The Aesthetico-Political: The Question of Democracy in Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, and Rancière

185 Pages·2014·0.94 MB·English

by  Martín Plot

The Aesthetico-Political
ii
The Aesthetico-Political
The Question of Democracy in
Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, and Rancière
Martín Plot
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2014
© Martín Plot, 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Plot, Martín.
The aesthetico-political: the question of democracy in Merleau-Ponty,
Arendt, and Rancière/Martín Plot.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-9663-7 (hardback)
1. Democracy–Philosophy. 2. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1908-1961–Political and social views.
3. Arendt, Hannah, 1906-1975–Political and social views. 4. Rancière,
Jacques–Political and social views. I. Plot, Martín. II. Title.
JC423.P535 2014
321.801–dc23
2014015519
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-9663-7
ePDF: 978-1-4411-9566-1
ePub: 978-1-4411-8046-9
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
For Anabel and Ulises
En memoria de mi viejo (1936–2014)
vi
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiv
Introduction: The Advent of the Aesthetico-Political 1
The enigma of democracy 3
Schmitt, Lefort, and the theologico-political 6
The epistemological regime of politics 15
Conclusion 17
1 Our Element: Flesh and Democracy in Maurice Merleau-Ponty 21
Deus mortalis 22
Flesh and democracy 28
An entire politics 40
Conclusion 52
2 The Law of the Earth: Hannah Arendt and the Aesthetic
Regime of Politics 55
Disagreement: Arendt and Habermas 57
Political phenomenology 66
Spaces and times of appearance 74
Conclusion: Political kitsch and ideology politics 81
3 The (Re)Aestheticization of Politics: Jacques Rancière and
the Question of Democracy 91
Rancière, Lefort, and the political 95
The question of democracy—in America 101
Recapitulation 115
Notes 117
Bibliographic References 152
Index 159
viii
Preface
During the last few decades, democratic theory has been dominated by normative
or analytic approaches to the study of political life and institutions. Debates
on institutional design or moral philosophy went from the liberal/libertarian/
communitarian discussion of principles of justice to the consideration of
deliberative and/or other procedural models for the justification of forms
of action, decision-making, or institution-building. Contemporary to these
debates, Continental thought went from the structuralist embracement of strict
relational—linguistic or ethnographic—models of social coexistence to the
post-structuralist, deconstructionist, and biopolitical critique of all previously
established approaches to the study of democracy and other political phenomena.
These two tracks of political theorizing were of course dominant mostly in
academic contexts rather than in the broader field of the public debate—a field
in which the intertwining of political struggles and political thinking, scholarly
publishing and political action, made democracy a field of multiply contesting
discursive positions and practices. In this latter, broader—but not necessarily less
sophisticated—milieu, philosophical reflection, and political activity engaged
again and again in the practice of interpreting the events of their time, and it
was in these contexts that the “question of democracy” became and remains a
political and theoretical battlefield.
Historically speaking, quite a few of the theorists central to the first two
aforementioned tracks of theoretical reflection on political phenomena played
also a central role in the broader public conversation. On the one hand, American
scholars such as Michael Walzer and Robert Nozick, or German social theorists
such as Habermas, became very much part of the public debate. On the other hand,
thinkers such as Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Andrew Arato, Slavoj Žižek,
or Claude Lefort, very much inscribed in the Continental tradition of political
thought, became influential across disciplinary borders and beyond the strictly
academic world. Several were the events that motivated these crisscrossings
between academic theorizing and public acting and interpreting—from the
consecutive waves of democratic transitions in South America, Southern and
Eastern Europe, and South Africa to the global collapse of the Soviet model;