Book Review: Other Areas: Badiou's Deleuze

DOI10.1111/1478-9302.12016_23
AuthorLukas Verburgt
Published date01 May 2013
Date01 May 2013
Subject MatterBook Review
forms of social and economic organisation, particularly
in the Middle East (p. 71). This invasive Western capi-
talism has been eroding autonomy and local centres of
inf‌luence in traditional Islamic societies.Western view-
points suggest that conservative Islam is ill adjusted to
the modern world (p. 31), whereas Christianity is
highly compatible with both democracy and capitalism.
From this perspective 9/11 lacks a singular cause,but is
a reaction to gradual Western economic expansion into
Islam-dominant regions, often linked mistakenly to a
purely anti-Christian or anti-democratic mentality.
Furthermore, Rockmore adopts a constructivist
approach to understanding history.The author favours
an actor model which evaluates events‘in ter ms of the
intentions and goals motivating human actions’ (p. 53).
His explanation of the US reaction to 9/11 is heavily
invested in the evangelical Christian and neo-
conservative inf‌luences on President Bush that thrust
American forces into at least three wars (Afghanistan,
Iraq and the global war on terror), ostensibly in defence
of freedom. The f‌inal chapter devotes many pages to
analysing the Bush administration’s execution of these
concurrent wars and the effect that Bush’s personal
politics played in def‌ining America’s reputation in the
region. However, this book fails to give a full account
of the other actor in play, namely Osama bin Laden.
Omitting a central f‌igure such as bin Laden from the
discussion ultimately weakens our understanding of
9/11 and overlooks important motivating factors and
intentions on the part of al-Qa’eda.
Rockmore argues convincingly that Western reac-
tion to 9/11 has been f‌lawed and short-sighted in
believing that terrorism is a problem solvable through
military might. He rightly elevates economic explana-
tory factors at least on a par with cultural and religious
theories to elucidate the tensions building before 9/11,
and provides ample evidence to support his claim.
Additionally, despite being published only ten years
after the September 2001 attacks, this book offers a
robust post-9/11 analysis.
Daniel E. Westlake
(George Mason University, Virginia)
Badiou’s Deleuze by Jon Roffe. Durham: Acumen,
2012. 196pp., £18.99, ISBN 978 1 184465 509 0
In an upbeat and engaging style, Jon Roffe offers a
profound reading of a provocative debate in contem-
porary philosophy: that between Gilles Deleuze and
Alain Badiou. At issue in the book is ‘neither the
correctness of Deleuze’s philosophy, nor ... that of
Badiou, but rather the evidence in Deleuze’s philoso-
phy to support the reading offered of his work by
Badiou’ (p. 160). This approach is not only unprec-
edented in its interpretative depth, but – as such – also
a remarkable contribution to the creation of a ‘Deleuz-
ian project’.
Badiou’s reading1is oriented around the destruction
of the popular image of Deleuze as a prophet of
‘anarcho-desire’ and ‘rhizomatic-becomings’. He argues
that, despite the endless amount of cool (Bergsonian and
Nietzschean) concepts and creations, Deleuze’s phi-
losophy is in fact ‘organized around a metaphysics of
the One’ (p. 6);a conservative metaphysics derived from
Dons Scotus and Spinoza in which ‘Being’‘is a unique
One-Agent ... distant from its productions and yet their
active source’ (p. 19). This pur if‌ication of Deleuze
forms the a priori decision or axiomatic ‘f‌ilter [and]
lens’ (p. 5) on which Badiou’s entire argument is prem-
ised. Moreover, Roffe shows that it is, in fact, a funda-
mental misrecognition which ‘leads Badiou astray from
the very beginning’ (p. 5).
This is carried out by means of an examination of
important concepts such as multiplicity,substance, truth
and the event.According to Roffe, all of these contain
f‌igments of a ‘Deleuzian philosophy ... irreducible to
Badiou’s account’ (p. 22).For instance, in chapter 4 it is
made clear how Badiou reduces the complex and
dynamic nature of the ‘virtual–actual’ distinction in
Deleuze to an oversimplif‌ied ontological dualism.Like-
wise, in the vital chapter‘Truth and Time’Roffe argues
that Deleuze’s fundamental goal to ‘broaden our con-
ception of being’ (p. 106) is repeatedly ignored in the
global, hierarchical and homogenising scheme of
Badiou.
Despite his attempt to ‘defend Deleuze against [this]
Badiouian scheme’ (p. 161) Roffe advocates a quite
‘Badiouian Deleuze’; he, somewhat surprisingly, praises
a new engagement with Deleuzian philosophy via
Badiou’s (unsuccessful) account.The hope of formulat-
ing a complete Deleuzian metaphysics could, neverthe-
less, be said to go against Deleuze’s own‘nomadic’ aim
to move ‘beyond philosophy through philosophy
[itself]’:2a neo-Leibnizian, materialist movement which
escapes Badiou’s account and is, thus, absent from that
of Roffe.
240 POLITICAL THEORY
© 2013 TheAuthors. Political Studies Review © 2013 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2013, 11(2)

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