polity
First published in French as Je vous sais si nombreux . . . © Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2017
This English edition © Polity Press, 2019
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
101 Station Landing
Suite 300
Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3262-9
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Badiou, Alain, author.
Title: I know there are so many of you / Alain Badiou.
Other titles: Je vous sais si nombreux. English.
Description: Cambridge, UK; Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018004916 (print) | LCCN 2018020846 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509532629 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509532599 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509532605 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Humanity--Philosophy. | Humanism. | Other (Philosophy) | Young adults--Political activity. | Political science--Philosophy.
Classification: LCC BJ1533.H9 (ebook) | LCC BJ1533.H9 B3413 2018 (print) | DDC 194--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004916
The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
The two essays that make up this volume began as two lectures I delivered, the first at the Lycée Henri-IV and the second at the École nationale des Beaux-Arts. A common feature of both was that they were addressed to audiences composed predominantly of young people, although for different reasons. At the high school the reason was obvious, since there are not many old people still in high school. At Beaux-Arts it was a different story, because it didn’t involve students from that school, at least not primarily, but rather a very informal “organization” of young and not-so-young people, almost all of whom were from the recent, closely related mass movements, the Nuit Debout [“Night on Our Feet”] gathering on the Place de la République and the fight against the labor law devised by the final Valls-Hollande government. They met regularly at Beaux-Arts to assess their action and to plan for the future. The organization was called “Conséquences,” which is a good name.
I owed my presence as a speaker to the mediation and requests of two young friends of mine, each of whom was from one of the places concerned and who basically represented for me the appeal to young people of philosophy primarily, in the one case, and of politics primarily, in the other.
In both cases there was a full house, an audience listening intently, and intense discussion afterward.
The key concept of the first lecture was the Other and of the second one, politics. You’ll see fairly quickly, I believe, that there were subtle, close links between the two requests. Basically, the situation very naturally turned the two lectures into a kind of sequel to my recently published book La vraie vie [published in English as The True Life, Polity, 2017], which was itself based for the most part on lectures to high-school students.
So once again it was a case, as the Athenian citizens’ characterization of Socrates’ public speeches had it, of “corrupting the youth,” which means: offering them some possibility, if not of changing the world, at least of having a strong enough desire to see what that could be like.
Alain Badiou