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Ten Theses on Politics
5:3 |
©
2001
Jacques Rancière
Thesis 1:
[1]
Politics is not the exercise of power. Politics ought
to be defined on its own terms, as a mode of acting
put into practice by a specific kind of subject and
deriving from a particular form of reason. It is the
political relationship that allows one to think the
possibility of a political subject(ivity) [
le sujet
politique
],
[2]
not the other way around.
1.
To identify politics with the exercise of, and struggle to
possess, power is to do away with politics. But we also reduce
the scope of politics as a mode of thinking if we conceive of it
merely as a theory of power or as an investigation into the
grounds of its legitimacy. If there is something specific about
politics that makes it something other than a more capacious
mode of grouping or a form of power characterized by its mode
of legitimation, it is that it involves a distinctive kind of subject
considered, and it involves this subject in the form of a mode of
relation that is its own. This is what Aristotle means when, in
Book I of the
Politics
, he distinguishes between political rule (as
the ruling of equals) from all other kinds of rule; or when, in
Book III, he defines the citizen as 'he who partakes in the fact of
ruling and the fact of being ruled.' Everything about politics is
contained in this specific relationship, this
'part-taking'
[
avoir-
part
],
[3]
which should be interrogated as to its meaning and as
to its conditions of possibility.
2.
An interrogation into what is 'proper' to politics must be
carefully distinguished from current and widespread
propositions regarding "the return of the political." In the past
several years, and in the context of a state-consensus, we have
seen the blossoming of affirmations proclaiming the end of the
illusion of the social and a return to a 'pure' form of politics.
Read through either an Arendtian or Straussian lens, these
affirmations focus on the same Aristotelian texts gestured to
above. These readings generally identify the "proper" political
order with that of the
eu zen
(i.e., a conception of the good) as
opposed to a
zen
(conceived as an order of mere living). On this
basis, the frontier between the domestic and the political
becomes the frontier between the social and the political; and to
the idea of a city-state defined by its common good is opposed
the sad reality of modern democracy as the rule of the masses
and of necessity. In practice, this celebration of pure politics
entrusts the virtue of the 'political good' to governmental
oligarchies enlightened by "experts;" which is to say that the
supposed purification of the political, freed from domestic and
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social necessity, comes down to nothing more (or less) than the
reduction of the political to the state [
l'étatique
].
3.
Behind the current buffooneries of the 'returns' of the political
(that include 'the return of political philosophy'), it is important
to recognize the vicious circle that characterizes political
philosophy; a vicious circle located in the link between the
political relationship and the political subject. This vicious circle
posits a way of life that is 'proper' to politics. The political
relationship is subsequently deduced from the properties of this
specific order of being and is explained in terms of the existence
of a character who possesses a good or a specific universality, as
opposed to the private or domestic world of needs or interests. In
short, politics is explained as the accomplishment of a way of
life that is proper to those who are destined for it. This partition -
- which is actually the object of politics -- is posited as its basis.
4.
What is proper to politics is thus lost at the outset if politics is
thought of as a specific way of living. Politics cannot be defined
on the basis of any pre-existing subject. The political 'difference'
that makes it possible to think its subject must be sought in the
form of its relation. If we return to the Aristotelian definition,
there is a name given to the subject (
politès
) that is defined by a
part-taking
(
metexis
) in a form of action (
archein
-- ruling) and
in the undergoing that corresponds to this doing (
archesthai
--
being ruled). If there is something 'proper' to politics, it consists
entirely in this relationship which is not a relationship between
subjects, but one between two contradictory terms through
which a subject is defined. Politics disappears the moment you
undo this knot of a subject and a relation. This is what happens
in all fictions, be they speculative or empiricist, that seek the
origin of the political relationship in the properties of its subjects
and in the conditions of their coming together. The traditional
question "For what reasons do human beings gather into
political communities?" is always already a response, and one
that causes the disappearance of the object it claims to explain or
to ground -- i.e., the form of a political part-taking that then
disappears in the play of elements or atoms of sociability.
Thesis 2:
That is proper to politics is the existence of a
subject defined by its participation in contrarieties.
Politics is a paradoxical form of action.
5.
The formulations according to which politics is the ruling of
equals, and the citizen is the one who
part-takes
in ruling and
being ruled, articulate a paradox that must be thought through
rigorously. It is important to set aside banal representations of
the
doxa
of parliamentary systems that invoke the reciprocity of
rights and duties in order to understand what is extraordinary in
the Aristotelian articulation. This formulation speaks to us of a
being who is at once the agent of an action and the one upon
whom the action is exercised.
[4]
It contradicts the conventional
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'cause-and-effect' model of action that has it that an agent
endowed with a specific capacity produces an effect upon an
object that is, in turn, characterized by its aptitude for receiving
that effect.
6.
This problem is in no way resolved by reverting to the classic
opposition between two modes of action:
poiesis
, on the one
hand, governed by the model of fabrication that gives form to
matter; and
praxis
, on the other, which excludes from this
relation the 'inter-being' [
l'inter-être
]
[5]
of people devoted to
politics. As we know, this opposition -- replacing that of
zen
and
eu zen
-- sustains a conception of political purity. In Hannah
Arendt's work, for instance, the order of
praxis
is that of equals
with the power of
archein
, conceived of as the power to begin
anew: "To act, in its most general sense," she explains in
The
Human Condition
, "means to take an initiative, to begin (as the
Greek word
archein
, 'to begin,' 'to lead,' and eventually 'to rule'
indicates);" she concludes this thought by subsequently linking
archein
to "the principle of freedom."
[6]
Once Arendt defines
both a proper mode and sphere of action, a vertiginous short-cut
is formed that allows one to posit a series of equations between
'beginning,' 'ruling,' 'being free,' and living in a city-state ('To be
free and to live in a
polis
is the same thing' as the same text puts
it).
7.
This series of equations finds its equivalent in the movement
that engenders civic equality from the community of Homeric
heroes; equals, that is, in their participation in the power of
arche
. The first witness against this Homeric idyllic, however, is
Homer himself. Against the garrulous Thersites -- the man who
is an able public speaker despite the fact that he is not qualified
to speak -- Odysseus recalls the fact that the Greek army has one
and only one chief: Agamemnon. He reminds us of what
archein
means: to walk at the head. And, if there is one who walks at the
head, the others must necessarily walk behind. The line between
the power of
archein
(i.e., the power to rule), freedom, and the
polis
, is not straight but severed. In order to convince oneself of
this, it is enough to see the manner in which Aristotle
characterizes the three possible classes of rule within a
polis
,
each one possessing a particular title: 'virtue' for the
aristoi
,
'wealth' for the
oligoi
, and 'freedom' for the
demos
. In this
division, 'freedom' appears as the paradoxical part of the
demos
about whom the Homeric hero tells us (in no uncertain terms)
that it had only one thing to do: to keep quiet and bow down.
8.
In short, the opposition between
praxis
and
poiesis
in no way
resolves the paradoxical definition of the
politès
. As far as
arche
is concerned, as with everything else, the conventional logic has
it that there is a particular disposition to act that is exercised
upon a particular disposition to 'be acted upon.' Thus the logic of
arche
presupposes a determinate superiority exercised upon an
equally determinate inferiority. In order for there to be a
political subject(ivity), and thus for there to be politics, there
must be a rupture in this logic.
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Thesis 3:
Politics is a specific rupture in the logic of
arche
. It
does not simply presuppose the rupture of the
'normal' distribution of positions between the one
who exercises power and the one subject to it. It
also requires a rupture in the idea that there are
dispositions 'proper' to such classifications.
9.
In Book III of the
Laws
, Plato devotes himself to a systematic
inventory of the qualifications (
axiomata
) for ruling, along with
certain correlative qualifications for being ruled. Out of the
seven he retains, four are traditional qualifications of authority
based on a natural difference; that is, the difference in birth.
Those qualified to rule are those 'born before' or 'born
otherwise.' This grounds the power of parents over children, old
over young, masters over slaves, and nobles over serfs. The fifth
qualification is introduced as the principal principle that
summarizes all natural differences: It is the power of those with
a superior nature, of the stronger over the weak -- a power that
has the unfortunate quality, discussed at length in the
Gorgias
,
of being indeterminate. The sixth qualification, then, gives the
only difference that counts for Plato; namely, the power of those
who know [
savoir
] over those who do not. There are thus four
couplings of traditional qualifications to be had, along with two
theoretical couplings that claim priority over them: namely,
'natural' superiority and the rule of 'science'
qua
knowledge.
10.
The list ought to stop there. But there is a seventh
qualification: 'the choice of god,' otherwise referring to a
drawing of lots [
le tirage au sort
] that designates the one who
exercises
arche
. Plato does not expand upon this. But clearly,
this kind of 'choice' points ironically to the designation by god
of a regime previously referred to as one only god could save:
namely, democracy. What thus characterizes a democracy is
pure chance or the complete absence of qualifications for
governing. Democracy is that state of exception where no
oppositions can function, where there is no pre-determined
principle of role allocation. 'To partake in ruling and being ruled'
is quite a different matter from reciprocity. It is, in short, an
absence of reciprocity that constitutes the exceptional essence of
this relationship; and this absence of reciprocity rests on the
paradox of a qualification that is absence of qualification.
Democracy is the specific situation in which there is an absence
of qualifications that, in turn, becomes the qualification for the
exercise of a democratic
arche
. What is destroyed in this logic is
the particular quality of
arche
, its redoubling, which means that
it always precedes itself within a circle of its own disposition
and its own exercise. But this exceptional state is identical with
the very condition for the specificity of politics more generally.
Thesis 4:
Democracy is not a political regime. Insofar as it is
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a rupture in the logic of
arche
-- that is, in the
anticipation of rule in the disposition for it --
democracy is
the
regime of politics in the form of a
relationship defining a specific subject.
11.
What makes possible the
metexis
proper to politics is the
rupture of all those logics of allocation exercised in the part-
taking of
arche
. The 'freedom' of a people that constitutes the
axiom
of democracy has as its real content the rupture of the
axioms of domination: a rupture, that is, in the correlation
between a capacity for rule and a capacity for being ruled. The
citizen who partakes 'in ruling and being ruled' is only thinkable
on the basis of the
demos
as a figure that ruptures the
correspondence between a series of correlated capacities.
Democracy is thus precisely not a political regime in the sense
of a particular constitution that determines different ways of
assembling people under a common authority. Democracy is
the
institution of politics -- the institution of both its subject and its
mode of relating.
12.
As we know, democracy is a term invented by its opponents,
by all those who were 'qualified' to govern because of seniority,
birth, wealth, virtue, and knowledge [
savoir
]. Using it as a term
of derision, they articulated an unprecedented reversal of the
order of things: the 'power of the
demos
' means that those who
rule are those who have no specificity in common, apart from
their having no qualification for governing. Before being the
name of a community,
demos
is the name of a part of the
community: namely, the poor. The 'poor,' however, does not
designate an economically disadvantaged part of the population;
it simply designates the category of peoples who do not count,
those who have no qualifications to part-take in
arche
, no
qualification for being taken into account.
13.
This is exactly what Homer describes in the Thersites episode
evoked above. Those who want to speak, though they belong to
the
demos
, though they belong to the undifferentiated collection
of the 'unaccounted for' [
l'hors-compte
] (
anarithmoi
), get
stabbed in the back by Odysseus' scepter. This is not a deduction
but a definition: The one who is 'unaccounted-for,' the one who
has no speech to be heard, is the one of the
demos
. A remarkable
passage from Book XII of the Odyssey illustrates this point:
Polydamas complains because his opinion has been disregarded
by Hector. With you, he says, 'one never has the right to speak if
one belongs to the
demos
.' Now Polydamas is not a villain like
Thersites; he is Hector's brother.
Demos
thus does not designate
a socially inferior category: The one who speaks when s/he is
not to speak, the one who part-takes in what s/he has no part in -
- that person belongs to the
demos.
Thesis 5:
The 'people' that is the subject of democracy -- and
thus the principal subject of politics -- is not the
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