Inexistenz

Following Alain Badiou, inexistence indicates a “degree of minimal existence approaching zero"[1] in contrast to existence, or maximal being. The inexistent does not, therefore, not exist. The inexistent is something that remains in limbo between ontological being (it really exists) and logical non-being (it has no part in structuring, or reasoning the world). For example, women’s suffrage, where women have ontologically existed since the dawn of the human, but inexisted in relation to the logic of voting rights, their plight was a degree of near zero existence with regards to civic laws. Forcing the inexistent into existence, is equal to the creation of a new logic (a novel world structure), where logic is “the legislation of appearing,"[2] not simply that something appears, but that its being effectively counts.

[1] Alain Badiou, Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II, trans. A.Toscano (London: Bloomsbury, 2009), 324.
[2] Ibid.