The Meaning of Sarkozy

Alain Badiou, in this sharp and focused intervention, claims that the election of Nicholas Sarkozy as President is not an event, nor is it the cause for wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth. To understand the significance of Sarkozy, we have to look behind the insignificant vulgarity of the figure and ask what he represents, namely a reactionary tradition which goes back to the early nineteenth century, in the process mapping out a communist hypothesis that can lay the basis for emancipatory politics in the twenty-first century.