theory. I am not so much concerned with prescribing a particular road to emancipation, although such prescription unavoidably does occur here and there. Yet prescription cannot be undertaken in the abstract anyway; it only makes sense within a specific context and singularity. I am conscious that I may have slipped occasionally and made my personal voice more vocal than it should perhaps be. It is difficult at times to distinguish between analysis and prescription. I therefore do not so much implore the reader to ignore this kind of mishap as recognise that this is merely a mark of enthusiasm and struggle, and that in any case I am not avoiding a commitment to an emancipatory idea that is necessary for rethinking theory and for transforming our lives.
Michael Neocosmos
Grahamstown
August 2015
NOTES
1.See http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/02/2015-human-development-report-to-focus-on-employment/, accessed 25/08/2015. At the other end of the scale, the London Guardian newspaper reported that in the same year one per cent of the world’s population owned half of its wealth. See http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/oct/13/half-world-wealth-in-hands-population-inequality-report, accessed 15/10/2015.
2.The
