Saint Paul
La fondation de
l'universalisme
To: poo@cts.comFrom: Ulrich Morgenthaler
Re: Evental - A question for Robert Earle
My name is Ulrich Morgenthaler, living in Stuttgart/Germany.
I googled across your piece "Looking for the Evental" when I was looking for help to translate the term "evental" into German. I --- also my friends --- found your piece very entertaining as well as insightful. May I ask you on what page in Badiou's book on St. Paul you found this term? I could then look it up in the German translation of that book.
In case it interests you: I am presently doing a translation into German of the book The Event in Science, History, Philosophy and Art by Dr. Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon. It was in this book that I first came across the term "evantal" which the author discusses under various aspects. For some information see:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Event-Science-History-Philosophy/dp/1602648816/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366227237&sr=8-1&keywords=yeshayahu+ben-aharon If you have any questions please let me know.
--- With best regards,
Ulrich MorgenthalerHi, Ulrich,And thanks for your letter.
You are asking about a quote taken from a novel, Nights in the Pink Motel: An American Strategist's Pursuit of Peace in Iraq by Robert Earle.
It is a fascinating bit of writing from one who served with the Bush administration in Iraq ten years ago trying, somehow, he tells us, to come up with a plan for getting the U. S. unstuck. When asked by one of the grunt soldiers in the hospital why he was in Iraq, he says that his main task is "trying to figure out how to defeat the insurgency and get us out of here."
As you know from the reading, he defines Badiou's "Evental" as "The rhapsodic insistence that what they [spiritual teachers such as St. Paul] believe enters time and space as we know it and pushes it out of the way,"
I think he'd say miracles are time-bound and space-bound. The boy walks. The old woman sees. That's an occurrence that reverts to what we would call reality; reality is the continuous reference point. What he means is a permanent alternative; reality is displaced.
If you need more input on this, I suggest that you contact Robert Earle, Author, "The Pink Motel" --- %The Naval Institute Press, 291 Wood Road, Annapolis MD 21402 --- to discuss this matter further. Me? I got lost later on in the book when Earle was eyeing the nurse with the "chocolate-drop moles" working behind the computer.
--- C. A. Amantea