Abstract

This chapter questions the conditions of possibility of ethics’ happening. In answering this question, it builds on Alain Badiou’s approach to ethics, showing that discourses on the subject are characterised by intrinsic unresolved contradictions making ethics impossible. Ethics appears as the negative response to problematic situations and not as positive and performative programme. Such can be the case, probably because such discourses on contemporary ethics and associated issues (governance, accountability, trust etc.) are grounded in one particular cultural and political context, that of North American democracy. Ethics is mission possible, provided discourses on its nature are adapted to the situation.