Description The Mathematics of Novelty: Badiou’s Minimalist Metaphysics
tackles the issue of philosophical materialism in Gilles Deleuze and
Alain Badiou, enquiring after the source and nature of the ‘novelty’
that both philosophers of multiplicity claim to discover in the
objective world. In this characteristically erudite analysis, Sam
Gillespie maintains that where novelty in Deleuze is ultimately located
in a Leibnizian affirmation of the world, for Badiou, the new, which is
the coming-to-be of a truth, must be located exterior to the
‘situation’, i.e. in the void. Following a lucid presentation of the
central concepts of Badiou’s philosophy as they relate to the problem
of novelty (mathematics as ontology, truth, the subject and the event),
Gillespie identifies a significant problem in Badiou’s conception of
the subject which he suggests can be answered by way of a supplementary
framework derived from Lacan’s concept of anxiety. Gillespie’s intent
to illuminate the relation of philosophy to the four truth procedures
(art, love, science, politics) leads him to the polemical conclusion
that, as a transformative rather than descriptive or reflective
project, Badiou’s philosophy ultimately reclaims the power of the
negative from the positivity and pure productiveness of Deleuze’s
system, thereby freeing thought from the limits set by experience.Contents Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
1. Conditions of the New: Deleuze and Badiou 1
I: Deleuzian Novelty 4
II: Badiou’s Novelty 7
III: Paradoxes of the Whole 15
IV: Overturning Assumptions 17
V. Conclusion: Axiomatic 21
2. Nothing That Is 25
I. Thinking and Being, They Are the Same 25
II. Foreclosing the Void 29
III. The Problem of Infinite Modes 33
IV. Non-Causal Relations 37
V. Conclusion: Enabling the Event 40
3. Approximately Infinite Universe 45
I. Frege/Russell: Zero Exists 50
II. Cantor: Infinity and Inconsistency 52
II. Badiou: Mathematics is Ontology, the Void is the Name of Being 57
IV. Towards the Situation 61
V. Meta-structure: The State and its Excesses 62
4. Beyond Being: Badiou’s Doctrine of Truth 71
I. Contesting Truth 73
II. Towards the Generic 77
III. The Force is With You 82
IV. Towards the Situation (Again) 85
5. Giving Form to Its Own Existence: Anxiety and the Subject of Truth 95
I. Rudimentary Ontology: An Overview 98
II. The Void: Subject or Being? 105
III. Affect defined 117
6. From Reflection to Transformation: What is Philosophy? 125
I. Beyond the World: Why Novelty? 139
Bibliography 151
Index 157
Authors, editors and contributors
Sam Gillespie Joan Copjec has paid tribute to Sam Gillespie as 'one of the most gifted and promising philosophers of his generation'. Sam was a leading figure in introducing Alain Badiou to the English-speaking world: as a key member of the original Umbr(a) collective at SUNY Buffalo, he instigated the special Badiou issue that published the first serious philosophical translations of Badiou's work, including 'Descartes/Lacan', 'Hegel', 'Psychoanalysis and Philosophy' and 'What is Love?' Sam Gillespie received his PhD posthumously from the University of Warwick.
ReviewsReview in S: Journal of the Jan van Eyck Circle for Lacanian Ideology Critique (Journal TOC | PDF file)
‘Illuminated by Gillespie's unusual brilliance, the distinctive profile of Badiou's philosophy stands out clearly against the backdrop of modern French thought. The Mathematics of Novelty is a lucid and important book by one of Badiou's earliest and most discerning admirers in the English-speaking world.’ - Joan Copjec
‘This tremendously valuable book is a landmark in the critical reception of Badiou’s work in general and of Badiou’s relation to Lacan in particular. Sam Gillespie provides a clear and incisive account of Badiou’s subtractive ontology (one that withdraws being and thought from the ‘conditions of the world’) and of his transformative or revolutionary conception of truth. He contrasts this account with that proposed by Deleuze, and he supplements it through reference to Lacan’s concept of anxiety, so as to make good the major gap he discerns in Badiou’s theory – its lack of an account of affect or motivation, of the process whereby a subject comes to be seized by the consequences of an event. The result is a philosophical tour de force, full of insight and promise.’ - Peter Hallward
‘The chief...originality [of The Mathematics of Novelty] is...its introduction of Lacanian psychoanalysis as a means of making good what Gillespie sees as the deficit of Badiou's ethico-political theory in terms of agency, commitment, and motivation....Gillespie has some interesting, often strikingly original things to say in this connection and makes his points with impressive argumentative force.’ - Christopher Norris
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