I can not but agree with Alex’s sentiments, Levi’s comment as well as Reza’s and Graham’s bits of support.  Even as I look over at my bookcase which houses no less than 17 books by or about Badiou, I must join in the call of betrayal.  Of course all kinds of Lacanian things can be said about myself or anyone who saw Badiou as the possible ‘one to save us’  For many young philosophers though, Badiou represented an exodus from the land of deconstruction (a country of pure salt and rubble) and promised great constructions, political aspirations outside the state and a future re-enchanted by thought.  What sealed Badiou’s fate in my mind was when he said, to a fellow EGSer, that the brain was ‘merely a tool of man.’

As equally disheartening as Badiou’s sterility is his remoteness – the construction of his philosophy as always at a distance – not only a distance in terms of his time (as distinctly modern) but the mathematic distance from thought itself to say nothing about the sick churning of materality.

Mark and Dominic reply to Alex.