Politics of the One: Concepts of the One and the Many in Contemporary Thought

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This volume in the Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy series examines one of the most important topics in contemporary political theory: how to conceptualize the relationship between the one and the many. The essays discuss how to reconcile multiple ontologies without subsuming them to a totalitarian unity. While one school of thought (Deleuze, Negri) seeks to create a new ontology based on the many instead of the one, (which, politically, is close to anarchy), another proposes to understand the "one" as the "ultra-one" of the event (Badiou). In this groundbreaking work, leading thinkers explore these debates and offer alternative concepts. Building on Jean-Luc Nancy's essay who proposes an ontology of "singular plurality," contributors aim to synthesize the one and the many and suggest different ways of forming collectives, beyond the dominant representative political forms. An original and challenging work, Politics of the One addresses new possible ways of bringing people together, integrating philosophy with theoretical and practical problems of politics.

Author Bio

Artemy Magun is Professor of Democratic Theory, Chair of the Department of Political Science and Sociology at the European University at Saint-Petersburg. He also teaches at the Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences (alias Smolny College) of the Saint-Petersburg State University. Artemy Magun received PhDs in political sciences from Michigan University (2003) and in philosophy from Strasbourg University (2004). He is author of many articles, of two books in Russian, one of which is also published in French. His book Negative Revolution is to appear in Continuum in 2013. A. Magun is member of the collective "Chto Delat" (Russia).