Sequence, Hypothesis, History: the Idea of Communism in the Light of the Singular Universality of a Process of Truth

Abstract

The article tries to examine the element of “historical belonging” to the body-truth within the Idea of communism as developed by Alain Badiou. From the perspective of Badiou's concept of the singular universality, a question arises regarding the relation between singular sequences that determine a temporal period of this “historical belonging” to the body-truth. With the help of a parallel reading of some aspects of Badiou's and Agamben's philosophical projects, the article claims that both Badiou's singular universality and Immanuel Kant's judgement of taste have the identical structure. From this perspective, the seemingly marginal role of Kant's philosophy within Badiou's and Agamben's works emerges as in fact the central point within the development of the political thought of both philosophers, without which it is impossible to understand Badiou's reintroduction of the concept of history within his philosophy. From this perspective, the communist sequence emerges as a specific temporality that places itself on the cut of diachrony and synchrony, and as such presents itself neither as pure repetition of previous sequences nor without any relation to them.