Ranciere - The Order of the City, Ranciere
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
The Order of the City
Jacques Ranci`re
Translatedby John Drury, Corinne Oster,
andAndrew Parker
In the beginning there wouldbe four persons. Maybe five. Just about as
many as the needs of the body. A farmer for food, a mason for housing, a
weaver for clothing. Totheseletusaddashoemakerandsomeotherworker
to provide for material necessities.
That is how Plato’s republic presents itself. Without a deity or founding
legend.Withindividuals,needs,andthemeanstosatisfythem.Amasterpiece
of economy—with its four or five workers Plato founds not only a city but a
future science, sociology. Our nineteenth century will be grateful to him.
His own century had a different judgment of it. His disciple and critic
Aristotle put it succinctly: a city is not simply a concentration of needs and
a division of the means of production. Right from the start something else
is needed—justice, the power of what is better over what is lessgood.There
are greater or less noble tasks, jobs that are more or less degrading,natures
appropriate for one group or for another, andall these must be distin-
guished. Even in a republic of four or five citizens, there must be someone
to represent andensure respect for the common goodthat defines the aim
[la fin]
ofthecityaboveandbeyondthesatisfactionofneeds.Howelsecould
justice ever come about from simply gathering together equallyindispens-
able workers?
1
There must be a misunderstanding somewhere. Or a trick. For justiceis,
precisely, the subject of Plato’s dialogue, and in order to define it he con-
structs his society as a magnifying glass. So justice must already be there in
his egalitarian gathering of workers, or else it will never turn up at all. It is
up to us to look for it.
1. See Aristotle,
Politics,
1291a.
Critical Inquiry
30 (Winter 2004)
From
The Philosopher and His Poor
by Jacques Ranci`re
2004 Duke University Press.
Usedwith permission.
267
268
Jacques Ranci`re /The Order of the City
The Fifth Man
A first clue might be a slight fluctuation concerning the number of
equals. Four or five, we do not know exactly. But whether the number is
even or odd ought to have some consequence for a philosopher infatuated
withmathematics.Lateronhewillsubjecteventhecouplingsofhiswarriors
tothegoldennumber,butforthemomentheseemsindifferenttothedetails
of his inventory. In the city of necessity he leaves open the possibility that
there is one person too many.
That may be a first reply to our question andto Aristotle’sobjection.No
one among the equals is superior, but one of them couldbe less indispens-
able than the others. Couldit be the fifth man, whose essential function is
not spelledout any further? Or couldit be the shoemaker? Is a specialistin
footwear really needed when a single worker suGces to handle all aspects
of building houses? It is no big deal to provide Atticpeasantswithfootwear,
andPlato himself tells us later on that they will carry on their workinsum-
mer “for the most part uncladandunshod.”
2
If so, shouldone-fourth of
this primitive labor force be assignedto that oGce? Or shouldwe assume,
rather, that the shoemaker is also there for
something else?
The fact is that
at every strategic point in the dialogue—whenever it becomes necessaryto
think about the division of labor, to establish difference in natures and ap-
titudes, or to define justice itself—the shoemaker will be there in the front
line of the argument. As if he were doing double duty behind the scenes.
As if this worker who is not to judge anything but footwear retained some
2. Plato,
Republic,
372a; hereafterabbreviated
R
. For this passageas for all other citationsfrom
Plato, I have used the bilingualtext of the Belles Lettres edition.While indebtedto the translators,
I have revisedtheir work more often than followedit faithfully.[Our practicehas been to translate
Ranci`re’scitationsfrom the Belle Lettresedition while consultingPlato,
The Collected Dialogues
of Plato, Including the Letters,
trans. Lane Cooperet al., ed. Edith Hamiltonand Huntington
Cairns (Princeton,N.J., 1961),as well as
Republic,
trans.DesmondLee (Harmondsworth,1987)
and
Republic,
trans.Robin Waterfield(Oxford, 1993).Referencesto passagesare indicatedby
Stephanus numbers.—Trans.]
Jacques Ranci`reis emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of
Paris-VIII (Saint-Denis). His many books in English include
The Ignorant
Schoolmaster, On the Shores of Politics,
and
Disagreement
. “The Order of the City”
is the first chapter of
The Philosopher and His Poor,
edited by Andrew Parker
(2004), an extended reading of the figure of the laborer in Plato, Marx, Sartre,
andPierre Bourdieu. John Drury was a freelance translator andthe translator
of Ranci`re’s first book in English,
The Nights of Labor
. Corinne Oster
receivedher Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst. Andrew Parker is professor of English at Amherst College.
Critical Inquiry /Winter 2004
269
usefulnessforthephilosopherthatgoesfarbeyondtheproductsofhistrade:
the marginal and at first glance paradoxical function of allowing a doubtto
hover about the actual utility of useful workers.
Andyet our shoemaker andhis fellow tradesmen are there to teach us a
fundamental principle: a person can do only one thing at a time. It would
be inconvenient for the farmer to stop his labor in the fields and devote
three-fourths of his time to repairing his roof, making his clothes, andcut-
tingouthisshoeleather.Thedivisionoflaborwilltakecareofthatproblem.
It will assign a specialist exclusively to each activity, andall will be for the
best:“Morethingsareproduced,andbetterandmoreeasily,whenoneman
performs only one task according to his nature, at the right moment, and
is excusedfrom all other occupations” (
R
, 370c).
Many things in such few words. First, a question: It is true thatmorewill
be produced under this system, butwhyis itnecessarytoproducesomuch?
Apparently these people are already living within a market economy, even
if this market is quite limited. Andone neednot have readAdam Smith to
realize that such a division of labor will quickly produce unexchangeable
surpluses. Starting with shoes, of course. With such a limitedpopulation
and such limited needs, the division of labor is an absurdity. It may not be
more convenient for the shoemaker to cultivate a plot of ground, but it is
certainly a safer bet for him to do so.
So argues the economy of Adam Smith. Plato’s economy differs in that
the needs of the first members of his society are not restricted—indeed, at
the beginning they are infinite. He tells us at the start that these men need
many things. Later he will tell us that these workers needmany tools.From
the very outset it is necessary to make
more,
and, for that, time is lacking.
It is not that the worker must work all the time, but he must always be
available to do his work at the right moment, and that is why he must have
onlyonejob.AnobservationthenoccurstoSocratesjustinthenickoftime:
experience shows that nature provided for this necessity by distributingdi-
verse aptitudes to different individuals. These aptitudes will be suited in
turn to various occupations andeverything will run smoothly.
Though not very clearly. The argument about time is itself already not
so simple. If it is true that the job does not wait for the worker,theconverse
is not true as well. Nature may have given the farmer exactly the right dis-
positions for working in the fields, but it has also given vegetables their
growing cycles. And it has made the seasons, which put unequal demands
on the exercise of these agricultural dispositions. Is the farmer really sup-
posedto spendthe whole off-season andbad-weather days waiting for the
right moment to turn over the soil? Isn’t there a right moment for him to
cultivate his fieldandanother moment, just as right, for him to make his
270
Jacques Ranci`re /The Order of the City
clothes andthose of others? That is what many farmers still willthinkinthe
very midst of the Industrial Revolution, without agriculture or industry
having anything to complain about—except wages. But that is a different
matter.
Woulda philosopher so expertatdescribingforpurposesofcomparison
theoperationsofartisansbesoignorantoftheconditionssurroundingtheir
exercise? That is highly unlikely. If he pretends not to know whethernature
leaves the farmer andthe mason withsu
G
cientleisure,andwhethersociety
does the same for their fellowworkers,it is becausehehasdecidedthatthey
shouldnot have all the time that circumstances, sometimestoogenerously,
havegiventhem.Theveryprincipleofa
social nature
shapingtemperaments
to functions couldbe the price of this omission. Behindthe apparent par-
adoxesofthiseconomyanothergameisbeingplayed,slightlyaskew,asfour
terms arrange themselvesintoa pattern:countlessneeds,timeinshortsup-
ply, workers who are more or less indispensable, and aptitudes among
which we do not know how to distinguish. For while we readily admit that
nature gives individuals different aptitudes and tastes, and that it forms
some bodies better suitedto work in the open air andothers to the work-
shop’s shade, how are we ever to differentiate a weaver-nature from a shoe-
maker-nature except through that absence of time that, combinedwiththe
urgency of the tasks at hand, never allows the one worker to be found in
the other’s place?
Andso the argument moves aheadon its two lame legs. The difference
in natures comes to rescue the poorly demonstrated impossibility of per-
forming two separate functions. Andthat impossibility, in turn, evadesthe
questions posed by the same enigmatic difference that would shape in ad-
vance the division of labor. If this economically improbable divisioncanbe
expressedin the natural evidence of social utility, the reason is that this is
where the arbitrariness of natureandtheconventionalityofthesocialorder
exchange their powers. The agent of this exchange is a notion too trivial to
engage much attention: time.
Questions of Time
Time, Feuerbach will tell us, is the privilegedcategory of thedialectician
becauseitexcludesandsubordinateswherespacetoleratesandcoordinates.
Again we must be precise. The time of which Plato is speaking here is not
that of physical necessity, the time of generation, growth, anddeath. It is
that more ambiguous entity—half philosophicalandhalfpopular,halfnat-
ural andhalf social—which determines one’s availability for a task or the
right moment for supply to meet demand. It is not the time needed to ac-
complish a task
(ergon)
but the time that permits or prohibits a pastime
Critical Inquiry /Winter 2004
271
(parergon)
—that is, the fact of being
beside
the necessity of work. It is not
the time measuredby water clocks but the time that compels some people
to its measure andexempts others from it.Itis leisure
(schol¯)
oritsabsence
(ascholia)
.
The factor of exclusion is the absence of time, or absence of leisure,
a-
scholia
. The notion is not peculiar to Plato; it is a commonplace in discus-
sions about the relationship of the order of labor to the political order. But
if the place is common, the paths leading up to it are anything but; from
Plato to Xenophon, or from Xenophon to Aristotle, the absence of leisure
lends itself to the most contradictory and disconcerting lines of argument.
For Xenophon, it is impossible for artisans to participateinthepoliticallife
of the city. They are always working in shadows, seated by a corner of the
fire. Theirs is an indoor life, an effeminate life that leaves them no leisure
to concern themselves with anything but work andfamily. Farmers, on the
other hand, out in the open air and bright sunshine, are the best defenders
of the city because they have—a strange way of putting it—not the most
leisure but the
least absence of leisure
.
3
In Aristotle the same criterion produces the same alternative, but his
argument is exactly the reverse. Artisans are effectively the ruin of democ-
racy, but the reason is that they have too much leisure. They spendall their
time loitering in the streets or the agora, which means they can attendall
the assemblies and meddle in everything indiscriminately. The democracy
of farmers, on the other hand, will be the best—or rather, the least bad.
Farmers are confinedto their fields, andthe assembly is too far away; they
will not have the leisure time to go to town andexercise their power, so
thingscanonlyrunbetter.Becauseiftheydidgototown,theywouldbehave
like men who do not possess the only leisure that counts, the leisure of
thinking. Farmers make the least badsort of democracies, those in which
the democrats do not have the time toexercisetheirpower.But,forthevery
same reason, in a well-governedstate they will not have their place.
4
Thus leisure andits absence zigzag in these cases to produce the same
result: the artisan cannot be a goodcitizen. The originality of Plato’s
Re-
public,
however, lies in its
not
posing this question as such. Aristotle, Xen-
ophon, andPlato himself in the
Laws
frame the question in its alternate
form: Can one be a citizen while engaging in a trade? Which occupations
qualify or disqualify people, provide the time to participate in political life
or take it away? In the
Republic,
on the other hand, citizenship is neither a
tradenorastatusbutsimplyamatteroffact.Onebelongstothe
community,
3. See Xenophon,
Oeconomicus,
4.2–3 and6.9.
4. See Aristotle,
Politics,
1319a.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]