Abstract
This chapter initiates a conversation between Deleuze and Badiou concerning multiplicity in three periods. The first (1976–1977) is political, seating multiplicity in a revised doctrine of materialism; it is initiated with Deleuze and Guattari’s “Rhizome—Introduction” (1976) and addresses Badiou’s “The Fascism of the Potato,” penned as Georges Peyrol. The terms of my analysis—multiplicity as structure and attendant procedures for producing any one—emerge in this period. The second period is conceptual, concerning Badiou’s mature ontological system in Being and Event ([1988] 2005) and its brief address by Deleuze and Guattari in “Example 12” of What is Philosophy? (1991). The third (and the one with which readers are perhaps most familiar) is martial, in which Badiou develops the antagonistic arguments in Deleuze: The Clamor of Being and claims that Deleuze is a philosopher of the One and not of multiplicity. Badiou’s criticism concerns the structure of Deleuze’s multiplicity and is the notion with which I open Chapter 3.
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References
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Vartabedian, B. (2018). Engagements, 1976–1997: History of a Misunderstanding. In: Multiplicity and Ontology in Deleuze and Badiou. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76837-3_2
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