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The question raised by a radical current of thought (Balibar, Rancière, Badiou), which traces its origins back to Althusser, can be formulated in the followed manner: in what way is it today possible to deploy the paradoxical dialectic of the Universal? In other words, how, starting out from the singularity of situations, to affirm a universal which is subversive of the order containing these situations, while at the same time acknowledging the impossibility of its substantial realisation? The risk involved being that one will remain wedded to a logic of momentary deflagrations containing the seed of their own failure, while moving backwards and shying away from the requirement to take up the challenge implicit in the mastery of action, and in the construction of a new order.