All resistance is a rupture with what is. And every rupture begins, for those engaged in it, through a rupture with oneself.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that any form of resistance stems from a disconnection with reality, which is ultimately rooted in an internal conflict within oneself.
Alain Badiou's quote reflects on the nature of resistance and change, positing that the roots of opposition to the status quo lie in an individual's struggle with their own identity and beliefs. It implies that to resist external circumstances, one must first confront and resolve their internal conflicts, highlighting the interplay between personal introspection and social change. This philosophical perspective encourages individuals to look within before seeking to alter the world around them.
In practice
In a discussion about personal growth, one might quote Badiou to emphasize the importance of self-reflection.
Art is not ideology. It is completely impossible to explain art on the basis of the homological relation that it is supposed to maintain with the real of history. The aesthetic process decentres the specular relation with which ideology perpetuates its closed infinity. The aesthetic effect is certainly imaginary; but this imaginary is not the reflection of the real, since it is the real of this reflection.
If you limit yourself to sexual pleasure it's narcissistic. You don't connect with the other, you take what pleasure you want from them.
The ethic of truth is the complete opposite of an 'ethics of communication'. It is an ethic of the Real The ethic of truth is absolutely opposed to opinion, and to ethics in general.
What kind of world does one see when one experiences it from the point of view of two and not one? What is the world like when it is experienced, developed and lived from the point of view of difference and not identity? That is what I believe love to be.
Love is not a contract between two narcissists.
We could say that love is a tenacious adventure. The adventurous side is necessary, but equally so is the need for tenacity. To give up at the first hurdle, the first quarrel, is only to distort love. Real love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world.
Londoners say, 'We're so proud of our diversity and tolerance,' but what if that diversity ends up making us intolerant?
The Forgotten Man is delving away in patient industry, supporting his family, paying his taxes, casting his vote, supporting the church and the school, reading his newspaper, and cheering for the politician of his admiration, but he is the only one for whom there is no provision in the great scramble and the big divide. Such is the Forgotten Man. He works, he votes, generally he prays β but he always pays β yes, above all, he pays.
We make a space inside ourselves, so that being can speak.
There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.
For those struggling in midstream, in great fear of the flood, of growing old and of dying for all those I say, an island exists where there is no place for impediments, no place for clinging: the island of no going beyond. I call it nirvana, the complete destruction of old age and dying.
Many undoubtedly owe their good fortune to the circumstance that they possess a pleasing smile with which they win hearts. Yet these hearts would do better to beware and to learn from Hamlet's tables that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
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