1. ‘Cosmo-geographies of difference: Latour, Deleuze, Badiou’
Thanos Gkaragkounis

2. The importance of difference in AT
Where to start?
Latour: ‘in the middle of things’
What can I do in the middle of things?
Assemblage Theory says: ‘unfold’
Is ‘unfolding’ an idealistic or an empiricist theory?
It is neither; or rather it is ‘both/and’; it is perfectly materialist, though not in the dialectical or Marxist sense, and it is certainly idealistic but not in the Kantian sense
Assemblage can be thought either in terms of Actor Network or as pure Assemblage Thinking:

3. Actor Network Theory: an Epistemology
Latour’s draws on uncertainty:
The 1st rule of ANT based on the recognition of the importance of uncertainty:
Follow rather than explain (the actors)
2nd rule: no group only group formation (identity always in the process of being made)
3rd rule: action overtaken : an actor is not always conscious of what made him/her act this way or about other actions that have had an impact on his/her action
4th rule : objects can act too, not only humans
5th rule matters of fact versus matters of concern (objectivism revisited)
6th rule: writing risky accounts

4. Assemblage Thinking: epistemologies
Bodies without Organs (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988)
Emphasis is placed upon becoming rather than being
Becoming is relevant to association, network and assemblage
For Deleuze being is about a point whereas becoming is pointless
Becoming does not mean imitation though
It means simply ‘constant transformation’
And it is here that Assemblage Thinking chimes with becoming;
Assemblage Thinking is about the externality of relations which condition but do not determine the elements that take part in these relationships

5. Assemblage Thinking: materialities
Becomings fold, unfold and refold
In terms of politics this signifies a micro-politics of difference
Under the lens of Assemblage Thinking difference is made
Difference is made of other differences
The final aim being always: to differentiate
The latter takes Assemblage Thinking from politics and places, on to the terrain of ethics;
Promote, sustain and cultivate moralities that will respect these differences
AT is not about a usual politics and ethics therefore;
AT allows to move from politics to micro politics; from ethics to liquid morality (have I been moral?)

6. Assemblage Thinking: from Ethics to moral ambivalence
It should be therefore understood:
No secure ground on which to lie our ethical judgements
No secure ground on which to base our political alliances
No secure ground on which to trust our personal engagements
No secure ground on which to build our economic institutions
No secure grounds on which to found our scientific progress
No secure grounds on which to make our artistic revolutions

7. Everything you were always afraid of, is happening
no foundations;
no uncontested meanings;
everything is ambivalent;
variety of interpretations;
philosophy is but an other ‘language game’
science is serving neoliberal capitalism
arts are commodified low quality products
love (of course) is always given in exchange for something (money usually)
Is not that scary?

8. Alain Badiou: from ANT (Epistemology) and AT (epistemologies+materialities) to the Event (ontology and truth)
Is there any possible way to eliminate ambivalence, difference, liquidity, indetermination, contingency and the externality of relations with which Assemblage Thinking is related?
Actually no, but this is not always bad news. Why? Because Assemblage Thinking is not about the relativity of truth but mostly about the truth of relations.
So what is a truth?
Without further ado we define truth:
‘The new that happens under the responsibility of the event to which a subject declares its fidelity’ (Alain Badiou)

9. The event
For Badiou truths exist in four domains: science, love, art and politics
Philosophy’s role is nevertheless not to prove its truth, but to facilitate finding the truth that happens in any of the other four domains.
Badiou’s philosophy is an ontology based on mathematics.
Opposite to the event stands the situation (current status of a condition of things to which the event has not yet been disclosed).
The event in other words is a break, rupture, a revolution something altogether different, from whose revelation and onwards no one can think of the situation in the same way any more.

10. The event What kind of ontology is Badiou’s ontology?
It is based on mathematics and specifically Set Theory
It is non-representational in that it starts that of which it speaks
Badiou draws on Plato ‘s philosophy in order to support:
the one is not and by implication (there is no being of the one)
what is not one should be the many that is the other of the one and that means that the many are
being thus is multiple and everything starts from difference (multiplicity)
Being is a multiple of multiples

11. The event: the new that happens
Inclusion and belonging
Not everything that is included in the situation belongs to the situation
So there is always something that escapes presentation: representation
Being therefore is always exposed to: void, excess and the indiscernibility of an undecidable event that comes from nowhere heading to the unknown

12. Subject
The subject is or deserves the name from the time it recognizes an event to which it declares its faith
This is the condition of truth (true politics; true science; true love; true art);
being faithful to what comes after the unfolding of an event

13. Conclusion The world is messy but that does not mean it is an illusion
More importantly that should not frighten us
ANT points in the direction of a flat ontology of connections, relationships and transformations where everything is being formed as a network but in a way that matters
AT takes a leap forward enhancing connections and networks but also stressing the importance of these materialities for subjectivities (subjects)
Finally, The Theory of the Event highlights the importance of bringing together these matters and these subjects through the mediator of truth explaining in other words why love, art, science and politics still matter (at least for some of us)!