Abstract

In Alain Badiou’s most recent work, L’immanence des vérités ( The Immanence of Truths), psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan once again figures peripherally but saliently. What is their specific relation in this text, however? We argue that Badiou responds here to the problem raised precisely by the Lacanian subject, situated as it is between the radical subjectivity of the symptom and the possibility of formalization. In L’immanence, he introduces the term ‘absoluteness’ to secure truths against both relativism and transcendental construction. We show that in drawing on Lacan to establish an understanding of the absolute, Badiou highlights the implicit tension between psychoanalysis and philosophy. We treat central cross-currents – truths, knowledge, the event and love – to help reveal the specific character of their confluence in this third book of Badiou’s trilogy. Although he stresses the unity of his and Lacan’s efforts, the impossible Real marking their divisions also invariably emerges the closer one investigates.