Democracy Realized One Classroom at a Time

2020

A glance at the cover endorsements of Badiou's recently published English works rapidly indicates that his is not an opus aimed at the faint-hearted. This is philosophy in the grand style and against the grain of the times. Attend then to his principal encomiast, Slavoj Zizek, who in "praising" Ethics indicates that Badiou's work takes "aim at the very heart of politically correct 'radical' intellectuals, undermining the foundations of their very mode of life!"i The fragile exclamation mark seems to indicate emphasis rather than irony or any self-conscious humor. The tenor of the laudation is political and polemical, a suspicion that is confirmed by the continuation: ''Ethics enacts a return to a full-blown philosophy which strikes as thunder into the morass of post-modernist sophisms and platitudes."^ The meteorological metaphor, if anything, adds to the stakes in suggesting a celestial source and naturalistic force of impact. The heavens open in the wake of the philosopher Badiou, or so Zizek appears to believe. And then finally, just to confirm the world historical stature of the man and the destructive potential of the thought, Zizek adds on the back cover of The Century a further lectorial rubric: "Read it with the proper tremor, aware that you are reading a classic, that a figure like Plato or Hegel walks here among us!"^ Philosopher, poet, playwright and aspiring filmmaker-^he wants to make, and has indeed got some way in negotiating, a Hollywood biopic of the life of Plato-Badiou has taken over the coveted spot of regnant French philosopher in the Anglophone world. It is a recent and in many respects surprising crowning in that Badiou's lengthy oeuvre is far removed from what Cusset dubs "French Theory.'"' It is true that * Professor of Law and Director, Program in Law and Humanities, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York.

Cardozo law review, 2010

Cardozo law review, 2003

and Chuck Yablon, for erudite and interesting commentary and other forms of reaction to earlier drafts. Chief amongst these, first amongst equals, is Linda Mills, my spouse, my love, my other name. 1 Where names are noted, the relevant biographical and bibliographical information can be found in the Dictionary and so is not repeated here.

Journal of Law and Society, 2009

My thanks to Phil Thomas for his enthusiasm, to Christopher Tomlins for candid and incisive comments, as well as to David Campbell, Chuck Yablon, and Alain Supiot for discussion of the themes of this paper. Thanks too to Geoffrey Samuel for sharing his work and for his tolerance, and finally to Linda Mills for grounding my thesis and challenging my method. I For a recent discussion of the juristic invention of the real, see 8. Edelman, Quand /es juristes inventent le reel. La fabulation juridique (2007).

Critical Inquiry, 2003

At the end of what she deemed to have been the worst of years, the English sovereign in her annual address to the nation resorted to Latin. The monarch, titular head of state and of the legal system, announced at the close of 1992 that it had been annus horribilis. In the face of tragic events and immediate threats, the impending divorce of her son and heir and the specter of taxation of the monarchy, the queen resorted paradoxically to a dead language, to a heavy signifier, to the weight of Latin. The force of the immediate and the pressure or stress of the political required the distance and gravitas of a language that few any longer either know or understand. It was the appropriate mode in which to signal both authority and grief. For an American audience, at the risk of a bad pun, annus horribilis probably translates as an asshole of a year and might well be thought to be a somewhat quaint example of the antique customs of the English. The apparent aura of civic republicanism in the United States, however, should not lead too quickly to the conclusion that the pinnacle of the U.S. juridical system is free of such rhetorical recourse to the foreign and antique. Faced with a peculiarly politicized and highly charged decision in the 2000 Presidential election, the U.S. Supreme Court also resorted to Latin. The much publicized and eagerly awaited judgment in Bush v. Gore was handed down quite literally to waiting journalists and other media representatives on the courthouse steps under the rubric of having been decided per curiam. 1 The title is taken from Gustave Flaubert, Dictionnaire des idees refues, in Oeuvres, 2 vols. (Paris, 1952), 2:1016, whose entry under Latin reads: "Distrust quotations in Latin: they always hide something dubious." For constructive criticisms-for dubiety-my thanks to

English Language Notes, 2010

Journal of Law and Society, 2004

This fragment is taken, mid-sentence as it were, from a longer discourse. It is plucked in process from a discussion of friendship for ideas. It is part of a longer journey through the annals of amity. The fragment also examines a fragment, a gloss on a text, a marginal ...

1986

One of the most interesting developments within contemporary legal theory has been the increasing importance accorded to the concept of interpretation. It is fortunately no longer possible to speak uncritically of, or simply to assume, the communicational and linguistic dimensions of legal regulation or of legal institutional discourse. While the concepts of communicationof discourse, language, text and sign-have long been key terms of debate within philosophy, literary theory and cultural studies, it is really only very recently that lawyers and particularly the legal academy have begun to take a serious if somewhat defensive interest in these disputes. The issues raised and the interests threatened are ponderous and vast; many of the dogmatic articles of legal faith are at stake and it should not be viewed as surprising if the debates as to the substantive implications of different forms of interpretation appear at times extreme and the positions adopted seem labored or untenable....

Cardozo Arts Ent L J, 2013

Journal of Law and Society, 1984