Introduction: Badiou's form

Abstract

Alain Badiou is perhaps the world's most important living philosopher. Few, if any, contemporary philosophers display his breadth of argument and reference, or his power to intervene in debates critical to both analytic and continental philosophy. Badiou's influence upon contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis, ontology, history and philosophy of science, film studies, art history, theatre studies, political philosophy and even geography has grown exponentially in the last few years alone. Badiou's work is now a constant reference for already-established figures such as Jacques Rancière, Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek, among others, and references to his work can be found in an enormous ra..