Abstract:
This thesis explores the place of chance in relation to political subjectivity and equality. We begin with a theoretical history of chance based on Hegel's logic, Nietzsche's Zarathustra and Althusser's aleatory materialism. With Hegel we see the forms chance takes: chance as possibility; chance as a process of actualisation; and chance as power. With Nietzsche we see the unleashing of the creative possibilities of chance through the de-totalising effects announced by the death of god, Nietzsche thus clears the way for chance to take its place at the heart of subjectivity. Althusser traces the history of a type of thought in which chance is the engine and in doing so formalises an aleatory materialism in which the material nature of chance is elaborated. From here Badiou develops a formal theory of the subject in which chance is at the heart, the subject existing essentially as the trajectory of a series of chance encounters. Badiou distinguishes political subjects from other types of subject through thinking the uniqueness of political situations, political truths, and the political events through which political truths are able to rupture political situations. At the heart of an event is its aleatory dimension, which corresponds to the material encounter through which truth is able to enter a situation. We see then that the political subject both emerges and develops according to the material process known as chance, and politics is thus a process with chance at its heart. Rancière shows that politics is based on the assertion of equality, and that the regime of politics that corresponds to the assertion of equality is democracy. Rancière casts fresh light on the place of chance at the centre of democracy, as the only just source of any title to govern. Badiou finally shows that an idea is necessary to mediate between truth and a political situation, but such an idea is not synonymous with Hegel's totalising concept. We finally see that equality, presupposes chance as the means through which to establish politics.