Alain Badiou - The Insubordination of Joan of Arc
Who is she, that there could be both the anti-Joan of Voltaire and Michelet’s Joan, the incarnation of the people? The nationalistic and Catholic Joan, France’s eldest daughter of the Church, and the Joan of resistance and emancipation? The last war brought the enigma to its fever pitch. For there was the Joan of Pétain and the Joan of the Resistance. There is a Joan of the darkest reaction, of denunciation and collaboration; and a Joan of the communists, the very same which, along with the secret Party, returned the colours of France to Aragon. Even today, there is a Joan of Le Pen and the National Front. Or a Joan for those for whom the watchword is no longer the rallying cry of resistance against the powerful and militaristic invader, “to throw the English out of France”; but the watchwords of the dejection and persecution of the most vulnerable of our compatriots, the terrifying slogan of “throwing the sans papiers out of France.” Against what can we reclaim a Joan for whom France is nothing if she is not within the imperative of resistance? If she, the Joan in the midst of her prayer, does not propose to tie all that is beholden to universal maxims for us in the midst of a political declaration? Accordingly, who can declare that those who have lived here for years, with or without documents, are as much from here as we are?
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