Gone is the complex “negotiation” of a multiplicity of shifting “subject positions”. Gone is any recourse to “strategic essentialism”. Gone is the whole abject register of “bearing witness”, of a guilt-driven empathy or compassion ultimately indistinguishable from a distance condescension. Gone are the anguished musings of an “irreplaceable” subject confronted with the impossibly demanding needs of the Altogether-Other (or the impossibly inconsistent demands of many others). Gone is the tension between this irreplaceable subjectivity and the “temptation” to justify action according to indifferent criteria of universal validity (which thereby “threaten” the subject with replacement). Gone is the tortured reflexive logic of a “decision made by the other in me”. Gone is the anti-philosophical conviction that only the Altogether-Other can know and validate this decision. Gone is the ultimately theological basis for this otherness. Gone is the pathos of finitude, the tragic obligations of the “hostage” and the “sacrifice”. Gone is the paralyzing recognition of a generalized “impossibility”. Gone, in short, is the theoretical association of ethics with a “goodness too good for this world”, along with its practical (legal) justification of this same world.
(Introdução de Peter Hallward à edição inglesa de L'éthique: Essai sur la conscience du Mal de Badiou, p.xxxv)
