Democracy in what state?

124 Pages·2011·0.67 MB·English

by  Badiou

DEMOCRACY IN WHAT STATE?
NEW DIRECTIONS IN CRITICAL THEORY
AMY ALLEN, GENERAL EDITOR
NEW DIRECTIONS IN CRITICAL THEORY
Amy Allen, General Editor
New Directions in Critical Theory presents outstanding classic and
contemporary texts in the tradition of critical social theory, broadly
construed. The series aims to renew and advance the program of critical
social theory, with a particular focus on theorizing contemporary
struggles around gender, race, sexuality, class, and globalization and
their complex interconnections.
Narrating Evil: A Postmetaphysical Theory of Reflective Judgment, María
Pía Lara The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in
Contemporary Critical Theory, Amy Allen Democracy and the Political
Unconscious, Noëlle McAfee
The Force of the Example: Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment,
Alessandro Ferrara Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence, Adriana
Cavarero
Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World,
Nancy Fraser Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory,
Axel Honneth
States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals, Jacqueline Stevens
The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Négritude, Vitalism, and
Modernity, Donna V. Jones
DEMOCRACY
IN WHAT STATE?
Giorgio Agamben
Alain Badiou
Daniel Bensaïd
Wendy Brown
Jean-Luc Nancy
Jacques Rancière
Kristin Ross
Slavoj Žižek
Translations from the French by William McCuaig
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Démocratie, dans quel état? copyright © 2009 La Fabrique English translation copyright © 2011
Columbia University Press All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-52708-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Démocratie, dans quel état?. English
Democracy in what state? / Giorgio Agamben … [et al.] ; translations from the French by William
McCuaig.
p. cm.— (New directions in critical theory) Includes bibliographical references
ISBN 978-0-231-15298-3 (cloth: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-231-52708-8 (e-book) 1. Democracy—
Philosophy. I. Agamben, Giorgio, 1942– II. McCuaig, William, 1949– III. Title. IV. Series.
JC423.D46313 2010
321.8—dc22
2010023553
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-
[email protected].
References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author
nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since
the manuscript was prepared.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD BY THE FRENCH PUBLISHER
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
Introductory Note on the Concept of Democracy
GIORGIO AGAMBEN
The Democratic Emblem
ALAIN BADIOU
Permanent Scandal
DANIEL BENSAÏD
“We Are All Democrats Now …”
WENDY BROWN
Finite and Infinite Democracy
JEAN-LUC NANCY
Democracies Against Democracy
JACQUES RANCIÈRE
Democracy for Sale
KRISTIN ROSS
From Democracy to Divine Violence
SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK
NOTES
AUTHORS
FOREWORD BY THE FRENCH PUBLISHER
Contributors to a number of editions of La Révolution surréaliste in the
1920s were requested to find something new to say about topics on
which it seemed at the time that everything sayable had been said—love,
suicide, the devil’s bargain, things like that. Nevertheless, by casting
intersecting beams, the answers they received from Artaud, Crevel, de
Naville, Ernst, and Buñuel did succeed in throwing the chosen topics into
high relief. This quality of illumination can still surprise us, close to a
century later.
The present collection was conceived in homage to that model. The
question put to our contributors was this:
The word democracy appears to generate universal consensus these
days. Of course, debates, sometimes fierce debates, do take place about
its meaning or meanings. But in the “world” we inhabit, democracy is
almost always accorded a positive valence. So we ask our contributors:
is it meaningful, as far as you are concerned, to call oneself a democrat?
If not, why not? And if so, in line with what interpretation of the word?
Some of the philosophers to whom this question was put were already
our collaborators. With others we were acquainted only through writings
of theirs, which suggested that their ideas about democracy diverged
from the mainstream consensus. The answers you are about to read also
diverge from, and sometimes contradict, one another—something we
foresaw and counted on. So this book supplies no textbook definition of
democracy, nor a user’s manual for democrats, and least of all a verdict
pro or con. But it does attest that the word democracy need not be
scrapped just yet, because it still functions as a pivot around which core
controversies of politics and political philosophy turn.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
I assume responsibility for the English versions of the contributions by
Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Daniel Bensaïd, Jean-Luc Nancy, and
Jacques Rancière. The essays by Wendy Brown, Kristin Ross, and
Slavoj Žižek were originally composed in English.
Political thought and everyday language in the Anglophone world
sometimes ignore the analytical distinction between state and
government. The European languages conceptualize the former notion
more strongly and capitalize the word (l’État, lo Stato, el Estado, der
Staat). I deliberately follow this advantageous practice and write “the
State” in my translations.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE ON
THE CONCEPT OF DEMOCRACY
GIORGIO AGAMBEN
The term democracy sounds a false note whenever it crops up in debate
these days because of a preliminary ambiguity that condemns anyone
who uses it to miscommunication. Of what do we speak when we speak
of democracy? What is the underlying rationale? An alert observer will
soon realize that, whenever she hears the word, it might mean one of two
different things: a way of constituting the body politic (in which case we
are talking about public law) or a technique of governing (in which case
our horizon is that of administrative practice). To put it another way,
democracy designates both the form through which power is legitimated
and the manner in which it is exercised. Since it is perfectly plain to
everyone that the latter meaning prevails in contemporary political
discourse, that the word democracy is used in most cases to refer to a
technique of governing (something not, in itself, particularly reassuring), it
is easy to see why those who continue, in good faith, to use it in the
former sense may be experiencing a certain malaise. These two areas of
conceptuality (the juridico-political and the economic-managerial) have
overlapped with one another since the birth of politics, political thought,
and democracy in the Greek polis or city-state, which makes it hard to
tease them apart. An example will show what I mean. The basic term
politeia may not be familiar to readers without Greek, but they have seen
it translated as The Republic, the title of Plato’s most famous dialogue.
“Republic” does not, however, exhaust its range of meanings. When the
word politeia occurs in the classical writers, it is usually followed by a
discussion of three different forms of politeia: monarchy, oligarchy,
democracy, or six if you count the three corresponding parekbaseis, or
deviant forms. But translators sometimes render politeia with
“constitution,” sometimes with “government.” In The Constitution of