The Noble Family as “Singular Multiplicity”? Redefining the Smoczynski–Zarycki’s Totemic Definition of Nobility through the Lenses of Alain Badiou’s Mathematical Ontology

Abstract

Abstract In our paper, we redefine the category of “family” denoting the relationship of selected members of a post-noble/post-aristocratic milieu in Poland using Alain Badiou’s terminology. Badiou’s ontology based on a mathematical set theory and a generic theory is the most developed, complex, and revolutionary ontology of the 20th and 21st centuries. However, it is rarely adapted to new empirical studies probably because of its novelty and complexity. We do not intend to use the empirical case study made by Smoczynski–Zarycki to inform our argument but instead perform a translation of the Durkheim–Lacanian theoretical standpoint from “Totem…” into the category of “singularity” [singularité] in its relation to “the state of situation” [état de la situation] from “Being and Event” (Badiou 2005). This approach seeks to find a universalizing potential of nobility that will allow it to become a relevant subject for truth procedure analysis.