Abstract
A classic definition of crisis within IR refers to crisis in terms of something that happens—an unexpected event—and has to be dealt with, managed, to be put managed and put under control. Perhaps, this is why the word “crisis” is simultaneously employed to designate momentary emergencies as well as opportunities, for they are moments in which interventions are possible. The aim of this chapter is to suggest a dialogue with concept of the “Event”—which Gilles Deleuze characterizes as “pure,” “true” events in relation to ordinary, superficial, historical events, while Alain Badiou claims it a rupture in being—to help us to navigate a sea of crisis discourses. I will argue that Deleuze’s use of the imagery of scars and wounds clarifies how he differentiates event from Event, which will lead us to a better understanding of the ontology of crisis and change. Based on 2013/2014 events in Ukraine, I will reflect upon the currently unfolding dynamics in post-Soviet space to, finally, characterize the end of the Ages of Empire in global politics as the Event.
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Notes
- 1.
For the specific differentiation of “Ukrainian Crisis ” and “Ukraine Crisis ,” see Trenin (2014, footnotes).
- 2.
Article 72 of the Ukrainian Constitution stipulates that only the President and the Parliament can call a referendum while Article 73 demands that any alteration in territory has to be done through an all-Ukraine referendum .
- 3.
The primary texts in which Deleuze explicitly discusses events are “The Logic of Sense” (2004), “Difference and Repetition” (1990), and “What Is Philosophy?” (1994), co-authored with Felix Guattari. As for Badiou, the bulk of his reflections lies in “Being and Event ” (2005), “Infinite Thought” (2004), and “Philosophy and Event ,” with Fabien Tarby (2013).
- 4.
As such, Deleuze conceives the historical event the affirmation of the aleatory, much like a dice throw rather than a necessary component of a providentially ordered system. Here, he is explicitly following Nietzsche, for whom the dice throw is affirms chance, producing nothing but sense (see Costache 2012).
- 5.
If one takes, in binary language, the set with the condition “items marked only with ones,” any item marked with zero negates the property of the set. The condition which has only ones is thus dominated by any condition which has zeros in it (Badiou 2005: 367–71).
- 6.
Badiou identifies four domains in which a subject (who, it is important to note, becomes a subject through this process) can potentially witness an event : love, science, politics , and art.
- 7.
In line with his concept of the event , Badiou claims that politics is not about politicians, but activism based on the present situation and the “evental” rupture, which is always connected to change .
- 8.
According to Feltham and Clamens (see their introduction in Badiou 2004), Events have four characteristics: (1) they are radically contingent; (2) they take place at a particular locality, the Evental site, and not across a situation; (3) it is always impossible to tell whether or not an Event belongs to a situation; and (4) an Event may only be identified “reflexively”—by already having chosen to identify it.
- 9.
Using the language of mathematics, Events occur when new, previously unspeakable numbers are discovered and named. The act of naming a new number transforms the field itself, pretty much like Thomas Kuhn’s idea of scientific revolutions, except that the transformative force is an act of naming rather than an anomaly in the empirical field. In this sense, political revolutions are akin to scientific revolutions in the ways their effects unfold.
- 10.
Badiou himself is reticent to enumerate long series of Events, since they are rare and exceptional, he argues. Hence, he insists that a lot of political eruptions, conflicts, and revolutions are not true Events at all, thus reinforcing my previous observation of how the word “crisis ” has been overused lately.
- 11.
While Russia was more easily internationally recognized as the lawfully successor of USSR after the official dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the remaining 14 post-Soviet states struggled for recognition as independent states. The three Baltic states were the first to declare their independence, between March and May 1990, claiming continuity from their 1918 to 1939 independent status prior to their annexation by the Soviet Union in 1940. The remaining 11 states (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , Moldova, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan , Turkmenistan, Georgia , and Ukraine ) initially formed the Commonwealth of Independent States and then eventually gained independence (see Arbatov et al. 1997).
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Resende, E. (2018). Crisis and Change in Global Politics: A Dialogue with Deleuze and Badiou’s Event to Understand the Crisis in Ukraine. In: Resende, E., Budrytė, D., Buhari-Gulmez, D. (eds) Crisis and Change in Post-Cold War Global Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78589-9_2
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