PHRONESIS

A nell! series {rom Verso edited by r�rnesto Laclatt and Chantal Mou{{e

There is today wide agreement [ha t the left-wing project is In cr i­sis . New a nta gonisms ha ve e m erge d - not only in a d va nced ca pita list societies bll t a l so in the Ea stern bloc a nd in the Third World - tha t require the reformulation of the socia list idea l in terms of a n extension and deepening of democracy. Huwever, serious disagreements ex i s t as to the theoretica l stra tegy needed to ca rry out such a ta sk. There dre those for whom the current critique of ra tiona lism a nd un i versa lism puts into jeopa rdy the very ba sis of the deIl10cra tic project . Others a rgue tha t the cri­tiq u e of e s s entia lisIl1 - a p oin t o f con vergence of the most importa nt trends in contempora ry theory: post-structura lisIl1, p hil o s o p h y o f la ngua ge a fter the la ter Wit tge n s t cin , p o s t ­H eidcggeria n hermeneutics - is the necessa ry c o n dit i o n for understanding the widening of the fie ld of socia l struggles cha r­acteristic of the present stage o f deIl10cra tic politics. I>hronesis clea rly locates itself a mong the latter. Our objective is to esta blish a dia logue between these theoretica l developments and left-wing politics. We believe tha t a n a nti-essentialist theoretica l stand i s the sine qua non of a new vision for the Lefr conceived i n terms o f a ra dical a nd plural democra cy.

On the Shores

of Politics

J A C QUE S l� A N C I t� R ��

Tran sl a ted by Liz HerOt1

VERSO London. New York

Introduction

Tc) speak o f the boundaries o f the pol it ical realm would seem to evoke no precise o r current reality. Yet legend in var iab ly has the polit ical begin a t one boundary, be it the Tiber or the Neva , and end up a t another, be i t Syracuse or the Kolyrna : r iverbanks 0 f foundation, i s land shores of refoundation, abysses o f horror or ruin. There must surely be something of the essence i n this l a n d ­scape fo r pol it ics t o be s o stubbornly represented within i t . A n d we k n o w t h a t philosophy h a s played a s igna l part i n this stub­bornness� I ts c l a ims i n respect o f polit ics can be read i ly summed up as an imperative: to sh ield polit ics from the per i l s that are immanent to it, i t h a s to be hauled on to dry land, set down on terra f irma.

The whole pol i t ica l project of Platon ism can be conceived as an ant i-marit ime polemic. The Gor�ias insists o n this : Athens has a disease that comes from its port, from t h e predominance of marit ime enterprise governed e n t i re ly by profit a n d surv iva l . Empirical polit ics , that i s to say the fact o f democracy, i s identi­f ied with the maritime sovereignty of the lust for possession, which sa i l s the seas doubly threatened by the buffeting of the waves a n d the brutality o f the sai lors . The great beast o f the populace, the democratic assembly 0 f t h e imp er ia l i s t city, c a n be represented a s a trireme of drunken sa i lors . In order t. save politics it must be puHed aground among the shepherds.

From the disclission which opens Book IV o f the Laws� we know that the distance of eighty stadia which separates the city of (�l in ias froll1 tts port is , in the Athenian 's eyes, barely enough. ()nly the few encircl ing mountains prevent t h i s proximity from

1

ON THE SHORES OF l'OLITICS

making the whole project o f foundation a hopeless one. The almuron, t h e tang of brine, i s always too close . The sea smells bad. This is n o t because of the mud, however. The sea sm ells o f sailors, it smells of democracy. The task o f philosophy is to found a different p o l itics, a politics of conversion which turns its back on the sea.

In the first place, it is a m atter of mise-ell-scene, of shifting images a r o u n d: cave a n d mou n ta in instead o f sea and land. Before taking llS down into the famous cave, Socrates te l l s llS a lot a b o u t t r i r emes , i n c orrig ib le sa i lors a n d he lp less p i l o t s . Entering the c a v e we b id farewell to th is fatal a n d seductive seascape. The cave is the sea transposed beneath the earth, bereft o f its sparkl ing glam our : enclosure instead o f open sea, men in c h a i n s instead o f rows o f oarsmen, the dullness o f shadows on t h e w a l l i n s re a d o f l ight reflected on waves . The procedure

whereby the prisoner i s released and offered conversion is pre­

ceded by a n other, b y that first metaphoric act which consists i n

burying t h e sea , drying i t up , stripping i t o f its reflections and

changing their very n a t u r e 4 In response to these assaults we

know, howev er, that the sea wil l take i t s revenge. for the para­

dox of the undertaking is that h aul ing politics on to the solid

ground of knowledge and courage enta i l s a return to the is les o f refounua t ion ; it means crossing the se,l once more and surren­dering t h e shepherds' resurrected city to the whim s of tides a n d

.

marlners. The pr ima r y a i m of th is noncommittal declarat ion - t h i s

declaration without promises - might therefore be to indicate a few places o r pathways conducive to reflection upon the figure o f t h e boundary which has always accompanied th inking about the polit ical; a n d also upon the age-old, a n d st i ll current, position of

phi losophy a t the margin o f polit ics, always somehow l inked to

the idea o f a retreat from that fatal brink, the idea o f a change o f course o f a 'conversion' which, from Greek metanoia to German , Kehre, whether v o l u bl e or mute (or even mutely voluble), has

a lways attended philosophy's thinking, or thoughtlessness, or even distractedness, vis-it-vis the polit ical realm.

But it has also becom e clear that current events c a n give fresh mean ing to this l ine o f inquiry. Nowadays we hear countless

2

INTRODUCTION

proclamations, both scholarly and otherwise, of the end of the era in which politics wandered from littoral to l i ttoral. Ended

too, it i s said, is the time when phi}osopher�legislators took it upon themselves to reground polit ics a t the risk of leading i t to some n e w abyss. Pol it ics is apparently now at last quitt ing that territory, bounded by the shores 0 f origin or blocked by the looming abyss, to which the custodianship of phi losophy has hitherto confined it. Free at last, it is supposedly a b o u t to spread out through the boundless space which is that of its own sup­pression. The end o f a subservient politics wi l l thu s a lso be the e n d 0 f pol it ics itself. We arc sa id to be l i v ing through the end o f p o l i t ica l divisions, 0 f social antagonisms and utop ian projects; entering into an age of common productive effort and free cir­cu la t ion, 0 f nat ional consensus a n d in terna tional com petition. Instead of utopian is lands a n d millenarian dreams, the belated wisdom of our times offers more accessible earth ly paradises and more imminent deadl ines: Europe or the Centre, 1993 or the year 2000.

Yet, viewed from closer range, this configuration holds some surprises. Thus the same conspicuous American who noisily pro­cla im s the end 0 f history with our decade also tells us, more quietly, that this is the very same e n d proclaimed by Hegel in 1�07, even i f th i s means leaving us in doubt: Has it taken history this part icularly overburdened two-centuries-Iong interval to get its death over with because getting r id o f the last vestiges is a lways slow, or because o f the fateful error o f the interpreter, J\.1arx, who saw in the Hegelian promise not the e n d o f history a t a l l , but m erely the end o f prehistory?

One might merely sm ile at the alacrity with which pol itica l a dm i n i strators look forward to the time when pol i t ics wi l l be over a n d they can a t last get on with pol it ical business und is­turbed. B u t it w il l perhaps be more interesting to take a closer look a t the duplicity involved in this real ization/suppression 0 f politics, which is s imultaneously a suppression/realization o f p h i ­losophy. Perhaps there i s something to be gai n e d b y a s k i n g q uestions a b out the n e w conjunction between philosophy's old claim to be steering polit ics a way from its own fateful bound­ar ies , a n d the new certainty about politics having fulf i l led itself

3

ON THE SHORES Of peLITICS

and history ha ving ended. Is it not Just when pol i t ics presurnes to have freed itself frorn rhe weight o f phi losophical utop ias that it f inds itself in the very p la c e for which i t \\i,lS dest ined by the philosophica l project of doi n g away once and fo r all wi th the disorders of pol it ics?

The texts which follow strive to disenrangle a few ana lyt ic clements from this s in gula r kn ot. They represent an attempt to get beyond toda y's cornpla c e n t or nosta lgic pron ou n c ern ents abo ut the exha ust ion o f ega l ita r ian and communa l ( m i s)a dven­tures, about the tr iumph o f l ibera l dernocracy or a bout the end of

ideologies, pol i t ics a n d history, a n d identify a fe w paradoxes which may prompt us to reexa mine n o t j u st p h i l osophy's pol it i­c a l role, but a lso the status 0 f the pecu l iar a ctivity which we c a l l polit ics. The reader should be alerted to the contingent na ture o f these analyses and the context t o which the fi rst two texts i n par­

t i c u l a r be long, n a m e l y d i s c u s s i on s wi th La t in A m e r i c a n phi losophers and friends fac ing the hopes and d i ffic u lt ies o f the return to democracy. I n Santia go de Chi le , we tr ied to thin k through a r e i n terpreta t ion of how democra cy i s exper ien c e d beyond the theoretica lly a n d pol i t ica l ly disastrous stereotypes o f 'rea l' a n d 'for rna l ' democracy. A t a Franco - B raz i l ian meeting, by contrast, we con sidered certa in a mbiguit ies of a nd i rnpa sses reached by a Western democracy supposedly rejo ic ing over the fina l transcendence 0 f c lass struggle. Str iking students in Pa ris and a French pres ident ia l e lect ion eve n tua l ly s u p p l i ed these reflections with raw ma ter ia l . Though I have not hesitated to

remove a mbiguit ies or to a rnpli fy va gue a l lus ions, J hope to have preserved some fee l ing in what follo ws of d i rect engagement between a n u mber o f q uest ions of interpretation w i t h in the c la s­sical phi losophical tra dit ion a n d a number of question s provoked

by the urgencies and surprises of our own p resent.

4

The End of Politics or The Realist Utopia

1. The End o f the Promise

The n o w u b i q u i tous ly bruited en d 0 f pol it ic s i s rea d i ly described as the end of a part icula r period of time which is i tse lf marked by a part icula r ernploymen t of t im e : the prornise. Immedia te pol it i ­cal real it ies offer us a s ign a l exa mple o f this . In 1981, we elected a n e w pres ident o f the Republ ic 4 At the t ime he made us a hun­dred and ten promises4 Not a hundred - a hundred a n d ten . Excess is the essence of the promise . In l' 88, we reelected h i m w i t h o u t in q u i r in g h o w m a n y o f them h e had k e p t. On t h e contrary, enl ightened o p in ion pra ised h i m for t h e fact that this time - with a scant exception, to which I shall return - h e did not make a single one. Wha t th is meant, so it wa s sa id , was that in seven years he and we had switched centuries4 We were leaving behind the 'dusty phi losophic a l and c ultura l corpus� of the nine­teenth c entury, the c e n t u r y o f the d r e a m o f the p e o p l e , of promised communit ies and utopia n islands, the century o f a pol­it ics o f the future which had o pen ed up the abyss into which o u r o wn century had s o nearly foundered. The new outlook 0 f our candidate-pres iden t was supposedly tha t o f sorneone who ha d f ina l ly seen the l ight, finally rounded the cape and entered the new century. ror the or ig ina l ev i l wa s the promise itself: the ges­ture which propels a telQs of community, whose s p l i n tered pa rts ra in ba ck down l ike rnurderous stones. Politics wa s now going to renounce i t s long complic ity with idea s o f future times and other pla ces. It would now end a s a secret voyage to the isles 0 f utopia, a n d henceforth vi e w i tse l f as the art of steerin g the sh ip a n d embra c i n g the wa ves, i n the n a t u ra l , pea ceful rn ove m en t o f

s

ON THE SHORES OF POLITICS

growth, of that pro-duction which reconciles the Greek phtlsis with the everyda y art o f pushing forward one step a t a t ime; that production which the la st, nlad century ruined with its murderous use 0 f the promise .

There is one pa rt icula r idea a bout the end of pol i t ics which goes l i k e this ; secularize politics as all other activities affecting the production a n d reproduction o f i n dividua ls and groups have been secula rized; give up the i l lusions attached to power, to the voluntaristic representation of the art of politics as a programme of li beration a n d a promise of happi ness . Give up the a ssimila ­tion 0 f pol itica l potestas to the imperium of some idea, some te/os of t h e gro up; make it more a k i n to the power of the secu­larized activities of work, exchange and plea sure. Conceive of an

exercise of polit ics synchronous with the rhythms o f the world, with t h e buzz of thi ngs, with the circula tion of energi es, in for­mation a nd desires: a politics exercised altogether in the present, with the future being nothing but an expa nsion of the present, pa id for, of course, by the requisite austerit ies and cutba cks. Such i s the new sense o f time to which we a re now sa id to be a ccedi ng. A t last, they te l l us, we a re enter ing the twentieth century - severa l decades late .

This is late and no mistake. And what a peculia r configuration modern times thus takes on. Our century has apparently spent t h e best pa rt of i ts time being no more tha n the future - the nightma re - of the previo Lls one. It ha s only just ca ught up with itself, by identifying with the century to come. This nvo hundred­year ga p i s the time it has taken to get rid of the revolution, to destroy both the roya l aspect of politics and the revolutiona ry aspect of its destruction, and so enter a homogeneous time, a tempora li ty rel ieved at last of t h e dou ble royalty of past and future. ]

Thi s time, which is no longer divi ded by promise, must be matched b y a space freed of divis ion4 This space is 'the Centre' -m ea n i n g n ot one a rea tha t is cen tra l rela t ive to others, b u t rather, generica lly, a n e w con figuration of pol it ica l space, the free development of a consensual force a dequa te to the free and apoli t ica l development of production and circula tion. But if i t is easy to decree the beginning and ending o f times, t h e empi ri ca l

6

r H I- END () I POL I TIC S

i d e n t i fication o f th is configura t ion poses other pro blems. The centre is ever elusive. The e n d o f politics seems ra ther to s p l i t into t\VO endi ngs which do not coinc ide - the end o f p romise a n d the end o f d ivi s ion - a n d vi rtua l ly produce two pol it ics of the 'end of pol i t ics' : the pa rty o f the new t ime on the one h a n d a n d t h e pa rty o f the n e w consensus on t h e other. The French presi dentia l e lect i on of 19� � epitomizes this4 The defeated ca n ­d idate had i dent i f ied h i m self precisely with the idea o f a new time4 Op p o s i t e a c a n d i d a t e repre s e n t e d a s t h e o l d ma n o f promise, o f the nineteenth century, h e l a i d c la i m to t h e youth o f the century t o come, the dynamism o f enterprise pushing new t h i ngs before i t . H e i nvi ted u s to opt s imply for youth a s opposed to age, to accept the now o bvi ous fact tha t the exercise of power qua right (potestas) a n d the unfettered development of power q ua potency (potentia) were one a nd the same. He sought to resha ckle his opponent to his a ha ndoned promi ses, to ma ke h i m own up to the very commi tments he wa s trying to concea l by promi sing nothing a t a ll , to confess tha t he wa s inelucta bly a ma n o f promise, a ma n who a nnounces wha t he i s po werless to a c h i eve, who casts o ld thi ngs far a h e a d instea d of p ushing new th i ngs before him step by step. Thus, in opposit ion to the man o f the o l d promise , to the o ld ma n o f promise, who ne i ther can n o r dares own u p to t h i s , there stood, in the s h a p e o f the c a n d i d a te-prime minister, the ma n o f dynamism, the one who p u s h e s new t h i n gs before h i m , the y o ung ma n who pushes young thi ngs, the appropriate win ner to carry us a s conquerors into the third m i l lennium.

This discourse a rgues for a potency which must, in the natura l course of things, fulfi l i tself a s power, wherea s the promise tends to reduce power to impotence or madness. I t is the only dis­c o urse tha t seems consonant with the not ion of the e n d o f promise, w i t h the pol i t ics-beyond-ideology which now reigns a bsolute over a l l our organs of p u bl ic opinion, be they popula r or schola rly� a discourse tha t en ters every corner o f everyday l i fe . Yet despite th is - or perhaps beca use of i t - it d i d not work when the big day came. It is as though th is dominant sociologi­cal a rgument were meant to be sovereign every day but one -every day except the day o f pol it ics, the day o f the poli t ica l TV

7

ON THE SHORES ef reLITles

showdown when the candidates stake their a l l . On that day, our young, yuppy prime minister found this out: there was j ust no way of exacting a promise, or the betrayal of a promise, from a m a n who simply would not go a long with it. There w a s n o way o f mak ing him put his fatal chips i n play. W hat needed to be done was to make him acknowledge duality, a t least some c o n­ception o f duali [y : the Two o f promise versus potency, o f word versus reality, o f the men o f the promise never kept versus t h e men o f dynamism who always move forward� This discursive division dogs every argument of our t ime, yet there is at least one situation in which it goes unheard - either by its intended aud i­ence o r by the spectators who referee the discursive due l: that s ituation is the cl inching moment, the moment when the move from potency to power has to be made, when potency's mere dis­p lay m ust be transformed into the proof of capacity a n d the right to power.

S o what bappened for such a ' n a t u r a l ' outcome to turn .ut so inconclusively? Very l i t t l e . I n face o f the man who sought to capture potcstas by means o f potentia in order to lead u s into the coming m i l l e n n i u m , a l l it took was for the opponent to c onj ure u p another boundary - not the horizon of a voyage but the b ri n k of a n abyss; for h i m to utter not a p ro mise but the opposite o f a pro mise . The very spec ia l k i n d o f prom ise which I mentioned e a r l i e r : the candidate-p resid ent p romised nothing but the worst - n a m e l y u p h e aval and c ivil waL Evoking t h i s a nti p r o m ise , whic h w a s assu m e d to h ave p erish ed a l o n g with promise itself, he invoked the p o l i t ica l to another end, another l imit . An d this was al l he needed to negate the Two o f prom ise versus potency, to aff irm that he was there, in h i s very mute­n ess , for one purpose o n ly: to ra l ly a n d preserve that property of Oneness which is a lone capa ble of p u l l i n g society back from the brink of the a b yss . S u d d e n l y p o l i t ics was no longer the art of a dva n c in g the energies of the wor ld , but r a t h e r that o f pre­venting civi l war through a rat iona l deployment of the One, of the ca l l to un i ty. Apparently , m u l t i p l i c i t y c o u l d not after a l l atta in peace of i ts own accord. Tha t such pacif icat ion might be ar rived at spontaneously, through t h e r u i n o f the old d u a l isms, was a c h i m e ra . The re la t ionsh ip of the rally ing One to the

THE END () I ]'OLITICS

sundering Two was a funct ion o f an art, the art 0 f po l it ics, a n d o f a virtue, the virtue o f a u tho r i ty.

2. The Re[urn 0 f the Archaic

That, then, was the trick that was performed before our eyes: the promise o f the worst was enough to [ransform the space o f the e n d o f pol it ics, to render it archaic, to dra w the potestas to the other side, not towards the potentia which was held to be its future, hut towards its predecessor - the auctoritas of the sage. To the m a n who wanted to estab l ish his potency by comparing rec ords, there c a m e the s i m p l e a n s w e r: we have both been equally powerless to p u sh things before us, but we are not equal with respect to something different, with respect to the precon­dit ion o f any undertaking : the sweeping aside of the threat o f upheavaL I n the face o f th i s threat, /Jotestas c a m e down quite n a t u r a l l y o n the side of the o n e in whom the 'spiri t' of the Constitution 0 f our Fifth Republic recognizes the supreme a n d card inal virtue, auctoritas.

Auctoritas i s the virtue which comes hefore the law and the exerc ise 0 f power, the virtue which Livy tel ls u s was that o f the Greek Evander, son o f Hermes, who resided o n the banks o f the Tiber, o n Latin territory, before the descendan[s o f the Tro jan Aeneas, before the foundation o f Rome. Evander, he te l ls us, compelled obedience from the shepherds auctoritate maKis quam imperio, t h ro u gh the pres[ ige ves[ed in a p e rson other than through th e emblems and sanctions 0 f command. Livy tel ls us straight away what lies beh ind this authority. Evander was ven­

erabilis miraculo litterarum: he insp ired respect through a n awesome connection with the word, with what is sa id a n d what is written, with what is aff irmed a n d interpreted by means o f the word.

This then is the primary con necrion between auctoritas a n d the word. The auctor i s a spec ia l ist in messages, o n e who i s able to discern meaning in the noise of the world . Evander, the son o f the messenger o f the gods a n d o f a priestess, is the obvious model here. O n the riverbank, in the h u b h u b of a herdsmen's quarrel about stolen oxen a n d a murder, he is able to detect the presence

9

..

ON THE SIIORES Of POLITICS

of the d iv ine, the presence of the god Hercules in the guise o f the cattle thief a n d k i l ler of the m a n responsible for the original theft. Evander recognizes the d i v i n e m essage and soothes the quarrel . A m irac le of words.

Apparent ly , such m iracles are stil l possible. As we have seen, our c and idate-president refused to reply to those who wanted to pin h i m down on the subject of prom ises and m a k e hi m confess to them. He said nothing. Bu t he wrote; he wrote a letter to the French people. And discerning m inds lost no time in sneering: prol ix as i t i s , how m any o f its addressees are ever going to read i t?

There i s no l im it to the na ivety o f such discerning m inds, for whom words on paper never stand up i n the face o f ' rea l i ty ' . Yet the answer was obviolls . W ha t d i d it matter ho w m a n y people read the letter? W h a t m a ttered w a s t h a t i t w a s s igned and addressed. Not that I underestim ate either the sense o f democ .. ratic pedagogy, which m a y have inspired the author of the letter, o r the c i v i c sense and the desire for inform ed choice which may have created attentive readers for i t . That i s not the im portant th ing, however. The im portant thing i s that in this way i t was m ade perfectly c lear to everyone that here, in contrast to the power-hungry jogging type opposite, w a s a different character, a being endowed w ith the miraculum litterarum - in short, a n auctor.

It is well known that our president l ikes writers. Discerning Ininds for whom pof it ics i s a spectacle think that i n cult ivating intellectua ls he i s p lay ing to the gal lery. But a n auctor i s some­t h ing quite di fferent from a n int ell e c tua l . A n auctor is a guarantor. I-Ie i s a master of words, able to sift sense, and hence just ice, from the noise of t h e world; to use words to quel l squab­bles; ro unite people b y apprehen ding m e ani ng; to pac ify b y virtue o f a strength that precedes the exercise o f power. The auc­tor i s someone able to augment (augere) the power of collective b e ing, and this i n a way that has very little indeed to do with the dynam ism of m odernity.

�rh is then was the surprise of the mom ent. From the great con­sensus on m odernizat ion, which seemed to leave us on ly one choice, the choice between young and old (to which the m odernity

10

(HE END OF POLITICS

o f life inv a r i a b l y urged the same response) , a n aspect 0 f radical a r c h a i s m h a d n o w e m e rged . The p e r soni f i c a t i o n o f y out h , d yna m is m a n d production fai led to get h i s qualit ies recognized as the proper credentials for t a k i ng us over the threshold of the third m i l l ennium , the m i l l e nnium o f a pacified society and a secularized polit ics. A t the su pposed cutt ing edge 0 f m odernity, at the a l leged ly decisive m o m ent of the deflation of the polit ical , what tr ium phed was the archaism o f the old polit ician who suc­c e e d e d i n a s sum ing the i m m e m o r i a l p lace of the auctor b y c onjur ing u p the gaping a b y s s , the br ink o f dread, from which he then made h im self our protector. He became the guarantor of t h a t process of p a c i f i c a t i o n which w a s s u p p o s e d to have em erged frorn the spontaneity of the secular ized w o r l d , hut which now seemed much rather to depend on a n art� the archaic art of pol it ics.

For what the old auctor offers is indeed the task everywhere proclaim ed as that of m odernity: to secularize politics, to dem il­itarize a n d d im inish it, to remove everything in it which is not functionally ordained for m axim izing the chances o f success for the collective being, for the s imple m anagem ent o f the social. This political task is quite precisely that of politics' self-dim inution. This d im inut ion c an be described in two ways, depending on how one views the re lat ionship between the categories of the social a n d the pol it ical . To d i m inish pol it ics is in one sense to reduce it to its function a s a pacify ing procedure between indi­v iduals a n d collectivity by rel iev ing it of the weight and sym bols of social d ivis ion. In another sense, it is to remove the sym bols o f pol it ical divis ion in the interests o f expansion, o f society�s inher­e n t dynamism. Now this double process, t h e reduction of the social by the pol i t ica l a n d the reduction of the polit ical by the social , is not som ething which c an be carr ied out by the sponta­neous tendencies of the centu r y a n d the background hum o f industry. The ()lle o f rat i ona l com ing together relates not to the demands of the task before us , but rather to the representation of the archaic g u l f which stands a l w a y s as our l im it . The reciprocal appeasem ent of the social and t h e pol it ical is the business of the old, a n o ld business which pol it ics has perhaps a lways had a s its paradoxical essence. Politics is the art of suppressing the polit ical .

I 1

ON THE SlIOltES OF POLITICS

I t is a procedure of self-subtraction. Perhaps the end of politics i s its fulf i lment, the ever-young fulf i lment o f i ts o ld ness. And per­haps, beyond the opposition o f classical and modern, phi losophy h a s a l w a y s k n o w n this d u p l ic ity o f the techne po/itike, a n d a l w a y s p laced th is ever-young end i n c lose p r o x imity to the conception o f foundation.

3. Aristode a n d the Centrist U topia

To g o deeply into this adjacency o f the beginning and the end would enta i l an entire reexaminati on of the idea o f c lass ica l pol i t ica l philosophy. I sha l l not embark on t h a t here, but merely note o n e problem in passing� to endorse Leo Strauss's designation of the Republic a n d the Politics as works and paradigms of pol it­ical phi losophy is perhaps to erase the primordial tension o f the relati onship between phi losophy and polit ics, the coincidence between the wish 'truly' to do pol it ical things as upheld i n the Gorgias and the wish to pur an end to politics, to h e a r nothing more about it . Or at least to p u t an end to pol it ics i n its primary spontaneous and democratic state, a s the anarchic self-regulation of the many hy majority decision. For Plato, the demos is the i ntolerable existence of the great beast which occupies the stage of the pol it ical community without ever becoming a s ingle sub-:­j e c t . T h e n ame which a c c ura t e l y q u a l i f i e s i t i s ochlos: the common rabble or, in other words, the infinite turbulence o f col­lections of i n d iv idua ls who are always at odds with themselves, l i v i ng rent by passion a n d a t the mercy of desire. On the basis o f this observation a n original dupl ic ity can b e def ined, a relati on­s h i p bet ween ph i l o s o p h y a n d t h e p o l i t i c a l w h i c h i s both thoroughly immanent a n d rad i cally transcendent, prohibiting the existence of any such thing as 'pol i t i ca l ph i losophy' .

Perhaps to a greater degree than in t h e r a d i c a l i sm of the Platonic refoundation, the complexi ty of this sp l i t i s made p l a i n i n t h e more discrete tension which animates Aristotle's [Jolitics� Here, the apparently s imple objecti ve of submitt ing the many to the l a w of the One i s i n fact spl it by a never entirely closed gap between two ways of conce i v ing the art of pol i t ics , of con­fronting the quest ion of the many: polit ics as the organization of

12

THE EL\;O OF POLl ( lCS

the h uman community i n accordance with the telos 0 f the rea­s o n able bei ng, a n d as a remedy for the s h e e r fact o f soc ia l d iv is ion. Thus the [Jolitics offers u s two origins for the po l i t icaL There is the good origin, the one set out a t the start o f Book I : the dist inction between the a n i mal phone a n d the human logos, the pecul iar power 0 f the logos to project a sense o f t h e useful (sumpheron) a n d 0 f the harmful (hlaberon) into the ci rcle of the community a n d thereby to usher in a shared recognition o f the just and the un just � And then there i s the bad origin, a s set forth in Book I V, l ink ing the logic o f the principle o f contradict ion to the factuality o f a state o f things. I n every city there are rich and poor. These categories const itllte the e lements and t h e parts o f the city par excellence, because they designate the only pri nci ples which cannot be combi ned . O n e cau always imagine t h a t the farmers might become warri ors or the art isans s i t in session at the boule . But w h a t no regime c a n d o is ma k e people simultane­ollsly r i c h a n d poor. The quest ion of polit ics hegins in every city with the existence of the mass o f the aporoi, those who have no means, a n d the sJnall number of the euporoi, those w h o have

them. Every city has these two irreducible components, ever v irrual ly

at war, ever present and represented to each other through the names they a d o p t and the pr inc ip les with which they identify themselves, which they make the ir own: liherty (eleutheria) for the mass o f the poor, virtue (arete) for the small number o f the ri ch. Thus do r ich and poor constantly grasp the common thing, the middle thing, in the pincers o f profit a n d honours, o f material interests a n d imaginary investments.

This was a gi ven. Ever s ince Solon had aholi shed slavery for debt i n Athens, a l l c it ies had i ncluded a mass o f poor people who, though unsuited to the practice of l a w or leadership, were nonetheless present in the city a s free men, possessing the COIl l­mon nall le, the common t i t l e o f t h e p oli t i c a l c ommuni t y: freedom. W hence a second detern1i nant o f the art o f pol i t ics , which i s , in modern terms, the art of putt ing up with what can­not be reconciled, of tolerating the existence alongside the r ich of the poor, who can no longer be thrown overboard a n d who remain attached to the centre 0 f the c i ty.

1 3

ON TH E S JJ 0 R E S .1' I' 0 LIT Ie S

This pri m a ry task of pol i ti cs ca n i ndeed be pre cise ly des cr ibed in modern terms as the pol i ti ca l r ed u cti on of the so cia l (tha t is to sa y the d istri bution of wea l th ) a nd the so cia l red u cti on of the pol i ti ca l (that i s to sa y the d i stri buti on o f va rious powers a nd the i mag ina ry investments a tta ched to them ). On the one ha nd, to quiet the confl i ct of ri ch a nd poor through the d istri bution of rights, responsi bi l i ties a nd co ntrols ; on the other, to quiet the pas ­s i o n s a ro l1sed by the o ccu pa ti o n o f the ce n tre by v irtu e of sponta neous so cia l a cti v i t ies .

The i dea l sol u tion, the idea l red u cti on o f the pol i ti ca l by the so ci a l , ta kes a homo n y m as the bas is fo r a n isomorph a nd d ic­ta tes that the centre sh ould be at the centre, that the pol iti ca l centre (the meson) of the ci ty sho uld be o ccu pied by the middle class ( to meson), by the class of those who a r e nei ther ri ch n o r poor, nei ther aporoi n o r euporoi., w h o n eed n ot pass, need not tra ve l, between thei r so ci a l spa ce a nd the pol i ti ca l centre. Th us, the centre is no longer a pole of tensi on bei ng p u l led i n e ither d ire ction between i tsel f a nd the periphery . The archai (or respon­si bi l i ties o f o ffi ce ) i n whi ch the arche (or governa n ce of the ci ty ) i s va ri ousl y i nvested a re no longer sp oi ls whi ch some a r e eager to seize or burdens whi ch others ar c eager to forswea c

In th i s sol uti on, a s set forth in Book I V, the pe rfe cti ng of po l­iti cs i n cl i nes towa rds i ts sel f-su ppression� The coi n ciden ce of the centre a nd the mean ma kes i t ' a l together easy 't to o bey the lo gos, a logos whi ch there fore a ppea rs less l ike the lo cus of a dis cussion tha n l ike a for ce whi ch is obeyed , just as l i v i ng thi ngs obey the l a ws of thei r ow n orga nisms.

A las, this positive sol u ti o n rema i ns an idea l . Su ch a regi me is en countered v i rtu a l ly nowhere . For this Aristo tle offe rs a nother posi t ive, so ciolog ica l expla n ation: ci t ies are too sma l l , he sa ys . There i s no room fo r a m iddle cla ss to develop . It i s tempti ng to s ee pres cien ce here: a s opposed to the idea l o f the cit y-demo cra cy, A r istotle would seem to be fore casti ng the true fu tu re of demo c­ra cy , t h e m i d d l e- cl a ss r u l e of o u r e x te n d ed a nd deve l o ped modern states . �u t perha ps h i s vis ion was, rather, a u topia , the rea l i st utop ia ; not the shi m meri ng utopia of the d ista nt island , of the pla ce whi ch d oes not e xist, but the i mper cept ible utop ia whi ch consists in ma king tw o sepa ra te spa ces coi n cide, na mely

14

THE END ()F 1)0 tITles

the so ci al middle a nd the po li ti ca l centre . Now, we a re a wa re that ou r so cieties prod uce hoth rniddle classes a nd terti a ry se ctors i n a bu nda n ce � Bu t we are sti l l sea r ch ing for the centre, for the coi n ciden ce of ce nrres� Governmen r by the ce n[re remains the u topia of Our rea l i st pol i ti cs + Fo r rea l ism too is a u top i a , some­th i ng i nto wh ich Aristotle gi ves us an exemplary i nsigh t. Utopia i s no r the elsewhere, nor the fu tu re rea l iza tion of a n u n fu lfi l led drea m . It is an in telle ctu al constru ction whi ch bri ngs a p la ce i n thought i nto conj u n ction with a per ceived or per cepti ble i ntu itive sp ace . Rea l ism is ne ither the l u cid refusa l of u topia nor the for­gett ing of the telos. It is just one u topi a n wa y of con figu ri ng the telos, of re cover ing the compass of reason w ith i n the si ngu lari ty o f the present . Bri ngi ng together the phi losophi ca l idea of the mea n with the middle cl a ss a nd with the spa ce of ci tizenship is stil l pa rt of the a ttempt to ca rry ou t th e Plat oni c pro je ct: to pla ce the many beneath the law o f the ene, to i nsti tu te the reign 01 m od era ti o n ra ther th a n tha t of the d e m o cra ti c apeiroll. Ph i losophy th us p uts an end to pol i ti ca l d i v is ion by mend i ng its own d i v i s i o n w i th respe ct to the po l i t ica l , b y e m p l o y i ng meta phori ca l reso u r ces whi ch a t on ce d i sta n ce it utterl y fro m empi ri ca l pol i ti cs a nd a l low it to coi ncide exa ctly with i t .

The on ly problem, of cou rse, i s the fa ct that the mea n never suffi ces to o ccu py the cent re + And i f the so cia l fa i ls to pa ci fy the pol i t ica l , th i ngs then m ust be tu rned a round a nd the pol i ti ca l rea l rn ent rusted with the ta sk of settl i ng the problelns o f the so cia l. But this the pol iti ca l ca n only do pre cisely by orga nizi ng i ts ow n red u ction, by effa ci ng the image of the cen tre a nd the i mag­i na ry tensi ons whi ch bea r u po n it or radiate from i t. It then fa l ls to the art o f pol i ti cs to ena ct a nother coi n ciden ce between pol i ti ­ca l , so cia l a nd terri tori a l spa ce : the coi n ciden ce of d ista n ces . The a rt of pol i ti cs is the art of putti ng the demo crati c contrad iction to posi ti ve use � the demos is the u nion of a centri peta l for ce a nd a centri fuga l for ce, the l i v i ng pa ra dox of a pol i ti ca l co lle ct iv ity formed fr om a pol i ti ca l ind ivid ua ls . The demos i s forever d rawing awa y from i tsel f, d ispersi ng i tsel f i n the mu lti pl i city of e cstat ic a nd sporad ic pleasures. The a rt of pol i t ics must regu late the intermit­ten cy o f the demos by irnposi ng i nterva ls whi ch pla ce its strength a t a d ista n ce from i ts turbu len ce, a t a d ista n ce from i tsel f.

15

ON THE SnORES Of 10LJTlCS

Thi s is the preocc upa t ion which characterizes Aristotle's com­parison between good and bad forms o f democracy in Books I V a n d V I o f the Politics. A bad democracy is a democracy true to its name, where the demos exercises the power, where i t inhabits the centre of the city, has but a few steps to take in order to s it in assembly and can lay clai m to the archai. A good democracy, by contrast, which comes as close as possible to the i deal regime of the politeia, contrives to di stance the demos . It removes the aporoi from the centre by means o f a property qualification o r by some other means. In this case 'supreme power is vested in the laws, because the state has no means [prosodonl o f payi ng the citizens'

Prosodos is a remarkable word. Its primary meaning is the point where the path approaches its goal. I n polit ical parlance, this approach takes on a more precise meaning: the fact of pre­senting oneself to speak before the assembly. But prosodos also designates that surplUS which makes presenting oneself, makes getting started, a possibi l ity: the plus whi ch allows one to be at the assembly at all; a surplus, therefore, with respect to work and with respect to the life whi ch work assures. This supplement, when it is lacking, need not be an insufficiency o f money. It may be simply insufficient time or lei sure. A person may not ha ve the leisure to go to the centre because the centre is distant or because the tasks and profit o f the day can n o t be given up i n order to do so.

According to Book IV, these are the benefits o f rural democ­racy, particularly suit ing a place in which the fi elds are quite far from the city. Under such conditions a good democracy can exi st, even a good poiiteia, beca use the farmers w i l l not ha ve the t ime to hold many meetings, the time to occupy the centre. They w i l l prefer to w o r k rather than waste their t ime with poll t ics . They wi l l have the opportunity (the exousia) for political activity, but they w i l l prefer to lea ve the responsibil it ies of office to those who ha ve the ousia., the wealth which makes it possible to devote

� . . one s tlme to It.

Here, perfection is achi eved by desertion from the centre. It i s necessary tha t the citi zens be far from the centre of their sover­eigntY4 For the regime to work, a certai n quali ty (pOiOII ttna) is

1 6

THF. END OF POLITICS

requ ired . Bur th i s i s not a quali ty possessed by the c it izens, merely a property of their space. There must not be a field abut­t ing the ramparts of the city, for the boundary must be sharply dra wn, not just between the social and the poli t ical, but also between the c it ize ns and the locus of the ir ci t izenship . There must be a hiatus, a void, at the border o f the pol it ical.

Of course this n o man's land is another utopia. There are always people, always a rabble on the agora, the populace (och­los ) mill ing around the ecclesia. Hence, the unb reakable rule guaranteeing the citi zenship o f the absent. I n those democracies where 'the people are compelled to settle in the country . 4 . even if there is a mob (ochlos ) on the agora, the assembly ought not to meet . . + w h e n the country people cannot come'. 3 I n s imple terms, assembly should not be held if there are absentees: the per­fect r u l e for a n e n t i r e ly se l f - removed democ racy, the i ronic inversion o f the pr inciple of the mean. The centre is assured not by presence but by absence, by vi rtue o f a gap which serves to keep interests apart.

This real ism is st i l l utopian, however. There is n o class whose mere presence o r absence can pacify the sphere of the pol it ical or block a l l approaches to i t . It therefore falls to the good politician to devise compromises that w i l l ensure the regulation of these approaches in terms both of material arrangements and of imag­inary perceptions. This entai ls assigning positions in such a way as to redistri bute passions - to strip from what is g iven to some whatever makes it desirable to others. The pr ime exam ple o f this for Aristotle was a n u n paid magistrature, which makes i t possible to give everyone exousia while reserving the pri vileges o f ousia for t h e few. A s a result everyone will happi ly occupy the place appropriate to them. The poor wi ll have n o wish for mag­istracies and wi l l not be jealous of those who occupy them, since they bring no remunera t ion. They will freely sacrifice the publ ic passion for honour to the private passion for profit. The r ich will occupy magistracies without being able to increase their wealth by doing so. They wil l probably even ha ve to sacrifice a l ittle o f i t . Rut they win pay i n order to satisfy their passion, the i r col­lective point o f honour: that they� the 'best', should not be ruled by the ' less good'. Thus wi ll private and publ ic passions be wel l

17

ON THE SltORES OF POJ ITICS

ap p o rti o n e d . �1 oreover, the poor, the apoToi., hei ng ah l e to d evote th emse lves e n t i re ly to work, may eve n he come r i c h , hecome euporoi. One mi ght take th i s to its logical exrreme and say that they will thus he ahl e to participate i n their turn in the profits an d losses o f the archai. Ari stotle did llot do so, for he was convi nced that profit is th e o n ly real pass ion of the masses an d that they w i l l only take an i nterest i n politics by default. The moderns have not hesitated to take this fi nal step, promis ing the poor that the very sl ightest advancement i n wealth w i l l propel them i nto the provi dential c lass of the golden mean�

Ari stotle is the inventor o f th e essential, of modernizati on, of the pol itics o f the end of the poli tical, a n end i ndi sti ngui shahle from the hegi nni ngs: the art of underp inn ing the social hy means o f the pol i tical and the politi cai hy means of the social. By reas­signing positions an d the passions that target them, hy altering the perception 0 f those positions and the emotions atrendirig that perception, politics pres ides over i ts own erosion an d creates rhe social realm vitally necessary to rhe natural real i zation of this goaL I n the strife of heing together, of inter esse., politics contrives inte rvals , th e i ntervals that s eparate d i verg e nt yer coexisre nt interests. Politics thus calls forth the social d imens ion wherein private and p uhli c are a t once harmoniulls and di stant, as publi c honour an d private gain are pursued with equal passion hut i n a m utually exclusive fashion.

One problem remai ns, the prohlem of another houndary -the houndary heyond which th i s perfecttng o f the self-dimi nished politi cal realm comes closely to resemhle that pol iti cal negation of the poli ti cal , that reahsorption of common space i nto the pr i.,. vate realm o f d o m i nati o n w hich i s kn o w n as desp oti s m o r tyrannY4 Does not the hest o f democracies, i ndeed the good politeia, where the mass o f citi zens fulf i l their preference for lucrative activi ty over the activity o f cit izenship, i n short that good poli ti cal regime which coincides with the sati sfacti on o f cit­izens' apol iti cal needs, bri ng i nto play the very same mechanisms whi ch serve rhe tyran ni cal an n ihi lati o n o f col le ctive power: microphronein., the s1l1allmindedness of ind ivi dual s locked into pettiness, the idiocy o f private interests; an d adunamia, the impo­tence 0 f those who have lost the resource o f collective acti on?

1�

TJ-IE END 0 F P OLIT ICS

Smallmi nded ness, mi strust an d the impotence 0 f the citizens -these are the rneans o f tyranny, al l the more l iahle to resemhle the means of good government in that there are good tyrants , dis­posed of their own volition to employ those good means of social co nservari on descrihed i n Book VI. The model for good tyrants is Pisistratlls, whose methods of government, as referred to i n the Constitution of Athens are wel ln igh i ndistingu ishahle from the r u l e s o f good ru ral d e m o c racY4 O u t o f his own pocke t , he advanced money to the poor for rhe m ro huy lan d , rhis wirh a douhle purpose : that they might n o t spend the ir ti m e lo itering i n the c i ty hur remai n di spersed i n the cou ntrys ide ; and thar with what were riches i n their terms (eu!Joroulltes ton metrion) , cou­pled with con cern for th eir p rivate affai rs, they might have neither the desire nor the lei sure to interest themselves i n common th i ngs .

The pol i t ics of di spersal . To those who may he di sturhed by the s imi larity of the two 'ends' o f politics, Aristotle offers the reassuring explanati o n that P is i stratus governed as a pol iti c ian rather than as a tyrant an d th u s settles for leavi ng us with a parad ox . Depolitici zati on is the oldest task of poiitics, the one which achieves its fu lf i lment a t the hri n k o f its end, its perfection on the hri nk of the ahyss.

This political suppression 0 f politics is also a means for phi­losophy to realize the closest image of politi cal Good in the midst of the di sorder of empir ical pol i t ics , th e di sorder of democracy. This realizati on is enacted through a specific mediati on: hetween rhe transcendence of the tetos and the compromises 0 f politics, Ari storle leaves room for the realist utopia of rhe c e ntre, the utopia o f a social realm capahle of setting irs own house i n order, of cancelli ng horh irs own divis ion and the division s derivi ng from the passions that seek to appropriate the poli ti cal centre� I n the phi losophical reaiizati on 0 f the art of politics, th i s utopia is an evanescent moment. But the proper task o f modernity has per­haps heen to give suhstance ro th is evanescent mi ddle term. Such would be the utopia o f modernity - a mi ddle term or detached fragme nt emancipated from the philosophi cal uto pia: the socio­logical utopia; a utopia which presents its own emancipati on as the emancipation o f the social realm; t h e utopia 0 f a rati o nal i ty

19

o l\" THE S H () RES • F POL I I I C 5

immanent to the social which heralds the eventual comI11on end of philosophy and of polit ics.

4. l)emocracy Without Boundaries

It is no douht in l�ocq ue vi l le that we can best observe this advent of a sociological end to the political, in the very tension which his analysis maintains between a nostalgia for pol i t ical heroism and a recognition of democracy as the peaceful self-regulation of the social. What is Democracy in America i f not a long meditation on the contemporaneity 0 f Aristotle? Social equality, the rule o f the short view and o f 'relaxed morality' a s modifiers o f pol itical equality, the invasion o f the ecclesia and the archai by the gut­tersnipe o f democracy, by the mob o f the agora - is th is not the modern image o f pacified democracy w hic h comes closest to the Aristotelian notion? l()cqueviHe's real genius lies in his identifi­catio n 0 f a hybri d figure within modern democratic sociality, between t h e comi n g together 0 f the centre a n d the comin g together o f what i s remote from the centre. Th e realization o f the Aristotelian project depends less on a particular class (the middle class in the centre or the citizen-farmers on t h e periphery) than on a particular state of the social . The pacification of the pol iti­cal depends u p o n a much deeper alteration than government by the 'golden mean', by the middle class + It depends rather o n a new sociality, described as an equality o f condition, w h i c h offers a truly pro vidential solution to the regulation o f the polit ical­soc ial rela t ionship . W hat the cleverest pol it icians c ould never achieve - the creation o f a self-regulated sociality automatically preventing the p o litical from overwhelming the social or the social from overwhelming the p olitical - is accomplished by the p rovidential tendency for conditions to be equalized.

Equality o f condition ensures the pacification o f polit ical emo­t ions by a sort o f polymeriza tion. The e l imina t ion o f passions fuelled by disi unctions and dist inctions, hy honours and ranks, opens up a social space where the old tensions affecting the centre are resolved by division , by the proliferation 0 f an infinity of points of interest, o f points of satisfaction of interest. The inflat ion o f the private sphere and the multiplicity o f satisfactions

20

THE E1\:[) OF 'OLITICS

associated with it , which go far beyond the mere reign of neces­sity or the mere desire for profit, guarantee an a ttachment to the peaceful coexistence and collective d iscip l ine w hich make these sat isfact ions s imu l tan eous l y p o s sibl e . A k e y n o t i o n i n th is arrangement i s relaxed morality, an equivalent to that 'facil ity' (praotes) so h ighly pr ized hy the Athenian democracy which Plato had decried and which Aristotle had wished to safeguard, no longer on the basis of the laxity of the populace, but rather on the basis of a natural coincidence of the centre with the mean. By soothing the vio lent passions of distance, relaxed morality effec­t ive ly eases the relationship between rule and satisfaction from the moment when, as part of the same tendency, the opposition between rich and poor ceases to polarize political space and the combined gains o f idion and koinon, o f public and private, begin to be spread out over the entire surface 0 f the social body; the minimal virtue which i s i n the process likewise distrihuted to all ensures peace better than the showy and provocative virtue of a few. This i s probably i n keeping with the d ivin e p lan , even i f i t i s a sorry sight for those 's lightly more elevated' souls who remain nostalgic for heroic po l i tics .

In this way, then, the fulfilment o f pol i tics, the achievement o f measure i n the midst o f the u nmeas u r ed, o f the democratic apeiron, would emerge from within the apeiron itself in its new mode of being . Yet there is a l imit and a precondition here. The l imi t is , as i n Aristotle, that point where the self-distancing o f the political comes altogether to resemble despotism, the rule o f a ' tute lary power' whose own facility lies in the fact that i t can exercise dominion in peace, lea ving society to its state of equal­ity, i ts satisfaction i n the private realm and its self-regulation of passions. The precondition is the existence of a providence. The renunciation o f the politics of honour needs the h e lp o f a pro vi­dence w hich can dis c e r n , more c l ear ly than t h o s e who are nostalgic for the heroic age� what paths lead to the realization o f th� C�ood a n d keep those paths well away from the roads to despotism. The sociological utopia was in the f irst instance able to emancipate usclf only thank s to the secularization of provi­dence, a secularization which was prior to the idea of progress. Sociological pro vidential ism was not i n i tial l y a phi losophy o f

21

ON Tl-IE SliORES OF peLITICS

pro gress, but a b ul w ar k a g ai nst d e c aden ce, a w ay of rei nterpr et­in g wh at was ori gin al ly apprehen de d a s de caden ce .

The so- cal led pos rmo der n a ge is a ti me when this rei nterpre­t ati o n o f ' de c aden ce � i m agines i tsel f cap abl e 0 f em an ci p ati on fro m every re feren ce to provi den ce . Now adays , we are to l d, th e pol ari z ati on o f ri ch and poor h as been su ffi ciently er ase d t o carry aw ay ]n i ts w ake the fevers th at atten d politi ca l hono ur an d he roi c demo cr a cy . Demo cr acy h as p asse d the age of its a r ch ai c fi xations , whi ch use d to tr ans form ev en the en fee ble d d i fferen ce becween ri ch a nd poor in to a f at al poi n t of honour . It i s n ow al l the more se cure for h avi n g heen per fe ctl y dep o l iti cize d, for �in g no lon ger per ceive d as the 0 bj e ct of a choi ce bu t l ive d a s an am bi ent mil ieu , a s the n at ur al h abi t at of pos tmo de rn in d iv i d u­a l i sm , n o I o n ger i m pos in g str ug gl es an d s ac ri fi ces i n sh ar p contr adi ctio n with the pIe as ures 0 f the ega lita ri a n a ge .

The qu estio n of sp ace i s th us resol ve d by me ans o f a vo id: the absen ce of an y visi ble g ap, an y bri n k, an y pre ci pi ce. The f:ra o f the Void is the title of a bo o k by Gi l l es Li povets k y th at cause d somethi ng o f a s tir.4 The au th o r rej e cts pessi misti c an a lyses of the co ntr adi cti o n between contempor ary he donism o n the one h an d an d the e conomi c dem an d for e ffort an d the poli ti ca l dem an d fo r e qu al i ty on the o ther. Inste ad, he a ss ures us of a n ever more pe r­fect co nsonance between demo cr at ic pl u r al ism a nd the tri u m p h o f a 'pro cess o f person al iz ation " promoti ng a nd ge ner al i zin g a ty pe o f i n di vi dual who l i ves i n a perm anent u n i verse of free ­do m , o f ch oi ce a nd of rel axe d a n d l i ghthe ar te d a tt itu d es to choi ce i tsel f. 'As n ar cissism grows \ wri tes Lipovets ky,

delnocratlc l egit i ma<...}' wins our, even if it does so in th e �cool' lnode. The democrari c regilnes with their party p l u ral isnl, their elections ano their freedoln of inforInation arc ever Inore clearly akin to th e persona li z ed sociery of self-service, psycholo�ical testing and per ..

Inl1table freedom.

Soch s chol arly an a l yses are echo ed i n the ban al themes of the p lur al i st so ciety , where commer ci al compet it ion, sex ual pe rmis­si veness , worl d m usi c an d che ap ch a rter fl i ghts to the A nt ipo des q ui te n atu r al l y cre ate in d i vi du al s s ln i tten w i th e qu al ity an d

22

Ttl E E NO 0 F POLrllCS

to ler ant o f di ffe ren ce . A worl d where everyone nee ds everyone e lse , wh ere everythin g i s permitte d so lon g as i t is o n o ffer as i n di vi dual ple as ure an d where eve rythi ng i s j u m ble d to gether is propose d to u s a s a worl d of sel f�p aci fie d m ul ti p li city . Re ason i s s uppose d to flower here i n i ts le ast v u l ner able form: no t a s dis � ci p l i ne forever thre atene d b y tr ans gressi o n a nd de legiti m ation , bu t as a r ation al i ty pro du ce d by deve lopmen t itsel f, a s a consen­s ual dere gul ati o n of the p assions . PI ural i sm th us is to day 's n ame for th e poi nt of con cor d, of u topi an h armony, between the i nto x­i cation of priv ate ple a sures, the mor al i ty of e qu al i ty i n so l ida rity , an d sens ihle Rep u h I ic an pol iti cs .

5. The End Dis r upte d

Thus di d we row tow ar ds the h appy shor es of the free ex cha n ge of goo ck, ho dies an d can di dat es. But in this world al l h app iness comes to a n en d, ev en th e h app iness of the en d i tsel f. Re al i st uto p ias are , l i ke other ki n ds, s uhj e ct to the sho ck of the re al. The ele cto ral co n j u n ctu re whi ch g ave us the youn g entr epreneu r di s­arme d he fore the ol d auctor h ad yet other me ans of te achin g us th at the tr i u mph of you th cu rrentl y identi fie d with the p aci fi ca­t io n of pol i ti cs i s n ot very su i t able fo r this pu rpose . The fo ur m i l lion votes cast fo r the can di date of 'Fr an ce for the Fren ch ' amou nte d to a br ut al a wa ken in g: i n the face of the suppose d col ­la pse 0 f the pol i ti c al sphere , with the p arty o f the ri ch and the p arty o f the poor both cal l in g for mo derniz ation an d nothin g els e, with the on ly choi ce - gi ven the ne arly ide nti ca l n at ure o f the en terpr i se a s envis age d by either si de - �i n g to opt fo r the �tter -t ai lore d p ubl i c-re lat ions i m age; in the face o f a ll this, wh at emer ge d , stunni n gly, w as not consens u s bu t ex cl usion , not rea son be come the so ci al r ation al i ty 0 f the coexist en cc of s at is facti ons, h ut pure h atre d o f the ()t h er, a co Ining to gcth e r in or der to e xcl ude . Where pol i ti cs w as s upp os ed to he catchi ng up w ith the t imes , dro p p ing dogm as an d tabo os., wh at appe are d centre -st age w as not w h at w as expe cte d: not the tri u mph of a mo dernity witho ut p reju di ces, hut the ret urn of the su premel y ar ch aic, of th at whi ch pr ece des a l l judgement - h atre d.

The p arty o f the 'y o ung' a nd ' dyn am i c� fi n al ly got a roun d to

23

ON T i l E S H O R E S O F P O L I T I C S

u nde rst and in g th is . I)i scu ssi ng re cord s an d promises, can did ates ' a ges an d p rogra m mes w as n or rhe re al i ssue. I t i s n ot ve ry cleve r to cl ai m vi ct ory in a deb a te w ith th e m an who o ccu pies the p la ce o f the fath er by sh owin g him th at he is old . Th at g oes with ou t s ay in g. You can n ot e xpe ct to defe at the fathe r by deb ati n g with h i m. The t a ck to foil ow in su ch cases is n ot the y ou th fu l cal l ( () ente rp rise but the age- old cal l to h at red . So, p l aste re d arou nd th e srree rs, we s aw the bl a ck si l h o uette of the fathe r a s of a m an to � sh ot d own . Th is w as d e fi n itel y m ore to the p oi nt. Aga in st the m an wh o d rapes himsel f in the miraculum litterarum, the best a nswe r i s the b ayin g of the w ol f p a ck � Aga inst the archaion, the archaioterorl, the even m ore ar ch ai c. A gai n st the fathe r figu re of the p ol iti ci an , the fig u re of the fathe r to be k i l led .

As a pe a ceful end to the p ol it ical , th i s suspi ci ousl y resem bles its mu rde ro us p rehist ory, cast i ng se riou s dou bt on the ide a th a t the s o ciety of the free exch an ge o f g o ods, b od ies an d si m u l a cra is one a n d the s ame thin g a s the s o ciety of conse n s u al p l u r al i s m. O f cou rse s u ch d ou bt i s n ot n ew - n ot sin ce Civilization and Its Discontents. Bu t, by a cu ri ous coi n ciden ce, the pess imi sti c p re­di ct io n w hi ch contested the M a r xi st p rom ise s i xty ye ars ago keeps getti n g obs cu red by as s uran ces of pe a ce pr edi ca ted up on the de dine of th at p rom ise . A nd we need the b rut al fa ct 0 f even ts £ 0 rem ind u s : rel axed a ttitu d es a r e pe rh aps n ot e xa ctly the I1l ost ch ara cter isti c fe a tu re of the econ om y of pie asu re . Ra the r th an tole ra n ce, wh at i t mee ts w ith i s the i rre g ul ab il ity of a pr im al ho rror, the irre gul abil ity of h at red an d d re ad , the pu re rej e a ion of the ot her.

A pu re rej e ai on whi ch it i s too convenient to p ut down to f r ust rati on, as the in corrigi bl y r ose- col oured re al i sts w ould h ave u s d o. For them, h atred ori gin ates in d is putes ove r prope rty or p os it ion , when the other p ossesses s ometh in g on e l a cks . F o r e x a mple , y ou h ate Arabs be cause y ou ar e une mpl oyed a nd th ey h ave jobs . Yet agai n, the sedu ct iveness of coin ciden ces, w ret ch cd as they mi ght be : in th i s h y p othes is y ou h ate be ca use y ou arc dep rived, y ou excl ude � cau se you a re excl uded . Th is h appens, of co urse . But eve ryd ay e xpe rien ce sti l l te a ches us th at the ple a­su res of excl us i on s ca r cel y d i m in i sh with the com f O f t a n d st abi l ity o f on e 's ow n p osi ti on . Pu tt in g h at red d own to l a ck i s

24

T H E E N D O } p a r I T I C S

gi vi n g onesel f li cen ce to see the i ss ue a s me rely one of b a ck­w ardness i n m od e rni ty, as a rel i c of the obs olete w ar between ri ch an d p oor. Th ere are , i t is s ai d , th ose left be h ind by exp an­si on . The y ar e st i I I in the l as t cen tury be ca use we h ave n ot h ad en ou gh ti me y et for eve ryon e t o benefi t from the f ru its of grow th �

Ti rre then, i n a he adl on g fl ight, be com es th e s u bst an ce of th e l a5t ut opi a . A l l we need i s to have no l ack of i t, al l we need i s n or to he m i ssin g fr om it, an d p ol it i cs w il l at tai n i ts ap p o inted end . We w ou ld h ave i t th at the age of p ro mi ses an d p rog ress i s ove c B ut wh at h as e xp ire d is n ot so m u ch a pr ogressi v i st f aith i n the p owe rs o f ti me as the link which th at f a ith on ce m ain t ai ned w ith the i dea o f a y a rdst i ck , a telos whi ch se rved s im u }t ane­ou sl y to t ake the me asu re of the st ate of p ol it i cs a n d give a f in al ity t o its f orw a rd moti on . Now, with neithe r y ardst i ck n or end, it i s faith i n the pu re for m of ti rre wh i ch Bl u st se rve as the las t ut opi a , the one whi ch su rvi ves the d is ap poi ntment o cca­si oned e a ch time ut opia i s sp ati al ized . This u top i a con fl ates tw. ch ara cter izatio ns of ti me . On the one h and, ti rre a s the form of the in fi n i te , of the apeiron to wh i ch al l problems of me asu re a nd mea s u re lessness can he refe rred a s to the ir n atu ral pl ace ; o n the othe r, t ime a s the prin ci ple of growth op p osing the on l y re m ai n ­ing identi fiab le evi l : del ay, whi ch i s the so urce of l a ck . W ha t then be comes even more s ove rei gn th an the ide a of the te ch n i cal dom­inati on o f the worl d is the ide a o f t ime a s pu re sel f-e xpansi on . The new In il len aria n iS In tel ls us th at i n 1 9 9 3 or 2000 we sh al l ente r into con ti nu ous , h omogene ous ti me, a ti rre w ith out events, for whi ch no event can h ave the fun cti on o f a y ardsti ck . In con ­tra st to o u r re cent obi t uary bi cente n n ial s , these d ates he raId the end of th at ti me when d ates i nter ru pted ti me, when events h ad ens u ing effe cts . Wh at i s he ra lde d in its ste ad is a t ime i n whi ch every p ol iti cal command ment w i l l e mbr a ce the n at ura l form of 'F orw ard ! Mar ch ! ' . Tinle, th e n , a s the pana cea n ex: j ust for the s or rows o f the he art but f or al l p ol i t i ca I e v ils . A l l we nee d is t ime, giv e us ti me, cl am ou r al l ou r gove rnrnen ts. Of co u rse every gove rnment w ants to in cre ase i ts l ife sp an . But there is m ore i n th is ple a : the t ransfer t o time o f a l l u top i an p owe rs. Ed u cati on p ol i ci es e xe m p lify th is w ith the e quat ion ; ed u ca t i on = j ob tr a in i n g� This e qu a tion i mp l i es mu ch m ore th an its obv i o us

2S

O N T t I l S H O R E S O F P O L I T I C S

me aning � giv ing the you ng a t sch ool qu al if icati on s wh ich mat ch th e j obs on the ma r ket - be cau se i t p osit s a ut op ian e qu iv a l en ce between th e h i olog ical t im e of the c h i l d's m atur ing i nto a du l t­h o od a nd the temp or a l it y o f th e exp and i n g m ark et.5 In th e f inal ph ase o f th e se rnl a r iz at ion o f pr ov i d e nce, f a ith in n atur e, in the n at u r al pr od u ct iv ity o f t im e, becorl1es syn onymous w ith fait h i n m ir acle s.

To th e pr ov oc ati on of a certa in return o f th e ar cha ic, o f a cer � t a i n r ever sal o f th e ' e nd ', th e rea l i st u t op ia res p ond s w ith a hea dl ong fl ight wh ich i s a l so a th e(ry o f headl ong fl ight . I f we d o n ot w a nt to l et ou rselv es be dr agged i nto th e rec kl e ssne ss o f th is fl ight, we sh al l h av e to cons ider the que sti on aga inst the gr a in, to tak e ser iou sl y thi s re ve r sion to th e ar ch aic, th ese n ew out hur st s of h atr ed for th e Oth er an d th ese repet it ions o f th e an ce str al ge stur e o f a ppe aseln e nt. Do th e se n ot test if y to a pecu l iar d r ift concer nin g th e col l apse o f th e d u a list ic pri n ci pl e, o f th e w ay in wh ich co nfl ict is represe nted ? W her e th e social pr in cipl e of d iv i­s i o n, th e w ar between r ich an d p oor, i s pr on ounce d dead an d bu r ied , we see th e r i se o f th e p assion for the excl u d ing O ne . Pol it ics thu s f ind s i tse lf facin g a n ev en In ore r ad i c al sp l it , b or n ne ith er o f di fferences i n w eal th n or of th e stru ggl e f or office, bu t r ath er of a p art icul ar p assion f or un ity, a pass ion f ed b y th e r ai l y in g p ow er 0 f h atr ed .

6 . Th e Ph il osop her a nd th e P ol i ti ci an

Th is bl ind spot of th e rea l ists may a lso be th e b lind sp ot o f a p hil osoph y w hich i s often , wh en i t come s to p ol it ics, m ore ' rea l ­ist ' th an is gener al l y a ck n ow led ged � Let u s retu rn to th e tw ofold or igin, th e tw ofold d eter minat ion o f th e p ol it ical in A ri st ot le : a n at ure whi ch make s m an a n eln inentl y pol iti cal be ing, an d the c o nt ingent f act o f the d iv is ion bet ween r ich a nd p oor. T he gu l f b etwe en th e se tw o th e se s pr ompt s th e qu e st ion wh eth e r th e wh ol e issu e can ind e ed be summed u p s impl y b y ev ok in g, f ir st, th e n atu r al sociabil it y of th ose wh o sh are th e logos an d , sec o nd, th e pr imar y opp os it ion w hich is ne ces s ar ily th e st an ce of th ose wh o ar e wh a t th e oth er s a re not , wh o d o n ot have wh at the oth­er s h av e. Th is ' be tw een-th e -nvo' pr obl e m m a y w ell be connect e d

26

T H E E N D O F I ' O L I T I C S

to a str ange fi gur e wh o In akes a f urt ive a p pea rance in Book I o f the Politics: the ap o l it ica l ind iv id u al , a be ing with ne ith er hea rth nor home wh o is e ith er ' a bove h um an it y' or el se a bject (phaulos, an adj ectiv e so pe j or ativ e a s to hav e no comp ar at iv e ). Th is be ing, A ri st otle tell s u s, th is c ityl e ss be ing, i s a l ov e r o f w ar in th at he is an azux, a n on-coop e r at or, a n ' i sol ated p iece a t dr au ght s'.6

"rh i s pr oposit ion w oul d se em str ange ev en i f we were bett er acqu aint ed w ith th e pl ay a nd term i n ology o f rhe gam e r eferr ed to.7 Yet rhere is noth ing i s ol ated a b ou t the p rop osit ion i tse l f, wh ich i s f ir ln l y e ln bedded i n A r i st otle's a rgu m e n t: it come s d ir ectl y aft er th e a s s ert ion 0 f s om et h ing con s ide r ed m an i fest (phaneron), n amel y th at man is by n at ur e a po l it ical a n i m al; a nd it is f ol low ed by anoth er 'obv ious fac t' (deloll ), on e wh ich seems, if n ot to be d irec tl y in fe r abl e fr onl it , then at lea st to be but ­tr e ssed by it : the fact , once aga in , th at In an is a p ol it ical a n i m al ­dist inctl y m ore p ol it ica l, a t an y rate, th an bees or other gr egar iou s a n i m a ls .

Between th e se tw o obv iou s fact s, th en, come s th is n (l1 eth el ess od d pr op osit ion : th e d esire f or w ar i s a pr op ert y o f the i sol ated m a n . On wh om th en w ould he mak e war ? Un le ss ' sta te o f w ar ' simpl y m e ans �st at e o f sol itud e' . Dr aught s w il l scar cel y su ff ice to en l igh t en u s; the gam e seem s m uc h r ath er to be there to d ose th e que st ion. Th is m ay be cust omar y� In PI at 0, a reference to gamin g ha d a l rea dy be e n u sed to c u t argum e nt d ea d; i n b ot h th e Republic an d the [Joiitics th e reference serves to s uggest th at a m ass ou t o f w hich so few e l it e pl ayer s emerge is ev en m ere u nf it to furn ish th e rul er s o f th e city. Her e, it d ose s t he d oor on a d if­ferent q ue st ion� the q ue st ion o f a bein g-t ogeth er wh ich c o u ld be a c on du ctor o f h at e, a contr ibut or to w ar. Onl y tw o fo rms of com bat ar e in prosp e c t here� Th ere i s th e wa r br ou ght by the aso­c i al ind iv id u al , by he wh o is mor e o r less t han a m a n� T his u nth in k able, inexpl icabl e w ar rema ins a n aca d emic h yp oth es is, s ince it a s s umes a n at ur e other th an h u rl1an n at ur e . An d th en th er e is th e combat b et ween gr ou ps on th e basis o f th e d istr ibu­t ion o f p rop erty a nd pr er ogat Lve s� wh ich p ol it ics can p acif y by r edist r ib ut ing the ca rd s or by ch an gin g th e p ercept ion o f th e gam e�

A stat e o f sol it ud e, the n, or a c ol lect iv e stru ggl e fo r wh at the

27

ON T H E S H O R E S O F P O L I T I C S

other group possesses. The excluded middle here, the 'between­the- two' w h i c h i s n o t conceptua l i zed , i s the soc ia l i za t ion o f hatred , the c o m m u n i t y formed n o t to se i ze the property o f another commu nity, but s imply for the sake of and o n the bas is of hatred. This i s the archaioteron with which the are he m u s t deal , most anc ient of a l l , yet s t i l l y o u n g as the miHenniu rn of the obsolete c lass struggle hoves i n sight: the b l ind spot at the bound­ary of the pol i t ica l which is a l so the bl ind spot of a phi losophy that conce ives of w a r as d i v i s i o n and hatred as envy, whereas in fact hatred is a ra l ly ing force in its own right a n d rall ies for no reason but the precise fact that for each ind iv idua l i t is s imply there, pr ior to any cause or reason being imagined and having no conceivable purpose for nature that makes s igns (those semeia or

signs of nature which are so much in ev idence when Aristotle demonstrates the pol i t ical nature of the h uman a n i m a l ) . Spinoza a t a n y rate must have encountered this hatred in the murderous frenzy of the ultimi barbarorum - the cit izens of that nat ion of merchant cap i ta l which pioneered our boundless modernitY4 Yet measuring the modernity o f th i s barbar ism wou ld sure ly have compel led h im t o ruin h i s phi losophica l edifice, to acknowledge a rift i n the empire of nature: not the r is ib le pretension of a n empire governed by h u m a n wi l l , but, o n the contrary, the irre­ducible region o f a distress resistant to that knowledge which changes sadness into joy .

This i s a n area that ph i lo sophy h a s trouble approach ing , whether its relationship to the ignorant mass be patient (Spinoza) o r impat ient (P la to ) : that p o i n t where the order of the pack becomes c lear ly dist inct from the d i sorder o f popular move­ments ; that iunct ion of the one a n d the many which i s ne ither the un ion of the discordant many nor the resolut ion o f the contra� d ict ion , b u t the p lace where the terrors of the One meet the terrors of the many, where the dread of the disarmed subiect , of the ch i ld -sub ject evoked by Jean-Fran�ois Lyotard/� becomes the face of a mobi l iz ing hatred, where the cure for separation turns in to radica l ev i l . Is this n o t the point which ph i losophy avoids even a t i ts most radica l ly self-accusatory, even when i t deems its betrayal o f its own task the very foundation of the tota l i tar ian catastrophe? Is not the pecu l i a r i ty of the Heideggerian approach

2 �

T H E E K D 0 F IJ 0 L 1 1 1 C S

to pol i t ics t h a t it swal lows u p the quest ion of a ra l ly ing hatred in the supposed ly more radica l abyss o f phi losophy's catastro­phe a n d s e l f - p u n i s h rn e n t ? In t h e terror o f t h e century , ph i losophy refuses t o acknowledge a n y pr inc ip le b u t i t s own or ig ina l error : the o l d but ever y oung betraya l ca l l ed meta­physics, which abandons the t a s k o f i l l u m inating what i s i n the imperi l led l ight o f being and instead sets u p a n a l l -powerfu l subject pres id ing over a world of oh iects p laced at i t s d i sposa l ; th i s pr inc ip le of the omnipotence o f the sub iect a n d o f the dev� astation o f the world fulf i ls i tse lf i n the reign 0 f technology, wh i l e the po l i t i ca l terror i t exerts appears a s i u s t o n e of i t s achievements (the corpses in the gas chamber, certainly , but a l so the l and la id waste by agr ibusiness , a n d so forth ) .

We know how drastically t h i s precipice princ ip le reso lves the i ssue of the approach to po l i t ics . By positing a s ingle essence o f dominat ion a s the unif ied pr inc ip le o f o u r t ime, it prohibi ts the g iv ing 0 f m e a n i n g to the ''}-wo o f p o l i t i c s i n whatever form (N a z i s m a n d soc ia l democracy, bourgeo i s i e and proletar iat , dernocracy and tota l i tar ianism) . Amer ica a n d Russia necessari ly exempl ify the working o f this same princ iple : the same frenzy of unrestrained technology, t h e same norma l izat ion of the rootless ind iv iduaL And what disappears in th i s account is the s ingular­ity of r a J 1 y i n g � t o - e x c l u d e , a l o n g w i t h its m o s t rad i ca l , exterminatory, express ion � The shared brink of the abys s leaves roorn for only t\va poss ib i l i t ies : e i ther a vo luncar i st ic metanoia curn ing its back to the sea and opposing the common drift of the rows o f Amer ican a n d Soviet oarsmen so as to bring a saved people back to dry land - back to earth, to the va lues of the earth (with a 1 1 the h o m o n y m i c resonances th i s suggests ) ; or e lse a reversal of the century, the f lash o f l ight in the depths o f suffer­ing , the wa i t for wh ich i s l ed b y thought , d i s tanc ing itself , interminab ly ph i losoph iz ing ph i losophy away, m imick ing the self�reduction of the po l i t i ca l i n an extraordinary passion for sel f-mortifica t ion.

Scrangely, it i s the sarne self-reductive figure which serves those who confront the quest ion of how the ph i losopher o f the cen­tury - one who spent his life warning his t i rne of the horror for which it was heading - cou ld have becorne compl ic itous with the

? 9

O K T F -I E S H O R E S O F P O L I T I C S

rnost extrerne forrn of th is horroL The answer given is a lways based on locat ing the po int where thought has forgotten to set a space betvveen i tse lf a n d its rnetaphysica l double - the point where the fields st i l l corne right up to the city rarnparts . The a i rn i s to identify the concept that has not yet been deconstructed, the concept whose surviva l is what rnakes possible such support for the abhorrent. Apparently there are a lways surplus words, words which, in becorning l i teral , p l u nge the th inker in to the uncon­ceptual ized abyss . There are a lways rnore of these words to be purged, and dernonstrably n o would-be purger ever cornplete ly f inishes the iob .

Perhaps this approach is rnore attached than it l i k e s to think to the doxies 0 f a century that fiercely systernatizes i t s rn istrust o f words (which, it is sa id , are never innocent) precisely because this rnistrust has s o regular ly proved va in . There is nothing for it : there wi l l a lways be surplus words, i u s t as there are a lways fie lds abutting the rarnparts or a rno b pressing around the ecclesia. The rnany, in whatever forrn they appear, wi l l continue to ho ld sway. No rnatter how rnany words are taken away, one can never silence the cries that stir up the crowd. Hence, the sornewhat hol­low pathos of p h i losophy's sacrif icing itself to exp iate i ts s ins , consurning i tse lf i n a flarne supposed a t once to shed l ight on and constitute reparation for the horrors o f the century. A l l this spec­tacular reparation rea l l y does is leave it to the practit ioners of po l i t ics to deal concretely with hatred . 1�his then is the t a s k entrusted to the k ing-guarantor o f dernocracy: to define a corn­ing together so that dispersal is reduced without unleashing the kind of unif icat ion that i s based o n hate; and to define i t in i ts necessary re lat ionship to an 'at least Two' representing neither the s i rnp le factual i ty of the d iv i s ion of social forces , nor the rornance o f enl ightening debate, bu t rather the site o f a cornrnon catharsis of the passions of the one and of the rnany, the point of rn in i rn u rn constr ict ion of what cannot l i v e peacefu l ly e i ther under the regirne of the one or under the regirne of d i spersa l .

Should this constriction, this jost l ing between the One and t h e Two for the governrnent o f the rnany, b e perceived a s a si rnple rnatter of the sensible view, forever devoid of any log os? Or even worse, a rnatter of empeiria - 0 f the sort of i iggery-pokery with

3 0

T H E E N D o r P O L I T I C S

which Socrates taxes the rhetoric of the ernulators of Gorgias, or in the sense in which we stil l speak of e lectoral i iggery-pokery? Should we not rather take a different route and return to that in i ­t ia l point, that inaugural rnornent when philosophy, in order to conjure away the disorder of the ochlos and the ev i l of d iv i s ion, invented for itself and for the pol i t ics to corne the po l i t ics of the end o f pol it ics? At this init ial point , phi losophy got the root evi l wrong, as i t were, rnisapprehending the true figure of the ochlos, which is not the disordered turbulence of the rnany but the hate­driven ral ly ing around the pass ion o f the excluding One. Is it not this init ia l rn i s iudgernent which i s revis it ing uS when in place of the c la rnour of a now obsolete d iv is ion we once again hear the howling o f the pack? Perhaps we need to reconsider the factual­ity of dernocratic d iv is ion, and ponder the fact that the pol it ical war between the parties a n d the soc ia l war between rich and poor, upon whose passing we have been congratulating ourse lves, had, in thernselves and in their conflictual interrelationship, an i l l ­appreciated power to rernedy the evil a t the root. It i s as though the war between rich and poor had a l so in sorne sense pacified an older war. As though the double d iv i s ion o f the polit ical and the social d id after a l l have a regulating function in relation to the rnore radica l sch i s rn provoked by that part icular k i n d o f passion for unity whose rediscovery o f archaic gestures and charisrnas o f pacif ication are the corol lary of the erasure o f divis ion itself.

7. Democracy a n d Ochlocracy: From P l a to to Post­Socialism

If we are t o th ink through the present rneaning o f the 'end o f pol­it ics ' we sha l l have to recons ider the re lat ionship posited by Greek thought between the demos a n d the ochlos, between the power o f the people a n d the turbulent unification of individual turbulences � Modern ideas of dernocracy have general ly con­firrned th i s in i t i a l rnode l , directly or ind i rectly, by ident ify ing dernocracy either with the self-regu lation, i n the final instance, of dispersed focuses of use and profit, or with the power of the l aw which institutes collective sovereignty b y subrnitting the particu­lar to the universaL But if the ochlos frorn the outset is not the

3 1

O N T H E S H O R t S O f P O L I T I C S

di sordere d su m o f appeti t es bu t th e p assi on o f th e e xcl u di n g On e - th e fri ght eni n g ral l yi n g of fri ghten e d m en - the rel ati on m ust be con ceived o th e rwis e. The d�mos mi ght we l l be nothi n g but th e mo vemenf where by the multit u de tea rs its el f a wa y from th e w eighty des ti n y w hi ch seeks to drag it i nto th e co rporea l fo rm of th e och/os, into the s afet y o f in co rpo ra ti o n i nto th e im age of the whol e. Demo cra cy i s n eithe r th e cons ens ual se l f­regu l ati on of th e p l ura l pa ssi ons o f th e m u lti tu de of in d i vi du als nor th e rei gn of a col l ectiv it y u n i fied by l aw un de r th e s hadow of Decl a r ati o ns of Ri ghts . Demo cracy e xists i n a so ci et y to th e degree th at th e demos e xists a s th e po wer to di vi de th e ochlos. This power of di vision is e nacted th rou gh a conti n gent histo rica l s yst em of ev ents, d is co urs es an d practi ces w hereb y any multi tu de affi rms a n d m ani fests itsel f a s s uch, si m ult aneousl y refu sin g both its in u) rp o rati o n in to the On e of a co l lectivit y th at a ssi gns ran ks a nd i dentiti es an d the pure a ban donm ent of i ndi v id u al fo cLS es of poss ession a nd te rro r.9 Demo cracy do es n ot e xist si m ply becaus e th e l aw dec l ares i n di vi du als e qu al a nd the col l e ctivit y m �t e r of its el f. It sti l l re qui res th e fo rce of th e demos whi ch is n ei th er a snm of so ci a l partn ers no r a gat he rin g to gether of di ffere n ces, b ut qu i t e th e o pposit e - the po wer to u n do al l p a rtnersh ips , ga th er­in gs an d ordin a tions . The geni us of Pl ato d e arl y gra sped that th i s fo rce o f t he an on Ylnous In an y a s s uch am o unted to a revo Jt o f the cardi n al agai ns t the ord in al . For hi m , o f co u rs e, ( hi s revo h co ul d only be th at of th e m ass , th e di sordered SlIm o f di so rdered fo cus es of appetit e. B ut the cl ai m of mo de rn democ r a cy t urns this th esi s on i ts he ad. It stan ds agai nst al l o r di n ati o n - a ll 'geom et ri c' e qu al i ty - hy positi n g the demos a s th e au tonomo us pow e r to separat e from th e och/os, th at i s to s ay fro rn th e an i m al rul e of pol i ti cs i n either i ts co n j oi ne d or its di s j oi ne d fo rms : th e O ne of co l l ectivi ty, th e di st ri b uti o n of soc ia l r an ks or th e h elot­ism of i n d i v i d u al s . Th i s s pe ci fi c po we r of th e demos, whi ch exceeds al l the d is positions of legis l ato rs, is in its sim pl e st fo rm the ral l yi ng-di vi di n g pow er of th e pri m al m any, the po wer of th e TlUO of di vi sion . The Two of di visio n i s th e p ath fol l owed by a One whi ch i s no lon ge r th at o f co ll ectiv e in c o rpo rati o n b ut r ather th at of th e e qu al ity o f a ny On e to a n y oth e r On e.

The essen ce o f e qu al i t y is in fact not so mu ch to u n i fy as to

3 2

T H E E N D O F P O L I T I C S

dec l ass i fy, to u n do th e su ppos e d n at u ra ln ess of o rde rs a nd re pl ace i t wi t h th e co n troversi al fi gu res of di v isi o n � Equ al i ty i s th e pow e r o f in co I�is ten t, di s i n te grativ e a nd ever- re pl ay ed di vi ­s i o n w hi ch tea rs po l i t i cs a w a y fro m the v a ri 0 us fi gu res 0 f an i m al i ty : the gre at co l lec tiv e bo dy, th e zo olo gy o f o rde rs j usti ­fi ed in te rms o f cy cl es of n atu re an d fun ction, the h ate -dri v en rallyi n g of th e p a ck . The i nco ns ist ent d iv is ion of the egal i t ari an argu m ent de ploys i ts h um anizi n g pow e r th ro u gh s pe ci fi c histo r� ica l fo rms. In the mo de m demo crati c age, de cl as si fyin g d iv is ion h as t ak en on a pri vil eged fo rm w hos e n am e ha s fal l en to tal l y out of favo ur, yet i f we are to k n ow wh ere we are we m ust look at th i s fo rm face - on . The n am e gi ve n to th is p ri v i leged fo rm w as cl ass st ru ggle.

Agai nst th e ol d feu d al dre am of th e grea t co ll ectiv e bo dy d ivi de d i nto o rde rs a n d its new s chola r ly or v ul gar v ari ants, a g ai n st th e n ew ' l i b e ral " dre am of th e wei g hts a n d co un te r­w eigh ts of a p lural i st so ci ety gui de d by i ts cl i tes, cl ass st ru ggl e pro cl a im ed an d pl ace d a t the hea rt of the demo crati c con flict the hum a niz ing po wer of di v ision . In th e fi rst pI ace, bein g a m ember of th e m i l i t ant c l as s mea n s only t his: no lon ger bein g a m ember of a low e r o rde r. To n am e the o pposition b etw e en bou rgeo i s an d proleta ri ans i s to in stit Lr e a sin gl e lo cus of po lemi ca l di vis ion as a mea ns o f assertin g the un acceptabi l i ty of a 1 1 un e q u al d ist ri ­b ution, al l fi xin g of soc i al ran ks o n the mo del o f a n i m al speci es. (�onsequently, the de cla rat ion o f c las s s tru gg le ini ti a l l y took two disti n ct fo rms, both e qu a l ly a pt to der ai l tho se zoolo gists in c l in ed to sea rch fo r i ts secret i n the low er de pt hs of wo rki n g-cl ass w ays o f li fe or i n the d ifferen ce between archai c a nd mo dern, or sk i l le d an d u nsk i l led, wo rkin g- c l �s st rat a. The fi rst i s to he foun d i n the ' naiv et y' of thos e wo rki ng-cl ass pam phl ets whi c h ta ke a s th ei r ha td e st andard th e st at em ent th at there are no class es, th e secon d in the so phisti catio n of th e theo r eti ci an w ho pro cl ai ms the pro � l eta ri at as a non-class of so ci et y, as th e d isso l uti on of a l l cl a ss es. The d i ffi c u l t en u)unt e r hetw e en Marx and prol etari an so ci al i s ts is p laye d out on th e ral.o r 's edge of th i s p a r a do xica l questi o n : how are we to co nceiv e o f th e age n t o f this a ction o f de cl assifi ­c at i o n ? Ho w to n am e this agent i f no t s ti l l by th e class n am e ? This n am e w i l l th en m ean tw o co n tradi cto ry thi ngs . On th e on e

33

ON T H E S HO RES OF P OL I T ICS

hand, it wi l l designate the d issolut ion of classes actua l l y taking place - which is to say a lso the dissolution of the working c lass hy itself, the work on i tself which tears it away hoth from the animal ity o f corporatism and from the animal ity o f the pack� Hut at the same time it wil l fix the c lass which effects the declassifi­cat ion in its own suhstanriviry, therehy resuscitating the fantasy of a good distrihution o f socia l funcrions or, in other words, in the f inal ana lysis , introducing a new form of the fantasy of the well-ordered One .

Al l the conf licts in the 'working -class movement' have had at heart the n a m in g of this non-c lass c lass, o f this insuhstantial suhstantia l ity. Marx thought he had given this con [radiction ade­quate form in the figure o f that party which un i ted proletar ians hy div id ing the class whose party i t was . That th is figure should have turned out h istor ica l ly to he the most fearsome of ex em .. p lars o f the One that suhiugates, indeed the exemplar most apt to suhstantiate a l l the others, hecause i t cumulated the powers of imaginary incorporation, o f feudal stratif ication and of the iso­l a t i o n o f terr i f ied i n d i v i d u a l s , c a n h a r d l y he sa id t o have e l iminated the problem. By forgetting Marx, however long the l ist of good reasons for doing so, we sorely risk s imultaneously forgetting the other s ide of the contradict ion : the movement which has nourished the delnocracies of the declassifying, demas­s i f y i n g power of t h e c l a s s srruggle . Indeed , n o matter how vigorously democracy has appl ied itself (0 reduc ing the c lass struggle to something incongruous in a free, equa l and fraternal order, and no matter how vigorously the class struggle for its part has sought to denounce democracy as a front for dominat ion, the fact remains that each has found itself hound to the other, har­ter ing the powers of the One, which denies exc lus ion for rhe powers of the Two, which exposes that exclus ion and reopens the conflict; each has shared its culture with the other, and each has done far Inore to form and c iv i l ize the other than all the 'per­missiveness" all the self-service and a l l the free trade in bodies and goods put together. To forget Marx i s thus to forget this sim­ple question: heyond c lass struggle, what will p lay the part o f that d iv is ion which separates demos from oehlos? Just as pure progressivism (pure faith in the powers of t ime) succeeds the

3 4

T H E E � . O F P O l I T I C S

progressivism of a society advancing hold ly towards the real iza­tion of its telos, what succeeds forgotten M a r x i s n1 i s a hastardized Hegel ianism: the peaceful real izat ion of reason hy a government o f the wise against the hack drop of consensual , con­sumerist mediocracy+ Ochlocracy fulf i l led rakes the form of that government o f wise men which is a lone fit to admin i ster the unharmonious harmony of prol iferating focuses o f satisfactio n . Postdemocracy is perhaps the precise coincidence of ochlocracy with its supposed opposite, epistemocracy: government by the most intel l igent, emerging quite natural ly from the regime o f the educat ion system co effect the precisely calculated administrat ion o f the infinit}f of great and smal l focuses o f satisfaction� As we know, however, the l im itation 0 f administrators o f satisfaction is how hard they find it to manage two o r three related emotions which are less easily quant if iahle and indexihle� frustration, fear and hate . Th is is where an addit iona l intervention is ca l l ed for, that o f the good king, the democratic king, sk i l led at executing two gestures in o n e - at exempl i fy ing the One ius t sufficiently to pacify the passions of the pack a n d therehy preserve the demos as an ahode of dual ity . The k ing ever ready, a lso, to cry wol f as a way of hringing the wolf to the door - of forcing things to the hrink of the abyss so that his peacemaking hecomes essential .

Are we under a monarchy? asks a would-be provocative voice from time to t ime. What c a l l s forth the s ingular figure of the democrat ic k ing l ead ing us wi th repet i t ive a r c h a i c gestures towards a hound less postmodernity is actual ly a newer figure, that of the conflict hetween democracy and ochlocracy. Were they to misiudge the scope of this conflict, our Inanagers o f the end o f politics would no douht have t o set off in search o f other returns of the archaic . But the question facing the pol it ic ians also imp inges on philosophy, whose original pos it ion placed it face to face with a democracy wh ich const i [uted ahsolute other­ness for it, because i t enshrined the scandal o f the factuality o f the tna n y making the law. Perhaps the car icature o f i tse lf that is now a commonplace o f enl ightened po l it ics and ser ious iourna l­ism wi l l compel ph i losophy more resolutely to explore the path of another idea of factuality, namely the path o f the wisdom o f the m a n y - a path, moreover, w h i c h the t i re less g e n i u s o f

35

O N 1 ' l i E S H e R t S e F P O L I T I C S

Aristotle long ago traced, a long with the path of the centrist utopia, i n more t h a n o n e passage of the Politics. For it would i ndeed be the u lti mate scandal for phi losophy, the highest price it could pay for its P latoni c arrogance in face 0 f the empiricists, i f it were ohl i ged to leave to the sole judgem ent of pol it ical j iggery .. pokery, not just the conduct 0 f the people's husincss, hut what is perha ps phi losophy's own most in [ imate husi ness; how (0 deal with fear a n d hate4

Notes

1 The end of th is interval has son1etimes been described as �the end of the French exception" but France certainly has no monopoly on violent beginnings for rational den1.cracy, even if son1e people have come to the conclusion in a l l sincerity that the English parlian1entary regime was the product o f a harmonious union between royal wisdom and free industrial expansion, or that American democracy arose solely fron1 the combinat ion of the spirit 0 f enterprise and Puritan morality. The true meaning of this 'end of the exception' was revealed by t h e renditions of �La Marseil laise� with which Eastern Europe responded to our pompOllS and revanchist lnter .. ment of the Bicentennial, for they resituated it within that n10vement which began in the England of the Ste\varts and which has not yet r u n its course. 2 Aristotle> Politicst IV, 1 2 9 2 b t 37 -8� 3 Ibid. > \'1 , l 3 1 9a > 36-8� 4 Gil les Lipovetsky, L�eTe du vIde, EssalS sur rtndlltiduallsnle COlltenl-

poratl1t ParIs 1 9 � 3 . 5 What: i s more, this urepia impmges on the m e a n s suggested for aC[U­alizing the equation. In the bulky educational reform plans generated by any minister worth his salt , one particular kind of proposal absolutely always turns up: I am referring to proposals affecting the organization of time. Proposals for shorter school days er longer school years, for cutting lessons b y five minutes or rescheduling tern1S and vacat ions . O f courset aU such meaSllres arc always backed u p b y appeals to psychological and ped­agogical authorit ies, and they have the added charn1 of belng the le(l�r costly. But what is n10re significant about their persistent presence is T h e eloq uent testimony it bears to a fa i th in the magi(;al powers of time -powers s u c h that any manipulat ion of ti lne at a l l , even a bl ind o n c �

guarantees some n1iraculous result er other. 6 Aristotle, P()litlcs� I , 1 2 5 3 a > 5-6+ 7 Draughts or backgammon offer only approximate equivalents to the peltoi o r pebbles which came into several ancient Greek gan1es. 1-hc precise n a t u r e of the game evoked here has been debated notably by Becq d e Fel1ql1ieres (Les /eux des ancie�ls, Paris 1 8 6 9 ) and H. Jackson (Journal of Phi/elegy,. val . 7 , 1 8 7 7 ) . On the basis of the comn1entaries, d espite their divergences and uncertainties, i t seems we may assun1e that the azux plece was a fixed pIece able to check any other piece approaching it in cln adlacent

36

T H E E N D or P O L l T I C S

spacet and not a n isolated piece l iable to be encirc}ed i n the course 0 f the play (for there is a difference i n k ind betw�en pieces) . The exact text and s),rnrax of this entire passage has been much discussed. � See �Le survivanf, in Hannah Arendt, el1te/otie et pelitique, Paris 1 9 8 9 . 9 The problems of imaginary incorporation and democratic division arc central te Claude Lefort's work. The notion o f any given multitude has received systematic p h l l o s o p h l c a l treatment I n Alan Badiou, Ltetre et fivellement. aespite th IS necessary reference fO t\VO very different intellec­tual proJects, responsibil ity for the ideas set forth here, using a s imi lar terminology, i s so le ly the author's+

3 7

The Uses of Democracy

Modern th inking on democracy has often represented it as d is ­tanced from i t se l f , separated from i t s t ru th . Those who congratulate themselves most loudly on enioying i ts benefits will­ingly reduce it to a consensus that inegalitarian order is best suited to supply ing the disadvantaged with their min imum share o f power and well-being. Those, on the other hand, who empha­size democracy's c a l l for equal i ty are qu ick to respond, stressing the stubborn reality of an inequal i ty which gives it the lie . With regard to representative democracy and the theories which main­ta in i t , the social ist tradition has long denounced the impl ied fiction 0 f an ideal community, a fiction serving merely a s a mask for the reality of selfishness a n d c lass exploitation. And the col ­lapse o f t h e soc ia l i s t mode l has cer ta in ly not d i s p e l l e d the s u sp i c ion tha t the democracy to which we in the West pay homage is but a shadow of the real thing. Real democracy would presuppose that the demos be constituted a s a subiect present to itself across the whole surface of the socia l body. The empirical figure of democratic man seems (0 contradict the fu l l idea o f the democratic comnlunity.

This v i s ion i s expressed, for example, in C.B . Macpherson's book The Life and �rimes of Liberal Denl0cracy, where l ibera l democracy appears as the somewhat unnatural c o n j u nction of democracy's comm unal essence a n d the indiv idual reckoning of profits and costs in the l iberal 1 I n ivcrse of the interest�adiusting invisible hand} I f left to themselves� democracy and individual ism would go in opposite directions. And in the current atmosphere of d is i l lus ionment we would sccnl to have the choice between only

39

O N T ] I [ S ] I () R E � 0 1 P O L ] 1 ( C S

two positions: either to rccollectivize the idea of democracy, whi le accepting l ihera l democracy a s an irreverslble fact (whence the search for ,�n iniection of more sou l , a s epito ln il.l'd by the idea of parricipation) ; or else to frankly accept that what we ca l l democ­racy is nothing but l iberalism, that al l the dreams of happy polities have never been anything but dreams, the self-deceit of a society of big and smal l capitalists who are finally complicit in the advent of the reign of the possessive indiv idual .

I wonder whether these d i l emmas d o not imply certain fa lse assumptions about the nature of democracy. At the heart of these fa lse assumptions is a strange notion about the original democ­racy, about anc ient democracy: it is as though this h a d been a system founded on the cont inuous presence of the people-as­sub iects , and as though this system h a d been contested and ruined from within by the coming of capita l i st ind iv idual i sm and by the emergence of a subject made doci le , even in i ts proletarian form, by that ind iv idual i sm. This v iew embodies revolutionary and romantic nostalgias for a beautiful totality o f cit izenship, which serve paradoxical ly to buttress l iberal ism's convict ion of having only just invented the indiv idua l , and i t offers an image of Greek dernocracy which ignores the very features wh ich tha t democracy ascribed to itself .

1 . The Reign of the Many

Let us recal1 for a moment a founding text of democracy's reflec­t ions on itself : the funeral oration delivered by Pericles i n Book I I of Thucydides ' History of the Peloponnesian War. This speech immediate ly proposes a concept of freedom which treats it as the uni ty of two ideas : a part icular idea of the public and a particu­l a r idea of the private. I n the words that Thucydides puts in h i s mouth, Pericles says something l i k e this: i n public we conduct the affairs of the c i ty; a s for the private, a s for the affairs of the ind iv idual , we leave those to be handled a s each person th inks fit .

The concept of freedom unifies the private and the pub l i c , then, but it unif ies them in their very separateness� Essential ly, Pericles says that our political regime is n o t one o f mobi l izat ion� We do not prepare for war after the fashion of the Spartans. Our

40

T l i E U S E S O F D E !'vt O <..: R ,\ C Y

mi l i t ary preparat ion resembles our life itself, a life without con­strain ts and without secrets. The democratic pol it ica l subiect has a shared domain in the very separateness of a way of life char­acterized hy two great features : the absence of constraints a n d the absence of suspic ion . Suspic ion, i n Thucydides' Greek, i s cal led h)'popsia: looking underneath. What characterizes democ­racy for Thucydides is the reiection of this looking underneath -something which the social theorists of the modern age e levate , by contrast, to the rank of a theoretical v irtue, an appropriate means of apprehending, beneath the appearance of commonality, a truth which be l ies it .

Noth ing, of c o u r s e , c o m p e l s u s to t a k e Per ic l e s , or Thucydides, a t h i s word, to identify Athenian democracy with its discourse o n i tse l f i n th i s or that part icu lar c ircurnstance . In L·'nvention d'Athenes) Nicole Loraux reminds us that this speech of Pericles was indeed a speech intended to mobi l ize . And we know, for example, that Athenian practices of denunciation, or the use o f antidosis, involved keeping a fairly close eye on one's neighbours � act ions , not to mention a close check on their prop­erty. Sti l l , there is at least one idea here which is so consistent that adversaries a n d devotees of democracy a l i ke can subscribe to it: the idea that from the outset democracy connects a part icular practice of po l i t ica l comn1unity with a style of life characterized by the sporadic . The man of the democratic city is not a perma­nent soldier of democracy. It is this sporadic character which one adversary o f democracy, P lato , mocked i n Book VII I o f the Republic, describing equali ty a s conceived by the democratic man as the incapacity to priorit ize, to choose between the neces­sary a n d the superf luous , the e q u a l a n d the u n e q u a l . The democratic man, for Plato, wants equal ity in everything, even in the unequal; not recognizing the difference between the necessary and the superfluous, he considers everything, including democ­racy, on the basis of desire., change or fashion� On one day, Plato te l l s us , he wi l l intoxicate himself with the sound of h i s Hute, then on the next he wi l l fast; one day he w i l l take exercise, the next he wil l lie around; one day he wil l engage in politics, the next in philosophy; for a t ime he will pursue the arts of war, then forsake war for bus iness and so forth.

41

O N T H E SHORE S e r: P O L I T I C S

We could eas i l y translate this portrait in to modern terms: Plato's democratic man, moving from polit ics to d iet ing or from the gym to ph i losophy, bears a fair res emblan c e to what i s described to u s a s t h e postmodern i n d ivi d ual. Bu t whereas the schizophrenic i n d iv id ual 0 f consumer society i s readily identif ied with the ru ination or degeneration o f democracy, Plato ant ic i ­pates h imse l f as a caricature o f democracy's perfect incarnation. For Plato, democracy is i n its essence a system o f variety, an d this appl ies eq ual ly well to what i s on offer pol i t ical ly : democracy, he says, is not a const itut ion, but a bazaar f i l led with all possible constitutions, where anyone can choose to perceive whichever variety they please.

Thus, as seen b y an opponen t, democracy is the regime of mult ip le accommodations. This idea o f the regime which every­one can see differently recurs i n Aristotle, but Aristotle conceives th is strength of mult ip le accommodation n ot as a sign of in feri .. ority but as a pol it ical virtue . This vi rtue is certain ly not that of democracy for Aristotle, however. For h im, as for Plato, democ­racy i s only the least bad of bad regimes; i t i s a regime off course as compared with the correct regime, with the politeia - in other words, w i th the R e p u b l i c . B u t on the other han d , the good regime is characterized precisely by the fact that it is al way s a mixture o f constitutions, a constitut ional marketplace. A regime without mixture, a regime which wants al l its la ws and inst itu­t i ons to resemble its basic principle, condemns itself to c ivi l war and ruin because of the very un i lateral i sm o f th is princ ip le . In ord e r to approach perfection, each regime must therefore correct itself , s triving to welcome opposin g pri n c iples, to make itself u n l i k e itself. There i s never such a thing as a good regime, in fact, o n l y regimes off course engaged i n the perpetual work o f self­correction - one might almost say of self-dissi m u lat i o n . Thus to Plato's mockery of the marketplace of regimes might well be opposed the passage i n Book I V o f the [Joiilics where Aristotle argues that there sho uld appear to be elements of both types o f regime (oligarchy an d democracy} and yet at the same time o f nei­ther, , 1 good pol ity being one i n which the ol igarch sees ol igarchy an d the democrat democracy.l

It is worth pausing to consider the function of artifice here, for

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THE U S E S e F D E M O C R A C Y

i t embodies al l the complexny o f Aristotle�s conception 0 f p o l i ­tics. S imultaneously discrediti ng the realist utopia 0 f coincidence

and the purely manipulative conception of polit ics, i t opens onto

an idea 0 f pol it ics not as i l l us ion o r machination but as the art 0 f

life in common. In Aristotle, art i f ice actual izes that p r inc ip le o f

life in common which goes by the name o f friendship, thwarting the uni lateral ism characteristic of each 0 f the const itut ive ele­ments of pol i t ics . It is a way of p lay ing the other's game, 0 f catching h i m out at his own game, an d it cannot be reduced to. some 'cunning of reason' . For Aristotle, th i s a r t remains the science o f the ruler, b u t p erhap s a port ion o f what has been called 'democratic invention � consists in the ab i h ty with which the non-ru lers enable themselves to play the game.

From t h i s rap i d s u rve y of certain fou n d i n g statemen ts o f democracy an d the Republ ic , let me draw two observations :

1 . Democracy - the power o f the demos - is not synonymous with some pr inc ip le o f unity an d u b i q u ity. The power o f the demos is just as much that 0 f a style o f life which gives the pr ivat e an d the publ ic the ir due .

2. The art or art if ice o f l ife in common, the way in which a reg ime must make itself unl ike itself, may st i l l have some­th ing to do with the t h i n k i ng an d practice o f pol i t ics under modern democracy. Perhaps there is a connect ion to be found between the ar t o f d i ssemblan c e as t h e o r i z ed by Aristotle an d the princ i ple o f d ivi s i o n which Claude Lefort sees as the essence o f modern democracy, as the site o f a dis­embodied power, s p l i n t e red between d iverse agencies o f leg i t imac y , i n par t i c u lar the ag e n c i e s o f the law an d o f knowledge.

We know that this regime of d ivision has u s ual l y been con­ce ived o f as so meth i n g n e gat ive � as the man i f e s tat i o n o f a sundering, a n on -truth , of democracy. Crit ical social thought has been strangely contaminated by a problematic born o f theocratic counte rrevolut ionary thought , which depicts the emergence o f democracy as a loss 0 f unity, a sundering 0 f the social bond. I

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() N l ' H E S H O R E S O F P O L I T I C S

shal l not dwell on al l the aspects of th is fantasy of a total i ty lost an d yet to be restored which [he counterrevolut ion has so gen­erol lsly bequeathed to soc ial ism an d social sc ience . t\1y problem is not the quest ion of whether the pri nciple of total i tarian ism i s or i s not to b e located here. I t is rather to see how th is i d ea o f d ivis ion as non-truth - as lie or i l lusi on - has been transposed into social science and Into the forms of social cri tique and pol it­ical perception that have been affected by i t . For i t was indeed this idea that gave social science its origi nal character as a science of suspicion which conceives the heterogeneity o f democratic forms to be inherently i nadeq uate and looks upon the space of democratic speech and representation as a travesty o f a truth which some would seek to hide an d others seek to h ide from themselves.

The practice of democracy has thus found i tself dogged by a n att i tude o f suspici on, o f looking underneath, which relates al l d emo c rat i c statements to a c o n ceal e d truth o f i n e q ual i ty, exploitation or spl itt ing. Two themes have been combined : that of formal democracy as opposed to real defnocracy, and t hat o f the i l lus i o n peculiar to the spontaneous consciousness o f social actors - an d mos[ speci fically the spontaneous consciousness of the exploi ted, who are separated from the meaning of their own practi ce. W hence a discourse with two mai n features : a dogma­tism based on the idea of a hidden truth and a scepticism based o n the idea that misapprehension i s inevi table. This theoret ical apparatus has demonstrated the formi dable power to survive the co l lap se of i t s pol i t ical models . Precisely where the great models o f pol it icaJ hope are i n ruins, at a time when one no longer dares propose any rival to democracy as t h e good form of collective l ife, dogmatism has effectively outlived i tse lf in the gu ise o f sceptici sm. The indeterminate ritual of de mystification continues to impose a way o f t h i n k i ng (an d practisi ng) democ­racy on the basis of s Ll sp icion, as if i t always had to be made to confess t hat i t i s not what it c lai n1s to be, and that those who practise it are perpetually d e l u d e d about what they are d o i ng.

Th i s vi ew of thi ngs has ended up so obscuri ng the very me�ln­i ng of the social ist experience, an d in part icular the rn ean ing of the worki ng-class sociali st experience, t hat th is experience is

44

T H E l J � j E S O F D E \ 1 0 C R A C Y

now mistaken for an achi evement of democracy. T h i s is what I

should l ike ro demonstrate by exami ning some aspects o f what I shall cal l the vzla denzocratica - rather as Hannah Arendt speaks o f the vita activa. I shall deal w ith just two such aspects in what follow s: the lise of words and the lise of forms.

2. The Usc o f Words and the SyUogism o f Emancipation

First let us cons ider the history of one part icu lar idea and prac­t ice in n i neteenth-century france - the idea an d pract ice o f workers' emanci pat ion . As a Inatter o f fact, th is idea establ ished i tself by virtue of a whole system of discourses and practi ces which completely rej ected an y notion of h idden tru th and its demystification� S e e n in this light, the experience of working­class Ini l i tancy takes on an aspect quite different from the one we arc accustomed to: it becolnes a sort o f testing o f equality. Social science has 0 f course always concerned itself essentially with one th ing, proving the exi stence of i n e q ual i ty. And indeed in this en deavo ur it has been highly successful. But the fact that the science o f social crit i c ism is perpetually rediscovering ineq ual i ty is [0 my mi nd precisely what mak es i t worth rak i ng another look at the practices which set o u t to do j ust the opposite. We may well be led in this way to as k who is the more naive, those who demonstrate the ex istence of i nequal ity or those who demon­strate the existence 0 f equal i ty - an d indeed whether the idea 0 f naivety itself has any pertinence here.

The aftermath of the revolution o f 1 8 3 0 in France saw an efflorescence 0 f working-class publi cations, pamphlets and news­papers a l l basical ly as k ing the same quest io n : are the French people eq uals or are they not? These texts, which often go hand in hand with str ike movements o r other k inds of movements, rend to take rhe approximate form of a syllogi sm.

The majo r premiss o f this syi logi sm is s in1ple : the Charter promulgated i n 1 8 3 0 says in its preamble that al l French people arc eq ual before the law, an d th is equality constitutes the syllo­gism's major premiss. The mi nor premiss is derived rarher from direct experience. ror example, in J � 3 3 , workers in the Paris tail­oring trade went on strike because the Inaster tailors refused to

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O N T H F. S H O R E S . f P 0 1 . l T I C S

respond to their demands relating to rates of pay, working hours and working condit ions � Here, then, the minor premiss would r u n something l ike this: now Monsieur Schwartz, the head of the master tai lors' association, refuses to listen to our case .. What we are putting to h im is a case for revised rates o f pay. He can ver­ify this case but he refuses to do so. H e I S therefore not treating us as e q u a l s 4 A n d h e is therefore contrad ict ing t h e equal i ty inscr ibed i n the Charter.

Here is another form of the sy l logisn1 : the same Mons ieur Schwartz meets with his col leagues and reaches a n agreement with them to res ist the workers' demands . So he organizes a bosses' federation. Now, [he l aw says that masters' federations are to be condemned by the same token as those o f the work­ers . Yet o n l y the workers are prosecuted . Here too eq ua l i ty is contradicted.

Another contemporary example : the law says that French peop�e are e q u a l , yet Monsieur Persil , Publ ic Prosecutor to the King, has just said, in his ind ic [ment against a town crier :

Ever ything which the Law has don e aga inst press licence and agai nst pe l i tica l associations w o u l d be l ost i f workers were d a i l y to he g ive n a picture of their posit ion .. hy cOlnparison with a nlore elevated class .f lnen i n society) hy repeated assurances that they are men iust like those others, and that they have a righ t to e n j o y the same things.

Here then is a new minor premiss o f the syl logism: a representa­tive of the law who has just sa id that workers are not l ike other men .

The syl logism i s s imple : the ma ior premiss conta ins what the law has to say; the minor, what i s said or done elsewhere, a n y word or deed which contradicts the fundamental legal/political aff irmation of equality.

� u t there are two ways of c o n c e i v i n g the cont rad i c t ion between the maior and minor premisses . The first i s the way to which we are accustomed. It amounts to the s imple conclusion that the l ega l /pol i t ica l words are i l l u s o ry, t h a t the equa l i ty asserted i s mere ly a fa<;ade des igned [0 mask the real i ty of ineq ua l i ty.

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T l- U : U S E S O F . E �1 0 C R A C Y

Thus reasons the good sense of demystification. Yet th i s i s by no means the logic fol lowed by these workers� The conclusion they draw is usual ly that either the minor premiss or the maior must he changed� I f l\tlonsieur Persil or Monsieur Schwartz i s right to say what he says and d o wha[ he does, the preamble o f the <.:harter must h e deleted. It should read: the French people are not equaL If , by contrast, the ma ior premiss i s upheld , then M o ns ieur Pers i l or M o n s i e u r Schwartz mus t s p e a k or act differently +

The interesting th ing about this way of reasoning is that it no longer opposes word to deed or form [0 reali[y. It opposes word [0 word a n d deed to deed. Ta king what is usually thought of a s something to be dismissed, as a groundless claim, i t transforms it into its opposite - into the grounds for a c l a im, into a space open to dispute. The evocation of equality is thus not ,1othillg .. A word has a l l the power original ly given it� This power is i n the first place the power [0 create a space where equal ity c a n state i ts own c l a i m : e q u a l i ty exists somewhere; i [ is spoken of and writ­ten about � It must therefore be verif iable. Here i s the bas is for a practice that sets itself the task o f verifying th is equality.

How can one verify words? Essentially, through one's actions� These actions must be organized l ike a proof, a system o f rea­sons . I n our example , th is a p p r o a c h e n t a i l s a de te rmin ing transformation in the practice of [he strike. The strike takes on the form of a logical proof. Previously, the refusal of work had been caught up in the logic of a power struggle culminating i n what iourneymen called a 'damnat ion ' : when they were d issat is­fied with the employers of a town, they 'damned" the town, that is to say they left with bag and baggage, a n d sought to prevent anyone else from replacing them� Against this logic of outright reiection the new prac[ice of the strike strove to transform a n al ignment of forces into a logical confrontation. This did not s im­p l y mean subst i tut ing words for act ions ; rather, it meant tral1sfo rming a power re lat ionship by means o f a practice o f logical demonsrra t ion.

W h a t had to be demonstrated was, precise�y, eq ua l i [y. The [a ilors' str ike demands i n 1 � 3 3 included a formulation which seems strange: they asked for 'relat ions o f equa l i ty ' with t h e

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O N T H E S H O R E S O F I) O L I T I C S

masters� This may appear na ive or pecul iar to u s , but the sense o f the th ing i s clear: there are workers and there are masters, but the masters are not the masters 0 f their workers. I n other words, two sets o f re lat ions have t o be reckoned wi th . O n the one hand, a relat ion of economic dependence exists which engenders a par­t icular social real ity - a part icular distr ibution of roles, a s echoed in the everyday order 0 f working cond i t ions and personal re la� t ionsh ips . This 'soci a I ' real i ty is a rea l i ty of ineq ual ity. On the other hand , a legal/po l i t ica l re lat ion exists: the inscr ipt ion of equa lity, a s it appears i n the founding texts, from the Declaration o f the Rights of Man to the preamble of the Charter. This second re lat ion h a s the force to engender a different soc ia l real ity, one founded o n equal i ty ; i n th i s case what this means is mak ing negotiation a customary thing; i t a l so means impos ing part icular rules of courtesy on t h e masters or establ ishing the workers ' r ight to read the newspaper i n the workshop. This social equal ­ity i s neither a s imple legal/polit ical equa l i ty nor a n economic l e v e l l i n g � It is a n e q u a l i ty enshr ined as a p o t e n t i a l i t y i n legal/pol it ical texts, then translated, d isplaced and maximized i n everyday l i f e . Nor i s i t the whole o f equa l i ty : i t i s a way of l i v ing o u t the re lat ion between equa l i ty a n d inequa l ity, o f l i v ing i t and at the same t ime d isp lac ing it in a posit ive way.

This is the definition o f a struggle for equality which can never be merely a demand u p o n the other, nor a pressure put upon h im, but a lways s imu l taneous ly a proof given to onese lf . This i s what 'emancipat ion' m e a n s . It means escaping from a m i nority. Bur nobody escapes from the socia l minor i ty save by their own efforts� The emancipat ion of the workers i s not a matter o f mak­ing labour the founding pr inc ip le of the new society, but rather of the workers emerging from their minor i ty status and proving that they truly belong to the society, that they truly communicate with al l in a common space; that they are not merely creatures o f need, of com pla int a n d protest, b u t creatures o f d i scourse and reason, that they are capab le of opposing reason with reason and of g iv ing the i r act ion a demonstrative form. Thus, the part icu lar strike we have been cons ider ing was constructed as a set of argu­m e n t s : the ta i lors ' d e m o n strat ion of the fa i rness 0 f the p a y increases demanded , t h e i r commentary o n the texts o f the i r

4 8

T H E U S E S O F D E M e C R A C Y

adversaries in order to prove their irrationality, the economic organization of the strike through the creation of a workshop managed by the workers themselves - this less a s a germ of some 'workers� power' to come than a s a n extension o f the republ ican pr inc ip le to a rea lm st i l l foreign to i t , namely the workshop. Perhaps after a l l there is no need for the workers to own their own factory and r u n i t themselves in order to be equaL Perhaps i t is enough for them .to show, when appropriate, that they can do so . Not to found a counterpower susceptible o f governing a future society, but s imply to effect a demonstrat ion o f capacity which i s a l so a demonstration o f communitY4 Self-emancipation is not secession, but self-affirmation a s a io int-sharer in a com­mon world, with the assumption, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, that one c a n play the same game as the adver­sa ry . \X1hence the pro l i ferat ion in the l i t e ra tu re o f workers ' emancipat ion - as also in that of women's emanc ipat ion - o f arguments a im ing to prove that those demanding equa l i ty have a perfect right to i t , that they part ic ipate in a common world where they can prove their case and prove the necessity for the other to recognize it.

O f course, proving o n e is correct has never compelled others to recognize they are wrong� I n order to uphold one's correctness other k inds o f arguments have a lways been needed4 The aff ir­mation of the right to be correct is dependent on the v iolence o f its inscr ipt ion. 1'hus , the reasonable arguments o f the strikers o f 1 � 3 3 were aud ib le , their demonstration v is ib le , on ly because the events o f 1 83 0 , recal l ing those o f 1 7 � 9 , had torn them from the nether world o f inart icu late sounds and ensconced them by a contingent forced-entry i n the world o f meaning and v is ibi l i ty� The repetit ion o f egalitarian words is a repetit ion of that forced­entry, which i s why the space o f shared meaning it opens u p i s not a space of consensus . • emocracy i s the community of shar­ing, in both senses o f the term; a membership in a s ingle world which c a n only be expressed in adversarial terms, and a coming together which c a n only occur in conflict � 10 postulate a world o f shared meaning is a lways transgressive. It assumes a symbolic v io lence both in respect of the other and in respect 0 f oneself . The legitimate sub iect w h i c h no text is adequate to found exists

4 9

O � T H F. S H O R E S O F P O L I T I C S

only in the act o f th i s double violence. Proving to the other that there i s only one world and that one can prove the legit imacy of one's action within it, means first of a l l proving th i s to oneself. I lannah Arendt posits as the pr imary r ight the right to have r ights . We might add that r ights are he ld by those who can impose a rat ional ohl igation on the other to recognize them. That the other more often than not evades such obl igat ions changes the prohlem in no essential way. Those who say on gen­eral grounds that the other cannot understand them, that there is n o common language, lose any basis for rights of their o\vn to be recognized. By contrast, those who act as though the .ther can always understand their arguments increase their own strength -and not mere ly at the leve l of argument 4 The existence of a subiect in law implies that the legal words are verif iable with in a sphere o f shared meaning. This space is v irtual , which is not to sa y i l lusory. Those who take the virtual for the il lusory disarm themselves ius t l ike those who take the community of sharing for a community o f consensus. The cal l for equal ity never makes i tse l f heard withou t defining its own space. The narrow path of emancipation passes between an acceptance of separate worlds and the i l lus ion of consensus. It is th is tension which is carica­tured hy analyses that oppose the formal to the real or by second thoughts which exch�lnge one posit ion for its opposite. Analyses of the day hefore� which contrast rea l l iberty and equal i ty with the ir formal declaration, a n d analyses of the day after� which contrast the good, decorous revolut ions of l iberty wi th the utopian and murderous revolutions of equality, both overlook the same thing: equality and liberty are forces engendered and augmented by their own actual ization. And th i s i s whar [he idea of emancipation impl ies when i t asserts that there is no such thing as i l l usory l iherty or i l lusory equal i ty, that hoth are real forces whose actual effects need to h e verif ied.

This also impl ies that there is no group strength independent of the strength with which indiv iduals tear themselves out of the nether world of inarticulate sounds and assert themselves as shar­ers in a common world. Thus, the idea of emancipation has made its way forward through a multitude of indiv idual experiences� I have had occasion to study the records of one o f those countless

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Tl I E U S E S O F . E l\ I O C R A C Y

singular experiences, [hat of a worker who created for himself an enrire ethic , even an economy, o f emancipation: a whole system for measur ing freedom, a sort of councerpo l i t ica l economy whereby, in every act of dai ly l i fe , i t became possible to assess the acquis it ion, not of the greatest amount of goods, but of the great­est amount of freedom.3 In this way, he invented a style of l iving based on having fewer and fewer needs and continual ly exchang­ing them for freedom. It would be interesting to compare this ascetic economy - a 'cenohitic' economy, he caHed i t - with present-day theories of the indiv idual agent a n d 'cost analyses' applied to the indiv iduaL Such a comparison would show how indiv idual emancipation carried to its logical extreme reconnects with shared concerns. Thus, one of my 'p lebeian philosopher"s essential budget headings was 'shoes" for the emancipated n1an is a n1an who walks a n d walks, moving around and conversing� putting meaning into circulation and promoting the movement of emancipation4 On the one hand, the emancipation of the worker entails a change in his style of living, a n aestheticization of h i s life. On the other, the point where man meets citizen, where the indi­v idual working out h is own life by calculation becomes a member o f the community, is located in the fact that man is first of a 1 1 a creature who speaks: it is essential ly as a speaking being that he discovers his equality with a l l other human beings. Indeed, it is thanks [0 theorists of language that, in France, the word emanci� pation h a s taken on a new meaning, transcending its legal sense, a n d come [0 connote a new indiv idua l and col lective experience. At the heart of th is new idea of emancipation is the notion o f equal ity o f intelligences as the common prerequisite o f both intel­l igibi l ity a n d community, a s a presupposition which everyone must strive to val idate on the ir own account.4

The democra t ic experience is th us one of a particular aes­thetic of politics. The democratic man is a heing who speaks, which is also to say a poetic being, a being capable of embracing a distance hetween words a n d things which is not deception, not trickery, hut humanity; a heing capahle of embracing the unreal ity of representation. A poetic virtl le, then, and a v irtue grounded in trust. This means starting from the point of v iew of equality, asserting equality, assuming equality a s a given, working

5 1

O N ' r � j E S i l O R E S 0 f P O L I T I C S

out from equality� trying to see how productive i t can he and thus m a x i m izing all possihle l i h er ty a n d equality. B y contrast , anyone who starts out from distrust, who assumes inequal ity a n d pro­poses to reduce i t , can only succeed in setting up a hierarchy o f inequal ities, a hierarchy of priorities, a hierarchy o f intelligences -and will reproduce inequal ity a d infinitum.

3 . The U se o f Forms

The same set of interpretations - a n d , I bel ieve, o f their effects -is revealed when we turn our attention to that other essent ia l aspect of democratic l i fe , the way in which forms are used. This m a y be c lear ly seen if we e x a m i n e one of the cardinal forms of mediat ion between ind iv idua ls a n d the polit ical system i n mod­ern societies� the form o f t h e school. The school i s a pr iv ileged site for voicing suspicion concerning the non-truth of democracy and crit ic izing the gap hetween the form of democracy and its real ity. Cr it ical th ink ing a b o u t democratic education has h igh­lighted one basic theme, that of fa i lure ; the fa i l u r e at school o f a large major i ty o f chi ldren from working-class backgrounds has been taken as evidence of the fa i lure of school to fu l fi l i ts task -t h e achievement o f social equ al ity.

The democratic school i s thus regarded a s a place \vhere a promise i s continual ly being broken, and here once aga in we encounter the double-barrel led approach o f social cr it ic ism: the first target is f a i lure � for which var ious remedies, pedagogical , psychological or sociological, are proposed; hut no sooner i s this target h i t than a second is revealed, for to prove fa i l u re is a lso, and most of a l l , to prove that democracy i s ly ing to i tse lf, that i t i s i l l adapted to the equal i ty which i t procla ims, that, on the sly � it is perfectly adapted t. the inequal i ty which it d i ss imu lates and indeed that inequal i ty i s its true fundamental pr inc ip le . The work of Bourdie l l a n d Passeron exemplifies th is logic, i l l which the sociologist a n d the social critic wi n every round by showing th�1 t democracy loses every round. W h a t they set out to show is pre­cisely that if the school h a s not fu l fi l l e d its ega l i tar ian prol l 1 i !�es this is not for want of means hut h y virtue o f its very mode o f being a n d o f the symbolic logic which is its foundat ion .5 A hook

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such as The Inheritors sets in motion in exemplary fashion what

I sha l l cal l the syllogism of sll spicion. This syllogism does not merely oppose a major premiss (the school as e q u a l fo r a l l ) to a minor one {the fa i lure o f working-class children} i n order to pro­duce a n indictment. I t i s intended to show further that school creates inequality precisely because i t promotes belief in equa l ity; in ha ving the children of the poor bel ieve that a ' I who are there arc equal , that pupi ls a r e marked, classified and selected only on the has is of the talents a n d intel l igence each has, i t compels the ch i ldren of the poor to acknowledge that i f they d o not succeed i t i s because they have no talents and are not in te l l igent, and it w o u l d there fore b e better i f t h e y went somewhere e lse . The school thus he comes t h e theatre o f a fundamenta l symhol ic v io­lence which is nothing hut the very i l lus ion of equa l i ty � In order to con vince that success is l inked only to the talents of the pup i l , the school pr iv i leges everything which goes beyond the simple transfer of knowledge, everything which is supposed to ca l l upon the personality and original ity of the pupi l . In d o ing this it selects a mode of being which is in reality a style 0 f l i fe , a form 0 f acculturation which i s not learnt at school - that o f the ' inheri­tors'. I t thus reveals itself a s false to its promise and faithfu l to its hidden essence: the Greek schole, which gave school its name a n d whose in it ia l meaning i s the condition o f persons of leisure, who as such are e q u a l and able on account o f the ir soc ia l p r i v i lege to devote themselves, should they s o desire, to study.

Thus, the form of the school describes a perfect circle: the con­vers ion 0 f socio-economic c a p i t a l into c u l t u r a l c a p i t a l , and, thanks to the practical diss imulation o f this conversion, which is as inv is ible as i t is effective, a separation o f those who have from those who do not have the means to effect it . t\10re hroadly, the democratic form nourishes hoth the i l lusion of cq ual i ty and the misapprehension of a basic inequal ity - the inequal ity between the leisure of the sch.Je a n d the realm of necessity, hetween those who can and those who cannot afford the luxury of the symbolic. Democracy is a fra udulent regime which presumes that l u xury is a possihi l i ty for the poor. This is the ultimate logic of the argu­ment o f suspicion, which makes democratic 111an a man abused by the forms wherehy d ivis ion is at once perpetuated and disguised.

5 3

O N T H E S H O R E S e F P O L I T I C S

True, this nihil istic interpretation of the argument of suspicion is countered by a positive pol it ical interpretation based o n the �reduct1on o f inequalit ies' . This accoun t is proffered by reformist pedagogues a n d polit ic ians who essent i a l ly retain three ideas from Bourdicu and Passeron's c r i t ique : the necessity to make expl ic it the factors impl ic it in i n e q u a l i t y, to struggle against the formal ism of the dominant culture a n d to take into account the weight of the socia l, of the habitus a n d modes o f social ization characteristic of the disadvantaged classes. The outcome of these policies, in France a t least , is now barely contested: supposed efforts to m a k e inequa l i ty explicit ha ve r igidif ied it . F or one thing, the m a k ing expl ic i t o f sociocultural difference has tended to turn that difference i nto dest iny and the institution of the school into an institution of assistance, with a l l that that e n t a i l s i n terms o f reorientations a n d reclassif ications serving to channel the chi ldren of immigrants away from a n y possible r i sk of fail­u r e . t\1 e a n w h i I e , t h e h u n t for ' i m p Ii c i t ' c r i t e r ia has 0 n I y aggravated the impact of the most expl ic it , a s witness t h e mad race (which begins at nursery school leve l and is quickly inter­nalized by the children) for a good pr imary school which wi l l l ead to a good junior school, thus p a ving the way to a good class in a good f)'cee located in a good sociocultural environment of a good area o f the capita l and so forth.

Thus, the nihi l ist ic vision of school as a form of reproduction of inequal ity and the progressive v is ion of school as a £1 instru­ment for reducing inequa l i t ies concur i n the ir effects as they d o i n their principles : both start wirh inequal i ty and end u p with inequality. In a sking for a £1 education adapted to working-class needs, or denouncing a n education that reproduces the domina­t ion o f the workers, they reassert a m o�ol ith ic presumption bequeathed by the counterrevolutionary crit ique o f democracy to its social ist dcmystifiers: the idea that disharmony between [he constitutive forms of a sociopolitical regime signifies an i l l or a fundamental l i e . Yet th is i s precisely the distinguishing feature of modern democracy: the heterogeneity of i t s forms, a n d here specifica f l y the nonconvergence of the logic o f schooling with the logic of production.

In one sense it i s certainly true that democratic education is the

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paradoxical heir o f the aristocratic schole, for i t equal izes less hy v i r tue of (he universal ity o f the knowledge it imparts , o r by virtue o f socia l leve l l ing, than by virtue o f i t s very form, which i s that of a separat ion from productive life. From ancient hierar­chical societies democracy borrows th is form, which separates inte l lectual leisure a n d productive necessity. But out of this once natural separation i t creates a contradiction in motion in which a variety of egal itarian pol ic ies are overlaid, encountering in fre­quently unpredictable guises the diverse ideological a n d social input o f the users ( t h a t is to say, famil ies) . The ambiguity of the school's form opens it up to a multipl icity o f choices a n d mean­ings : for some it is the ren1 izat ion o f e q u a l citizenship, for others a means to social mobility, a n d for y e t others a right, indepen .. dent 0 f i ts a c t u a l use, be it sllccessful or otherwise - a right which democracy owes to itself a n d to the wishes o f its members, however indeterminate these may be. t\1ost of the time a l l of these mean ings mingle, making educat ion neither the mask of inequality nor the instrument o f inequa lity's reduction, but the site o f a permanent negotiation o f equal i ty between the democ­r,1tic state and the democratic ind iv idua l : a m a n i fold negotiation which, to u n e q u a l and often contradictory expectations, offers gains a n d losses which arc inf in ite ly more complex than those conceived of hy the analysts of educat ional ' fa ilure' .

Let me take one example from French pol it ics . November 1 9 � 6' saw the outhreak o f a quite puzzl ing student strike aga inst proposed government legislation o n the universities. The basic a i m of t h i s l e g is l a t i o n was to m a k e h igher e d u cat ion more responsive to economic requirements. One graduate i n three, we were told, was unemployed. Hence the need to introduce a 'selec­t ive or ientat ion' which would set students on the right path a n d match their ahi l i t i es with e ventual employment. (Another factor, I believe, was [hat t h e forces supporting the conservative major .. ity l ike the word 'selecti o n ' for its own s a k e . ) But the legislation hefore Parl iament was very circumspect: a little selective orien­tation, but n o t too much; the universit ies would be a l lo wed to increase enro l rnent fees, but not by too much either. This rather tepid law seemed destined to go through without a mur m ur o f protest. Yet, within days, two hundred thousand students and

5 5

O N T H E S H O lt . E S 0 f P OL I T I C S

lyceens were out on the streets o f P aris demanding its rejection. T h i s mo vement w a s s t a r t l i n g for a v a r iety o f reasons .

Everything took place as if, despite the modesty o f the legislation, the interested parties had taken i n one word only, a word which was intolerable per se: 'sclection'� Yet the context o f this response contained no remnant of cu l tura l revolution, a n d a l l the great debates challenging the capita l ist education system had long since evaporated. The students and lyceens opposing the new l aw were themselves for the most part ind iv idu a l ly caught u p i n the logic o f selection, in the search for good classes and good networks+ This change i n practical beliefs and attitudes seemingly posed no obstacle to the unyie ld ing maintenance of a system o f collective ident if icat ion whereby a free a n d open university system was considered a hard-won and inal ienable right o f French democ­racy: a university where anyone can study anything, whatever the r isks a n d potential losses for the ind iv idua l and for the state - in short, a knowledge bazaar, to go back to the P latonic image -was e v iden tly considered the due o f the collectivity a n d o f each of its members. That ind iv idua ls should be entitled to the ful l scope 0 f university education from the state, whether or not this leads to e m p l o y m e n t , is p a r t o f t h e negotiat ion of e q u a l i ty between the democratic state and democratic ind iv idua l s . But this should not be t a k e n to mean s imply that the disordered wishes and calculat ions of the democratic bazaar force compro­mise o n the a d m i n is tra tors o f t h e c o l l e c t i v e r a t i o n a l i t y . Democracy would indeed a m o u n t t o n o m o r e t h a n what Plato s a w in it if it were s i m p l y the d i s o r d e r of d o m i n a t i o n , the d ishar lnony between its forms. The compromises a n d disorders of domination are only 'democratic' to the extent that they them­selves are effects of egal itarian d iv is ion , the contingent historical configurations where ( h a r d i v i s ion can recognize its own place and reaffirm its power, which is the power to declassify. For this is exactly what is at stake in the word 'se lect ion' , which some take pleasure merely i n uttering and others refuse even to hear, The seemingly apol it ical young people who took to the streets to contest this single word appear to have grasped its meaning well; (he i ssue c a m e d o w n to e q u a l i t y versus i n e q u a l ity, a s i m p l e matter o f knowing which of the two i n the f inal instance ruled

S6

T H E U S E S OF D E �1 0 C R A C Y

over the democratic compromise and gave i t i ts meaning: the rights of the mult itude or the rights o f the administrators 0 f the nch/os in a i l t h e i r wisdom.

Which gives u s some perspective, i t seems to me, o n the con­tradictory assessments that were made o f this calm, lukewarm and apparent ly unromant ic movement. There were those who hailed the realism of young people who, u n f i k e the revolution­aries of ] 96 � , were able clearly to define their objectives and p e a c e f u l ly organize the ir t r o o p s . Others, o n t h e contr a ry, attacked the pettiness of a movement f ixated o n immediate inter­ests and ludicrously concerned with respecta bil ity. B u t perhaps both (hese views miss one o f the most remarkable aspects o f what one cal ls realism and the other reformism. F o r something truly remarkable happened in th is movement. Copies of the pro­posed leg is lat ion were m a s s i v e ly d istr ibuted throughout the universit ies . The students bought it, read it and disclJssed i t . In o u r day, we d id not read t h e text of proposed legislation on the universities_ We knew what they expressed: (he submission of the university to ca pita l ist power. We had noth ing to say to t h e pol it ic ians w h o proposed them, except that capital ism spoke out o f their mouths and that they could do nothing other than what they were doing. For their part they expected no other reaction from us and accordingly had n o problems besides that of main­taining order. This t ime, though, something to.k p lace which created total disarray in the ranks o f (he government a n d (he majority: the students evaluated the law a rid pronounced i t a bad law. They addressed the pol it ic ians as i f they were people who c o u l d , after a U , j u s t as e a s i l y make good l a w s as had o n e s . Polit icians expecting the u s u a l tefrain, ' C a p i t a l i s m speaks out of your mouths' , suddenly found themselves be ing taken seriously as legislators, being treated as if (hey cou ld perfectly well m a k e la w s i n the general interest, s ince that was what they had been elected for. This 'na ivety' of the students of 1 ' � 6 , whose rea­soning resembled that o f the str ik ing tailors o f 1 � 3 3 , enabled them, by playing the others' game, t o create a qu ite new polem­ica l space, tak ing their interlocutors completely hy surprise and leaving them nonpl ussed - caught, in fact, in the (rap o f the reinvented syllogism o f equality +

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The force o f this syl logism, however, hy no means reposes on the superiority of realism over utopia, o r of peaceful over violent methods. It is n o t a characteristic of the syllogism o f equal ity that it replaces strife by ta lk r Rather, it establ ishes a common space a s a space o f div is io n. Transcending the dec l ine o f the great figures o f c lass struggle and revo l u ti on a ry hope, the modesty of the 1 9 � 6 demonstrators touched t h e same sensit ive point as the vio­lence o f the enrages o f 1 ' 6 � . It asserted the strength o f the d ividing many aga inst the consensual - and ochlocratic - degen­eracy o f democracy: against government by well-selected el ites i n t h e name o f a harmonious management of the scattered desires o f the mass. Against the hierarchies of consensus and the pas­sions of exclusion, the occupation of the street by the anonymous mult i tude reaffirms the community of sharing. And this i t can do only by tracing that v io lent inscription which made the contin­gent site of the negotiation o f knowledge into a p l ac e for the exercise o f egalitarian transgression.

4. Democracy Now

I have considered two instances o f democratic practice, one taken from the heroic age o f a combative democracy, the other from the ambiguous age of a democracy which in the very banalization o f its rule, o f its self-regulat ion, a l lows us to g l impse the outl ine o f its involut ion . [ t seems to me that these two examples shed a new l ight on certain contemporary analyses of the phenomenon o f democracy.

I a m t hink ing in t h e f irst place of t h e vis ion encapsulated by Jean-Fran�ois Lyotard i n the idea of poscmodernity. After t h e age o f grand narratives o f the social , centred on t h e theme of t h e absolute wrong and the un iversa l v ict im, democratic indetermi­n a c y has turned out, according to Lyotard, to be synonymous i n pr inc ip le with that ' ins istent pressure of the inf in ite on the w i l l ' w hich characterizes the inf in i te tumult of c a pita 1 . 6 The logi c o f c a p i t a l t e n d s a l w a y s to c r e a t e d i s c o r d a n c e , h e t e r o g e n e i t y between l inguist ic discourses4 This heterogeneity proh ibits t h e discourse o f the un iversal v i c t i m but a l l o w s the same experience to be phrased in an inf in i ty of different ways� thus working-class

5 8

T l i E U S E S O f l) E �1 0 C R A C Y

e x p e rl e n c e m a y be v a r i o u s l y a r t i c u la t e d i n the l a n g u a g e o f contractual negotiations or i n that o f discourse on the subject o f Labour.

This approach has the mer it o f abol ish ing the distance that suspic ion maintains , but i t does so from the start ing-point of the categories of suspic ion themselves. Just as , for Marx, bour­geois progress iv i sm diss ipated the i l lus ion of chivalry, so, for Lyotard, the democracy o f capita l d i ss ipate s the proletarian i l l u ­sion. With the col lapse o f the pol it ica l fantasy o f the One, what asserts itself, in its positivity, is solely the economic tumult of dif­ference, which is ca l led, w i thout distinction, either capita l or democracy 4 More generally, Lyotard evokes a positive aspect for the va rio l i S forms o f suspicion regarding democracY4

He thus inverts the P latonic condemnat ion of indeterminacy, o f the democratic apeiron, ascribing a positive value to the theme of democracy as a bazaar. Likewise, he reverses the usua l inter­pretation of the conteluporary themes o f the 'end of ideology� or of 'depolit ic izat ioll ' in advanced democratic societies. Yet this upside-down Platonism surely fails to break o u t of the Platonic mould and continues to ident ify the democratic apeiron with nothing more than the turbulence o f appetites, even i f this makes two readings possible : a n exoteric reading which stops short a t the narcissistic self-gratification of the 'p lura l i s t ' society, o r a n esoter ic reading w h i c h reopens the inf inite g a p between the Republic and democracy, seeing the rule of administrative ration­a l i t y a s a 'soff form o f total i tar ian ism. When a l l is sa id and done, does not such a n approach fa i l to gra s p a l l the cu r rent complexity o f the democratic phenomenon? For example, what made the French students' strike so strange was the durabi l i ty 0 f certain identifications in the very midst o f t h e rout of a l l the great incorporations, the recognit ion o f a wrong even i n the absence of a victim. In a situation w here the demands o f eco­nomic compet i t ion a n d geop o l it ic al e � u i l i b r i u m now l e a v e democracies t h e slenderest o f margins for p o l itic al alternat ives , where i n d i v i d u a l ways of assessing l ife refer to b roa dly consen­s u a l values , suddenly it takes a lmost nothing - one word too many, say - for a polemical space to re�emerge where t riv ia l dif­ferences are transl ated into major options, where a system of

5 9

O N T I f E 5 H () R E S 0 I P () ] I T I C S

possibil it ies with the minutest of v ar iables gives way to a hasic alternative in which a choice has to he made between egalitarian words which confirm democracy a n d inegal i tar ian words which contradict it� ( ., itigation general l y continues to rule in politics . Where i r no longer holds sway, i t is not the postmodern logic o f d is junct ion which manifests itself, but the retllrn o f the archaic: straightforward bruta l i ty in its diverse guises, from the a l leged language o f numbers to the a l l too real howls o f the hate-fi l led pack, effectively resuscita t ing the v ict im as the unnameable, as a stranger to the law o f discoursc. The apparent logic o f post­modernity thus explodes between two 'archaisms' . Faced with the return 0 f the an imal ist ic aspect of politics, the democratic v irtue of trust recreates a polemical space of shared meaning. This is, precisely, the strength of equality, which acts through those smal l differences that c a n give a radical ly different sense to the same experience. I have no hesitation in saying that what is happening here i s (to stay with the Platonic lexicon) of the order of reminiscence. Sudden�y, i n the very s lumber of pol it ical dis­course, e q u a l i t y a p p e a r s a s the t h i n g t h a t g i v e s a common meaning to the infinite var iety o f 'self ish' i n d i v i d u a i uses o f a democratic form.

To many this reminiscence seems too evanescenL [ n their view, it needs to be given sol idity . This is the meaning o f that other a n a l y s i s o f c o n t e m p o r a r y democracy w hich is p r i m a r i l y expressed through the theme o f part ic ipat ion. Yet 1 w o n d e r whether t h i s notion, offered a s a solution t o the problems o f democracy, i s n o e rather a solut ion to the problems 0 f the cri­t i q u e o f democracy - the s m a l l change o f f a l l e n g r a n d a lternatives . The idea o f partic ipation blends two ideas o f dif­ferent origins: the reformist idea of necessary mediat ions between the centre a n d the periphery, and the revolut ionary idea of the permanent involvement o f cit izen-subjects in every domain . The mixture o f the two produces this mongrel i d e a , ass ign ing to enduring democracy, as i ts site of exercise, the mere f i l l i ng o f spaces le f t empty b y power. But docs not the permanence o f democracy reside much rather i n its mobility, i ts capacity to shift the sites a n d forms of part ic ipat ion ? When str ik ing work ers acquire po\\·-er by demonstrating that they can, i f need be, run

6.

T H E U S E S O F D t:: �1 0 C R A C Y

their own factory, why should w e wish for that power to find its permanent express ion there on the spot, i n the form of self­management? Likew ise, d u r ing the student str ike, one heard remarks such a s the following: �There ought to have been a pre­l iminar y dialogue between the interested parties� . But this is a n entire ly retrospective argument: there s imply was n o interlocutor for the consultation which �should have' taken place before the birth of this ephemeral power. Cienuine participation is the inven­tion of that unpredictable subject which momentari ly occupies the street, the invention of a movement born of nothing but democracy itself. The guarantee of permanent democracy is not the f i H rng u p of a l l the dead times a n d empty spaces by the forms of participation o r of counterpower; it is the continual renewal o f the ac[ors a n d o f the forms o f their actions, the ever-open possi­b i l i e y 0 f the fresh emergence of this fleeting subject . The test o f democrac y must ever be i n democracy's own image: versatile, sporadic - and founded on trust.

Notes

C.lt Macpherson, The Life and Tilnes of Liberal Delnocracy, Oxford 1 9 77. 2 See Aristotle, PoltliC5, 1\', 1 2 9 4 b , 35-6. ,) See Gabriel (�auny, Le philosophe plebeient writings collected and edired by Jacques Ranciere, Paris 1 9 8 3 . 4 See Jacques Ranciere, Le J'naitre Ignorant, Pans 1 9 � 7 ; also, in this volume, LThe C0t11I IH1n lty of Equals ', Chaprer 3. .5 See Pierre Bourd1t�u and Jean-Claude Passeron, Les htritiers, les etu­di�1ltts et la culture, Paris 1 964, translated as The /rJheritors: French :Students and Thc'ir Relations to Culture, Chicago 1 9 7 9 ; and Bourdieu and Passeron, La ret)roductioll, Elenleflts peur une thiorie du systelne d'en­sel�ne"JZeflt, translared ,lS Reproduction ill f�ducatioll. Society and Culture� London 1977. r view rhe rheses o f Bourdieu and Passeron at the level of gen­era hty ar which (he)' have obtained their success w l t h l n rhe politrcal doxies, and i ndependently o f the subsequent developnlc·nr of eirher auchor. 6 See T. ,nbeau de I'tntellectuel el alltres papiers., Paris 1 9�4. 11ere again I 3m singling out rheses which \\ere perhaps able ro systematize t h e thinking o f a specific llloment il l nnH:. It is worth notlng� however, t h a r Lyorard's subse(}uent work h�lS c.:ontinued relentlessly t o undernline any oplilni�tic reading of pesrnlodcrnn):

6 J

The Community of Equ als

The theme o f the community o f equals nowadays generally gives rise to two k inds of brooding. The fi rst is a gr udging rel ief . There is a n ent ire l i terature t h a t inv i tes us to shudder retrospectively at the thought of the danger we were in {or would have been i n i f we had n o t been so srn a r t } frorn the cornbined threat of rea l lev­e l l i n g on the one hand a n d the great Whole which swallows up indiv idual w il l a n d reason on the other. A sornewhat degenerate forrn of cathars is is the just i f icat ion g i v e n f o r such l i te r a r y endeavours, which see fit to set cont inual l y before our eyes the fantasy of that great ent i ty whose fascination for u s so clear ly speit our doorn . The second k i n d of brooding i s a 'reasonable' nosta lg ia . T h ou gh o n l y too w e l l aw are o f w h a t the a b o v e ­mentioned threat made poss ible , we st i l l take i t to represent so me th ing we would not w ant to lose, namely a part icu lar con­figuration o f being-together wirhout which thought and action are bereft o f the virtue of ge ne rosity which dist inguishes the p ol i t ica l frorn mere business management. By some inverse exor­cisrn, it is the very passe and superseded character o f th is figure, which is no longer the object of either fear or hope , that serves to rn a inta in t h a t ba re l y percepti ble gap 3nd a l lows a sh i rn rner ing cloud o f egalitar ian a n d corn rnuna l honour to continue hovering above the banal administration of financial indexes and corporate

. -

reo rgan lza n ons . Both these feel ings gauge a concept u al figure by the ba lance

sheet of history. I f we wan t to avoid this, perhaps we need to alter the terrns o f the q uestion s l ight ly; p erhaps, instead of set­tling our accounts with the comrnunity of eq u als, we ought to

6 3

O N T H E S H O R E S O F P O L I T I C S

consider how the communit y of equals does its own accounting, or rather what k i n d of accounting gives rise to this figure in the first p lace . What I have in mind here is a twofold l ine o f mquiry . The more fundamental aspect - which I shal l leave as ide for now - has to do with the re lat ionship o f the idea o f community to t h e idea of loss itself, to what we retain o f a loss or to what takes s h a p e around it . In th is connection, I a m put in m i n d of a quatrain of Rilke�s which reminds u s that 'Losing too is ours" (Auch lloch l1eriieren is! ullser), thus l inking the notion of loss to the notion of common property. Even more simply, we might wel l reca 1 1 the l ink between the idea of community and the judge­ment o f the Gospel according to which 'He that findeth his l ife sha l l lose it ) - a pronouncement which may readi ly he coupled with the Platonic motif o f the invers ion of l ife, and which has the following remarkahle impl icat ion: t h e collapse o f the represen­tation of another life does not n u l l i fy that l ife hut instead lends it a v ert ig inous reality . A n d at the core 0 f this vert iginousness is equality, the desire to partake of equa l ity .

I shall leave aside this hasic or overarching question, however, and concentrate on a n i ssue t h a t ar ises from it � The fact i s that the great accounting between t h e W h o l e and loss breaks down into a series o f smal ler ca lculat ions, into ways o f measuring equalit y that do not a l l o w themselves to he reduced to rules and standards without putting up a fight. Ways of counting, of count­ing oneself, of getting oneself to count. Ways of defining interests that cannot he reduced even to the s imple calculat ion of pleasure versus p a i n ; forms of profit that are also ways of heing-together ( o f resemhl ing one another or heing distinct from one another) and of def ining those gaps w h i c h Hannah Arendt saw as the very principle of polit ical inter esse� A n d ways o f defining inter­ests entered on more l ines a n d i n more ledgers t h a n can he covered h y t h e d o u b l e b o o k k e e p i n g of r e a l i t y / u t o p i a a n d science/ideology. O u r i n q u i r y needs therefore to go into a lower gear: whenever equa l i ty or community is the i ssue , we need to ask what i s in a position to win o r lose a part icular interest on such and such a l ine. I n how many ways may equals he reckoned e q u a l ? How indeed are they to he counted in order for t h i s calculat ion to he made? A n d so o n .

6 4

T H E ( � 0 M 1\.1 tJ N I l Y 0 F E Q U A L S

I f w e p u r s u e a few of these accountings, we shall be led to reconsider the not ion that the standard of equa l i ty is t h e la w (whether celestial or infernal ) of the COlllmunitarian body. For i t may wel l h e that relations of communit y and equal i ty are them­selves hut a never-ending settling of accounts. By tak ing a closer look at the accounts presented hy e q u a l i t y to community we s h a l l see t h e i m a g e o f the s i n g l e g r e a t h o d y c r u m h l e , a n d encounter a l l the deficit and discord which ensure that the com­m u n i t y o f e q u a l s can never materia l ize without some cement plugging t h e cracks in the image, withou t some ohligation to keep ta l ly ing members and ranks and retranslating the terms o f the formula .

1 . Concerning a Letter: The l> a n q u e t of Equals

A s the starting-point of m y ana ly s is I shall horrow an exalTlp le from one 0 f the most significant configurations of communitarian thought, the one known, more or less adequately, as 'utop ian social ism' . In 1 � 3 � Pierre Leroux puhl ished De tEgalite, then in 1840 D e I'Humanite - two works intent on fou nding the modern community 0 f equals on a tradit ion a s long as human history and mobi l iz ing to this end hoth the laws of Moses a n d the law of Minos, t h e c i ty of the ancients a n d the Fathers of the Church+ Leroux�s thesis is presided over by a master image, that o f t h e fra­ternal m ea l , a n d a master text, {he words o f the Epistle to the Romans which teach that, a s one hody in Christ , we are a l l mem­hers one 0 f the otheL 1 Image and text were perfectly appropriate to the per iod, for they perfectly symhol ized social ist and commu­nist ard.ur - a n d the working-class press, hoth social ist and communist, copiously adopted Leroux's citations, i f not his ideas; toda y the y a r e appropriately horrify ing, evoking as they do the spectre of the great al l-devouring Whole. Seen in operat ion, how­ever, this master image a n d th is master forlTlulation quickly betray their contradict ions and impose the need for a reaccounting, a recementtng, a reWfLtlng.

Thus, in his exposit ion of t h e ancient tradit ion of the fraternal meal in De t �gal ite, Leroux encounters a curious phi lological prohlem. He analyses the estahlishment of this tradition in terms

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o f its d u a l aspect, its dual or ig in : practices 0 f warr ior fraternity on the o n e h a n d and pract ices of per iodic r e d i s t r i b u t i o n o f wealth on the other, bringing together the \fIosa ic tradition and the Cireek tradit ion in a cont inuous history culminat ing in the Essene cOlllmunity, which Leroux considered the origin of the founder o f the Eucharist. Along the way, Leroux came across a problem o f denomination which had already given pause t o his inspiration, the Plutarch o f the Life of L)'t·UT!lIS. The fraternal meals of the Spartans were cal led p hidities. Plutarch felt that they should properly he ca l led philities!} o r meals o f friendship, for t h e Cireek pheidein means to economize - suggesting that fraternal meals were above a l l fruga l . We know that the Spartans were considered miserly, a n d Plato recalled this in his portrait o f the timocratic man. But P lutarch settled the issue, and Leroux fol lowed s u i t : a l a m b d a replaced a de l ta , a n d the Spartans ' mea ls henceforward had a name t h a t corresponded to their concept.

More is i n vo l v e d here, though, t h a n menta l convenience. Leroux does have a specific purpose, which i s to ident i fy the st i l l fettered and only part ia l ly real ized principle of a n open com� munity within a closed one. I n the sma l l Spartan brotherhood he seeks rhe pr inc 'p le o f the great human commun'tr. H e sees th is aristocra tic caste as the l imited, one-sided real ization o f equality, a society o f e .. ua ls or friends founded on exclus ion but perfect i n itself; i ts forced closure is supposed to he the necessary a n d suf­ficient condit ion 0 f the caste's transit ion to humanity . The caste must therefore be kept free from grasping timocracy, but this necessity causes Leroux to s h u n another l ine o f thought, one stemming from that excised de lta a n d susceptible of transporting us from S p a rt a to Athens, a n d from the relat ionship between ar istocracy a n d t imocrac y t o t h a t between c o m m u n i t y a n d democracy.

L e t me trace th is other l ine of i n q u i r y by way of a passage i n Aristotle's Rhetoric, from the chapter on �witt ic is rns ' (which are i n t h e f i rst p l a c e asteia - o r t h i n g s people say in t h e c i t y ) . Aristotle refers i n pass ing to a j o k e o f Diogenes' which also involves a kind o f pol it ical regime, table manners and the mode of being of a city. Diogenes, he tells us, sa id that the Athenians

6 6

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found t h e i r IJhidities i n raverns.2 In other words, the personal economies a n d collective e q u a l i t y sought by the Spartans in the institution of phidities were found by the Athenians i n restaur­ants and publ ic meeting-places. This i s another w a y of setting up a contrast , as the P e r i c les o f Thucydides does, between the Athenian school of freedom a n d easy l iv ing, and the mil itary discipl ine of Spartan society. The anecdote natura l ly gains from being recounted b y the theoretician of philia a n d po l i t ica l soci­et ies . A n d i t will no doubt remind not a few readers 0 f the place in the Politics where, making the case for democratic wisdom i n opposition to the part isans of government b y the wise, Aristotle employs another gastronomical argument. For the same cost, he tells us, you can eat better at communal me als where each pays an equal share. The same should go for pol it ical del iberat ions: the combined contrihutions of the many small Athenian intel lects IllUSt always exceed in de l iberat ive potent ia l whatever the few scholarly intellects can together offer.3

S o Leroux rejects a n inconvenient delta a n d with i t any con­s iderat ion of equa l ity's accounts with community . He decides to ignore the bite timocracy takes out o f aristocracy a n d the bite democracy takes out of community. For, l i ke t imocracy for aris­tocracy, democracy i s too avaric ious for community� Democracy is what muddles community, what cont inua l ly reduces it to its own messiness; i t is the unthinkable aspect o f community. Plato took it upon himself to think this unth inkable , th is discordance between community a n d democracy. O u r moderns in the main refuse to d o so . Instead, they apportion things differently, they change letters, they o ver lay ima ges � I n th i s way, the modern polit ical tradit ion has fashioned a strange model of fraternity a s i t was i n the ancient world. B y superimposing different pictures it a l lows us to env is ion a Spartan Athens or a n Athenian Sparta : a more democratic and c iv il ized Sparta, where f ine speeches are made and dashing deeds done. This i s how Rousseau's Sparta i s fashioned, for example - or Leroux's . The sallle goes for the Athens of Hannah Arendt: witness the way she isolates a shorr extract from the speech made b y Pericles in Thucydides while neglect ing what is i n fact the structur ing d ichotom y o f the speech - that between Athenian �freedom' and Spartan militarism.

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This lets h e r set up a n exemplary pol i t ica l stage where peers (homoioi) dist inguish themselves b y making the fine speeches and performing the fine deeds that confer a b r i l l i a n t immortality upon the precariousness of human actions.

2. Concerning an Image: The Communitarian Rody

Perhaps two (�reeces arc a l w a y s needed to arrive at o n e C;reece. Certa in ly the master image 0 f the fraternal meal cannot be sus ­t a i n e d otherwise� But the Christ ian formula and image of the fraternal body pose a n ident ica l problem. 'So we, being many, are one body in Christ ' , says the Apostle, ' a n d every one mem­bers one of another . � Popular ized by Leroux, this formula was unproblemat ica l ly annexed by the communists and p r o v i d e d La Fraternite, the leading working�class c o m m u n i s t organ, w ith its masthead morto. Yet ne i ther those who gave i t pr ide of place n o r those who even at the t ime denounced the great pantheist ic W h o l e as a fantasy s e e m to have been a w a r e o f the exact P au l i n e context o f the formulat ion. The image o f the members of the body w a s n e v erthe less introduced b y the A p o s t l e i n response to a quite specif ic i s sue , namely the d istr ibut ion and h ie r a r c h y of c h a r i s m s w it h i n t h e Chr is t ian communit y . The quest ion o f charis I l ls was in effect that of t h e d iv i s ion of labour i n a sp i r i tua l community . It was necessary for the gift o f tongues a n d the gift of miraclcs , the gift of cures and the gift of prophe­cies , t o re late to one another as d o the members of the body, e a c h p l a y i n g its part a n d ass i s t ing or be ing subord inate to t h e others . But even from Sa int P a u l ' s text two r a t h e r different con­c lus ions may be drawn, depending on the term considered. On the members, P a u l s a y s two things : that i t i s their function to give one another m u t u a l ass i s tance , but a l s o that a k i n d o f equal i ty i s establ ished among them by means of rec iprocal C0I11-pensat ions . A compensatory h o n o u r devolves upon those who a r e infer ior b y nature a n d funct ion, j u s t as the 1l10re noble parts o f the body are left naked w hi le the shameful ones are cov ered. A s for c h a r isIll s, the Apostle asserted, much more summari l y , that they were not a l l e q u a l l y useful, not a l l equal ly worthy o f being sought. A system o f c lass i f icat ion was c a l l e d for, founded

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o n the jusrness of the w h ole � B ut h o w was t h i s ius tness to be understood? There were i n fact two r iva l interpretat ions o r glosses here . '(�od ", sa id t h e communist La Fraternite, 'arranged a n order of this k i n d (of perfect equal i t y ) so t h a t there might b e no s c h i s m or d iv i s ion but that the members might offer one a n o t h e r m u t u a l a i d . ' 4 [ n o r d e r thus t o extract a c o m m u n i s t imagc from t h e Chr ist ian o n e , however, th i s e g a l i t a r i a n com­mentary had to overlook the long tradit ion of the commentaries of t h e Church Fathers , a t rad i t ion w hich Gregory of Nazianzus sums up in a treat ise bear ing the u n e q u ivocal t i t l e 'On W ell­Ordered Debate . That I t Is Not Fitt ing for Every M a n i n E v e r y Circumstance to Debate upon t h e D i v i n i t y � : 'One part (meros) commands and pres ides � A n o t h e r i s lcd and directed� We m a y not a l l he the tongue, n o r a l l prophets , apost les , interpreters , etc . ' ''' The f o r m u l a for e q u a l i t y i s thus a l s o t h e formula for eccles iast ica l hierarchy .

Th is interpretat ive ch iasma therefore reveals another super­i m p o s i t i o n of images : the i m a g e of the g r e a t C h r i s t l i k e communist body overla ys the Paul ine image o f t h e b o d y o f t h e Church. B u( the latter i s i tse lf a super imposit ion, for behind the fable of the d istribution of char i sms m a y be discerned an older fable, a n exemplary narrat ive o f the d iv is ion of l abour in the social body ; the fable of the b e l l y and the l imbs told by Menenius Agr ippa to the plebeians after their withdrawal to the Aventine h i l l . Behind the image o f the great Whole, then, the figure of divi­s ion a n d recementing. But Menenius Agrippa�s s imple apologue achieves a formula for community only b y leav ing a d o u b l e di lemma unresolved.

First of a l l , there was the problem o f super iors . The senator­orator restored order in the revolt o f the plebs by expounding a l a w o f communal coexistence which w a s a lso a law o f hierar­chical subordinat ion . Accordingly, the plebe ians were the bel ly, the vegetative p a r t o f the city, powerless w i thout t h e protect ion of the patr ic ians ' embrace� The trouble with th i s , however, was precisely the fact that he was compelled to te l l th is fable to the p lebeians . The very prInc ip le of superior ity collapses i f i t h a s to be exp la ined to infer iors w h y they are inferior. This discourse assumes that it wi l l be apprehended on its own terms, but the

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fact is that it portrays a community, governed by equality, which is quite different from the one that it promotes.

And the di Jemma changes sides, so to speak, i f the inferiors decide to adopt the apoJogue a s their own, as a way o f pro­c J a i m i n g their own equal ity . This i s prec ise Jy what Leroux's contemporar ies and the workers in La frater1lite d i d . They adopted the apoJogue a n d in the process inverted its identifica­t ions : t h e y th emseJves became the act iv e arms f i J J ing useJess beJ J ies . But th is turn ing o f the fable on its head exposes its men" dacity : the hierarchy of functions it promotes is seen to conceal a pre-existent h ierarchy of l ike a n d u n l ike . One enters the com­munity o f one's equaJs not by being usefuJ to them but onJy by being l ike them. There is no way of being counted one of them without reflecting their own image: a n equal is someone whose image is that o f a n e q u a l . M a k i n g a virtue o f usefuJness, p l a y ing the card of function, i s mereJy to preserve one's di ss im i l a r ity. No redistribution of members, functions or bodies c a n transform unlike into l ike . Another k ind of l ikeness is required than the one that serves to cJose the caste of the aristoi.

3 . The Community of Masters and the Community of SJaves

[ t w i J J no doubt be ob jected that the egaJ itar ian o f 1 8 40 had a v a i l a b J e qu i te a different modeJ , one which PauJ h imse lf art ic­uJated for the benefit o f the great human commun ity, i>where there is neither Greek n o r Jew, c ircumcision nor uncircumci .. s ion\ but mereJy men a J J e q u a l l y bearing the image o f God. The troubJe is that this new simil itude puts a doubJe twist on the s i m i Jar, w hereby what is ga ined is l i ab le to be Jost again imme­diateJy � The first stage o f th is tw isting is the one that i s a p p l i ed to the very core o f the communitar ian parad igm represented hy the community o f the three div in i t ies . Here, once aga in, the founding reJat ionship o f community hangs upon a singJe letter, Is the Son in the image o f the Father? Or is he consubstantiaJ with the Father? These two formulas are dist inguished b y virtue of a single iota, which puts a moat of bJood between the heretics of resembJance (homoiollsia) a n d the o r thodox be l ievers i n

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c o n s u b stant ia l i ty (homoousia) . The posit ion o f the orthodox b e l ievers i s argued in the name of equa l ity. To say that the Son is like the Father i s to sa y that he i s outs ide h im , that he i s not e q u a l to h i m . But to pos i t the equal i ty of Father and S o n makes t h e S o n into the Father's refJection. The unity o f the Father and h i s image is thus asserted to be pr ior to a n y quest ion o f resem­b l a n c e � E x e m p J a r y e q u a J s a r e n o t J i k e s . B u t t h i s f irst t w i s t a f f i r m i n g equal i ty a t the e x p e n s e o f resemblance is immedia te Jy fo J Jo w ed b y a reverse one . In w o rds borrowed from S a i n t P a u J , M a r i us Victorinus sums u p the radicaJ becoming-other to which e q u a J i t y with the Father comm its t h e S o n , ' w h o di d not regard h i s equaJ i ty with the Father 3 S a booty to be j ea Jous Jy guarded' . 6

The u n i t y o f the Father with h i s image prior t o a J I question of res emblance i s in fact worked out in the most radicaJ d iss imi­J a r i ty, i n that obedience unto death, unto death o n the Cross, t h r o u g h w hich aJone is made manifest the equa l it y of w i n o f F a t h e r a n d S o n .

l 'he formuJation o f Mar ius Victorinus, that e q u a l i t y is not a booty to be jea JousJy g uarded, has generaJ force. Those whom the w i J J o f the Father a n d the sacr ifice o f the Son eJevate or restore to the JeveJ of images of God are thereby 'del ivered into sJa v e r y ' to a l l the ir brothers. The doubJe twist ing of the l ike h a s daunt ing consequences for the Eucharistic fraternity which the new proclamation o f the equa l i ty o f J i k e s i s s u p posed to entai l . The n e a t l ine o f descent w hich is supposed to Jead from t h e fra­ternaJ m e a J of the ancients to the Last Supper a n d the ceJebration o f the Eucharist ignores the fact that the Eucharist is remarkabJy s ingu Jar in the Chr istian conception of community . The basis of the e a r l y theory and pract ice o f monastic communit ies - that is , c o m m u n it ies of isoJated men - is s impJy not t h e fraternity of the Eucharist nor the j o y of brotherly sharing. The two canonicaJ ref­erences to t h e Acts of the Apostles serve rather to remind those incl ined to cheat over the g iv ing up of their possessions about the p u n ishment o f Anan ias . W h a t these references are based on is obedience to the C�ross. ' { 'he fact i s that the community o f the ser­v a n t s o f d i v i n e e q u a l i t y d o e s n o t i t s e J f k n o w e q u a l i t y . The gJossary o f the RuJe of Saint Benedict is exempJary in t h is regard, for it notes but two uses o f the adjective aequalis - the first to

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evoke t h e equa l i ty o f the charity d ispensed by a n a b b o t to each of those who are entrusted to h i s care, and the second to e nlpha .. size the equa l i ty o f the duty o f obedienl:e (servitutis militium) incunlbent u p o n a l l nlonks . This does not reflect sonle nornlal­i z i n g tendency w i t h i n the m onast ic i n s t i t u c i o n . The nl ean ing assigned to obedience and t h e fornls 0 f i c s exercise nla y have var­i e d , but fronl the rough d i s c i p l i n e o f the e a r l y fathers i n the d e s e r t to t h e ru le o f the Benedict ines , by way o f the r u l e o f Pachonl ius o r the Inst i tut ions o f John C�assian, one idea renlained constant: the i d e a that obedience i s not nlere respect for a hier­archy but ra ther the general fornl o f the r e l a t i o n s h ip which servantS o f God m u s t observe towards o n e another. I n S a i n t Paul 's words, to renounce self-wil l i s t o de l iver onse l f u p to o th­ers in slavery 4 I n another conlnlentary on t h e First E p i s t l e to the Corinthians, S a i n t Basi l the Great, in his 'Letter on the Perfection of the Lives o f Monks" putS i t thus : 'Thought and action should be a s of one who has been de l ivered by God inco slavery to h i s sp ir i tua l brothers (homops�lchois adelphois),7; he adds, however, that each has h i s own part icu lar rank (en tagmati)4 S a i n t Basi l 's 'Letter' deals w i th the app l icat ion of t h i s pr inc ip le nl ore part icu­lar ly as i t concerns the J u t i e s of young nlonks towards t h e i r elders, b u t the entirety o f nlonastic pract ice a n d thought takes i t a s a nlore fundanlenta l f igure: the homopsllchos is a homodou­los - a c o nlpan ion i n slavery. 'rhe conlnlunity o f monks, which i s the Christ ian conlnlunity par excellence, is nlade u p not o f equals but of men who are one another ts s laves.

This f igure would weigh heavy i n the history o f cOHlnluni tar­i a n thought and practice+ I t appears tnappropr ia te indeed as a bas is for the grand fratern i t i es 0 f social isnl or conl nlun isnl . And o n l y too a p p r o p r i a t e , o n the o ther hand, ro repet i t ion i n the guise of the sacrif ice ( o r su ic ide ) 0 f the egal i tar ian nl i l i t a n t who renounces h i s n e w -found e nl a n c i p a t i o n in o r d e r t o d e l i v e r h inlse l f i n t o s lavery t o h i s brothers+

The paradox, then, is that at the nlonlent when conlnluni ty of property canle to be proposed as the w a y t o real ize e q u a l i ty, as the egal i tar ian solut ion to the ' soc ia l quest ion ' , two great nlodcls of such conlnluni ty were ava i lab le , but ne i ther of thenl cal led for equa l i t y . W h a t t h e y d id offer, s tr ic t ly speak ing, was e i ther a

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conlnlunity o f nlasters or a conlmunity o f slaves4 In speaking o f nlasters a n d slaves here, I a nl aware o f forcing the synlnletry sonlewhat, for this appl ies properly on ly to the second nlodel, the nlonastic conlnl u n i t y o f sp ir i tua l brothers dedicated to nlutual slavery. By contrast, the f irst model , the communal paradigm par excellence, a s o u t l ined in Plato's Republic, o f course pre­sents not a conlnlunity o f nlasters but a comnlunity o f guardians. The inlportant po int , though, is that the P laton ic guardians are not equals e ither. Their comnlun i ty is founded not on property held in conlnlon but, o n the contrary, on the fact that a l l they have 0 f t h e i r own is what i s c o nl m o n . The famous contrast between true (geonletric) and false (ar i thmetical ) equal i ty inlp l ies that t rue equal i ty , the equal i ty of proport ion, the one which mer­its th e n a nl e 0 f f r i e n d s h i p , is e s t a b l i s h e d o n I y t h r 0 u g h t h e wholesale reject ion o f the false variety, that o f the c i t izen-art isans who place their clainls to e q u a l l t y on the scales along w ith the ir nlerchandise. The conlnlunity 0 f guardians is in the first place the rei ec t ion 0 f a l l a f f i i i a t ion 0 r co a f f i I i at ion, 0 f a l l for m s 0 f co nl­par ison or u n i o n between single i n d i v i dua ls each hav ing the ir own t i t le to e q u a l i t y to advance i n the assenlbly a s in the nlar­ketplace. This conlnlunity can only be understood in terms o f the lack o f possess ion, or nlore precisely the non-belonging to self, which is the corollary o f nlastery. Signif icant in t h i s respect is the polemic i n B o o k IV aga inst t h e 'absurd' concept of self-mastery. Mastery is not thought but exercised. The strange notion of self­nlastery has to be scaled back to its true meaning, wh ich i s the governnlent o f lower by higher, o f t h e infer ior by t h e best: o f body b y nl i n d , o f p a s s i o n s b y i n t e l l e c t a n d 0 f a r t i s a n s by guardians . Properly, there is no such thing as a 'nlaster o f h inl ­se lf ' - which i s tantamount to saying t h a t there a r e no equals. Only the well-ordered c ity i tself answers to the category 0 f isotes; it a l lows each i n d i v i d u a l to e n j o y the benefits o f its isotes, But i t knows n o equals and is i tse lf eq ua l t o nothing, resenlbl ing on ly the d iv ine nloue ! .

S trictly understood, the conl nlun i ty o f guard ians t i es non­belonging t o i n e q u a l i ty . The c o nl nl u n i t y is o f nlasters or o f sl aves, a n d ultimately the t\VO are equ iva lent . What i s excluded here is the hybrid nl iddle ternl, rhe equal i ty of free subjects. The

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Christian homologue o f this P la ton ic polenl ic m i g h t wel l b e seen in the pecul iar rage which aroused S a i n t B a s i l the Great against those serni -Ar jans or disguised Ar ians who claimed that the l loly Spir i t was neither rnaster nor s lave, but 'free'.8 A choice had to be made, h e insisted: e i ther the Holy Spir i t is a lord, partaking o f the nature of the uncreated, or else a slave, partaking of the nature of the created. Since everything created was homodoulos, the Holy Spirit must therefore be a lord, b u t not , for a l l that , ' free ' , and can on ly be long to the corn rnuni ty of t h e Master. As for [he rnonks w h o obey the Master's wi l l , w e have seen that their corn­rn u n i t y o f o w n e r s h i p i s s i rn p l y t h e consequence o f t h e i r non-possession o f self. Which neat ly s u rn s u p t h e answer o f the Rule of S a i n t Benedict to the quest ion whether monks should possess a n y t h i n g of their o w n: obviolls ly not, s ince they a r e forbidden to possess e i ther their own body o r their own wi lL

4 . Workers, Brothers, Communists

Thus, the two great rnodels of cornmunity to which egal i tar ian th ink ing harked back in i t s golden age both posited a cornrnunity that did n o t ernbrace equality. How was i t , then , that th is double ad miss ion o f ineq ua l i ty w a s now reversed? To rn y mind the answer l ies in t h e coming together o f nvo ideas : a n ana lys i s of social d iv is ion which saw this as the cause of inequal i ty a n d the const i tut ion of a n e w f i g u r e o f e q u a l i t y i t se l f . T h i s a n a l y s i s needed first o f a l l t o identify t h e pr inciple of inequa l i ty w i t h t h e self ish a n d asocial principle o f separation. The basis of the repro­duction 0 f inequal i ty was thus conflated with the principle o f d iv is ion which isolated i n d i v id u a l s from one another. D iv is ion was selfish, and selfishness was d iv is ive . Cornrnuni ty therefore reinstituted equal i ty to t h e extent that i t inst ituted fraternity. All that remained was to def ine the ident i ty of brothers in terrns of their difference both from Plato's guard ians and frorn t h e s laves of C; o d . [n order that brothers be ne i ther rnasters nor slaves, the figure of the counterpart h a d to embody i tse lf in a new social ind iv idua l i ty h a v in g e q u a l i ty a s its founding pr inc ip le . P ierre Leroux sought (0 conceptualize this new i n d i v i d u a l ity, to consti­tute a n e w anti -P latonic triad and to define the energy which

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holds the rnernbers o f a n egal itarian humani ty together. H i s con­ternporaries tended to rnock h is speculat ions. Like Socrates i n Book [ V o f the Republic, they took t h e view t h a t t h i s was going a very long way round to find the principle o f just ice when i t was lying, so to speak, a t one's feet. Socrates recognized th is principle in the rough wisdom of the d iv is ion of labour ; Leroux's contem­poraries found i t , for their part, in an undiv ided labour, in work as a u n itary principle . F rorn t h e i r point of view, work presented a double aspect . [ n t h e first place, i t created identity. The sarne certainty arose from mornents o f expansive cord ia l i ty, when the refrain w a s 'We a r e a l l Workers' , as from moments of conflict, which poin ted up the antagonisrn between toi lers and idlers, between real workers a n d loafers : the certainty that work was now the generic name for h u m a n action a s such. Second, the ident i ty t h u s created served as a rn easuring-rod: the f igure of the worker e rnbodied the rneasure of work - the fact t h a t work was henceforward acknowledged as the source o f goods a n d as the measure o f t h e i r v a lue . If i t had now becorne possible to forget the hierarchical i rn p l ications o f t h e Platonic cornrnunity or o f the Pau l ine fraternity, th i s was because the way work was measured in the heyday of pol i t ica l econorny had wiped out ear l ier fables concerning the distribution of rn e n and functions by irnposing the unitary la w of the production a n d distr ibut ion of goods.

The idea o f the cornrnunity o f fraternal workers could now be formulated, a n d to th is end three ideas were cornbined: first, an arche 0 f c o rnrn u n i ty, a single pr inc ip le a s to what the comrnunity holds in c o rn rn o n , n a rne ly workers, labour power and t h e prod­ucts of labour; next , a precise rneasure which al lows the principle of fraternity immediately to becorne the principle of the distrib­ution of functions and of the fruits of labour; a n d , last, the idea of a v i rt u e w h i c h c a n s u s t a i n t h e c o rn m u n i t y a n d w h i c h i s embodied i n a h u rn a n figure. The fraternal worker i s above a l l a uJorker: the one who produces t h e rnaterial substance o f what i s he ld i n c o rn m o n k e e p s fa i th wi th the c o rn rn u n a l pr inc ip le t h r 0 ugh h i s d a i I y a (: t i v i ty.

[ n this way, a n a l l iance i s wrought between the principle o f p o l i t ica l econorny a n d t h e p r i n c i p l e 0 f fraternal c o rn m u n i t y u n d e r the b a n n e r o f the e q u a l i t y o f labour . The assumption

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henceforward i s t h a t work which produces what is to he he Jd in common is dedicated to soJ idar i ty, that in w orking for oneseJf one produces for others. The rad ica J charac ter of ega l i tar ian communism resides i n t h e extremely s Jender gap between th is aspect o f work i n the gJory d a y s o f poJ i t ica J economy a n d the v ir t u e of t h e c o m m u n i s t worker's d e d i c a t i o n to the cause o f humani ty . The troubJe w i th the communi t y o f fra terna J workers i s that n o sooner is i t ins t i tuted than i ts system o f i d e n t i ficat ion coHapscs ; the communist worker is immediate Jy spl i t into toi ler and communist , worker and brother. A perfect instance of th is dramatic deveJopment is suppl ied by the h istory o f t h e commu­ni ty which Cabet took to the U n i t e d Stares i n order to found h i s c o m m u n i s t I c a r i a . A c u r i o u s ar t ic Je i n the Icar ian p a p e r L.lc POfJulaire effect ive ly summarizes the pro bJem as experienced by the actors i n the drama. H u m a n i ty, we are to Jd , i s comprised o f b u t three k i n d s o f p e o p l e - w o rkers , b r o t h e r s a n d t h i e v e s . Workers a n d brothers w i l l a Jways manage to J i v e together i n one famiJy . Thieves, however, have to be thrown out. A n d , the art icle concJudes, the fraternaJ communi ty i s mereJy app Jy ing its own bas ic pr incipJe when i t shows Jayabouts the dooL9

E a c h term a n d each propos it ion here tend to open a g u J f beneath the feet o f t h i s apparent ly s impJe reasoning. Let LIS con­f ine ourselves for the moment to one s impJe quest ion ; who rs the judge of the id Jeness that causes a poor worker to be iden t i f ied a s a th ie f ? I s i t the brother? O r i s i t not rather t h e worker, t h e only person equipped to transform ' less ' work or ' less good' work into non-work or ant i-work, that i s to s a y i n t. theft - a Jogical coup that might fur ther be d eemed a thef t o f fratern i ty � To put i t another way, i s not the word ' th ief ' here preciseJy a way o f des­ignat ing the in t imate s p l i t between t h e worker and the btother? O n the o n e h a n d , the brother assumes the face of t h e i d Jer for whom t h e worker works; o n the other, the worker assumes the face of t h e egotist who sacrif ices brotherhood to work, to the income a n d en jo yment t h a t work produces for h i m . A sJog�1n e c h o i n g through the h i s t o r y o f t h e i r c O ITlrnun i ty t a u g h t t h e Icarians t h a t t h e y h a d come i n order to found Icar ia , not in order to enjoy its fru i ts . But jus t who d i d t h e en joy ing a n d who d i d the founding? W h a t d i d the ' i n order to' mean? A n d for whonl?

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Such �uest ions were made more acute b y t h e d is t r i b u t i o n o f roJes character ist ic o f t h e Icar ian fraternity. First , there was the great f a m i J y o f French Icar ian communists , then there was the v anguard d e tachment of Icar ians who went a h e a d to found the communist colony i n the United States, a n d last, t h e I � n k between the two, 'Father' Cabet h imseJf, ep itomiz ing t h e Jaw of fraternity a n d grounding the so l idar i ty of the sma l ler communi ty in the u n i t y of the greater. T h i s tr ipart i te structure author ized endJess pernlu tat ions between t h e roJes o f f o u n d e r a n d benef ic i ary, worker a n d brother, robber a n d robbed� On the one h a n d , those who Jeft for America burnt the ir boats, abandon ing t h e i r home­J a n d and g i v in g a J J they possessed to the c o m m u n i t y before sett ing off to found Icar ia i n t h e wi Jderness . M e a n w h iJe , those who stayed i n France stood to profit from the p ioneers i n two ways : i n t h e f irst place, t h e y e n j o y(�d seeing the ir drearTI o f fra­terni ty fuJf i l Jed through the work of others, a n d second, i f t h e y foHowed, they wouJd en jo y the fru i ts o f the work of foundat ion directly. They w o u Jd therefore a l wa y s be in debit i n the baJance of foundat ion versus en jo yment . This re lat ionship c o u J d aJso be v iewed the other way round, however. Those w h o d eparted Jeft b e h i n d t h e poverty a n d repression of the oJd world � Those who remained beh ind were left with the preocc u p a t ion o f being com­munists a n d fraternaJ i n a worJd o f expJoitat ion, a n d to continue f ind ing enough work to subs id ize t h e i r brothers i n Icar ia u n t i J such t ime a s they had w o rked enough - and fraternaHy enough -£0 enjoy the materiaJ benefits o f the ir Jabour. This reversibJe rela­t i o n s h i p o f e x p J o i t a t i o n w a s further c o m p J i c a t e d w h e n t h e founders wrote t o the ir brothers i n France a n d descr ibed the pJeasures o f Icaria to them. B y doing so, they attracted the enthu­siasm a n d f inanc ia J support of potentiaJ new founders. When these converts du Jy arr ived, the rc�J 1 i ty they encoun tered was not so br ight as they h a d ant ic ipated, �lnd they were accused o f hav­ing come ITlereJy to reap the rcwards � '1 () this reproach they retorted t h a t they had come as founders a n d compla ined t h a t those � J 1ready reaping the rewards were the ones who h a d been a b u s i n g t h e i r frater n it y in o r d e r to rob t h e m . Such m u t u a J recr iminat ion c o u J d eas i Jy h<lve gone o n indefiniteJy . The truth o f t h e matter, however, w a s not that some brothers were false. I t

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was rather that work was unbrother ly a n d that the worker a s worker h a d nothing to do with fraternity (which 0 f course i n n o way prevented him, as a communist , from h a v in g a desperate love 0 f i t } . The community of fraternal workers thus ends u p spl i tt ing r ight down the rn idd le into a party o f work a n d a party o f fraternity. I n the Icarian case, t h e party o f work was repre­sented by the p ioneers, who were a ware of h a v i n g �del ivered themselves into slavery' to t h e i r supposed brothers. Regarding t h e m s e l v e s a s e x p lo i t e d by the ' i d l e n e s s ' o f the latter , they demanded rnorc work and more equal ity . I n oppos i t ion to them, the party o f fraternity, e rnbodied b y 'Father' Cabet, denounced the ega l i tar ian workers ' lack 0 f brotherl iness as fermenting the destruct ion o f the community� A n d why destroy the communi ty, Cabet wanted to know, un less i t be to share o u t the s p o i l s and l i ve a t ease in a smal l cornmunity 0 f workers, l a b o u r i n g rn u c h to benefit rn u c h , working not for the great human family b u t s im­p ly f o r thernselves a n d their famil ies . W h a t Cabet discovered, wi thout rea l ly th ink ing i t through, was th i s : the co nun u n i s t worker w a s above a l l a sharer, a n d hence doubly determined ( o r d o u b l y free o f d e t e r rn i n a t i o n ) a s sharer g i v i n g a n d a s sharer receiving. Though e .. ual i ty c o u l d a lways be represented as the fa ir d i s t r i b u t i o n o f s h a r e d efforts a n d s h a r e d rewards, i n i ts essence i t c o u l d never be anything but a cont inua l tug of war over less and more which w a s on ly aggravated by the rn u lt ip l ic­ity o f accounts demanding sat isfact ion . The equa l i ty specific to the fraternal corn rnunity of workers was an endless balancing o f deb i t a n d credit o n the two l i n e s o f work a n d fraternity, the end­l e s s i n t e r c h a n g e a b i l i t y o f t h e ro les o f d e b t o r a n d c r e d i tor. Discover ing this, then, Cabet merely drew the conclus ion that h e had not suff ic ient ly preached fraternity to h i s t r o o p s . The heart o f the matter escaped h i m : the leap of logic const i tuted by the s imple inference from labour-as-measure to the community o f workers as the real izat ion of just ice . More of a n orator than a ph i losopher, he fa i led to see that t h i s was o l d Plato getting h i s revenge. Indeed , everything turned out jus t as though the fa i lure of the Icarian cornrnunity constituted a negative v a l idat ion of the organizing pr inciple of the Platonic city, that i s to say, the radical separat ion between the act ion that defines the funct ion of the

7 8

T H E C O 1\.1 !'r1 U N I T Y • F E Q U A L S

guard ians a n d the action that rn akes i t p o s s i b l e to support thern . If the guard ians are to guard, the material precondit ions of this s u p p o r t h a v e to be produced ent ire ly separate ly from them, ent ire ly independent of t h e i r activity. It i s not j u s t that in a well­ordered city it is impo ssible t o do more than one th ing at a t ime. It is rather that this impossibi l ity rests 0 n a more fundamental principle - the principle that the community of guard ians must b e absolutely protected from the f luctuations 0 f more a n d less, which together attach to rnater ia l product ion a n d to the cate­gories o f m i n e a n d not-mine . The radical i l l is th i s ape iron, the lack o f determinacy of des ire a n d the absence of l imits on desire which stand opposed to a n y measur ing o f e q u a lity. This i s pre� cisely what i s involved when it comes to the lack o f e .. ua l i ty i n work. The measure o f work i s strictly correlated with the immea­surabil ity of des i re . There i s s imply no reason to subject onese lf to equali ty in the measurement of work as ide from that more which may he added to the worker's support . Every worker is a n oligarch in petentia; every worker i s a l itt le capita l i st .

Platonic radical i sm here reveals how paradoxica l i t i s to treat work, a s producer and measure o f wealth, a s the logical bas is o f the worker as art i san o f community. The realm o f egal i tar ian workers is not the fraternal community but rather - to take another p o i n t o f reference from t h e Republic - t h e hazy frontier betwen ol igarchy and democracy, the s ingular moment when the p r i n c i p l e o f necess ity a n d economy beg ins to vac i l late i n the indeterminacy of desires, where the desire o f the worker's son for en joyment begins to spread out across the mult ip l ic i ty 'of objects o f love . A n d let us not forget t h a t e .. ua l ity, fraternity a n d com­munity are a l so objects o f love. With in community, the desire to en joy the fruits o f one's l a b o u r fningles in no precisely measur­a b l e way with t h e p l e a s u r e s o f e g a l i t a r i a n s p e e c h a n d o f brotherly love, both o f which may b e embraced with s incerity to the p o i n t o f s u i c i d e , o r to the p o i n t o f d i s i l l u s i o n rn e n t o r betrayal. Corn nlun ism is not the worker's j ustice, it i s his pass ion : h i s wh i rn , u n t i l i t becomes h i s crucif ix ion.

"fhis is not just a rnanner of speaking. The representation of the being-together o f equa ls a s a fratern a l community can be thought o f strictly a s a pass ion o f dernocracy 's youth - a s democracy

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acceding to self �consciousness i n a universe of o l igarchic va lues . It would be tempting to i l l ustrate this coming to awareness i n concrete terms a s a n ex is tent ia l choice presenting i t se l f to an i n t e l l i g e n t a n d energetic y o u n g worker in the d a y s of Louis

Phil ippe: the savings h a n k versus the community, establ ishment in the work world versus revolution. But the democratic passion is precisely the possibil ity of accumulat ing the choices offered a t the crossroads, of be ing prepared t o be torn in a l l directions � I t once. The voyage to Icaria was t h u s a s imultaneous departure for the new world o f both business and community. From th is per­spective, the worst i s nor a lways inev i tab le for communists, but i t is for community, which in every instance is sure to fi n d equal­ity in a different p l a c e o r i n a d ifferent form from t h e one expected. Community wanted to forge equals through brother­hood� The problem was that it h a d e q u a l s already, in the shape of hybrid beings, mongrels of varied aspect, all of which bear the stamp of inequal i ty : the worker eager to e n j o y the fruits o f his

labour, the smooth-ta lk ing orator who is as much at home in the assembly hall as in the tavern, the fraternal beggar playing the exploited phi lanthropist . Even i n his experimental , a n d for that

matter caricatural , form, t h i s mongrel was now the n e w legis la­tor - the one before whom the old�style legislator, the founder of cities, must bend. This i s what Father Cabet learned to h i s cost: the professor o f fraternity was beaten on h i s own ground - that of speech - by smooth-tongued debaters, a n d thrown ou t of h is own commun ity. The agency of the law, of the declarat ion o f equ al i ty w h i c h defined being-in-common, w a s now i n the h a n d s o f a character continual ly involved in excess or default . Perhaps this fable of the professor of e q u a l i t y torn apart by his disciples m a s k s a more secret r e n d i n g of workers ' democracy in its y o u t h ?

5 . Community and Society; The Paradox o f Equality

Should not such teachers of fraternal equal i ty have foreseen this

outcome? O n e person at least h a d warned them - someone who had been C:abet's professor o f ROlnan law at Di jon, someone o f whonl many lcarians were avo wed followers: Joseph Jacotot,

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theorist o f the equal ity of intel l igence . Twenty years before they

set sai l for America, Jacotot had seen i n the Icarians' minds, a s in the minds of a l l egal i tar ians, the most radical o f challenges to their assumption that the principle of the community of equals and the principle of the socia l body were o n e a n d the same. Equality, he taught, was a bel ief impl ied by the very idea of intel­

ligence. Belief i n it, acquired or reacquired, was the basis of a community of equa ls , a community of emancipated m e n . But such a community did not a m o u n t to a society. The notion of social equal ity was a contradiction in adjecto. Pursuing it could o n l y contribute to the forgetting of equa l ity itself.

More p a r t i c u l a r l y , Jacotot a l e r ted t h e e g a l i t a r i a n s to t h e impossibi l i ty o f b inding two contradictory logics: the egal itar ian logic impl ied by the act of speaking and the inegal it�r ian logic inherent in the social bond. There could never be any coinc idence between the two different senses in which the speaking being is prey to arbitrariness: to the arbitrariness of language on the one hand a n d to the clrbitrariness of the social bond on the other.

Let us take the arbitrariness o f language to mean simply that there i s n o reason immanent to language, n o d iv ine o r universal language, but merely a mass o f sounds which it behoves each i n d i v i d u a l to invest with meaning at each use . This arbitrariness turns both every utterance and every reception into a n adventure which presupposes t h e tense interaction o f two wishes: a wish to say a n d a wish to hear, each threatened a t every moment by the danger of fal l ing into t h e ordinary abyss of distraction, above which i s stretched the tightrope of the wi l l to meaning. What this tension presupposes, a l ways provided that it continues to posit it itself, is the v irtual ity of another tension - the v irtua l i ty, that is, o f the tension of the other.

The ever-renewed effort exerred by this presupposition may be g iven a variety of names. Some c a l l it s imply reason. Jacorot felt more fa i thfu l to its nature and exercise i n ca l l ing it equality, or rather be l i e f i n the e q u a l i t y o f inte l l i gences. To s p e a k of the equality of intell igences had two basic i m p l icat ions : f irst, that every spoken 0 r written sentence takes on meaning only if it assumes a subject whose corresponding venture permits the dis­cernment o f a meaning the truth of which no pre-existing code or

8 L

O N T H E � l l O R E S e F P O I [ , l I C S

dict ionary suppl ies ; and second, that there are n o t\VO ways of be ing intel l igent, that every intel lectual procedure fol lows t h e same path, t h e p a t h o f a mater ia l i ty traversed b y form or mean� ing, a n d that the seat o f intel l igence is a lways the presupposed equa l i ty of a wish to say and a wish to hear.

T h i s is precisely what was i m p l i e d by M enenius A g r i p p a )s journe y to the Avent ine h i l l to te l l h i s fable to the plebeians . B e h i n d that fablets moral , which i l lu strated the i n e q u a l i t y of functions i n the social body, la y qu i te a d i fferent moral , one inherent i n the very act o f composing a fable . This act of com­posit ion was based on the assumption that i t was necessary to speak a n d that th i s speaking would be heard; the assumption o f a pre-exist ing e q u a l i t y between a wish to s p e a k a n d a w i s h to hear. Above a l l , i t put th is presupposit ion into practice. The rela­t ionship of a representative of the upper class to the members of t h e lower class w a s subordinated to a different one, the rela­t ionsh ip of narrator to l isteners, which is not just a n egal i tar ian re lat ionship but a re lat ionship whose egal i tar ianism is posited, a n d should be enhanced, by the storyteller's art itself . 'fhe moral o f t h e very act o f fabulation was thus the e q u a l i t y of inte l l i ­gences . A n d th is e q u a l i t y s h a p e s a n d def ines a c o m m u n i t y, though i t must be remembered that this community has no mate­rial substance. I t is borne a t each a n d every moment by someone for someone else - for a potenti a l inf in i ty of others. I t occurs, but it has no place .

()f course the interweaving of the two relat ionships operates i n both directions. Equal i ty must be pos ited i f inequa l i ty is to be expla ined . B u t the thing that needs exp la in ing , the thing that sets the machine o f explanat ion i n mot ion , i s inequa l i ty , the absence o f reason that must be rat ional ized, the factici ty that has to be pu t i n order, the social arbitrariness that demands the estab­l ishment of ranks . In short, the arbitrar iness of language that for one rat ional subject is traversed b y another presumes another, soc ia l , arbitrar iness . A l l that i s meant b y social arbitrariness i s that the soc ia l order i s devoid o f a n y immanent reason, that i t is merely because it is , without an y organiz ing purpose. In t h i s i t seems at first altogether comparable to the arbitrariness o f lan­guage . But there is a r a d i c a l a n d i m 1 1 1 e d i a t e l y o v e r r i d i n g

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difference: the material arbitrariness o f the social weight of things cannot be traversed by any subject for another subject. There i s n o reasoning collective subject . O n l y i n d i v i d u a l s are endowed with reason. A collectiv i ty can have no wish to speak to an yone . Society i s ordered in the same way as bodies fa l l to earth . What society asks of us i s s i m p l y to acquiesce: what i t demands i s our consent.

What b inds us together p r i o r to a l l community, pr ior to a n y e q u a l i t y o f intel l igence, is the l i n k that runs through a l l those points where the weight of things i n us becomes consent, a l l those points where acquiescence comes to b e loved a s inequal i ty a n d i s reflected in the act iv i t i es of compar ing, setting up and e x p l a i n i n g ranks . Tradit ion read i ly c a l l s th is pass ion; Jacotot preferred to ca l l i t inequa lity, be l ief in t h e inequal it y of inte l l i ­gences. Ex is t ing without reason, inequa l i ty has a n even greater need to rat ional ize i tse l f at every moment a n d in every p lace . Jacotot g ives such rat ional izat ion the generic name o f 'exp lana­t i o n ' . E x p l a n a t i o n in th is sense is rooted i n the necess i t y to attribute reason to something that has none, to things whose lack 0 f reason i s intolerable . I n this way, s imple non-reason, the contingency o f things, i s turned into active unreason. A n d th is 'or ig in of inequa l i t y ' i s re iterated in every explanat ion; every e x p l a n a t i o n i s a fiction of inequal i ty . I e x p l a i n a sentence to someone because I assume that he would not understand i t i f I d i d not e x p l a i n it to h im. That i s to say, I e x p l a i n to h i m that i f I d i d not exp la in he would not understand. I e x p l a i n to h im, i n short, that he i s less intel l igent t h a n I am, and that that is w h y h e deserves to be where he is and I deserve to be where I a m . The social bond is mainta ined by t h i s endless manufacture o f acqui­escence, wh ich i n schools i s cal led e x p l a n a t i o n a n d i n publ ic a s s e m b l i e s a n d courts goes by the n a m e of p e r s u a s i o n . E x p l a n a t i o n t u r n s a l l lllishing to sa)' i n t o a schola r)s secret; rhetoric turns a l l wishin� to hear into knowing how to hear.

Even before Cabet and the Icar ians came to blows over the pr inciples of community - over work versus fraternity - Jacotot conve yed to them the disconcerting message that there was no pr inc ip le o f the community of equals w h i c h was also a pr inc ip le o f soc ia l organizat ion. There was no ratio cog1zoscendi that was

8 3

O N T l- f E S H O R E S O F P O L I T I C S

at the same tI m e a ratio essendi. There were b u t two ways o f grasp ing hold o f arhitrariness� the pr imary non-reason of things a n d of language : the ega l i tar ian reason of the commul l l ty o f equ als o r the inegali tar ian unreason o f social bodies . The cOln­m u n i t y of e q u a l s c a n a l w a y s b e r e a l i z e d , b u t o n l y on two condit ions. First, it is not a goal to be reached but a supposit ion to he posited from the outset a n d endlessly reposited. Al l that strategies or pedagogies o f the community of equals c an d o is cause that community to fal l into the arena of active unreason, 0 f explanat ory/e xpla ined inequal i ty ever seeking to pass itself off as t h e slow road to reconciled futures. The second condit ion, which is much l ike the first, may be expressed as follows ; the commu­nity o f e q u a l s c a n never achieve s u h stant ia l form as a social inst i tut ion. I t is t ied to the act of its o w n ver if icat ion, which is forever in need 0 f reiteration. N o matter how many i n d i v i d u a l s hecome emancipated, society c a n never b e emancipated. Equal ity may he t h e law of the community, but society inev itah ly remains i n thrall to inequal ity. Attempting to set u p the community of lahour or the community of fraternity amounts to casting the imaginary veil of the One over the radical d iv is ion of the two orders a n d the ir i n e x t r i c a b l e entwinement . A c o m m u n i t y o f e q u a l s c a n n e v e r become coextens ive with a soc iety o f the u n e q u a l , but nor can either exist without the ocher. They a r e a s mutual ly exclusive in the ir principles a s they are m u tua l ly reIn­forcing in their existence4 Anyone proposing to put [he pr inciple of their union into practice, to make society e q u a l , should be confronted by the following d i l emma: a choice must h e made between heing e q u a l in an unequal society and being unequal i n a n ' e q u a l ' society, a society which transforms equal ity into i ts opposite4 A conlrnunity o f equals i s a n insuhstant ia l COIlllll unity of i n d i v i d u a l s engaged i n t h e o n g o i n g creat ion of e q l l a l i ty. Anything else paraded under th i s hanner is either a tr ick, a sc hoo] or a m i l i tary u n i t . 1 0

6 . The C o m m u nity o f Sharing

Such was the w a rn i n g that the young fraternal workers h a d ahsolutely no wish to hear. Or, to he more precise, i n one sense

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T H E C () M �/1 U N [ T Y O ): E Q U A L S

they did not hear i t , while i n another sense they did - interpreting it after the i r own fashion. They d i d not hear it in the sense that they sought to transform the go verning idea o f communi[y into an organiz ing concept 0 f socia l exper ience. They set themselves u p as mentors fO the people and mar[yrs to brotherhood, a p os­ture that old Cabet had adop[ed long before them. They thus doomed themselves a t one stroke to the b irterness o f d i s i l l u ­sioned teachers a n d to the i n disc ip l ine of unru ly students. But their pedagogical and apostolic passion was more than mere unconsciousness, for it rested a l s o on a part icular understanding of the fable of the Aventine h i l l , one which for them meant that the equality o f speaking he ings could affect social real ity . This further d isplaced the emphas is o f the sccne, its key moment, n o t just from the fah}e�s content to the speech situation that produced it, hut thence to events that had preceded that context and indeed brought i t into heing. For M cnen i us Agrippa to compose his fable, the p lehe ians had to have withdrawn to the Aventine hi l l in the first p lace; they further had to have spoken, to have named themselves, to have made it c lear that they were speaking beings whom i t was appropriate to a p p roach and address. The egal i­t a r i a n presuppos i t ion, the c o m m u n a l invent ion of d iscourse, requires a n i n i t i a l hreakthrough which introduces into the com­munity of speaking heings some who were not hitherto o f its number. This break[hrough induces a different economy of the presuppositl'on of equality� The effectiveness of the community o f speaking he ings i s predicated o n a violence which antedates it. The essence o f th i s inaugurat ing violence, which h as nothing [0 d o with counting d e a d and wounded, i s to make the invis ible vis­i h l e , to g ive a n a m e to t h e a n o n y m o u s a n d to m a k e words a u d i h l e where only noise was perceptihle hefore. It creates sepa­ration i n a community, making room for debate therein, yet i t i s i t s e l f only poss ib le inasmuch a s it projects the ega l i tar ian pre­suppos it ion back into the past � Thus, e q u a l i t y is not s imply that presuppos i t ion which ascr ibes socia l congregation in the last instance to the community 0 f s p e a k i n g heings , as to a pr inc ip le necessari ly forgotten; for it is 1 1l r ln ifest i n the recurring rupture which, by projecting the egal itarian presupposit ion back to a p o i n t an ter ior to itself, endows i t with social effectiveness. The

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ON T l I E S H O R E S O f P O L l r l C S

e g a l i t a r i a n presupp os i t ion is not j u s t the i m m a t c r i a l , poetic thread of the community of equals weaving its way through the great fictional fabric of inegal itarian society, for i t brings into play social means o f verifying equality, that is, means of verifying community with in society.

We c a n understand, therefore, w h y our young fraternal work­e r s p a i d no heed to the voice t h a t w a r n e d t h e m o f the disharmony between the logic o f society and the logic o f com­munity .. The fact was that they themselves had experienced the new ways of verifying the declaration of equal ity warranted by its reappearance - and revolutionary reinscription - in July r S 3 0 . Earlier, I offered an analy sis o f the tactics o f logical demonstra­t I o n w h i c h character ized t h e t r a n s i t i o n from t h e o l d journeymen's 'damnation' to the modern str ike a n d gave sub­stantia l form to the idea of social emancipat ion. I tried to show how the configuration of mater ia l confl ict a s rational argument took as its core a k ind of sy Jlogism imposing an obl igation to proceed from the declaration of equa l i ty to its effect ive dep loy­ment. B y contrasting the fact of the inscription of equal i ty with the facts of actual inequality, this approach successfu l ly replaced dismissal as a groundless c l a i m by its opposite, by a ground for making a c l a i m , a basis for argument, a space for disputation where the relat ionship betvveen l i k e and unlike could come into p l a y a n d where the words of equ al ity were genuinely sub;ect to verif ication. The result was the creation o f a community of shar­ing in both senses of the term: a space presupposing a single, shared rationality, but also a place whose very unity depended on the effecting of a divis ion; a polemical community brought into being to impose a hitherto unacknowledged consequence of the discourse of e q u a l ity. Whereas Jacotot's c r i t ique confined the verification of equal ity with in the continual ly recreated relation­ship between a wish to say and a wish to hear, such a verification becomes 'socia l ' , causes equal ity to have a real social effect, only when i t mo bi l izes an ohligatio" to hear. The young Jacotist pro­letarian thus had to clear h i s own way to the verification of the equal i ty of speak ing beings - contributing h i s own intel lectual ad venture, as i t were, to Les AVelllures de Telemaque. The equal­ity of speak ing beings made i tse lf readable i n his exper ience

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through a very specific text, to which recourse was una voidable in that i t itself recaJled the event of its own inscription a n d drew its meaning from the act which reactivated that event and carried it beyond itself. A t the conjuncture which concerns us the text in question was not so much the Charter a s i ts preamble, not so much the constitutional law a s the declaration of the basis of that law, it being understood that this bas is itself was rooted in noth­ing m o r e t h a n the structure of r e p e t i t i o n . The d e c l a r a t i o n repeated the event t h a t h a d taken place, constituting it a s already written, a l ready obligatory. It was itself designed for repetit ion, and to further whatever repetition was capable o f producing by way of new egal i tarian events.

So the egal itar ian polemic invents an insubstantial community

completely determined by the contingency a n d resolve of its

enactment. This egalitarian in vention of community refuses the

terms o f the d i lemma that forces a choice between the immateri­

al ity o f egal i tar ian communication and the inegal i tar ian weight

of soc ia l bodies . Social material ity is not � u s t that weight o f bod­

ies to which o n l y the discourse of inegal itarian rat ional izat ion

appl ies . For i t too may be traversed by a wish-to-say which posits

community by presupposing concord in a specific form, the form

o f a n obligation to hear. The there is of the event brings out the

facticity of beinK-there-together .. I n the mo vement of the event

repla)'ed, of the text restaged, the community of e q u a l s occa­

s ional ly finds the wherewithal to imprint the surface of the social

bodv with the traces 0 f its actual effects. � The communist passion cannot therefore be reduced to a mis-

interpretation e ither o f Plato's Republic. or o f the Christ ians' mystical body; nor can it be reduced to the inabi l ity of a youth­ful workers ' democracy to dea l with the indeterminacy a n d boundlessness o f its desire. The original source of the communi� t a r i a n m i s c a l c u l a t i o n l ies in a s i n g u l a r e x p e r i e n c e of transgress ion . I c h a r a c t e r i z e d t h i s transgress ion e a r l i e r, i n Platonic terms, a s the revolt o f card ina l against ordinal , but the revolt in quest ion was a far cry from the Platonic opposit ion between the ar i thmetical multipl icity of desires a n d the geomet­r ica l proport iona l i ty 0 f the wel l -ordered community . It was grounded in a logical experIence, that of a common measure

8 7

O N T i l E S H O R E S e F P O I [ T I C S

appl ied to inC0l11menSurables . Equal ity and inequality arc incom­mensurate w ith each other, and yet, when the egal i tar ian event and the invent ion o f communl ty connect, they d o indeed become commensurable. The experience of th is common measure is a n extreme experience. E qual i ty i s a n except ion. [ ts necessity is gov­erned b y t h e con t ingency and the resolve which inscribe i t s presupposit ion i n transgressive strokes lending themselves to the invent ion of community, to the invent ion o f demonstra[ions of effect iv e c o m m u n i ty. [ t i s not h a r d , then, to unders tand t h e attraction, t h e cont inual ly renewed d r e a nl , of community a s a body united by some principle of l i fe ( love , fraternity o r work) h a v ing currency among t h e members of that body or serving a s a y a r d s t ick i n [ h e d i s t r i b u t i o n o f func[ ions w i t h i n i t . T h e accepted measuring-rod of the egal i tarian except ion is the v io­lence which is repeatedly reproduced in response to the tension generated b y the vain attempt to suppress i t . The practice of t h e communi ty o f sharing i n i [self nourishes t h e passion for shar ing wi[hout d iv id ing, the passion for a n equa l i ty with substance in a social body which i s measured b y i t . The communist passion y earns to release equal i ty from its exceptionalism, to suppress the a m b i v a lence of sharing, to transform the polemical space o f shared mean ing into a space o f consensus . Beyond a n y misun­d e r s t a n d i n g a b o u t t h e i d e a of the c o m r n u n i t a r i a n body, t h e communist dream of t h e nineteenth century held f irm to the egal i tarian experience, to the measurement of the incommensu­rable, jus t as K a n t i a n transcendental appearance held firm to t h e experience of a specif ic d est iny for reason.

Consequently, the satisfaction of ha v ing overcome t h e dead ends and fo l l ies of community was i n danger of meaning only that the exceptional i sm of equa l i ty had been forgotten4 Beyond com muni tar ia n misca lcu lat ions l a y the a p p e a l o f t h a [ s i lnp le equa t ion which reduces e q u a l i t y to the ru le of the principle o f unif icat ion of the multitude under t h e cornmon law o f the One. With the t i llle of reverence for rhetoric and the glorif ication of new beginn ings safely past, a re turn would at l a s t be made to

[hat terra f irma where jus t ice comes down to [he common mea­sure o f the i1454 Yet such a return qu ick ly encounters the necessity that a l l o w s t h e es tab l i shed s tate to underwr i te a n y k i n d of

8 8

T I l E C O � 1 !'v1 U N I T Y a F E Q U A L S

COllllllun i tar ian equal ity only if that state backs i t u p by project­ing a l l legal-pol i t ica l authority b e h i n d it , in the form of t h e me[alegal i ty o f [he Rights of Man, so that [he unresolvable ques­t ion whether equa l i ty i s the foundat ion of community or v ice versa has to be addressed a t t h is level . The unresolvable question gives rise to endless argument between the part isans of e q u a l i t y based on the common measure of t h e universal a n d the partisans of equality based on respect for t h e tiniest 0 f differences. This

...

endless argument would be o f no consequence were i [ not for the fact that its very unresolvabi l i ty serves to just ify the practice of suhmitt ing every case of the application of e q u a l i ty, as inscribed in the legal -pol i t ica l text, to the wisdom of the legal experts . The trouble is that experts in law ex is t whereas experts i n equa l ­ity do not - or, more exactly, that e q u a l i t y begins only when the power of the experts ceases to hold sway. Wherever the v a u n t e d tr iumph o f law a n d of t h e legal state t a k e s the form of recourse to experts, democracy has been reduced [0 a caricature of i[sel f -to nothing more than go vernmen[ by wise men.

The memory of the comnluni tar ian miscalculation is thus the memory o f the fact t h a t e q u a l i t y may be inscribed upon the social body only through the experience of the measurement o f incommensllrables, [hrough t h e recollec[ing o f a n e v e n t that con� s t i tuted the inscrip tion of the presupposi t ion 0 f e q u a l i t y a n d through the restaging 0 f that event . Such restaging h a s no foun­dation a n d is j u s t i fied by a 'there was' which a lways refers back to yet an earlier ' there w as' . The communitarian obl igat ion is bound to the v iolen[ contingency o f the event a n d to the factic­ity of heing-there-together. The way i n w hich facticity becomes a pr inciple of obl igation is indeed one of the oldest (yet ever fresh) scandals for pol i t ica l think lng, which has never ceased battling with it , whether as enactment or as community . Here we are p u t in mind, on the one hand, o f t h e w a y in which Hannah Arendt, in On /(ev.lutiol1., confronts the monstrousness whereby some populat ion or other, by v irtue nlerely of geographical chance, is described as a free a n d e q u a l people, so t h a t qual i t ies which can proper ly be a p p l ied o n l y to a n acting subject are ascribed to a state o r body. ()n the other hand, one recaHs Aristotle)s ref1ec� tions a s he grapples w i t h another aspect o f the problem: who

O N T H E S H O R E S O F p e L I T J C S

should govern? Logic suggests that the best should hold power and exercise i t for a s long as possible . But Aristotle f inds that [ h i s ideal cannot a l w a y s b e rea l ized . Specifically, i n the case o f a city made up of men who are a l l free a n d 0 f l ike nature, the golden rule must g ive way to facticity. We are confronted by the fact o f a city that i s a plethos - ' a lor 0 f people ) , a l l possess ing the attribute o f freedom4 I l ere, in short, the pol i t ic ian is help less and can only go along with things as they ar.e unt i l he can some­how find a way to have t h e just ice of proportion preva i l amidst the confusion entailed by the ru le of the many. Now the charac­teristic thing a b o u t the modern way o f founding equality I S that it worsens t h e scandal of facticity a n d heightens the contingency of the being-there-together of the plethes by means of a n egali­tarian act which i s the inscription o f the unfoundable right of the mult i tude .

The invention o f community - the ever-to-be-recommenced invention of the community of e q u a l s - i s k indled in the dis­jointed and random relat ionship between what is there and what forces change; in the facticity of the process of shar ing; and in what it is that causes t h i s process to refer back to an earl ier conl­ing together o f egal itar ian event a n d egal itarian text. In this way, a part icu lar relat ionship i s establ ished between the invent ion o f community a n d the state o f the soc ia l realm. From the invention of community flow a number of effects which eventually come to be inscribed in the social fabric i n the shape 0 f hybrid forms that may equal ly wel l be described a s conquests for the workers, a s new m e a n s o f t ightening the b o n d s o f d o m i n a t i o n or a s aspects o f the consensual self-regulation of a social machine now going merri ly on i t s way without ask ing itself a n y more ques­t ions . Such profit-and-Ioss calculat ions l e a v e out the essential thing, however, which is that these aspects of the soc ia l inscrip­tion of invented community constitute a topography, a n aleatory distr ibut ion of places and cases , of s ites and situations, which in their very d ispersa l are so m a n y opportunities for a resurgence of t h e egal itar ian signifier, for a fresh corroborative de l ineation o f the community of equa l s � Democracy i s not t h e simple domin ion of the common ]a \v a s inscribed i n legal -pol i t ica l texts, nor i s it the plural dominion o f the pass ions . I t i s f irst a n d foremost the

9 0

T H E C O M M U N I T Y O F E Q U A L S

space 0 f a l l those locations the facticity o f which tal l ies with the contingency a n d resolve of the egalitarian inscription i n the mak­ing. Thus, the street, the factory or the university can become the locus o f a resurgence of t h i s k i n d in response to the chance p a s ­sage 0 f some apparent ly ins ignif icant p o l i t ica l measure, t o a word out o f place or a n i l l - j udged assertion, any o f which m a y open the door t o a fresh testing o f community, t o a rein scription o f the egal i tar ian signifier, to the recollection of the e ar l ier event that inscr ibed itself forcibly in this p lace . In the autumn 0 f 1 9 � 6 , for instance, we saw how the single word 'selection' h a d the power to establish a new communication between the egal itar ian s ignif ier a n d the factual s ituation, existing in France, 0 f a uni­versity open to a l l regardless o f economic considerations. Those who a t the time contrasted the success 0 f this movement, so cir­c u m s c r i b e d in its g o a l s a n d o r g a n i z a t i o n , w i t h the · v a i n revolutionary dream of 1 9 6 � , evidently forgot that the victorious ca lm o f the moment was only possible thanks to the v iolence of those earlier events w h i c h had put the university in question a n d used the streets to effect communication between the univers i ty as a p lace a n d society as a whole�

There can therefore be moments o f community - not those fes­t i v e m o m e n t s t h a t are s o m e t i m e s descr ibed, b u t d i a l o g i c moments, moments when t h e rule l a i d down by Gregory 0 f N azianzus is contravened, w hen a n impertinent d ia lectic is cre­a t e d by those who have no r i g h t s in t h e m a t t e r, b u t who n e verthe less assert s u c h r ights in the j u n c t i o n between the violence o f a new beginning a n d the invocation of something already sa id, something already inscribed4 There a r e moments when the community of e q u a ls appears as the ultimate under­p i n n i n g o f the d istr ibut ion of the inst itut ions a n d obligations that const itute a society; moments when equals declare them­se lves a s such, though aware t h a t they have no fundamental right to d o so save the a p p e a l to what has been inscr ibed earlier, which the i r action raises behind il as a banner. They thus expe­r ience the artifici«l aspect 0 f their power - in the sense that 'art i fice' m a y mean both something that is n o t necessary a n d something that i s to be created.

9 1

O N T H E S J -{ O R E S O F P O L J T J C S

Notes

1 R o m . 1 2 : 5 ; sec a lso l COL 1 2 : 1 2 . 2 Aristotle. �heto"c., H I , 1 4 1 1 a, 24. 3 Aristotle, Politlcs, I I I , 1 2 8 b , 1-3� 4 See cranslation of 1 Cor. 1 2 : 1 2 i n 'Tradlc ions communistes', l ,a

Frater11lte, l)ecember 1 8 4 2 , p. 1 1 0. 5 Discours 3 2 , in Gregoire d e Nazianze, Discours 32 a 3 7 , Paris

1 9 8 5 , pp. 1 0 9 - 1 1 . 6 Sec a lso Ph i L 2;6� abundandy cited by l\.1arius Vi(.'torinus in his

AJv.ersus Artu1-n. See Traitcs tiJe% giques sur I a T,initCl Paris 1 9 6 ' , nocably sections 1 , 9 , 1 3 , 2 1 , etc.

7 Sa i nc �asi le, Lettres, Pans 1 95 7 ) voL 1 , p. 54. 8 SatHC �asile, Tralte du Saint ESPTlt, vol . 1 , 1 ' 4 6, pp.

2 04-6 .

9 Le Poplliaire., 2 1 January 1 84 ' . 1 0 For further thoughts on th is , perhaps I m a y be permitted to

direct the reader to lily Le Maitre ignorant, P a r i s 1 9 8 7 ; Engl ish cranslar ion by Kristin Ross, The 19nor�nt Schooltnaster, Stanford, Calif. 1 9 9 1 .

D emocracy Corrected

'So, i n w h a t \vas nominaUy a democracy, power was reaU y in the hands o f the first c i t izen . ' 1 I n poJit ics, everything depends o n cer­ta in f o u n d i n g u t terances . We s t i J l have to decide how such utterances arc to he understood. Here, we shaH proceed o n the hypothesis t h a t Thucydides' famous characterization o f the gov­ernment of Pericles is not 'poJ i t icaJ ' i n the sense o f refJecting the disi l lusioned wisdom of one who is used to commanding men a n d who observes the contradiction between showy phrases and solid reaJities. The gap between names and things, whose perversions Thucydides weJJ knew, is preciseJy what defines the space of po} i t � i c a l rat ional i ty . Thus, democracy is not ' j u s t a word' o r an iUus ion � Rather, i t is a disposit ion o f the name and appearance of the peopJe, a way o f keeping the p e o p Je present in their absence. Thucydides teUs uS t h i s : po J i t ics is not in the first instance the management of the interests of the community, nor is it the sim­pJe art of subduing the popuJace b y means of fine words. I t is the apparatus whereby the peopJe are kept within the v is ibJe sphere t h a t the peopJe's name ruJes over� a s the subject that occupies the gap between the fiction o f community on the one hand and the surfeit o f reality o f the popuJace on the other, the peopJe serve both to l ink and to separate the two, themseJves aJternateJy taking on a n d l os ing definit ion as the features of the t\vo intermingle.

1 . Disproportionate a n d Anarchic

My a im in w h a t foJJows i s mereJy to give resonance to the sin­gularity of Thuc ydides' words in the faintly anxious satisfaction

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of our present t ime, which s imultaneous ly rejoices in the tri� umph of democracies alld wonders whether they arc in fact governable + The presumable cynic ism o f the ancient h istorian, a friend o f the Sophists, would doubtless prompt an amused reac­tion to t h e gravity of our queries . Thucydides was well aware that the question of polit ics was indi v is ib le from that of whether democracies were governable . But he a l so knew that th is ques­tion i s invar iably a lready settled, that democracies are always both governed and ungovernable - indeed governed inasmuch a s t h ey are ungo vernable . There is pol it ics, the a rt a n d science o f polit ics, because there i s democracy� Pol it ics i s encountered as a l ready present i n t h e f a c t u a l i ty of democracy .. in t h e very strangeness of the combination of words which j o i n s the unas­s ignab le q u a n t i t y o f t h e demos to t h e i n d e f i n a b l e action of kratein. The primary unsettl ing factor i n this juxtaposit ion is not that t h e people are too ignorant for matters which demand knowledge, too fickle for matters which demand s tab i l i ty, too excitable when prudence is called for or too petty when grandeur i s req uired. Rather, i t is that the people are a lways more or less

•

than they are supposed to be: the majority instead o f the assem-bly, the assembly instead 0 f the community, the poor instead o f t h e city, applause instead 0 f agreement, pebbles counted instead of a firm decision t a k e n . Reaching a decis ion by totting u p peb­bles and the bemoaning of t h e stupidity of majorities are the small change of that ' o n e too m a n y ' , that divergence from itself, which constitutes the demos as such. The people are at once d is .. proportionate a n d a n archic � Language bears witness to th is : there can be no arche corresponding to rhe demos a s subject, n o way of r u l i n g according to some inaugurat ing principle ; there is only a -cracy - a manner of prevail ing. Prevail ing because one is the best, say Pericles' admirers Thucydides and Call icles; prevail­i n g because one prevails, retorts his detractor P1ato. The -cracy o f the best - o f t h e kreitton - is n o q u a l ity, n o definable expertise, hut rather the sheer extra weight borne by the one best able to subrnit to the dictates of h i s own des ire , who prevai ls among the people; for he who gives the people the greatest number of arse­n a l s , the greatest number of co lon ies and the greatest sense of their own importance, is the one who receives the most power

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from t h e m in return. The 'one too many' o f democracy here a l lows i tse l f to be reduced to the 'more, a lways more' of unsatis­fied des ire , of the economic imperial ism that turns democracy into t h e ch i ld of oligarchy a n d the mother of tyranny.

The c o n c e p t o f pol it ics or iginated i n a choice concern ing democracy: whether to declare democracy unworkable as the regime 0 f the d iss imi lar and entrust the welfare o f the city to t h e p h i l o s o p h i c a l use o f speech and the mathematical use o f n u m ­bers, or, a lternat ive ly, to run democracy o n the b asis o f its very d is s i m i l a r i t i e s , i ts very ungo vernabi l ity, u s i n g its const itut ive s e l f - d i v i s i o n for and/or against it : to institute the const itut ional rules a n d customs of government that would al low the people to en joy t h e v i s ib i l i ty o f their power through the dispersal a n d even d e l e gation o f the ir qua l i t i es and prerogatives. The latter a p p r o a c h is exemplif ied practically in t h e arrangements (sop his­mata) t h a t are Aristotle's response to the Platonic d enunciat ion o f d e m o crat ic sophistry.

This i s the hypothesis of democracy corrected - democracy gov­erned b y the judic ious use o f its own ungovernabil ity. This is not a matter o f trickery, or the cynical or penitent juggling 0 f words a n d things, scenery a n d props� It is a matter 0 f accomplishing the goal of politics, of leading the community harmoniously through discord itself, through the impossibility o f the peopl� being e q u a l to themselves. The triumph o f solid facts over showy phrases i s also t h e tr ium p h 0 f rhe polit ical logos over democratic factua l i ty. It is terllpting to try a n d frame the encounter with factuality here in terms 0 f a clearly defined dialectic in which the essence o f pol i ­tics is real ized through its own negation. In the first place, there would b e the idea o f politics, the archetype o f which Aristotle outl ines i n B o o k I o f the Politics: community founded on the spec i f ically human power o f the logos, the power of making man­ifest the expedient and the harmful, and hence the jus t a n d the unjust+ I n the second place, there would be the pure factuality of the city d iv ided into rich and poor, split n o t just by fortune but also by the des ire for power. And finally, there would be the system o f forms a n d arrangements whereby the pol it ical logos is realized through its capac ity to overcome the twofold d iv is ion of the people - its difference from itself a n d its division into classes.

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But perhaps, by imposing i tse lf on the factua lity o f the division of wealth, this dialectic of COTll rllun i tar ian reason misses the core of pol it ics - its true 'or igin) , For how exactly are we to conceive o f that first m a n i festation o f the expedient and harmful which� according to Aristotle, occurs in the course 0 f deliberation upon the just and the un just ? How does the manifestation of the expe­d ient (to sumpheron � t h a t w h i c h converges, w h i c h brings together in a useful way, which serves to bring together) entai l the manifestat ion o f the just , o f just ice as a po l i t ica l principle? The fact is that the sun in sumpheron does not suffice to differ­ent iate the h u m a n c i ty frorn c o m m u n i t i e s of ants O f bees � Heracl i tus a l r e a d y knew t h i s ; the logos is sum/JberU11'ICl1ol1! diapheromenol1. To reach the jus t from the starting-point of the expedient it is necessary to go by w a y o f opposites, by way of blaherol1ladiko11: 'the harmful a n d thus t h e u n just ' , as the trans­lators often phrase it. But t h i s is to obliterate the very heart of the matter, w h i c h i s the a s y m m e t r y o f the sl-lmpher.'1 a n d t h e blaberon. The hlaheron is not just the harrnful or inexpedient; i t is t h a t which wrongs o r i n j u r e s . Usefu l convergence � that earnest pipedream of the so-cal led l iberal age - affects the con­stitution of the po l i t i ca l realm only i f it is part of that grievance, that wrong needing righting, which is antithetical to the useful yet not s y m m e t r i c a l w i t h i t . The f a c t u a l i t y o f the d i v i s i o n between r ich a n d poor i s not the obstacle beyond which the political logos should establish itself. Rather, this factuality gives substance to the grievance thanks to which the register of the jus t becomes access ib le to the register o f the u s e f u L Democracy denotes t h i s grievance a t the same t ime a s i t denotes the people's difference from themselves a n d the power of appearance attach­i n g to t h e p r o c lamat ion of the people ' s n a m e . Po l i t ics is a function of the fact of democracy, of the way in which democ­racy's factuality presents itself in three forms: the appearance deployed by the name o f the people, the imparity of the people when counted and the �rieval1ce connected with the antagonism between rich and poor. Pol it ics exists, first, because there are names which deploy the sphere of appearance of the people, even if in the process such narnes are apt to become separated frorn ' things'; second, because the people a r e always too numerous or

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too few compared with t h e form o f their mani festation; a n d third, because the name o f the people is a t one a n d the same time the name o f the community a n d the name o f a p a r t of - or rather a spl it in - the community. The gap between the people as com­munity a n d the people as d iv is ion is the site of a fundamental grievance. At the outset, i t is not the king but the people who have a double embodiment.

Polit ics is not a function 0 f the fact that it is usefu l to assem­ble, nor 0 f the fact that assem blies are held for the sake of the good management of common business. It is a function of the fact that a wrong exists, a n in justice that needs to be addressed. But the pol i t ica l wrong associated with t h e double embodiment o f the people i s not a wrong l i k e any other. On the one hand, it cannot be assimilated to the sort of jur idical wrong that a court of law can address on the basis 0 f laws or regulat ions. The irrec­onci la bi l i ty o f the parties antedates any specific dispute. O n the other hand, this irreconci la bi l i ty is not synonymous with inexpi­able war or infinite debt. The evolut ion o f the wrong, which is responsible for the definitive transition from an ordered an imal society t o a human p o l i t ica l community, takes p lace against the backdrop 0 f t h a t radical otherness which Aristotle exemplif ied in the figure o f the stranger to any city, the man who is e i ther sub­human or superhuman - a monster committed to total war or a div in ity beyond the reach 0 f a l l reciprocitY4 Somewhere between legal a d j u d ication a n d inf inite indebtedness, between law and rel igion, po t i t ica i grievance bespeaks a n irreconci lab i l i ty which remains addressable, one which gives r ise o n the one hand to vio­lent manifestations 0 f otherness a n d on the other to the peaceful handl ing o f confl ict - both excessive in respect of any dialogue between the interests involved, a s in respect 0 f an y established rule concerning reciprocal rights a n d duties. In response to the name 0 f t he people, suhjects emerge who take the wrong in hand, who expose the substance 0 f the irreconci lable grievance while s imultaneously beginning the process of addressing it by means of disputat ion.

Politics exists by virtue 0 f the democratic mo bil ization o f this apparatus o f appearance, imparity a n d grievance. This mea ns that i t does not exist s imply because power or the state exist.

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Factors attributed to political history intermix other mechanisms with the pol it ical apparatus proper, mechanisms having to do with the exercise of majesty, the vicarship of the d i v i nity, the command of armies or the management of interests. A n d wher­ever t h e ' e n d ' o f the p o l i t i c a l i s p r o c l a i m e d , w h a t i s r e a l l y targeted i s th is apparatus of appearance, imparity �lnd grievance. 1 'his is the upshot when appearance is lost on account of the uni­versal exhibit ion of the real, w h e n the grievance I have been describing is swamped by the objectification o f common 'prob­lems� and ways to solve them, when imparit y is replaced b y interminable poll ing for voting intentions or popularity, a long with the e q u a l l y interminable reckoning of indices of good or bad management of common business . Exhibit ion in p lace of appearance, exhaustive counting in place of imparity , consensus in place of grievance - such are the commanding features of the current correction of democracy, a correction which th inks of i t se l f as the end o f politics but which might better be called post­democracy . These are the forms of a r a t i o n a l i z a t i o n o f democratic ungovernabi l i t y whose depletion of a l l estimates and a l l images, l i k e its l i m i t l e s s p r o d u ct ion of l a w s a n d art ic les designed to foresee and regulate a l l grievances, will sure ly be stopped dead i n its tracks b y the sudden emergence o f new avatars of the monster a n d of a merciless divinitY 4

2. Modern Metapol it ics

In the modern age, pol it ics i s reborn with the redeplo yment of the name 0 f the people and of the space 0 f the gr ievance to which that name gives substance. Those who conceive o f politics in terms of the state, as o u r l ibera l anti-statists persist i n doing, can a lw a y s teach how the roots o f the republ ican state l i e in the formation of the nation-state u n d e r the monarchy. S o far as pol­itics proper i s concerned, however, i t i s reborn when the sphere of appearance of the people begins regaining ground from the prestige of royal majesty and the trappings o f the d iv ine vlcar­s h i p ; when the people reappear a s the locus of a d iv is ion and when this division once aga in demonstrates, at the heart of the legend of communIty, the asymmetry between the Slll1zpheron

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and the blaberon+ It i s now that new names a r e proposed for the people and that new subjects come forward wel l fitted to exhibit and address the wrong that has been done the people : repu bl i ­cans , democrats and r e v o l u t i o n a r i e s � b u t a l s o w o r kers or proletar ians . It i s now too, however, that around the m i l d rever� i es o f t h e sumpheron b ringing a n i n d u s t r i o u s community together there begin to prowl far weightier shadows: t h e shadow of a sovereign people settl ing a l l grievances or t h e shadow of the body 0 f the oppressed people a s the locus of an absolute wrongr Herein lies the singularity o f modern politics: even as the a p p a ­ratus 0 f democrat ic a ppearance, democrat ic g r i e v a n c e a n d democratic imparity is being redeployed, there emerges in paral­l e l a metap o l i t i c s w h i c h p o i n t s u p the u nt e n a b i l i t y o f that apparatus , its contradictoriness or hypocrisy, its cris is or its end. Modern politics comes into being accompanied by the thought of its own e l iminat ion . Something t h a t Aristot le and Thucydides took for granted - that the people were at once part and whole, sovereign a n d not sovereign - has n o w become a scandalous notion. It is true that Plato conceptualized an absolute antagon­ism between the H .. e p u b l i c a n d democracy, o p p o s i n g a meta pol i t ics or politics of the arche to the factual i ty of democ­racy. B u t modern meta polit ics burrows into the very heart o f pol i t ics . [ t demands that the names u s e d by pol it ics resemble its rea l i t ies a n d vice versa. The appearance of the people must be strictly confined to the attriblltes o f sovereignty or the appear­ance of sovereignty dissolved in favour o f the real it ies o f the people as producers. The imparity 0 f democracy, strictly def ined as the reign o f the major ity vote, wavers between the unrepre­sentabil ity of sovereignty a n d the incalcu labi l i t y of the wrong done the poor. Either the democratic people must be educated according to republ ican doctrine or e lse the repub l ic must be brought back to the truth of the reign of interests. Thus, fragile al l iances are sacrificed a n d clashes begin to occur between the different elements o f a democratic apparatus now required to embrace congruence between names a n d t h i n g s , truths a n d appearances . For l iberals , the archaic passions associated w ith the name 0 f the people disturb the prospect 0 f the rule 0 f the sumpheron - a convergence 0 f the usefu l a n d the just destined to

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put a n end to grievance. On rhe socia l ist s ide, the rights 0 f the producers clash with the names assigned by polit lcs, and class war co l l ides with the fictions 0 f the legal system. It was part 0 f �1arx's genius that, in a few a s yet unsurpassed texts, he was able to bring to life every eiemellt in the rheatre of politics a n d mod­ern meta politics: the words a n d togas o f ancient politics deployed to l i q u i d a te royal majesty; the modern management of warring interests; the marvels of bourgeois industry a n d the icy waters o f egoistic calculat ion; the crit ique o f t h e rights o f man a n d the den unciation of the absolute non�right of the proletarian; the mission of the class without q ual it ies and the coming reign of the producers; the withering away o f the parasit ic state and the dic­tatorship of the proletariat . M a rx also ident if ied the essen rin 1 drama here, or rather the double drama: the tragedy of the u n a d .. dressable wrong played out against the background of the idy l l of the generation o f just ice by the ru le of usefu l prod uct ion . t\1 arx made democracy's separation from i tse l f into the separa­tion of the pol it ical realm from itself , giving t h e sp l i t a name that would be adopted by the whole of modernity - and even turned against t\1arx himself . The name in question was ' ideology' . This was not jus t a new name for an old idea - i l lus ion , s imulacrum or something of the sort - but rather a name for the continually incriminated distance between names and things, the conceptual operator that controls junctions and d i s j unctions between com­ponents of the modern pol it ical apparatus . ' Ideology' i s what makes it possible i n turn to reduce the appearance of the people to the level of a n i l l usion masking real conflict or, conversely, to denounce the names o f the people a n d the manifestations of the people's grievance as anachronisms merely holding u p the advent of the rule of the common interest . �Ideology' l i n k s the produc .. tion of the polit ical sphere to i ts evacuation, for it designates the gap between words and things as a disturbance in politics that may a t any time become a d isturbance of polit ics . I t is an ever­shiftable term w h i c h , by rearranging a t win the relat ionships of the people's appearance and grievance, permits the locus of the polit ical to be continual ly changed - changed, indeed , to the l i m i t , which is the declaration of the end o f polit ics. The �end of the pol it ical ' designates the completion of the process whereby

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the metapolitical, coiled at the heart o f the polit ical, eviscerates i t from within, and in the name 0 f the critique of appearances so thoroughly erases a l l mediation 0 f the wrong and injust ice done that politJ�cal justice is reduced to nothing more than the reasonable rule o f the sumpheron.

3 . Racism: The Disease o f Consensus

The hypothesis o f consensual democracy runs roughly a s fol­lows. We arc at the e n d o f the t ime when the appearance of the people a n d the grievance o f the people held sway� We are leaving that period behind: first, on account of the col lapse o f the 'work­ers, states" a n d second, by virtue o f the energy with which we have developed a n d shared our wea lth a n d mult ip l ied ind iv idua l satisfactions and forms 0 f collective cons ultat ion. We can now dea l w i th division for what i t has become, namely competit ion, a form of that convergence thanks to which the production of the useful rea l izes i t se l f through the production o f justice. We can endow the reality o f democracy with what we have taken away from its shadow, freeing imparity from the trap p ings 0 f appear­ance and the exaggerations o f grievance. The present fai l ings o f representation, the gap between the parl iamentary majority a n d either the sovereign people o r t h e mutt ipl icity o f cit izens - a n d for that matter t h e absence o f a n y majority, a n d empty benches i n the Nat ionat Assembly - can be rectified by mechanisms for profil ing the people or port ions 0 f the people, a s b y mechanisms designed to objectify prob lems a n d solut ions, a long with the r u l e s for t h e i r d i scuss ion, in the most e x h a u s t i v e way. t\1echanisms, too, for harmonizing the computation o f the parts with the image o f the whole in the context of that perpetual overal l computation which displays public opinion in its entirety as synonymous wi th the people a s a body. And mechanisms for problematizing any object o f grieva nce lia ble to revive th e name of the people a n d the appearance 0 f the people's se lf-division. A grievance is s imply the sytnptom ( ) f a problem, a n d no problem is anything more than the lack 0 f the means to solve it . Exposure of wrong m u s t now give way to identif ication o f the lack, fol­lowed by its remedy. This may be a lack o f resources to be shared

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or a lack of rules for the prevention o f confl ict: the ans\ver to the one i s unl imited economic growth, to the other a proliferation of l a w s and regulations. The exhaustive enumeration o f problems to be solved and lacks to be answered c a ] ] s for a correspondingly precise enumeration of the participants necessary and sufficient to d iscuss and resolve each case� The image of the round-table d i scuss ion appropriate to the problem to hand here con rrasts sharply i n i r s completeness w ith empty par l ia mentary benches, a n d it nlay readi ly be identif ied with the hundred per cent of the populat ion pol led d a i l y on their desires a n d choices and dis­played broken down into their precise d i v is ions . T h e objectivity of problems and the enl istment o f the contributors needed to solve them t h u s enta i l s a concurrence o f opinions around the solution that offers i t se l f of its o w n accord as the only one t h a t makes sense.

In this way, pol it ics assigns itse lf an edifying purpose. Stripped of its theatrical fancy dress, democracy is introduced into th is programme as that dialogue, that co11ective search for hon1011oia, which P lato counterposed to the seductions of rhetoric as the noise of assemblies to popu lar theatres. But Plato w i ] ] not accept payment � n such cheap c o i n . For h im, the difference between d ia logue and rhetorical persuasion cannot define an y conceivable correction of democracy. Rather, i t defines philosophy's radical difference from democracy. Democracy cannor be redeemed by phi losophy. And it is most certa in ly farcical to posit its dialogic redemption through d iscuss ion of the more and the less or the weighing o f interests i n t h e balance. Imparity i s an essential part o f democra cy. The only k ind o f dialogue compatible with democ­racy i s one where the parties hear one another but do not agree with one another, the k i n d of d ia logue which takes p lace on the stage. Democracy is c losely l inked to traged}f - to unsettled griev­a n c e . T h e modern experience o f democracy h a s refuted the over-s imple Platonic identif ication of democratic imparity with the masses' desire for 'more, a lways more' . �ut at least it has confirmed P l a to's i n t u i t i o n : democracy i s not the search for hontolluia - and cspecia l ly not the fairy ta le which clothes the debat ing of common interests i n the garb of phi losophica l d i a ­l o g u e . l)e rn o c r a t i c d i a l o g u e i n t h i s respect resembles poet ic

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d ia logue a s defined by Mandelstam: the interlocutor i s ind i s ­pensable to I t , b u t so i s the indeterminacy 0 f that interlocutor -

the unexpectedness o f h i s cOllntenance.2 Democratic dia logue refuses the objectif ication impl ied by �partnerships' and their 'problems' . A n interlocutor i s not a 'partner�. And the advances o f democracy have always been due to i m p r ovisat ion by unpro­g r a m m e d actors , b y s u r p l u s interlocutors : a n o i s y c r o w d occupying the street, a s ilent crowd crossing their arms i n a fac­tory a n d so forth. We a r e ta lk ing here not a b o u t spontaneous action b y the people but a b o u t democratic imparity. No ' w i ld­catting' against t h e organization is involved, for s u c h improvised crowds have a l w a y s been a b l e quickly t o provide themselves with representatives to go and parley i n c i v i l fash ion with the spokespeople of wealth and power whenever the latter were w i l 1 -ing a n d ready to receive them. The p o J it ica l wrong, a s we have seen , c a n be addressed. But addressed docs not mean redressed. To assume that a common language a n d a comprehension by e a c h s i d e o f the other ' s r e a s o n i n g a r e p r e r e q u i s i t e s for the wrong's being made manifest and being debated is not the same th ing a s objectifying that wrong as a problem whose solut ion i s sought by partners acting together. The parties i n confrontation do not make up a n y whole capable of definitively righting the wrong. The subject that gives voice a n d substance to the griev­ance is not qualif ied to declare it satisfied. Nor is there any just if icat ion for sett ing u p a n opposit ion, as Habermas does., between the discursive formation o f a w i ] ] to democracy a n d l ibera l compromise between interests� Democracy i s neither com­promise between interests nor the formation o f a common w i l 1 . Its kind o f dia logue is t h a t o f a divided community. Not t h a t it i s indi fferent t o the universa l , but in pol it ics the universa l i s a lways subject to dispute. The pol i t ica l wrong does not get righted� I t i s addressed as something irreconc i lah le within a community that is a lways unstable a n d heterogeneous . This is a l so why there is no reason to counterpose a post modern logic of the exp los ion 0 f language games a n d the h<.lterogencity o f the dif ferend to the modern logic of grievance founded o n the common language o f the wrong, the great narrat ive o f the people a n d the display o f the uni versa l v ict im. \ For one thing, the place 0 f the wrong in the

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frarnework of pol it ics i s pr ior and indeed constitutive relat iv e to any figuration o f the universal victim, so the ecl ipse o f the one does not entai l the nonexistence o f the other. �rhe p olit ical rneta­rnorphoses of the people and their grievance cannot be reduced to th i s rnetapol i t ical f igu rat ion . A l s o , the homogeneity of the proletar ian grievance and of the proletarian narrative does not stand in si rnple opposition to the mu lt ip l ic i ty of language games. The r e a l m o f grievance is not in fact a horn ogeneous one, while the great prolerarian narrative is epitomized by a mult i tude of m inor l a n g u a g e ga rn e s and m i n o r gr ievances , a p le thora o f instant ia t ions a n d scenar ios o f the w rong which a r e a l w a y s played out a t the frontier between homogeneity a n d heterogene­ity, s y s t e m a t ica l ly m i x i n g u p d i fferent l eve ls of speech a n d refusing cornrnunity even a s they constitute it . Ci r ievance is the true measure o f o therness, the thing that unites interlocutors while sirnultaneously keeping thern at a distance from each other. Here again what Mandelstam says aboll t poetic interlocution may be app l ied to pol it ics : it i s not a quest ion of acoustics but o f distance. I t i s otherness which g ives meaning t o language games, not the other way round + L ikewise, dreams of a new pol ft ics based on a restricted and general ized otherness, o n mult iform networks redirecting the f lows of the communication and infor­rnat ion rnachine, h a v e had o nly disappoint ing resu lts, as we w el l know. lln less i t i s rel igious, otherness can only be p ol it ical , that is , founded on a wrong at once irreconci lable a n d addressable . W h e n the apparatus of grievance disappears , what takes o ver in its stead i s sirnply the platitude o f consensus, which does not take l o n g to reveal to those o f a real ist hent, w h o are so delighted to see the people 's pol i t ica l pass ions soothed, its inev itable d a r k s ide: t h e return t o the political animal state - a n d the pure a n d s imple rejection o f the other.

Testi rn o n y to this i s s u p p l i e d u s every d a y in the forrn o f pathetical ly well- intentioned consensual round tables a iming to solve the problems o f which current outbreaks o f racism are s a i d t o be j u S t syrnptorns. 'rhe trouble i s that racism is n o t the syrnp­torn but the disease - the d isease, i n fact, o f consensus itself, the loss of a n y rneasure of otherness. The transmogrificatIo n o f the other to the frenzied point of pure racist r ejection and the erasure

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o f the other through the problematization o f immigration are two sides 0 f the same c o in . It is the 'sensib le � supp lant ing of appearance by exhibit ion, o f i rnpar ity b y counting a n d o f gr iev­ance by c onsensus that invites the monster back t o where the pol i t ica l n o w fai ls to reach. It is the exhaustive counting o f a popu lat ion forever being p o l l e d t h a t replaces the people (now dec lared an anac hronism ) by the s u b j e c t referred to a s 'The French', a sub ject whose first rn a n i festation - on a par with the latest a p odictic pol it ical forecasts by some jun ior minister - is � iab 'e to be some very emphatic opin ions on the excessive num­ber of foreigners, the feebleness of the governmenfs repressive rneasures or the shockingly soft life led by prison inmates. I t is the regime o f universal exh ib i t ion and the attendant promise 0 f t h e t o t a l r e a l i z a t ion of a l l fantasies (for the p cl ltry cost o f a Minite l c onnection) which ensconce, a t the very centre o f the parade of desirable objects, the figure o f the thwarter of whole­s a l e e n j o y m e n t . A n d it is the d i s s o l u t i o n of t h e s u b j e c t 0 f g r i e v a n c e w h i c h c r e a t e s a w o rdless v i c t i m , o b j e c t o f a n unquenchable hatred. The immigrant i s f irst a n d foremost a worker who has lost his name, a worker who is n o longer per­ceptible as such. Instead o f the worker or proletarian who is the o bject o f an acknowledged wrong a n d a subject w h o vents his grievance in struggle a n d disputat ion, the imrnigrant appears as at once the perpetrator o f an inexpiab le wrong a n d the cause of a p r o b l e rn c a l l i n g for the r o u n d - t a b l e treatrnent . A l ternate ly problematized a n d hated, the immigrant i s caught in a circle, one might even say a spiral : the s p i r a l o f lost p o l i t ica l otherness, doomed to the unnameable form of hatred that goes hand in hand with the real ists ' wish to r id problerns o f 'emotions' . There is no way o f taking pass ion o u t 0 f pol it ics. There is t h e pass ion for equa l i ty and the passion for inequality, a s the ingenuous o r c y n i c a l responses o f respectable round-table part ic ipants clearly show: it i s a l l right to debate racisrn i f you first g ive way an equality, or to give the other the run of the c ity so long a s he is denied cit izenship a priori .

Depolit ic iz ing conflicts i n order to settle thern, or str ipping otherness of any yardstick the better to solve its problems - this i s the madness which Ollr t ime identifies with a reasonable a n d

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easy democracy that harmonizes state init iat ives with the natural tendencies of productive society, with its efforts a n d desires.4 The state, we are told, must be modest, restoring or leav ing to society its d ynamism a n d a b i l i t y to guarantee the harmoniol1s coexistence of J £S agents. For th i s the state must be social ized i n the right way, must get i t se l f i n tune w i t h the h u m o f t h e worldts energies, with the rhythms o f the product ion and c irculat ion o f things, people and information, b y adopt ing the same modes of management, communicat ion and consultat ion as t h e business enterprise. Unfottunately, for the state to be modest, society also would have to be modest. The one i s never more nor less modest than the other. They s imply take turns a t being the one to d isplay the immodesty of both, and, at the moment, it happens to be society's turn to d isplay immodesty, to ident ify i t se lf with the per­manent promise of everything to everyone, which is to say the p e r m a n e n t frustrat ion of e v e r y o n e i n e v e r y th i n g . The great metapol it ical i l lus ion of modernity i s precisely t h i s antagonism between a modest society a n d a n immodest state, an antagonism within whose terms l ib erals and social ists have never ceased to commune. The cold monster o f the state has never ceased work .. i n g for the hot monster of society, for a l l t h e des irable objects that society exh ib i ts as critics of appearance a n d fel ic itous reso­lut ions of otherness. State and society enter into opposit ion with each other, i n fact, on ly with the fa l l ing into obl iv ion of p o l i t ics­with the abandonment o f the fundamental re lat ionship of the pr incipled character of pol it ics to the factu a l i t y of democracy, to the apparatus o f appearance, impar i ty a n d grievance. Society no more holds the solut ion to the state's problems than the state h o lds the solution to social problems. The folly of the times is the wish to use consensus to cure the diseases of consensus. What we must do instead i s r e p ol i t i c i ze conf l icts so that they c a n be addressed, restore names to t he people and give po l i t ics back its former v i s ib i l i ty i n the han dl ing 0 f problems and resources.

Notes

1 �rh llcyd idcs , J-/rstory of the Pe/opunnesian War, [rans. Rex Warner, revis�d edi t jon , f-Jannondsworth 1 9 7 2 , II, 65.

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2 Sec .sip rvl a nde ls ta m, le sobcscdn ike ' (On the Interlocutor); French translation� ·.e l ' interlocuteur\ in .e la IJoesle, Pa r is 1990. 3 See Jcan-Fran<;ois Lyotard, La ConditIon p05tmoderne, Paris 197 9; Engl ish tra nsla t ion by Geoffr ey Benn ingt on a n d B . �lassumi, The [l()stmodern C.lldlti.u, �lanchester 1984 . 4 See :Nlichel Crozier, Etat mod erne, Etat modeste, Paris 1987.

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