TUMULTUOUS UNIVOCITY: BADIOU’S MISREADING OF BEING AND THE EVENT IN DELEUZE

Abstract

Badiou argues that Deleuze fails to liberate the concept of difference by re-inscribing the multiple into the totality of the One. This suppression of difference is supposedly carried out at the expense of the radical uniqueness of the event, which, according to Badiou, has no immediate connection to being. I investigate how Badiou reaches this conclusion and then establish his interpretation of being and the event. For Badiou, being is a void; therefore, the event is a radical beginning or rupture entirely disconnected from being. Deleuze, on the contrary, maintains a deep connection between being and the event. Furthermore, he claims that being is univocal — said with one singular voice — even though it is always spoken with an endless number of diverse tones and timbres. Hence, for Deleuze, the event is a repetition of being, a clamorous oscillation between the repetition of the same and of difference. Next, I demonstrate how Badiou’s interpretation of Deleuze goes awry. While Badiou rightly describes Deleuze’s account of being as univocal, he misconceives Deleuze’s concepts of being and the event that are at once singular and multiple. Because the event simultaneously expresses singularity and multiplicity, the difference separating them is never sterilized or suppressed. Instead, it is through this very difference that they are produced and merge into one ontological plane. Deleuze’s concept of the Body without Organs allows for these different forces to occupy the same surface without silencing the clamour of being. The Body without Organs is irreparably cracked, though still one substance. Its two sides or attributes are held together through an irresolvable tension. Nonetheless, the different layers of being share the same lens. Therefore, Deleuze’s concept of being is not a repetition of the same that levels down difference but a repetition of the event that continually produces it anew.