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 Can Politics Be
Thought?
FOLLOWED B Y

Of an 0 bscure
Disaster
On the End ofthe Truth ofthe State

ALAIN BAD I 0 U

Translated and with an introduction

by Bruno Bosceels

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS · DURHAM AND LONDON · 201 8

 Peut-on penser la politique? © I98S Editions du Seuil
D'un desastre obscur: Etat, droit, politique © I998 Editions de l'Aube
Introduction and English translation© 20I8 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY
Designed by Matthew Tauch
Typeset in Garamond P re mie r Pro by Copperline Books

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Badiou, Alain, [date] author. I Bosteels, Bruno, [date] translator, writer of

introduction. I Container of (expression): Badiou, Alain. D'un desastre obscur. English.

Tid<: Can politics be thought? I Alai n Badiou; translaied, and with an introduction,
by Bruno Bosteels.

Other tides: Peut-on penser la politique? English I Of an obscure disaster.

Description: Durham: Duke University Press, 1018. j "A John Hope Franklin

Center Book." I Includes bibliographical references and index.

ldemifiers: lCCN 1018013532 (print)

LCCN lOI8029338 ( ebook)

ISBN 9781478001758 (ebook)

ISBN 9 781478001324 (hardcover: alk. paper)

ISBN 9781478001669 (pbk.: alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Political science-Philosophy. I Communism. I Communise state.

State, The. I World policics-1945-1989. I World politics-1989-

Classification: LCCJA71 (ebook) I LCCJA71.B1613 1018 (print) I DDC i20.01-dC 1l

LC record available at https://kcn.loc.gov/2018013531

 CONTENTS

'
TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION · I

Can Politics Be Thought?

Threshold · 29

I. Destruction · 40

2. Recomposition · 70

Of an Obscure Disaster:
On the End of the Truth of the State
III
 Translator's
Introduction

BRUNO BOSTEELS

The two texts translated in this volume constitute Alain B adiou's

most elaborate response to the crisis of M arxism before and afi:er
the collapse of "really existing socialism" in the Soviet bloc. This
response seeks to be faithful to the original impulse behind Marx's
thought, whose novelty would still remain to be reassembled all the
while acknowledging that the old Marxism is dead. Instead of being
merely the inert object of the crisis of Marxism, Badiou proposes
that we should be its active subject: the subject of the destruction
and recomposition of Marx's legacy in terms of its lessons for chink­
ing emancipatory politics today. Hence the title question, Peut-on
penser la politique?, the ambivalence of which becomes even more
pronounced in English: Can politics be thought? This question
can be heard as meaning not only Can we think politics? Is politics
thinkable? But also, in line with B adiou's own view of the relation
between politics and philosophy, Can politics be a form of thought
in its own right, if by this we understand che hypothesis of an egali­
tarian practice chat produces universal truths about che possibility
for collective existence today?
What I propose to do in chis translator's introduction, then, is
to answer two basic questions that may help the reader understand
che place of Can Politics Be Thought? and Ofan Obscure Disaster:
On the End ofthe Truth ofthe State within the trajectory of B adiou's
philosophy: first, what should we cake to be Badiou's understanding
of Marxism; and, second, co what extent does the crisis of Marxism
introduce a necessary break or reorientation, if there is any to begin
with, in chis philosopher's overall work?1

We can begin answering che first of these questions by consider­

ing Badiou's recent book, The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots
and Uprising, which opens with an affirmation chat to many of his
readers will have come as a surprise: "Here, without concerning my­
self with opponents and rivals, I would like to say chat I too am a
Marxist-naively, completely and so naturally chat there is no need
to reiterate it."2 To readers of his older works, in particular, this af­
firmation may indeed seem surprising, insofar as Badiou devotes
dozens of pages in these works to a sustained reflection upon the
complete crisis of Marxism. Such a reflection not only cakes che form
of a critique of Scalinism; it also goes much further and declares an
end to che referential value of Marxist discourse in general.
For instance, in Theor_y of the Subject, which corresponds to
Badiou's seminar between January 1 9 75 and June 1979 and which,
upon its publication in 1982, constitutes a belated grand summa of
his version of French Maoism, he exclaims, "Yes, lee's admit it with­
out beating around the bushes: Marxism is in crisis and atomized.
Pase che elan and creative scission of the sixties, past the national
liberation struggles and the cultural revolution, we inherit, in times
of crisis and the threat ofwar, a fragmentary and narrow d isposicion
of thought and action, caught in a labyrinth of ruins and surviv-

2 · Bruno Bosteels
als."3 Three years later, in Can Politics Be Thought?, Badiou similarly
and if possible even more forcefully restates the fact that, measured
against the force of its beginning in Marx himself, the crisis of
Marxism constitutes the dominant event by which the contempo­
raneity of thought must be measured. If, from this point ofview, the
crisis of Marxism appears to be both complete and inescapable, then
surely more than a few readers familiar with Badiou's older writings
will have raised their eyebrows upon hearing him affirm his Marxist
credentials in The Rebirth of History as though this were the most
natural thing in the world.
To readers less familiar with Badiou's overall thought, on the
other hand, the affirmation about his being a Marxist will have ap­
peared to be less surprising than unconvincing. This is because to
many of these readers, who in the next breath rarely fail to present
themselves as trustworthy authorities on the matter, this longtime
Maoist cannot really be seen as a proper Marxist. Badiou himself
is the first to acknowledge the prevalence of this criticism, which
takes aim with particular force at his recent renewal of the com­
munist Idea for being divorced from the economic and material
realities of our post-Fordist times. "I am ofi:en criticized, including
in the 'camp' of potential political friends, for not taking account
of the characteristics of contemporary capitalism, for not offering
a 'Marxist analysis' of it. Consequently, for me communism is an
ethereal idea; at the end of the day, I am allegedly an idealist without
any anchorage in reality."4 Whether they come from the lefi: or the
right, the problem with all such summary trials and condemnations
of Badiou s insufficiency as a Marxist is that they presume to know
in advance the answer to the question What is Marxism? However,
not only is the answer completely different, but even the question is
posed differently in each case.
For Badiou, the question of what constitutes Marxism is not
philosophical but political. Beyond the naive, spontaneous, and
nowadays entirely naturalized principle of a certain dominance of
the economy, Marxism always means political Marxism for Badiou.
Therefore it is also as a militant political discourse that Marxism

Translator's Introduction · 3
muse be periodized, criticized, and, if need be, destroyed and re­
composed, based on the obstacles ic encountered, che solutions ic
proposed, and the problems ic lefi: unresolved co this day:

Genuine Marxism, which is identified with rational political

struggle for an egalitarian organization of society, doubtless be­
gan around 1848 with Marx and Engels. But it made progress
thereafter, with Lenin, Mao and a few others. I was brought up
on these historical and theoretical teachings. I believe I am well
aware of the problems that have been resolved, and which it is
poincless to start reinvestigating; and ofthe problems that remain
outstanding, and which require of us radical rectification and
strenuous invemion.5

Considered in this light, it turns out that many of the objections

raised against the author of The Communist Hypothesis for being
insufficiently M arxist depend on a prior definition of Marxism that
is foreign to Badiou's own. Whether they view Marxism primar­
ily as the science of history, as the critique of political economy, or
as the philosophy of dialectical materialism, such objections fail co
take into account the fact that for Badiou and his comrades in the
different organizations that he helped found, Marxism has no real
existence other than as a militant discourse of political subjectivity.
One of these friends, Paul Sandevince (a.k.a. Sylvain Lazarus), in
the brochure What Is a Marxist Politics? published by the Maoist
organization of the Union ofFrench M arxist-Leninist Communists
(uCFML), in which both he and Badiou were active until the early
1980s, sums up this significance with his usual concision: "Marxism
is not a doctrine, whether philosophical or economical. Marxism is
the politics of the proletariat in its actuality," and later: "Marxism
is the politics of communism."6
With regard to this political definition of Marxism, there has
been no significant change in Badiou's point of view. Already in the
early Maoist pamphlet Theory of Contradiction, which dates back
co che mid-197os, he had written, "We must conceive of Marxism
as the accumulaced wisdom of popular revolutions, the reason they

4 · Bruno Bosteels
engender, and the fixation and precision of their target."7 Similarly,
against the scientific view still dear to his old mentor Louis Al­
thusser, Badiou in Theory ofthe Subject once more underlines the
militant political nature of M arxism: "Science of history? Marxism
is the discourse through which the proletariat supports itselfas subject.
We must never let go of this idea."8 And it is also this same idea that
will appear in the pages of Can Politics Be Thought? In fact to sup­
port the militant understanding of Marxism, we could cite almost
any text from any period of his work in which Badiou refers to the
discourse that Marx and Engels inaugurated with The Communist
Manifesto.
There is, then, no longer anything surprising if in The Rebirth of
History we find what is only the latest in a long series of statements
about the nature of Marxism as the living knowledge and militant
discourse of communist political subjectivity:

Any living knowledge is made up of problems, which have been

or must be constructed or reconstructed, not of repetitive de­
scriptions. Marxism is no exception to this. It is neither a branch
of economics (theory of the relations of production), nor a branch
of sociology (objective description of "social reality"), nor a phi­
losophy (a dialectical conceptualization of contradictions). It is,
let us reiterate, the organized knowledge of the political means
required to undo existing society and finally realize an egalitar­
ian, rational figure of collective organization for which the name
is "communism.",

This privileging of the political over the analytical, of the mili­

tant over the critical, or of the prescriptive over the descriptive, can
be seen even in the preferred choice of texts from the Marxist canon.
Rather than concentrating, as Althusser did, on the discovery of a
new, structural type of causality in Capital, or even, in the manner
ofAntonio Negri, on the Grundrisse as the dynamic center of Marx­
ian thought, Badiou always favors the historical and intervention­
ist writings, such as Marx's The Civil War in France, Engels's The
Peasant Revolt in Germany, Lenin's What Is to Be Done?, and Mao's

Translator's Introduction · 5
Problems ofStrategy in China's Revolutionary War. Marxism, Lenin­
ism, and Maoism are thus tied to different episodes in an internal
periodization of revolutionary activity:

The great stages of Marxism are punctuated by the proletarian

revolutions and, precisely, the great Marxists are chose who have
directed and synthesized the findings of the theory, ideology,
and politics of the proletariat in the light of these same revolu­
tions: Marx and Engels for the Paris Commune, Lenin and Sta­
lin for the October Revolution, Mao Zedong for the Cultural
Revolution.10

Without wanting to submit the canonical texts for each of these

sequences co a nostalgic reconstruction going straight to the mau­
soleum or wax museum of great dead leaders, for Badiou to be a
Marxist today means first and foremost to take cognizance not of
the solutions so much as of the problems lefi: unsolved during the
last revolutionary sequence from the twentieth century, that of the
Cultural Revolution in China, which between 1 966 and 1976 was
marked by the name of Mao Zedong. One necessarily must remain
a Marxist even when it comes to pushing the unsolved problems all
the way to the destruction and recomposition of Marxism itself.
By contrast, what Badiou seems to have in mind when he affirms
his spontaneous adherence to Marxism in The Rebirth ofHistory
is little more than expedited praise for the analytical strengths of
Marx's diagnostic of the exploitation of labor in Capital. This is a
diagnostic that today, in the context ofworldwide turmoil and crisis,
may well be truer than it was a century and a half ago: "Basically,
today's world is exactly the one which, in a brilliant anticipation,
a kind of true science fiction, Marx heralded as the full unfolding
of the irrational and, in truth, monstrous potentialities of capital­
ism."" For Badiou, though, it has become ever more painfully evi­
dent that the essence of Marxism is not analytical but militant. Not
only does he consider communist politics to be a wager essentially
disjoined from the critique of political economy, but he goes so far
as to suggest that what defines a defeatist stance-even or especially

6 · Bruno Bosteels
when it finds shelter in the M arxological orthodoxy of the university
discourse-is the inability to separate one from the other.
Marxism in Badiou's understanding, in sum, is neither the sci­
ence of history nor the dialectical philosophy that puts Hegel back
on his materialist feet; it is neither a critique of classical or bour­
geois political economy nor an objective description of the misery
of the world with an underlying anthropology of the human subject
as generic species-being. Instead, it is or was a militant, intervening
discourse to sustain the real movement of communism.
Is or was? Great ambivalence surrounds this issue, as is to be ex­
pected in a discourse that constantly comes under the sway of the
specific conjunctures in which it intervenes. If Marxism is neither
an objective science nor a systematic philosophy but an intervening
discourse ofthe political subject, the historical referents and concep­
tual operators of this discourse can be expected to undergo major
changes as well. Marx, Lenin, and Mao-to limit ourselves to the
names systematically summoned by Badiou-are far from present­
ing a homogeneous doctrine that would go by the official name of
Marxism, or Marxism-Leninism, to be protected by the guardians of
orthodoxy from the threat of ideological deviations. To the contrary,
all efforts to safeguard such a doctrine are symptoms of academic
conservatism at best and dogmatic sclerosis at worst, due to the fun­
damental inconsistency of its object. "To put it bluntly, Marxism
doesn't exist," Badiou will go on to declare in the early to mid-199os,
because "between Marx and Lenin there is rupture and foundation
rather than continuity and development. Equally, there is rupture
between Stalin and Lenin, and between Mao and Stalin."12
As far as the breaks and discontinuities between Marx, Lenin,
and Mao are concerned, Badiou sometimes adopts another of Syl­
vain Lazarus's arguments, which refers to the changing roles of his­
tory and politics, or of the relations between the so-called objective
and subjective facrors. For the author of Capital, there thus would
exist a close union or fusion between history and politics, enabling
a kind of transitivity between the working class as a social category
and the proletariat as an organizational operator devoid of all sub-

Translator's Introduction · 7
 stance; for the author of WhatIs to Be Done? the need for a vanguard
party hints at a symptomatic gap that needs to be bridged between
social being and consciousness, or between the class in-itself and the
class for-itself; and for the author of "On Contradiction" and "On
Practice," who is, not coincidentally, also responsible for a "Critique
of Stalin's Economic Problems ofSocialism in the USSR," politics is
put in the command post as a relatively autonomous practice or in­
stance, whereas history, far from serving as an external referent at
the level of social being, becomes entirely absorbed into politics as
the name for the latter's contingent unfolding according to a peri­
odization all of its own.13
Along similar lines, Badiou has increasingly come to disjoin the
analytical from the political role of Marxism ever since he proposed
the combined destruction and recomposition in Can Politics Be
Thought? As a diagnostic, Marx's critique of political economy may
well be more valid today than yesterday, but this does not help the
militant actors in the political uprisings of our time to devise the
appropriate tactics and strategies for intervention. Something has
entered into a profound crisis in the articulation between these two
aspects or logics of M arxism, which I h ave called the analytical and
the political and which others call the logic of capital and the logic
of struggle, supposedly marked by an incommensurability overcome
only by the imaginary glue of communism.14
In other words, Badiou is less and less convinced that we can un­
derstand politics "through history, in and with history," as the early
Marx said about the development of religion i n The Holy Family, in
a phrase ofi:cn repeated by the late Daniel Bensald.15 This is because
for the author of Being and Event politics is entirely of the order of
the event, which cannot be understood unless we put to the side all
mere facts and opinions about facts. For this reason, Badiou increas­
ingly will come to see a political intervention-like an invention in
art, a proof in mathematics, or an amorous encounter in love, as the
other domains in which events can take place- as self-referential
and authorized only by itself This is especially clear in the period
from the late 1980s to the mid-19 9os, which is to say roughly from

8 · Bruno Bosteels
Being and Event to Metapolitics, when the antihistoricist and anti­
dialectical impetus of Badiou's work effectively reaches a peak. But
many commentators still perceive such a stance at work in the pro­
posed return to communism in The Communist Hypothesis and The
Rebirth ofHistory.
Now the drawbacks rightly or wrongly associated with this posi­
tion should be obvious: a seemingly ethereal aloofness, a privileg­
ing of the philosopher-intellectual to the detriment of the masses
in revolt, and in general a separation between praxis and Idea un­
der the openly accepted philosophical guardianship of Plato rather
than Marx. Conversely, however, the risks i nvolved in the opposite
position should be no less evident: an anti-intellectual disdain for
theory in favor of the pedagogy of che deed, a tendency to explain
away the emergence of autonomous political tactics on che basis of
the historical cycles of the capitalist world system, and, in general, a
reduction ofthe political or interventionist M arx of The Communist
Manifesto and The Civil War in France i n favor of the analytical or
systemic Marx of Capital, with or without che subjective supplement
of che Grundrisse.
In any case, the perceived shift in the trajectory of Badiou's eval­
uation of Marxism as a militant discourse is less radical than ap­
pears at first sighc. Even as he will differently come to interpret che
sense or meaning of the term " history," Badiou has always defended
the thesis that politics-while necessarily anchored or rooted in
history-cannot be inferred or deduced from history alone. This
is why all political events are necessarily forced events rather than
spontaneous uprisings.
Let us consider, for example, how in Theory ofthe Subject Badiou
attempts to devise a dialectical articulation between history and
politics, mapped onto the dialectic of productive mass and partisan
class. "Class, apprehended according to the dialectical division of
its dialecticity, means partisan political action anchored in the pro­
ductive historicity of the masses," he claims. "The whole point is to
know how all this works together, because it is this working-together
that is class. This entails nothing less than to make the rectifiable

Translator's Introduction · 9
singularity of policies rise up in the real movement of history."16 It
is true chat Badiou subsequently will abandon this view of the tran­
sitivity or dialectical working-together of history and politics, or of
masses and classes organized through the party's action against the
State. Thus in Can Politics Be Thought? intransicivicy will become
the new key in determining the essence of policies, which marks
the point of the real even at the beginning of Marx's discourse and
which only the M arxist critique ofpolitic al economy later on ended
up fixating into a fic tion.
Between Theory ofthe Subject and Being and Event-with Can
Politics Be Thought? in the mid-198os serving as a pivotal transi­
tion-the old M arxist paradigm of base and superstructure, of
forces and relations of production, and of masses, classes, party, and
State is abandoned in favor of the seemingly disparate paradigm of
situation, intervention, event, fidelity, subject, and truth chat most
readers will have come to associate with Badiou's own philosophy.
This does not mean that Badiou henceforth will abandon M arx's
dialectic and forgo the category of history altogether. In fact in Can
Politics Be Thought? he proposes chat the new vocabulary remains
that of the dialectic. And, as recently as in The Rebirth ofHistory,
he is still revisiting the articulation in question, but now the history
in which all politics is said to be anchored or rooted no longer refers
to the objective factors but becomes an aspect wholly internal to the
subjective process of sustaining a political event as such.
For the pose-Maoist in Badiou, the point is not to politicize his­
tory but to historicize politics. If we witness a rebirth or reawaken­
ing of history, it is no longer premised on the objective history of the
class struggle but on the becoming-historical ofcertain spontaneous
revolts and uprisings and on the making-political of chose historical
moments. In other words, the dialectic, if chis is still what we want
to call the theory of the event, amounts to an immanent periodiza­
tion of spontaneous riot, historical movement, and political organi­
zation. And so the new version of chat old question asked in Theory
ofthe Subject in terms of masses, classes, and party becomes in The
Rebirth ofHistory "How are we to inscribe politically, as active ma-

10 · Bruno Bosteels
cerialicy under the sign of the Idea, a reawaken ing of History?," par­
ticularly if such inscriptions are no longer predetermined but muse
be treated as both rare and contingent events. "Let us simply note
chat if every political truth is rooted in a massive popular event, it
nevertheless cannot be said chat it is reducible to it."17
The militant lesson that B adiou most recently has drawn from
the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement in North America, and the
indignados of Puerta del Sol, for example, is chat the philosopher
should put an ear to the ground co listen to the rumble of massive
popular events, while avoiding at all cost the danger of becoming
the thought police or judge of history-or, worse, helping the exist­
ing cops and judges by becoming a snitch: "For now, though, the
philosopher will be allowed to lend an ear to the signal, rather than
rushing to the police station."18 Philosophy for Badiou cannot be the
waiting room to the local police station or to the world-historical
tribunal from which self-appointed progressives judge everything
and nothing under the sky. Instead it is an activity of thought under
the condition of events that are partially beyond its control. Badiou
has recourse to a number of expressions to make sure that philoso­
phy lees itself be conditioned by and learns from the political events
of its time. Thus in French he most often uses the expression etre a
l'ecole de, literally "co be schooled by" the riots and uprisings of the
past decade-exactly in the same way, in che 1970s, it was common
usage among French Maoists to rely on chis expression to refer to rhe
cask of theory in the face of the events of the "red years" char cook
their inspiration from the Chinese Culcural Revolution. In any case,
we should not rush to judgment by imputing to the philosopher a
desire for reaching a lesson to the participants in the recent revolts
and uprisings. To do so would mean, ironically, co cum oneself into
a mirror image of the philosopher rushing to the police station: in­
stead of blaming the rioters for their lack of ideas, we would blame
the philosopher for his excessive confidence in the Idea. Any day
now I picture somebody along these lines writing a book called Ba­
diou's Lesson, echoingJacques Ranciere's harsh attack inAlthusser's
Lesson. Bue while in The Rebirth ofHistory the author does speak

Translator's Introduction · 11
of " lessons," the fact remains that these are lessons to be learned
from the people in revolt and not magisterially taught to them, very
much in the same way chat in The Century Badiou presents a series
of "lessons" taught by, rather than to, the artistic, political, and psy­
choanalytic experimenters of the t wentieth century. "In the condi­
tion of political misery that has been ours for three decades, is it not
obvious that it is we who h ave everything to learn from the current
popular uprisings?" Badiou also asks in an article originally written
for Le Monde with regard to the events of 2on in Tunisia and Egypt.
"Yes, we must be the pupils of these movements, not their stupid
teachers."19
Accusations against the philosopher's overreaching ambition with
regard to the recent uprisings depend on a profoundly un-Marxist
presupposition chat these accusers attribute to Badiou's recent work
on communism, namely, the presupposition that it would belong
to the philosopher alone to formulate, develop, and propagate what
he calls the communist Idea, without which there could be no re­
awakening of H istory. This would place today's militants in the
position of impatient schoolchildren with a likely attention-deficit
disorder waiting for the philosopher's master class about the role
of the Idea. The latter, then, would be the philosopher's brainchild
with which he supposedly hopes to shepherd the rioters and looters
in the direction of a resurgence of communism. Similarly certain
readers will have concluded from the title ofBadiou's Philosophyfor
Militants chat political militancy depends on the prior theoretical
work performed by the professional philosopher. This too would
lead us straight back to a form of speculative idealism along the
lines of how Marx, in his 1873 afterword to the German edition of
Capital, reproaches Hegel for placing the driving motor of history
in the realm of the Idea: "For Hegel, the process of thinking, which
he even transforms into an independent subject, under the name
of 'the Idea,' is the creator of the real world, and the real world is
only the external appearance of the idea."20 However, while there
is certainly no shortage ofvagueness surrounding the notion of the
Idea as brandished by Badiou, neither The Communist Hypothesis

12 · Bruno Bosteels
nor The Rebirth ofHistory bear out the presupposition that elabo­
rating this notion of the Idea would be the exclusive purview of che
professional philosopher. To the contrary, if there is one presupposi­
tion consistently at work in all of B adiou's writings on the political
condition, it is the notion that politics is an active and generic form
of thought in its own right, with its ideas, thoughts, watchwords,
and scripts. And whereas Marx speaks about the role ofpraxis in
overcoming the inertia of the traditional opposition between theory
and practice, Badiou prefers to describe politics as apensie-faire, that
is, a collective and generic "thought-practice," which is never exclu­
sively in need of the philosopher to know either what is or what is
to be done. "If policies is the practice of a thought in an absolutely
self-sufficient register," as Badiou concludes in Metapolitics, "then
we can say chat philosophy's cask is to seize the conditions for the
practice ofthought within chis singular register known as politics."21
Even the call to ensure that an Idea be rooted in the historical
events chat mark the present age of riots and uprisings so as to give
them greater durability and expansiveness should not be treated as
the symptom of a philosopher's desire for hegemony over the future
of politics. For, aside from the materialist principle which holds chat
it is philosophy that is conditioned by politics and not the other way
around, part of chis call stems very much from the opposite desire,
namely, the wish for policies to bring about a situation in which
everyone can be a philosopher. "Of course, you will recognize in
this a Platonic desire, though expanded from the aristocracy of the
guardians to the popular collective in its entirety," B adiou remarks
in PhilosophyforMilitants. "This wish could be expressed as follows:
wherever a human collective is working in the direction of equal­
ity, the conditions are met for everyone to be a philosopher."22 Not
only are ideas and thoughts immanent to actual political struggles,
but even the communist Idea, for all its seemingly glacial Platonism
or speculative Hegelianism, can be translated as the wish for poli­
tics to create a generic place in which philosophers and militants in
revolt-like the famous hunter, fisherman, herdsman, and critic in
the still overly masculine and pastoral version of communist society

Translator's Introduction · 13
prefigured in The German Ideology- become gathered into a single
figure, perhaps even without having ro split their time between morn­
ing, afternoon, evening, and after-dinner activities, as was still the
case for Marx and Engels. "In this sense," writes Badiou, "all eman­
cipatory politics contains for philosophy, whether visible or invis­
ible, the watchword that brings about the actuality of universality­
namely: if all are together, then all are communists! And if all are
communists, then all are philosophers! "23 According to this for­
mulation, the time may not seem ripe for the universal sharing of
philosophy, but, instead of setting our expectant eyes on the future
of what is yet to come, we could also read the desire for everyone to
become a philosopher as something that already is actualized in ev­
ery instance ofcollective struggle, no matter how local or short-lived.
In this sense, the argument would be in favor of politics as a generic
thought-practice in which theoretical ideas are not transcendent but
immanent to the actions and initiatives that are their only practical
existence. Of course what remains to be seen is the extent to which
Badiou himself facilitates such an understanding of politics as an
immanent thought-practice.
In this regard we face a decision between two basic positions: ei­
ther we maintain the necessity of a double occurrence of thought,
first within politics and then within philosophy; or else we strive as
much as possible to dissipate such reduplication in the name of strict
historical immanence, or what Marx in the "Theses on Feuerbach"
calls the "this-sidedness" ofpractical activity, with the likely result of
a gradual withering away of philosophy as a separate activity. If Ba­
diou is reluctant to accept the last position as a simple given, it may
very well correspond to the ultimate aim of his entire philosophy,
which for this reason always harbors certain elements of antiphi­
losophy as well. Like the Idea, then, truths are immanent to the situ­
ation in which they are worked out. "A truth is something that exists
in its active process, which manifests itself, as truth, in different cir­
cumstances m arked by this process," Badiou observes in The Rebirth
ofHistory. "Truths are not prior to political processes; there is no
question of confirming or applying them. Truths are reality itself,

14 · Bruno Bosteels
as a process of production of political novelties, political sequences,
political revolutions, and so forth."24 Ideas would be part of the on­
going political process. Rather than operating at a theoretically su­
perior level, they would be active on the ground or at the grassroots
level, in the militant rationality of the struggles themselves.
On the other hand, B adiou is always adamant about drawing a
clear line of demarcation between philosophy and the various non­
philosophical procedures- politics among them -in which events
take place and truths can be produced. And, while such a line of de­
marcation is meant as a lesson in restraint to keep philosophy from
making the disastrous claim chat it can be a politics (or a science,
or an art, or a form of love) in its own right, it is also true that this
insistence runs counter co the wish to dissolve che heterogeneity be­
tween politics and philosophy into a single thought-practice whose
unity would be guaranteed by the mediating term of history as the
sole realm of all human activities.
In the end a simple way of summarizing what Marx and Badiou
have in common i s to consider both as thinkers of the generic: ac­
cording to a footnote in OJan Obscure Disaster, this would be the
most important conceptual innovation made in Being and Event.
The location of this genericity is certainly different-with the
young M arx, especially, situating the generic on the side of the hu­
man subject as a species-being, and B adiou, by contrast, assigning
the generic to being qua being as uncovered in a singular truth pro­
cedure. However, just as for Marx the collective or communal nature
of the human being should not be seen as an anthropological given
but as an axiomatic presupposition enacted in the here and now of
concrete struggles, we also must avoid the false impression that B a­
diou's ontology would depend on some kind of phenomenological
gifi: as the appearing ofpure being in the miracle of an event. Instead,
both Marx and Badiou offer versions of a materialist and dialecti­
cal understanding of the link within a given situation between be­
ing, truth, event, and subject. The author ofBeing and Event merely
pushes the deconstruction of being all the way to the point where
the impasse of being is at the same time the pass of the subject. This

Translator's Introduction · 15
means that the generic thought-practice of politics, which o rganizes
a material fidelity to the chance occurrence of an event, can still be
considered an instance of what Marx, in his "Theses on Feuerbach,"
calls revolutio nary practice- even if for Badiou the age of revolu­
tions definitely ended with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revo­
lution: "The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of
human activity o r self-change can be conceived and rationally un­
derstood only as revolutionary practice."25

Does this mean that there is no significant break in Badiou's work

with regard to the militant role of Marxism? H as the crisis of Marx­
ism affected only the vulgar misconceptions limited to the doctrinal
fixation of Marxism-Leninism in the Soviet manuals of historical
and dialectical materialism? Why, then, would Badiou affirm the
need for the destruction and recomposition of Marxism? And, fi­
nally, to what extent does a text like Can Politics Be Thought? mark
a shifi: in Badiou's philosophical itinerary by contributing to this
process?
Here some background history may be useful. Indeed, prior to its
original publication in 1985 in France, Peut-on penser la politique?
had been presented in the guise o f two lengthy exposes, in Janu­
ary and June 1984, o ffered at the Center for Philosophical Research
on the Political. Housed at the Ecole Normale Superieure o n rue
d'Ulm, this was an initiative begun at the end of 1980 by Philippe
Lacoue-Labarthe andJean-Luc Nancy upon an invitation from Jacques
Derrida and with the added suppo rt of Badio u's former teacher and
Derrida's older colleague at the t.cole, Louis Alchusser. The signifi­
cance of this theoretical and institutional conjuncture c annot be
stressed enough. While many devoted scholars of Derrida's work
have commented on the fac t that the Center marks the moment
when deconstruction becomes inseparable from the philosophical
interrogation o fthe essence o fthe political, few of them have paid at­
tentio n to the concomitant fac tor o f seeing an unexpected dialogue
emerge with a number o f Alchusser's ex-students. Thus among the

16 . Bruno Bosteels
notable figures trained in the Althusserian school besides Badiou,
Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy also invited E tienne Balibar and Jacques
Ranciere to present their work in progress at the Center, work that
eventually would lead to major publications such as Ranciere's On
the Shores ofPolitics and Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Un­
like Balibar's and Ranc iere's texts, though, Badiou's talks never
bec ame part of the published proceedings, which would remain
limited to the first two years of activities at the Center collected in
the volumes Rejouer lepolitique and Le Retrait dupolitique-still to
this day, moreover, only partially translated in English in volumes
such as Retreating the Political. It is therefore understandable that
most readers would fail to make the connection between B adiou's
text and Lacoue-Labarrhe and Nancy's efforts to reassess the philo­
sophical legacy of the revo lutionary ldi in the wake o f Heidegger's
and Derrida's proposed deconstruc tion of the tradition of Western
metaphysics. Understandable but also unfortunate, for this failure
represents yet another missed oppo rtunity to gauge the effec ts of a
possible encounter between two parallel, if no t wholly independent,
theoretical and philosophic al o rientations indicated by the names
of M arx and Heidegger in Germany and by tho se of Althusser and
Derrida in France.
It is only in the context in which the arguments behind Peut­
on penser la politique? were first presented that we can explain why
Badiou begins his intervention with a "Threshold" o r "Liminary,"
written in August 19 84, in which he responds to the idea that served
as one of the principal guidelines for the collaborative work of the
Center at the E cole Normale Superieure, where Althusser and Der­
rida were both teaching at the time: the idea of a "retreat" of the
politic al. The French expression retrait here suggests both a retreat­
ing o r withdrawing and a new treatment o r retracing of the stakes
of the politic al. Derrida already had played on this duplicity of the
trait-as-retreat a few years earlier, in texts like "The Retreat of Meta­
phor," but readers of Heidegger in F rench translation also would
not have been surprised to see Derrida in The Truth in Painting, for
example, offer lengthy ruminations on the idiom of the trait and its

Translator's Introduction · 17
withdrawal in an attempt to bring together two families of related
terms from Heidegger's original German: on the one hand, terms
like Riss, Umriss, and Aufriss, and, on the other, terms like Zug,
Bezug, and Entzug or Entziehung. Every tracing of a line or trait,
according to the combined logic of these two idiomatic series, is si­
multaneously an inscription and an erasure; every stroke or outline
at one and the same time opens a rift or lets itself be engulfed by an
abyss ; and every relation or rapport marks at once a retraction or de­
fection of the ties that bind us. In the French text of Peut-on penser
la politique? Badiou adds yet another possibility to this complex
configuration, insofar as he links Marxism's historical credibility to
its capacity to tirer des traites, that is, "to draw lines" or " lay claims"
on history as a process endowed with meaning. By the same token,
if Marxism in the early 1980s finds itself "in retreat," en retrait, or
"takes its retirement," prend sa retraite, this must be understood in
terms of a growing incapacity to lay claims on being the referent that
gives meaning to the process of history.
Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, in the documents with which they
punctuate and assess the results of the Center's research, explicitly
adopt the logic of the retreat based on the Heideggerian and Der­
ridean understanding of the term:

The retreat in the Heideggerian sense (Entzug) of the presenta­

tion which only takes place as the concealment or the disappear­
ance of what is presented (this is the structure or the movement
of alitheia) and, with the Derridean value of the "re-treat," of the
"re-tracing" (combining Zug and Riss) implying in the retreat a
"new" incision or inscription, which cuts ouc again that which
retreats. 26

Even more so than Derrida in "The Retreat of Metaphor" or The

Truth in Painting, however, Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy add a de­
cidedly political slant to this argument. They thus propose that, at
a time when globally we are becoming enmeshed in a sofi: form of
totalitarianism in which politics encroaches upon every aspect ofev­
eryday life, a step back may be needed in order to redefine the essence

18 · Bruno Bosteels
of the political. In what they also call a "liminary" or "introductory"
statement, the conveners of the research center define their purpose
as follows:

In these times, in particular, in which the most simple political

despair (weariness), but also the ease or calculation of things, grn­
erated every imaginable regression and reduced political debate to
almost nothing, it was necessary to give ourselves some room. Noc
in order to shut ourselves off from the political or to reject it but,
on the contrary, co replay its question anew. If there was a chance,
albeit a very slender one, of a philosophical intervention in poli­
tics (or with regard to the political), this was its-exorbitant­
cost, if one considers it to be such.27

A crucial part of this proposal thus relies on the conceptual dis­

tinction between politics, or la politique, and what, for lack of a bet­
ter word, Lacoue-Labarche and Nancy prefer to call the political,
or le politique in French. In the "Opening Address" to the Center,
they add:

In speaking of the political we fully intend not to designate poli­

tics. The questioning about the political or about the essence of
the political is, on the contrary, what for us must ultimately take
stock of the political presuppositions itself of philosophy (or, if
one prefers, of metaphysics), that is to say, of a political determi­
nation of essence. But this determination does not itself produce
a political position; it is the very position of the political, from the
Greek polis to what is deployed in the modern age as the quali­
fication of the political by the subject (and of the subject by the
political). What remains to be thought by us, in other words, is
not a new insticution (or instruction) of politics by thought, but
the political institution of so-called Western thought.28

By accepting the invitation to speak at the Center for Philosophi­

cal Research on the Political, Badiou thus also accepts the challenge
of submitting the discourse of Marxism to an interrogation inspired
by the work of Heidegger and Derrida. In fact the combination of

Translator's Introduction · 19
destruction and recomposition can be considered Badiou's version of
deconstruction. Bue chis also means chat co some extent he accepts
the idea that Marxism-or, rather, M arxism-Leninism- marks the
metaphysical age in the political oncology of the West. Or, as Lacoue­
Labarthe and Nancy had said, "In our translation: socialism (in the
sense of 'real or actually existing socialism') is the complete and
completing figure of philosophy's imposition-up to and including
what, for one of us at least, could have represented the hope of a cri­
tique and a revolutionary radicalization of established Marxism."29
Here perhaps I should add chat Badiou, who had been working in
almost complete isolation from the dominant academic discourses at
the time, would be forever grateful for the chance of a dialogue pro­
vided by Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy. "I hold them in the highest
esteem and love them very much," B adiou told me in an interview,
before shedding some light on the circumstances that surrounded
the original presentation of Can Politics Be Thought? as part of the
research center on rue d'Ulm:

We met in the early 1980s, precisely at a time which for me, no

doubt, was the period of maximum isolation, because the New
Philosophy had been installed, everybody had rallied more or less
to the socialist Left and to M itterrand, and truth be told, if you
consider my own politico-philosophical position, precisely at the
time of Theory ofthe Subject, you will find that it went completely
against the grain and was worked out in absolute isolation. I really
should thank Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy for not having partici­
pated in this isolation and for having invited me to the political
seminar, which they directed at the time on rue d'Ulm.30

Badiou's specific response to his friends' invitation, however, is

nothing short of perverse. With all due respect, he accepts that what
is happening at the time may be described in the Heideggerian terms
of a retreat. And he likewise adopts the distinction between politics
and the political, but only to invert the evaluation of both terms in
Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe's use. The retreat of the political thus
frees up the mobility of politics as a militant thought-practice for

20 · Bruno Bosteels
which Marx's invention, afi:er all, continues to serve as an exemplary
model. Except to add that, insofar as Marxism has led to a fixation
of militant discourse into a metaphysical doctrine, Marx's beginning
must be given the chance of a recommencement. Hence the twofold
approach of Can Politics Be Thought?
As for 0/ an Obscure Disaster, no further context is needed, I
think, to grasp the force of Badiou's rebuttal of the common argu­
ment about the "death" of communism afi:er the collapse of the So­
viet Union, other than to mention that the tide comes from a verse
in Stephane M allarme's sonnet "The Tomb of Edgar Allan Poe," the
last tercet of which reads as follows:

Calme bloc ici-bas chu d'un desastre obscur

Que ce granit du moins montre a j amais sa borne
Aux noirs vols du Blaspheme epars dans le futur.

Calm block here below fallen of an obscure disaster,

May this granite at least reveal its limit for ever
To the glum Rights of Blasphemy dispersed into the future.11

Other than the Mallarmean syntax, of which Badiou has always

been fond and which likewise dominates both texts translated in
this volume, only a few technical terms pose serious problems for
the translator. In Peut-on penser la politique? Badiou systematically
uses ouvrier as a referent for Marxist politics. In many cases, as when
he refers to the mouvement ouvrier, this can easily be rendered as
"workers' movement." Elsewhere, however, as when he posits in the
section "Refutation of Idealism" that the deconstruction of Marx­
ism as a metaphysical discourse cannot go all the way but must stop
at the presupposition that all emancipatory politics depend on a
subject chat is populaire and ouvrier, this reference is more problem­
atic. To translate the adjective ouvrier as "working class" in chis case
would mean missing out on the fact that Badiou is participating in
a broader interrogation of the elements of class essential ism involved
in the official doctrine of Marxism-Leninism. For this reason, I h ave

Translator's Introduction · 21
preferred "workerist," even though for the Maoist organization of
the U C F M L in which Badiou was active throughout the 1970s, ou­
vrierisme or "workerism" implied an ideological conflation of the
working class with its immediate political capacity, resulting in a
limitation of militant struggles to purely economic demands. "It is
completely false to think that any social practice of any worker, no
matter which one, is revolutionary or proletarian," the U C F M L in­
sists in an early circular. "We must firmly combat these orientations
which, despite the 'left-wing' air that they may try to put on, are
in reality from the right. They indeed reject the mass alliance and
the materialist analysis."32 I will leave it to others to decide if and to
what extent "workerist," in the way B adiou mobilizes the term in
Can Politics Be Thought?, may communicate with the tradition of
"workerism" or op eraismo in the Italian tradition.
Finally, there is the strange neologism of the horlieu or "outplace,"
which also appears in Can Politics Be Thought? This term refers back
to a complex elaboration in Theory ofthe Subject, in which Badiou
opposes the horlieu, a portmanteau word derived from hors + lieu,
to the esp/ace, or "splace," another neologism of his own invention
based on espace + place, that is, the space of assigned places. The
dialectical opposition between splace and outplace, in this sense,
continues and revises the way in which Badiou in his earlier Maoist
work Theory ef Contradiction had opposed place and force. As he
explains in Theory efthe Subject:

A remark on terminology: if one opposes force to place, as I shall

continually do, it will always be more homogeneous to say "space
of placement" to designate the action of the structure. It would be
even better to forge the term splace. If, on the contrary, one says
"place," which is more Mallarmean, we will need to say, in the
Lacanian manner, "place-holding" or "lieutenancy" for "place."
But " force" is then heterogeneous to designate the a-structural to­
pological side. It would be more appropriate to say: the outplace.33

For Badiou, an event thus always takes place as the omplace of a

structure of assigned places. In M allarme's terms, it is that which

22. • Bruno Bosteels

proves that what will have taken place is not just the place itself, but
the dice throw from which results che constellation of an eternal
truth.

NOTES

1 For a more systematic account, s e e Bruno Bosteels, B.zdiou and Politics

(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011) . In what follows, I also rely
on materials first published in "The Fate of the Generic: Marx with Ba­
diou," in (Mis)readings ofMarx in Contemporary Continental Philosophy, ed.
Jessica Whyte andJernej Habjan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014),
211-26.
2 Alain Badiou, The Rebirth ofHistory: Times ofRiots and Uprisings, trans.
Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2012), 8.
Alain Badiou, Theory ojthe Subject, trans. and introduction by Bruno Bo­
steels (London: Continuum, 2009), 182.
4 Badiou, The Rebirth ofHistory, 7.
5 Badiou, The Rebirth ofHistory, 8 - 9 .
6 Paul Sandevince, Qu 'est-ce qu 'une politique marxiste? (Marseille: Potem­
kine, 1978), 6. More recently, see Alain Badiou, Qu 'est-ce quej 'entends p,ir
marxisme? (Paris: Editions Sociales, 2016).
7 Alain Badiou, Theorie de la contradiction (Paris: Fran�ois Maspero, 1975),
16.
8 Badiou, Theory ofthe Subject, 44. Even Marx and Engels themselves had
put under erasure the following passage in their manuscript for The Ger­
man Ideology: "We know only a single science, the science of history. One
can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nacure
and the history of men. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the his­
tory of nacure and the history of men are dependent on each other so long
as men exist." Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Gennan Ideology, in
Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 3 : 3 0 3 - 4 .
9 Badiou, The Rebirth ofHistory, 8-9.
10 UCFM L , Sur le maoisme et la situation en Chine apres la mort de Mao Tse­
To11ng (Marseille: Potemkine, 1976), 3 .
II Badiou, The Rebirth ofHistory, 12.

12 Alain Badiou, Aletapolitics, trans. a n d introduction b yJason Barker (Lon­

don: Verso, 2005), 58.

Translator's Introduction · 23
 13 Aside from the texts collected in Sylvain Lazarus, L'intelligence de lapoli­
tique, ed. Natacha Michel (Marseille: Editions Al Dante, 2013), see also
the anonymous text, most likely authored by Lazarus, "Le mode dialec­
tique," La Distance Politique 3 (May 1992): 4 - 6, available in English as
"The Dialectical Mode," trans. Bruno Bosteels, in Badiou and Cultural
Revolution, special issue ofpositions: East Asia Cultures Critique 13 .3 (2005):
6 6 3 - 68. For Badiou's critical rejoinder to the work of Lazarus, see chap­
ter 2 in his J.letapolitics.
14 See Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, Marx, prenom: Karl (Paris: Gal­
limard, 2012).
15 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Holy Family, in Collected Works,
4 : 109. See also Daniel Bensald, '"Dans et par l'histoire': Retours sur la
Question juive," in Karl Marx, Sur la Question juive, ed. Daniel Bensald
(Paris: La Fabrique, 2006), 74 -135.
1 6 Badiou, Theory o/the Subject, 27.
17 Badiou, The Rebirth of History, 67, 89. For Badiou's changing views of
history and politics, see also chapters 3 and 7 in my Badiou and Politics.
18 In French this sentence reads as follows: "Dans !'instant toutefois, on
permettra au philosophe de preter l'oreille au signal, plutot quc de se
precipiter au commissariat." Gregory Elliot's translation is less evocative
of the philosopher as a tattletale who hastens to tell on the rioters in the
police station: "For now, however, a philosopher will be permitted to lend
an ear to the signal rather than rushing to judgement." See Badiou, The
Rebirth ofHistory, 2 r.
19 Badiou, The Rebirth ofHistory, 106.
20 Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes, introduction by Ernest
Mandel (London: Penguin, 1976), 102.
21 Badiou, Metapolitics, 8 6 - 87.
22 Alain Badiou, Philosophyfar lvfili1a111s, trans. and introduction by Bruno
Bosteels (New York: Verso, 2012), 37. Badiou does not elaborate on the
Gramscian undertones of this formulation. In fact, to my knowledge An­
tonio Gramsci is conspicuously absent from all of Badiou's writings.
23 Badiou, Philosophyfor Militants, 38. Compare with Marx and Engels: "In
communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but
each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regu­
lates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one
thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the
afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have
a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic"
(The German Ideology in Collected Works, 5 :47).

24 · Bruno Bosteels
Another random document with
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"I've heard your aunt say half-a-dozen times that she did
not like your going to those Burnsides," said the farmer.

Steenie laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not

bound to care for all her likes or dislikes either," muttered
the boy, tapping his front teeth with his silver-tipped cane.

Macalpine's sharp keen eyes looked sharper and keener

than ever as he observed, "After your aunt's bringing you
up, and doing everything for you these ten years, ever since
you could toddle alone, I think that she has a good claim at
least to your obedience, if you have no affection to give."

Apparently Master Steenie did not relish his uncle's remark,

for, perhaps to turn the conversation, he began teasing the
farmer's dog. Macalpine's angry remonstrance led to the
reply of his nephew with which my little story begins.

"I wonder that you care to keep such a rough ugly cur as
that Trusty," observed Steenie Steers.

"I keep him for some use," answered the farmer. "Trusty
guards my flock attends to my call; by day or by night; in
snow, rain, or hail, he is always ready to do my bidding.
He's a good old fellow," continued Macalpine, stooping to
pat his rugged friend, who licked the farmer's hand in
return. "I've reared him from a puppy."

"I should not care to rear such a common kind of dog as

that," observed Steenie, who prided himself on being a dog-
fancier. "If he were a King Charles spaniel now—"

"Or a pug or a poodle," interrupted the farmer; "I should

not consider him worth the rearing. I care for use, not for
show."
"Your favourite does not cost you much, I'll be bound!" said
Steenie Steers, with a saucy laugh.

"Trusty costs me nothing," answered Macalpine, "for he is

content with a few bones, and fairly earns what he gets. But
a friend of mine once reared a puppy that would, perhaps,
be a puppy just to your taste. Plenty of care and pains she
bestowed on the useless creature, and stuffed it with food
more than enough. I consider that much of that good
feeding was downright waste, seeing what the puppy was to
turn out, and that my poor friend really stinted herself to
pamper her pet."

"Did the creature devour so much, then?" inquired young

Steers.

"Why, he must have gobbled up, during his training,—let me

see—let me see," and Macalpine rubbed his shaggy head to
help out his calculations,—"the pet must have gobbled up as
good as three hundred big legs of mutton!"

"I say!" exclaimed Steenie, in much amazement. "Your

friend's pet must have been no pup, but a lion, and one
with a monstrous appetite, too! Such a brute as that would
soon eat his mistress out of house and home."

"He did not eat all the mutton in a day—or a week—or a

month; he took his time about it," said the farmer, with a
low chuckling laugh. "But my friend's hungry pet did not live
on mutton alone; we must add to the meat some three
hundred pounds of fresh butter!"

"A dainty dog!" exclaimed Steenie.

"And not much less than a thousand loaves of white bread,"

said Macalpine "with tubs of milk, and casks of beer, and I
don't know how many plum-cakes, seed-cakes, iced cakes,
and all sorts of sweeties besides!"

"You are cracking a joke on me, uncle," said Steenie. "I'll

answer for it that your friend's pet was never a puppy at
all."

"I could not answer for it that he is not one now, and a very
useless puppy, and a very ungrateful puppy," cried the
farmer, rising from his seat. "There, I see my sister
coming," he added, as he looked through the open door-
way; "Trusty, you and I will go and meet her."

Trusty, ever ready, sprang up and followed his master.

Steenie's face had grown exceedingly red at the words of

Macalpine; the boy bit hard the silver tip of his cane. He
could now see clearly enough what his uncle's meaning had
been. Steenie himself was the idle, ungrateful puppy, that,
after having been fed for ten long years on his kind aunt's
bounty, had made no kind of return for all the care and love
which she had lavished upon him.

I must say that Farmer Macalpine had a rude and

disagreeable way of giving reproof; he did not, as all
Christians ought to do, speak the truth in love. His manners
and his words were as rough as his hair. We may have no
such plain-spoken uncle to remind us of things which we do
not care to remember, but it is well for all who have been
brought up by parents or friends in comfortable homes, all
who have been fed and clothed year after year by the
kindness of others, to ask themselves what return they are
making for all that they have received.

I fear that Steenie Steers is not the only boy who deserves
the name of "a very useless puppy," and who might, if he
would, learn a lesson from Trusty, the old shepherd's dog.
 What Bird Would You Be?

"A NEW game for a rainy day!" cried Clara, clapping her
hands to command silence amongst the merry little group
of children who, tired of active romps, now clustered around
her.

"It must be a quiet one, for the little ones are out of breath
with Blindman's Buff, and Sophy, I see, is fanning herself on
the sofa. Here, Tom and Felix, draw in chairs to form a
circle; the two footstools will do nicely for Jessie and Minnie
—little seats will suit little people. Tall Phil, you may perch
on the music-stool, and look down on us all, if you like it."

The circle of children was soon formed, all waiting till Clara
should tell them how to begin their new game.

Clara took a rich red rose from a vase which stood near. "I
am going to ask a question," said she, "and to the one who
shall offer the best reason for his or her answer, the rose
shall be given as a prize."

Tom, a merry rosy-cheeked boy, laughed as he stooped and

whispered to his next neighbour, Annie. "If the rose were to
be won by giving a long jump, or a hard pull, or a good
knockdown blow, I'd have a chance," said he; "but you
could wring out butter from a broom-stick sooner than a
rhyme or a reason from me."

"Let's hear the question," cried Phil.

"If you were to be changed into a bird, what bird would you
choose to become?" asked Clara.

"An eagle," shouted out Master Tom.

"Your reason?" inquired the young lady.

"Well," drawled out the boy, "suppose because he is the

biggest and strongest of birds, and able to whack all the
rest."

"The eagle is neither the biggest nor the strongest of birds,"

cried Phil. "The ostrich, condor, and albatross are all larger,
and some more powerful than the eagle."

Tom shrugged his shoulders and shook his head; had he not
been fonder of boxing than of books, he might have said
that the huge condor, being a vulture, is of the same order,
and therefore may be called first cousin to the eagle.

"Jessie, dear, what would you be?" asked Clara of the

smallest child in the room.

"I'd be a hummingbird," lisped Jessie, "'cause it's the

prettiest of all 'ittle birds."

"Pretty, yes," observed Annie, her sister; "but I think that

its prettiness is rather an evil to it than a good. If you were
a hummingbird, Jessie, you would very likely be caught,
killed, and stuffed for the sake of your beauty."

"And what says our little Minnie?" inquired Clara of a plump,

fair, flaxen-haired child who sat on a footstool next to
Jessie, with her arm round her young companion.

"I'd be a beauty swan, swimming about amongst the lilies,

under the shady trees," said the child, who had admired the
swan and his mate, with their little cygnets, floating on the
lake, as she had seen them that morning.

"Give us your reason," said Clara.

"I like paddling about in the water, it's so nice," was the
simple reply.

"Ay, you would like it in summer," cried Phil, "when the lilies
are in flower, and the trees in leaf. But I know a little lady
who in winter does not care to stir off the hearth-rug, and is
ready to cry if sent out into the cold. She would not then
care to be a swan, and paddle about on the ice."

"I'd rather be a swallow," cried Felix, "and escape altogether

from winter with its frosts and its snows. A life of active
pleasure, not of lazy enjoyment, for me! I like to travel and
see distant lands and what fun it would be just to spread
one's wings and be off for France, Italy, or Algiers, without
any trouble of packing a trunk, with nothing heavier to
carry than feathers, and no railway tickets to pay for, or bills
at hotels on the way!"

"Were you a swallow, you'd have a bill wherever you flew,"

laughed Phil.

"Oh! A precious light one," said Felix gaily.

"As for me, I'd prefer the life of a lark," cried Phil. "I'd
sooner mount high than fly far; and I'd like to whistle my
song from the clouds. To my mind, the little sky-lark is the
merriest bird under the sun."

"If you were to be changed into a bird, Sophy, what bird

would you be?" asked Clara of a rather affected little girl,
who sat twirling the bead bracelet which she wore on her
arm.
Sophy drooped her head a little on one side, as if it rather
troubled her to give an opinion,—and she thought herself
too much of a fine lady to join in so childish a game. She
glanced up, however, at the splendid rose which Clara held
in her hand, and thinking that it would look very pretty in
her own hair, prepared to answer the question.

"What bird would you be?" repeated the boys, who were
growing a little impatient.

"The nightingale," said Sophy in an affected tone, again

looking down, and twirling her beads.

"You must give your reason for your choice," observed

Clara.

"Every one admires the nightingale's sweet notes," said

Sophy, glancing up at the rose.

"Oh, ho! There's a fine reason!" laughed Phil. "I'd sing like
the lark in the joy of my heart, with the sunshine about me;
but Sophy would sing for other folk to admire her trills and
her shakes, and cry out, 'I never heard anything so fine!'"

Sophy looked vexed at the remark, for Phil had hit on her
weakness; the vanity which is always seeking for praise.
Clara, who liked all to be peace and good-humour, turned at
once the attention of the little party in another direction, by
addressing Annie, the only one of the circle who had not yet
been questioned.

"What bird would you be, dear?" asked she.

"I think, an eider-duck," replied Annie.

Her answer was received with a burst of laughter.

"A duck—to dabble in mud, and gobble up snails and frogs!"
cried Phil.

"Or be gobbled up itself, with green pease, and admired as

a very nice bird!" exclaimed Felix.

"Ducks are very pretty—almost as pretty as swans," lisped

little Jessie, who did not like her sister to be laughed at.

"I do not think that eider-ducks are pretty," said Annie; "I
did not choose the bird for its beauty."

"You have not given us a reason for your choice yet,"

observed Clara.

"I think the eider-ducks useful," said Annie; "the delightful

quilt, so light yet so warm, which has been such a comfort
to mamma in her illness, was made from their down. But
my chief reason for liking the bird is its unselfishness. You
remember, Jessie," added Annie, addressing her sister,
"what mamma told us about the eider-ducks that are found
in Scotland, Norway, and Iceland?"

"Oh yes; I know all about them!" cried Jessie. "The good
mother duck pulls off the down from her own breast to line
her nest, and make it soft and warm for her baby ducklings;
and when people steal away the down, she pulls more and
more, till she leaves herself bare,—and then her husband,
the drake, gives his nice down to help her."

"When mamma told me all this," said Annie, "it reminded

me of the beautiful story of the Highland mother who was
overtaken by a terrible snowstorm, as she travelled with her
babe in her arms. The mother stripped off her shawl, as the
duck does her down, and wrapped it close—oh, so close!—
round her child, and hid him in a cleft in a rock. The baby,
wrapped in his mother's shawl, was found alive where she
had left him; but the poor woman—the loving woman—"
Annie's voice failed her, and she did not finish the touching
tale of the mother who perished in the cold from which she
had guarded her child.

"Now let us compare the various reasons which have been

given for choosing different birds," said Clara, "that we may
decide upon which is the best one. The eagle was chosen
for size and strength, the little hummingbird for beauty; one
liked the swan's life of easy enjoyment, another the
swallow's of active amusement. The lark was chosen for
cheerfulness, the nightingale for the admiration which he
gains, the eider-duck for the unselfishness which she
shows. Now which of our little party has given the best
reason for a choice?"

"Annie! Annie!" cried most of the children—though Sophy

murmured something about "an ugly waddling creature that
can say nothing but 'quack!'"

"Then I think that we agree that Annie has won the rose,"
said Clara.

And if, before the day was over, that sweet rose found its
way to a chamber of sickness, and was laid on an eider-
down quilt within reach of a lady's thin hand, the reader will
easily guess how it came there. Annie was one not only to
admire but to imitate the unselfishness of the bird that finds
its pleasure in caring for the comfort of others, instead of
seeking its own.
 The Hero and the Heroine.

"HARRY was a hero, if ever there was one!" cried Theodore

Vassy, after he had been for some time silently looking at a
print of the prince who was afterwards so famous as Henry
V. The print represented the well-known anecdote of Harry's
trying on the crown of England by the sick-bed of his father.

"I never admire that story much," observed Theodore's

eldest sister Alice, raising her eyes from a volume which she
had been reading. "A son finds, as he thinks, that his father
has just died; and, instead of bursting into tears (like our
good Queen when she gained a throne by the death of her
uncle), Prince Harry's first thought is to try on the crown! I
do not wonder," added Alice with a smile, "that when the
poor sick king woke from his deathlike sleep, he was little
pleased with his son."

"But the son, if the story be true, made such a noble excuse
for himself, that even his father was satisfied," said
Theodore. "Harry had not tried on the crown because he
was in the least hurry to wear it, but because—"

Alice shook her head, laughing. "Harry's excuses may have

been clever, but I am afraid that they were but false ones,"
said she; "for when he was once on the throne, one crown
was not enough for King Harry: he must carry sword and
fire into poor France, because he wanted to have two!"

"Girls know nothing, understand nothing, about heroes,"

said Theodore in a tone of contempt.

"Girls have been heroines," replied Alice with some

animation. "In this very book which I have been reading
—'Memorials of Agnes Jones'—there is an anecdote of her
courage when she was a child of but eight years old which
might have done credit to a boy of ten, even if he bore the
name of Theodore Vassy," added the elder sister gaily.

Theodore prided himself on his manly spirit, though it was a

spirit which more often carried him into difficulties than
bore him bravely through them. For instance, Theodore had
boasted that he would clear his father's cellar of the
troublesome rats that had made it their home; and he had
made an attempt to do so. The boy had even succeeded in
catching a rat by the tail! But no sooner had the fierce little
prisoner turned and bit his captor's finger, than Theodore,
giving a cry of pain, had let the rat go, and had retreated at
once from the cellar, leaving the honours of the battle-field
to his small four footed foe.

Luckily for Theodore, no one had been present to witness

the fight; and the boy took good care not to mention his
adventure. Not even Alice knew where her brother had got
the little mark left on his hand by the teeth of the rat.

"Let's hear your anecdote, if it's worth the hearing," said

Theodore Vassy. "I never yet knew a girl who would not cry
at the prick of a needle."

Alice turned back the pages of the book which she had been
reading, till she came to the part relating to the childhood of
Agnes Jones.

"This memoir is written by the sister of Agnes," observed

Alice; "and it is one of the most beautiful books which I
ever read in my life."

"And who was this Agnes?" asked Theodore.

"A young lady, the daughter of an officer," replied Alice
Vassy. "When she was a little child, she accompanied her
parents to the island of Mauritius, off the east coast of
Africa, where occurred the following incident, thus related
by her sister." And Alice read as follows:—

"At Mauritius, when she was about eight years old, a friend
sent her a present of a young kangaroo from Australia. An
enclosure was made for it in the garden, and Agnes
delighted to feed and visit it daily."

"I've seen a kangaroo in the Zoological Gardens,"

interrupted Theodore. "It was larger than our big dog, and
went springing and jumping on its long hind legs, as if it
were set on springs. I never saw such a creature for
leaping! I was told that the kangaroo has tremendous
strength in those hind legs, and that, when hunted, it
makes itself dangerous even to the dogs. I suppose that
this little girl's kangaroo was very tame as well as young, or
she might have had more pain than pleasure from her
plaything." Theodore was thinking of his fight with the rat.

Alice went on reading the sister's account of the little Agnes

and her pet kangaroo:—

"One day, as she opened the gate, it escaped, and bounded

off into our neighbour's plantation. Agnes followed, fearing
it might do mischief, climbed over the low wall which
separated the two gardens, and after a long chase
succeeded in capturing the fugitive. Some minutes
afterwards my mother came into the garden, and was
horror-struck to see her returning from the pursuit—the
kangaroo, which she held bravely by its ears, struggling
wildly for freedom, and tearing at her with its hind feet;
while her dress was streaming with blood from the wounds
inflicted by its nails."
"I say!" exclaimed Theodore involuntarily, "I'd have let the
horrid beast go!"

"But she would not do so," continued Alice, still reading,

"until she got it safely into its house; although it was many
a long day before she lost the marks of her battle and its
victory."

"She was a gallant little soul!" exclaimed Theodore. "What a

pity it is that Agnes was a girl, and not a boy! For, after all,
courage is not of much use to a woman."

"I am not sure of that," replied Alice; "nor, perhaps, would

you think so, were you to read this beautiful Life. Agnes left
a bright, happy home, to watch as a nurse by the sick-beds
of the poor. Though she was a lady born and bred, she
shrank from no drudgery, grumbled at no hardship: she
worked hard, and she worked cheerfully, looking for no
reward upon earth. Agnes had to struggle against great
difficulties; but she mastered them just as she had
mastered the kangaroo when she was a child."

"And got nothing by it," said Theodore Vassy. "One might

suffer, and struggle, and conquer difficulties, if, like Harry
the Fifth, one had a crown to make it worth while."

"There was a crown for Agnes," observed Alice gravely; "but

not one that man could give, or that she could wear upon
earth. The artist who drew that picture—" Alice glanced as
she spoke at the print in the hand of her brother—"has
made Prince Henry look upwards, as if praying to be made
worthy to have a crown. Agnes Jones's was a life-long
looking upwards—a life-long trying on, as it were, of the
crown prepared for such as love their Heavenly King;—and I
believe," added Alice, as she closed her volume, "that after
her brave struggles and her victories, Agnes Jones has gone
to wear that crown."

Beware of the Wolf.

YOU never need fear, little children, to meet

A wolf in the garden, the wood, or the street;
Red Riding-hood's story is only a fable,—
I'll give you its moral as well as I'm able:
Bad Temper's the wolf which we meet everywhere—
Beware of this wolf! Little children, beware!

I know of a boy, neither gentle nor wise,

If you tell him a fault, he gives saucy replies;
If kept from his way, in a fury he flies—
Ah! Passion's the wolf with the very large eyes;
'Tis ready to snap and to trample and tear—
Beware of this wolf! Little children, beware!

I know of a girl always trying to learn

About things with which she should have no concern:
Such mean Curiosity really appears
To me like the wolf with the very large ears,
All pricked up to listen, each secret to share—
Beware of this wolf! Little children, beware!

And Greediness, that's like the wolf in the wood

With the very large mouth, ever prowling for food,
That eats so much more than for health can be good;
That would clear a whole pastry-cook's shop if it could;
That never a dainty to others will spare—
Beware of this wolf! Little children, beware!

PASSION, PRYING, and GREEDINESS, each thus appears

As a wolf with fierce eyes, a large mouth, or big ears;
They bring to our nurseries fighting and fears,
They cause bitter quarrelling, trouble, and tears.
Oh! Chase them and cudgel them back to their lair—
Beware of the wolves! Little children, beware!
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
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