Metapolitics

By ‘metapolitics’ I mean whatever consequences a philosophy is capable of drawing, both in and for itself, from real instances of politics as thought. Metapolitics is opposed to political philosophy, which claims that since no such politics exists, it falls to philosophers to think ‘the’ political.

Alain Badiou, April 1998[1]

Metapolitics (sometimes written meta-politics) is metalinguistic talk about the analytic, synthetic, and normative language of political inquiry and politics itself. Put simply, it is dialogue about the way we talk about politics. If one studies, analyzes, and describes a language, the language used for studying, analyzing, and describing the object language is a metalanguage. In current usage and praxis, the term metapolitics is often used in relation to postmodern theories of the Subject and their relation to political theory.[2] In its broadest definition, metapolitics is a discipline that studies the relationship between the State and the Individual.[3]

See also

References

  1. ^ Badiou, Alain. Metapolitics. London & New York: Verso; 2005. ISBN 1-84467- 035-X. p. xxxix.
  2. ^ Toward Meta-Politics
  3. ^ Other "meta-" discourses: Since Metapolitics in its current usage takes on inter-disciplinary characteristics, it is often discussed in relation to other disciplines, including mathematics (science) and art. When mathematicians are concerned with utilizing the formula, signs, and language of mathematics in order to talk about the formal system itself they are engaging in a metalanguage. To discuss the system of axioms which constitutes the foundation of mathematical talk (ie., calculus or set theory), mathematicians (or any lay person) would occupy themselves with metamathematics (talk about mathematical talk). Those who occupy themselves with the examination, analysis, and description of the language of science, occupy themselves with metascience.

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