Rancière on democracy, populism and the banlieues

Rancière was interviewed in Libération last Friday. He set out (very clearly) a few of his ideas on politics and democracy. Here are a few snippets:

1. Democracy

La démocratie n'est ni la forme du gouvernement représentatif ni le type de société fondé sur le libre marché capitaliste. Il faut rendre à ce mot sa puissance de scandale. Il a d'abord été une insulte : la démocratie, pour ceux qui ne la supportent pas, est le gouvernement de la canaille, de la multitude, de ceux qui n'ont pas de titres à gouverner.

Democracy isn't the form of representative government nor is it the type of society founded on the capitalist free market. You have to restore the capacity to scandalise to the word. It was an insult at first: democracy, for those who couldn't stand it, is government by the rabble, the multitude, of those who do not have the title to govern.

2. Populism

On voit se séparer deux types de légitimité : l'une, savante, des gouvernants et des experts, l'autre, populaire, de plus en plus contestée et stigmatisée comme «populiste» quand elle va à l'encontre de la logique dominante, comme lors du référendum sur la Constitution européenne.

We see the separation of two types of legitimacy: one, learned, of the governers and the experts, the other, popular, more and more contested and stigmatised as 'populist' when it is contrary to the dominant logic as at the time of the referendum on the European Constitution.

3. Equality

L'égalité n'est pas un but à atteindre, au sens d'un statut économique ou d'un mode de vie semblable pour tous. Elle est une présupposition de la politique. La démocratie est le pouvoir de n'importe qui, la contingence de toute domination.

Equality is not a goal to be attained, in the sense of economic status or a way of life similar for everybody. It is a presupposition of politics. Democracy is the power of no matter who, the contingency of all domination.

4. The banlieues

Le problème n'est pas de savoir si des gens sont mal traités ou mal dans leur peau. Il est de savoir s'ils sont comptés comme sujets politiques, doués d'une parole commune.

The problem isn't knowing if people are badly treated or feeling bad about themselves. It is to know if they are counted as political subjects, equipped with a common language.

END OF THE REPUBLIC?

On Friday 9 Dec 2005 Balibar and Bensaid will debate on the basis of the following;


La République a été un idéal émancipateur. Elle a délivré les individus de leur sujétion à un monarque pour en faire des citoyens membres d'une collectivité régie par le droit. Joue-t-elle encore ce rôle? Le démenti social que lui opposent ceux à qui elle n'a pas fait place la relègue dans l'idéologie. Ne serait-elle à présent qu'un ensemble de valeurs abstraites destinées à masquer les exclusions de fait : à l'école, dans les banlieues, dans la représentation politique et médiatique? Le dévoiement patrimonial de la République a transformé l'idéal en un rappel à l'ordre des autorités et des hiérarchies instituées.
Face au désir de reconnaissance, exprimé dans la violence brute ou par la revendication politique, les défenseurs du "modèle" républicain ne cessent de dénoncer son antithèse qu'ils nomment communautarisme, le repli des individus sur leur identité ethnique. Mais ces réactions ne sont-elles pas le produit d'une République volontairement aveugle à la reproduction des inégalités sociales et à son passé colonial. Il est temps de sortir de cette alternative idéologique pour penser autrement la participation à la chose publique, à la lumière des multi appartenances et d'une citoyenneté aussi bien sociale que politique.

Are the values of the republic just a set of abstract set of ideas masking real exclusions? What other politics?

Balibar and Bensaid on the events in Paris

Etienne Balibar and Daniel Bensaid are on Les Vendredis de la Philosophie on Friday 9 December under the title of of Ni Commmunauté ni Repuplique (Neither Community nor Republic). Although neither Telerama nor the France Culture site explain anything more, this it seems to me, is likely to be a discussion focussing on the recent events in the banlieues.

Sartre, the subjective and subjectivity

Sartre, Subjectivity and the Subjective

A recent secondary text hoping to help A Level Philosophy students understand Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism is quite useful but gets something fundamental about his work quite wrong. Part of the problem lies with the translation they rely upon but a broader problem concerns anglo philosophical misunderstandings of what has become known as continental philosophy, of which Sartre is a key figure.

Let's start with the Philippe Mairet translation of one of Sartre's key foundational sentences:

il faut partir de la subjectivité

which is translated by Mairet as;

we must begin from the subjective.

So the French la subjectivité is translated as the subjective. This is misleading because there is a big difference between the notion of the subjective and the notion of subjectivity (subjectivité).

So let's take a look at (the very good, incidentally) Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy. There is no definition of subjectivity but there is a definition of subjective which includes four senses of the term, the fourth of which is -

what is subjective is a mere matter of personal taste or preference; lacking in truth or validity; arbitrary.

A French dictionary of philosophy (Dictionnaire de Philosophie - Jacqueline Russ, Larousse Bordas, 1996) also emphasises this weak version of the notion of the subjective:

individuel et dependant des preferences personelles (individual and dependent on personal preferences).

But in the French dictionary there is a separate entry for subjectivité - a much stronger conception of subjectivity as vie consciente (conscious life).

Elsewhere in L'Être et Le Néant (Being and Nothingness) Sartre defines subjectivité as: la conscience de conscience - consciousness of consciousness.

A French commentary on Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism by Sophie Bilemdjian (Puf, 2000, 24) links the Sartrian notion of existentialism to a very strong conception of subjectivity.

L'existentialisme s'inscrit dans la tradition initiée par Descartes des philosophes de la subjectivité . . . . La subjectivité est la specificité d'un être conscient de soi, présent au monde et à soi, qui a rapport à soi et pour lequel son être est en question permanente. Ce mode d'être spécifique de l'homme, Sartre l'appelle dans L'Être et Le Néant le pour soi . . .


Existentialism inscribes itself within the Cartesian tradition of the philosophy of subjectivity . . . Subjectivity is the specificity of a being conscious of itself, present to the world and to itself, which has a relationship to itself and for which its being is in constant question. This mode of being, specific to man, Sartre calls, in Being and Nothiingness, the for-itself . . .


Later she defines subjectivity in opposition to the weaker notion of the subjective:

La subjectivité . . . n'est pas, . . . une hypothése idéaliste enfermant l'individu dans son interiorité et donc occultant le poids du monde materiél . . . . mais c'est le socle théorique minimal de quiconque prétend tenir un discours vrai. (Belemdjian, 38)

Subjectivity . . . isn't . . . an idealist hypothesis locking the individual up in his interiority and thereby obscuring the real weight of the material world . . . but it is the minimal theoretical foundation for anyone who claims to maintain truthful discourse.

So there is a big problem with Mairet's translation of the term subjectivity as subjective. Subjectivity is (epistemologically) something very strong and a starting point for any truth claims, not a starting point for personal preferences and weak claims about the world.

So Mairet gets it very badly wrong. This has consequences for a new book aimed at A level teachers and students, which is a secondary commentary in English, on Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism. (Jones, Cardinal Hayward, Philosophy in Focus, John Murray, 2003).

They say that Sartre's notion of the 'subjective' (or subjectivity) entails the following:

"While the rest of philosophy blunders on with its foolish project to reach objective knowledge about the world, existentialism turns to focus on all that we can know, our own individual subjective experiences." (28)

This is wrong. Sartre the atheist, believes that we should start from human subjectivity rather than the subjective biases of the individual or a purported omniscience.

The authors go on to develop lines of argument based on this misreading, indeed they treat the 'subjective' as a foundational element of Sartre's existentialism. He may reject objectivity in the sense of a non-human godlike view on the world, but his notion of subjectivity holds onto the idea of truth claims very strongly. In fact the subject for Sartre is much more like the notion of the person in the anglo-analytic tradition.

One unfortunate consequence of this text may be that prejudices and ignorance about French philosophy may be reinforced in a whole new generation of philosophy students.

Michel Onfray on the TV

France 3 covered the opening of the fourth year of Michel Onfray's Université Populaire de Caen. Go here to view the report.

Rancière on the radio

Next Friday on France Culture, Rancière is discussing (in French) his new book, La Haine de la Démocratie (The Hatred of Democracy). Go here for details.

Rancière on the hatred of democracy

Jacques Rancière

La Haine de la Democratie

This is a relatively small book - 106 pages. Very readable and clear - propelled by a commitment to the value of equality of 'no matter who to no matter who'. Rancière is critical of those who hate democracy, those who seem to want to blame a series of apparent social maladies on it. The book starts of with a list of them - the young woman who has France holding it's breath with her story of a sexual attack, the adolescents who refuse to lift their veil at French schools, the social security deficit, the revision of the bac curriculum so that out go Racine and Corneille but in come Montesquieu, Voltaire and Baudelaire, street protesters wanting to keep the retirement system maintained, the development of reality tv, homosexual marriages and artificial insemination.

Over in the anglo speaking world we have seen a number of similar causes - the phrase dumbing down, the general hatred of media studies by the errr . . . media, Big Brother, the 50% university target - all of this blamed on democracy - at least this is what Rancière exposes in his account of the use of it as a term of abuse especially in the work of a section of French intellectuals.

But democracy as a term of abuse is not new. Rancière argues that hatred of democracy is as old as democracy itself. Indeed the term was first of all an insult, used by those who saw in it the ruin of all legitimate order through the innumerable government of the multitude. (p.7 LHDLD)

Yet this hatred is evident in the countries around the world which declare themselves to be democracies. The people who criticise the USA for its affirmative action are the same people who have applauded the USA when it travels the globe dishing out democracy at the end of a barrel of a gun. (p. 9)

The new articulation of this hatred of democracy is worrying. The new version of the hatred of democracy goes like this:

1. democratic government is bad when it lets itself be corrupted by democratic society which wants all differences respected and equality.

2. so a good democracy is the one which suppresses this kind of (catastrophic) democratic civilisation.

Rancière wants his book to follow up the consequences of this hatred but also much more positively to restore to the term democracy, its cutting edge.

DEMOCRACY AND ANARCHY - ABENSOUR

Miguel Abensour in La Démocratie contre l'Etat (2004) discusses true democracy which he calls (and called it long before the Iraq war) insurgent democracy. This is not a surging up of democracy within the commonly accepted field of the political as defined in the terms of the liberal democratic state. Instead Abensour conceptualises true democracy as situating itself outside of that field, this democracy is against the state:


La démocratie insurgeante n’est pas une variante de la démocratie conflictuelle, mais son exact opposé. Tandis que la démocratie conflictuelle pratique le conflit à l’intérieur de l’Etat, de l’Etat démocratique qui donne son nom même se donne comme un évitement du conflit premier, inclinant du même coup la conflictualité vers le compromis permanent, la démocratie insurgeante situe le conflit dans un autre lieu, à l’extérieur de l’Etat, contre lui, et bien loin de pratiquer l’évitement du conflit majeur, - la démocratie contre l’Etat

Insurgent democracy is not a variant of conflictual democracy, but its exact opposite. Whereas conflictual democracy practices conflict in the interior of the state, of the democratic state, which gives it its own name, it gives itself away as an avoidance of the primary conflict, inclining conflictuality at the same time towards permanent compromise, but insurgent democracy situates conflict in another place, exterior to the state, against it, and well away from the practice of the avoidance of the major conflict - democracy against the state. (2004, 18-19)

This is because true democracy follows an anarchical impulse against the principle of order, and as the key institution in liberal democracy which embodies order is the state, this is democracy against the state:

La démocratie insurgeante prend naissance dans l’intuition qu’il n y a pas de vraie démocratie sans réactiver l’impulsion profonde de la démocratie contre toute forme d’arché, impulsion anarchique qui se dresse donc en priorité contre la manifestation classique de l’arché - à savoir, l’Etat.

Insurgent democracy is born from the intuition that there isn’t true democracy without reactivating the profound impulse of democracy against all forms of arche, an anarchic impulse which stands therefore as first priority against the classic manifestation of the arche - namely, the state. (2004, 18-19)

In much political philosophy there is an impulse to replace the political with the social but with Abensour we can see an alternative vision of democracy which embraces interminable political conflict against the state.

Au lieu de concevoir l’émancipation comme la victoire du social (une société civile réconciliée) sur le politique, entraînant du même coup la disparition du politique, cette forme de démocratie fait surgir, travaille a faire surgir en permanence, une communauté politique contre l’Etat. A l’opposition du social et du politique, elle substitue celle du politique et de l’étatique.

In place of conceiving emancipation as the victory of the social (a reconciled civil society) over politics, at the same time leading to the disappearance of politics, this form of democracy makes appear, works towards, the permanent appearance of, a political community against the state. In place of the opposition of the social and the political, it substitutes that of the political and the state. (2004, 18-19)

At this point another political relationship opens up: the state is knocked off its throne, and instead of seeing the state and politics as natural bedfellows, this relationship is denaturalised:

Détrônant l‘Etat, elle dresse le politique contre l’étatique et rouvre l’abîme trop souvent occulté entre le politique et l’Etat.

Dethroning the state, it puts politics against the state and reopens the gulf too often hidden between politics and the state. (2004, 18-19)

And once the hidden is once more clearly visible it becomes more evident that: democracy is anti-state or it isn’t at all, and that a

démocratie est le théâtre d’une insurrection permanente contre l‘Etat, contre la forme Etat, unificatrice, intégratrice, organisatrice.

Democracy is the theatre of a permanent insurrection against the state, against all forms of state, the unificationist, the integrationist, the organising state. (2004, 9)

There is an overdose of the sacred - Michel Onfray

Onfray is one of those French philosophers who is really popular in France and yet has attracted hardly any attention over in the anglophone world. He is a popular philosopher who sells around the same amount in France as Alain de Botton does in Britain but is a much different kind of philosopher and character. de Botton comes across like a bright but lost and vulnerable public schoolboy. Onfray dressed in black, hooded even, is caustic and working class - a fan of Bourdieu too. (Incidentally de Botton's work is liked in France - Roger Pol Droit in Le Monde gave a favourable review to de Botton's Consolations of Philosophy.)

Onfray was interviewed in Le Monde 2 in early April. It seems to have been a difficult interview. Onfray starts off by criticising French journalism for misrepresentation. He then goes on to say some very interesting things 'There is an overdose of the sacred' (Il y a une overdose du sacré). He then pits the virtues of philosophy against theology:

Si vous vous contentez de dire aux gens de regarder la mort en face car ils risquent de mourir bientôt, et qu'ils se débrouillent avec ça, je comprends qu'ils soient dans le déni et bricolent des fictions, comme la vie après la mort! Quand on ne fournit pas d'idéologie de substitution, les individus se réfugient dans la fable. La solution est de dire: << Donnons de la philosophie, sortons de l'ère théologique, entrons dans la philosophie.>> Les gens ne sont pas des abrutis. Si on leur explique, par exemple, les réflexions d'Epicure, ils seront capables d'y trouver des éléments pour affronter philosophiquement la mort.

If you content yourself in saying to people look death in the face for you risk dying soon, and they are happy with that, I understand that they are in denial and are botching together fictions for themselves such as life after death. When we don't furnish any alternative ideology these individuals seek refuge in fables. The solution is to say let's have philosophy, leave the theological era, get into philosophy. People are not moronic. If you explain to them, for example, the reflections of Epicurus, they will be capable of finding there some elements to confront death philosophically.

By the way Sartre died around 25 years ago.

Just been in France for a few weeks and there is a great deal going on there to mark the 25th anniversary of the death of Sartre. I didn't see anything going on in Britain or through the BBC. Even if BBC4 is the place where everybody goes to think, no Sartre. Over the Channel there is a load of stuff, here and France Culture has a series of programmes about him, get details here.

Sartre anniversaries

A number of anniversaries relating to Sartre are imminent. Telerama has a biographical account by journalist Michel Contat. here