Bat, I basically agree that Badiou’s problem is political rather than philosophical; except that it seems to me that that might itself be, or lead to, a philosophical problem. And thanks for the point about conditioning not being subordination.

With this distinction in mind, I’d suggest that Badiou’s weakness lie not so much in his philosophy but in his politics. His peculiar brand of left Maoism had pretty much run out of steam by the mid-1970s and left him thoroughly ill-equipped to understand, say, the uprisings in Eastern Europe in the 1980s (uprisings he pretty much ignores in his woeful “obscure disaster” take on the collapse of the USSR). So in that sense it’s not surprising that the last political Event that Badiou recognises was 1968 – no reason why we should be limited in such a manner tho.

One small point: I don’t think it’s right to speak of philosophy being “subordinate” to its conditions. In fact Badiou argues that one of the ways philosophy goes wrong is to subordinate itself to one of its conditions, a phenomenon he calls “suture”. Rather he talks of philosophy as a “procuress of truths”. There’s a lot that can one read into this rather racy metaphor, but it doesn’t smack of subordination.