a few more reflections on I/Thou... as such

I will draw attention at this point to Badiou’s useful interview with Peter Hallward who asks rhetorically: "Where do you stand in relation to the contemporary obsession with the other, with the valorization of difference as such?" And "how", he adds, "do you avoid this question once it’s been admitted that it is not a matter of claiming a particular essence (sexual, racial or religious), but of developing a critical position that takes account of the fact that where people are oppressed, they are oppressed as women, as black, as Jewish or Arab? Alain Badiou has characteristically interesting and provocative responses to these questions. "When," he says "I hear people say we are oppressed as blacks, as women, I have only one problem: what exactly is meant by ‘black’ or ‘women’?"

Badiou is not being facetious. He follows this with: "if this or that particular identity is put into play in the struggle against oppression, against the state, my only problem is with the exact political meaning of the identity being promoted. Can this identity, in itself, function in a progressive fashion - that is other than a property invented by the oppressors themselves?" With this powerful comment, Badiou goes on to discuss Jean Genet, an important writer for both post-colonial and queer studies. "In his preface to Les Negres Jean Genet said that everything turns around the question: what/who are black people, and for starters, what colour are they?" You can then answer, says Badiou, "That black people are black. But what does black mean to those who in the name of the oppression they suffer, and make it a political category? I understand very well what black means for those who use the predicate in a logic of differentiation, oppression and separation"(my emphasis). "Just as I understand very well what French means when Le Pen (the extreme right wing politician) uses the word. When Le Pen champions national preference, France for the French, [he means] the exclusion [of immigrants], the Arabs and so on."