So far as I can understand Badiou's system, isn't a diagonal a
transcendental. So art or poetry itself is not a diagonal but must be
univocal immanence. (Univocal being one and many and not one voice to
the exclusion of all others which would be an equivocal claim which is
not univocal. Hence a polyphonic novel must be univocal for if it were
not then there can be no dialogic imagination. See note below.) So the
question here of a diagonal is a transcendental question posed of the
the transcendental itself and so concerned with the formal pragmatics of
philosophy or what Laruelle would call the philosophical decision in his
transcendental critique. It then follows that poetry is not a question
or a problem to be solved. Here Badiou is being quite Deleuzian in his
use of an a-posteri transcendental or a virtual transcendental which
comes afterwards or what Deleuze also calls nomadic and mapping a
diagonal. But to be able to pose a diagonal transcendental question
univocity must be or the question cannot be posed. The basic question
being what is thought which is intertwined with a question of being.
Badiou also rejects the Leibnizian principle of non-contradiction (there
are many possible worlds but only the best possible world is chosen and
so there is no contradiction between one best possible world and many
possible words.)
So to speak in a more colloquial way, the world of poetry and the world
of philosophy are contradictory worlds in which there is no question or
no need of this contradiction being resolved into a non-contradiction
which is the best of all possible worlds which is to say that there is
no need for philosophy to give the voice of thought and reason to
poetry. Poetry is already infinite thought, which is to say poetry is
univocal, and the problem for philosophy in posing a diagonal to
infinite thought which is already poetry is a unilateral problem of how
to pose a transcendental question for philosophy. Unilateral because you
can't then go from philosophy to poetry to say what poetry is since this
requires a philosophical decision which is already chosen on behalf of
philosophy and as such is not the question of what is thought and hence
the banal failure of philosophy to answer its own question. With poetry
already being infinite thought it is already truth so truth procedure is
a unilateral transcendental procedure for philosophy in which philosophy
is unable to turn around and be able to say what is and is not a true
poem for if it were to do so it fails as philosophy to pose the question
of what is thought and again fails to be philosophy, which is to say it
is not true philosophy.
The way questions are posed by Badiou of art and poetry also answers
Deleuze's concern about philosophical concepts being based solely on a
mathematical or scientific function, as appears the case in Badiou's
earlier book on events, which as Deleuze rightfully understands would be
a disaster for philosophy and to which Badiou also readily agrees.
Deleuze's a-posteri transcendental also goes some way to explaining
Foucault's joke about the 20th Century being (a-posteri
transcendentally) Deleuzian, just as an amusing aside.
Note:
Beth Metcalf does a far better at explaining univocity then I can hope
to do....
THE UNIVOCITY OF DELEUZE
by Beth Metcalf
http://users.rcn.com/bmetcalf.ma.ultranet/
Ray Brassier (a Badiou translator) also has an article on Laruelle and
non-philosophy in Radical Philosophy which again does a far better job
of explaining then I can. I think Robin MacKay is still translating
Badiou's Number and numbers and a draft can be found on his blog.
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