…or refuse.

Before I say anything else, I don’t follow the distinction between representation and presentation. Can you explain that to me, please?

On the rest, I’ll have to look at the Badiou piece. On your summary, I think I’m not sold. Initial quibbles, which I’ll keep in mind when I finally get round to doing the requisite reading:

“we must seperate, in Badiou’s conception, the problem of truth and the subject’s approach to it.”

As subjects, we don’t get to truth as such. We only get to truth via our approach(es) to it. More modestly, I’d say at a minimum this is where my own interests lie. Also, in case there’s some terminological innovation made such that we’re not subject but proto-subjects or something, that doesn’t get around the issue - the problem of truth vs conceptions of truth.

“What follows is that the event, which gives rise to truth, makes the subject possible rather than being made possible by the subject.”

I don’t know what to make of this. It strikes me that there’s a distinction made here, subject and non-/pre-/potentional subject, that I’m not sure impacts what I like about the magic language stuff. That is, there might be different versions of the term ‘truth’ here that are more like homonyms than contending arguments. If we take the example of Saul/Paul, my sense is that Saul is not a subject and Paul is: Paul is Sauld plus/having passd through the event and truth/the truth derived from event. I’m certainly willing to consider all of that, but I’m not clear about how it connects with the magic langauge argument. Whether Saul or Paul (and whether the two are posited in a relationship of continuity or of break), the magic langauge argument seems to hold and to be untroubled either way. This actually adds more to my hunch reading Badiou that there was something like a magic language involved (I didn’t have the term before, though, of course). As in, my sense was that we have a series event-truth-subject, and the “-” between each term do not involve interpretation. (Thus, a magic language, and yet, in a way I don’t understand, it’s still all subjective…?) Perhaps I’ve misunderstood, if so please correct me. But if I haven’t then this strikes me as misguided, in the sense of being subject to the various complaints and attacks we can make on magic languages.

It also strikes me as not needed - I can’t back this up but my intuition is that the attack on magic languages only has effect when people use a magic language to undergird another position. That is, if something is built on a magic language and the magic language washes away, the edifice may collapse. But the magic language doesn’t place tautologies or assertions out of bound. Put differently, given that there’s no magic language or magic meta-language such that interpretation doesn’t go away, it’s no criticism to say that a position is not complete in and of itself - in the sense of being fully articulable without presupposition or assertion. Assertions and tautologies are fine, as long as they recognize themselves as such.

take care,
Nate

The matheme, in Badiou’s notion “thinks.” Here’s where he argues with wittgenstein, its in one of the first essays in “Theoretical writings” i don’t remember which.
Basically, the arguement is, the matheme is not a representation of thought but a presentation of it. Interpretation is secondary, the matheme is self-sufficient. As such, the problem of interpretation is only a decayed version of the truth of the matheme.

we must seperate, in Badiou’s conception, the problem of truth and the subject’s approach to it. What follows is that the event, which gives rise to truth, makes the subject possible rather than being made possible by the subject.

There you go, a magical language.

what do you get when you mix the godfather with a continental philosopher:

he makes you an offer you can’t understand