THE REMAINS OF HISTORY

A concept of the messianic event and the historical remainder is crucial to Jambet, as exemplified above all in his narrative of Alamut. The early volumes that Jambet co-wrote with Guy Lardreau, L'Ange (1976) and Le Monde (1978), anticipate this narrative. In one sense, this is unsurprising. Jambet and Lardreau began their career together as French Maoists or, more precisely, members of the Gauche Prolétarienne (1968–73), as contrasted with other Maoist organizations like the Union des Communistes de France Marxiste-Léniniste (including Badiou, Judith Balso, Sylvain Lazarus and Natacha Michel) and the Gauche Ouvrière et Paysanne (1969–72; see Badiou 2008a: 125–6). The Gauche Prolétarienne eventually became particularly notorious for those adherents who, disillusioned when the revolution no longer seemed imminent, not only withdrew from revolutionary thought but, to a greater or lesser degree, swung to the opposite pole: Benny Lévy, Jacques-Alain Miller, Olivier Rolin, André Glucksmann (see Badiou 2008a: passim).

Neither Jambet nor Lardreau remained Maoist or politically active, though, to Badiou at least, they appeared to be ‘honest renegades’ (Badiou 2008a: 128). But having noted the connection between Jambet and Lardreau, we also need to separate them. It is Lardreau who provides the chapter in L'Ange that most evidently develops a thought of event and remainder. His account of early Christian sects is a version of Jambet's tale of intermittency (LA: 3.1; cf. Lardreau 1983).