In this book, Livingston develops the political implications of formal
results obtained over the course of the twentieth century in set theory,
metalogic, and computational theory. He argues that the results achieved by
thinkers such as Cantor, Russell, Godel, Turing, and Cohen, even when they
suggest inherent paradoxes and limitations to the structuring capacities of
language or symbolic thought, have far-reaching implications for understanding
the nature of political communities and their development and transformation.
Alain Badiou's analysis of logical-mathematical structures forms the backbone of
his comprehensive and provocative theory of ontology, politics, and the
possibilities of radical change. Through interpretive readings of Badiou's work
as well as the texts of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Gilles
Deleuze, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Livingston develops a formally based taxonomy
of critical positions on the nature and structure of political communities.
These readings, along with readings of Parmenides and Plato, show how the formal
results can transfigure two interrelated and ancient problems of the One and the
Many: the problem of the relationship of a Form or Idea to the many of its
participants, and the problem of the relationship of a social whole to its many
constituents.
