Abstract

Alain Badiou's political thought revives the revolutionary aspiration to create the “emergence of another humanity.”3 However, Badiou's project is not a nostalgic attachment to Leninism; it is a response to Leninism's failure and a call to experiment beyond the exhausted political forms of the twentieth century. In a recent lecture, “Is the Word Communism Forever Doomed,” Badiou argues that the model of the Leninist party-state is no longer a viable option for composing a “new mode of existence.”4 The emancipatory goals of both Leninism and Maoism were crushed by their institutionalization in the party-state. Although the following sentence sounds like…