• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Jacques Ranciere Dis- agreement AND PHILOSOPHY POLITICS Translated by Julie Rose Unlve�oty of M;nne•ota P.e" � Mlnne•poll• � london �· �"'�--�'"·"'"' '�'""'·�·"ii".fNII!! The University of Minnesota gratefully acknowledges financial assistance provided by the French Ministry of Culture for the translation of this book. The publication of this book was assisted by a bequest from Josiah H. Chase to honor his parents, Ellen Rankin Chase and Josiah Hook Chase, Contents Minnesota territorial pioneers. This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government of Australia through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. Copyright 1999 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota Originally published as La Mesentente: Politique et philosophie, copyright 1995 Editions Galilee. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Preface vii Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 1. The Beginning of Politics 1 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu 2. Wrong: Politics and Police 21 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ranciere, Jacques. 3. The Rationality of Disagreement 43 [Mesentente, English] Disagreement : politics and philosophy I Jacques Ranciere ; translated by Julie Rose. 4. From Archipolitics to Metapolitics 61 p. em . Includes bibliographical references and index. 5. Democracy or Consensus 95 ISBN 0-8166-2844-0 1. Political science-Philosophy. I. Title. JA71.R25513 1998 6. Politics in Its Nihilistic Age 123 320'.01'1-dc21 98-42205 Notes 141 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Index 147 The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Preface The question we must bear in mind is, equality or inequality in what sort of thing? For this is a problem, and one for which we need political philosophy. Aristotle, Politics, 1282 b 21 Is there any such thing as political philosophy? The question seems in­ congruous for two reasons. First, theorizing about community and its purpose, about law and its foundation, has been going on ever since our philosophical tradition kicked offand has never ceased to keep it vital. Second, for a while now, political philosophy has been loudly trumpet­ ing its return with a new lease on life. Cobbled for a long time by Marx­ ism, which turned the political into the expression, or mask, of social relationships, subject to poaching by the social and the social sciences, today, with the collapse of state Marxisms and the end of utopias, po­ litical philosophy is supposed to be finding its contemplative purity in the principles and forms of a politics itself returned to its original pu­ rity thanks to the retreat of the social and its ambiguities. This return poses a few problems, however. When not limited to com­ menting on certain texts, famous or forgotten, from out of its own his- vii PREFACE PREFACE tory, this rejuvenated political philosophy seems most unwilling to go "do politics;' to be involved in politics in truth as opposed to all that is beyond the usual assortment of arguments trotted out by any state ad­ done in Athens in the name of politics.1 The first encounter between ministration in thinking about democracy and the law, right and the politics and philosophy is that of an alternative: either the politics of legitimate state. In short, the main aim seems to be to ensure commu­ the politicians or that of the philosophers. nication between the great classic doctrines and the usual forms of state The starkness of this Platonic disjunction thus clarifies what remains legitimization we know as liberal democracies. But the supposed con­ apparent in the ambiguous relationship between the assurance of our vergence between the return of political philosophy and the return of political philosophy and the discretion of our politics. There is noth­ its object, politics, is lacking in evidence. At a time when the political ing to say that political philosophy is a natural division of philosophy, was contested in the name of the social, of social movements or social accompanying politics with its theory, however critical. In the first place science, it was nonetheless still manifest in the multiplicity of modalities there is nothing to say that any such philosophical configuration comes and places, fromthe street to the factory to the university. The resurrec­ along and either echoes through theory or founds through legislation tion of the political is today revealed in the discretion of such modali­ all the great forms of human acting-scientific, artistic, political, or ties or the absence of such places. One may object that the whole point otherwise. Philosophy does not have divisions that then lend themselves is that politics purged has once again found the proper place for delib­ either to the basic concept proper to philosophy or to areas where phi­ eration and decision-making concerning the common good, in assem­ losophy reflects on itself or on its legislation. Philosophy has peculiar blies where discussion and legislation take place, spheres of state where objects, nodes of thought borne of some encounter with politics, art, decisions are made, supreme courts that check whether such delibera­ science; or whatever other reflective activity, that bear the mark of a tions and decisions conform to the laws on which society is based. The specific paradox, conflict, aporia. Aristotle points this out in a phrase problem is that these are the very places where the disenchanted opin­ that is one of the first encounters between the noun philosophy and ion spreads that there isn't much to deliberate and that decisions make the adjective political: "Equality or inequality, comes down to aporia themselves, the work proper to politics simply involving an opportune and political philosophy."2 Philosophy becomes "political" when it em­ adaptability in terms of the demands of the world marketplace and the braces aporia or the quandary proper to politics. Politics, as we will equitable distribution of the profits and costs of this adaptability. The see, is that activity which turns on equality as its principle. And the resurrection of political philosophy thus simultaneously declares itself principle of equality is transformed by the distribution of community to be the evacuation of the political by its official representatives. shares as defined by a quandary: when is there and when is there not This curious convergence obliges us to backtrack to political phi­ equality in things between who and who else? What are these "things" losophy's evidence premiere. That there has (almost) always been poli­ and who are these whos? How does equality come to consist of equality tics in philosophy in no way proves that political philosophy is a nat­ and inequality? That is the quandary proper to politics by which poli­ ural offshoot of the tree of philosophy. Even in Descartes politics is not tics becomes a quandary for philosophy, an object of philosophy. We listed among the branches of the tree, medicine and morality apparently should not take this to mean that pious vision in which philosophy covering the field wherever other philosophies encountered politics. The comes to the rescue of the practitioner of politics, science, or art, ex­ first person in our tradition to come up against politics, Plato, only did plaining the reason for his quandary by shedding light on the prin­ so in the form of a radical exceptionality. As a philosopher, Socrates ciple of his practice. Philosophy does not come to anyone's rescue and never reflected on the politics of Athens. He is the only Athenian to no one asks it to, even if the rules of etiquette of social demand have viii lx PREFACE PREFACE of a rule for assessing different types of heterogeneous discourse. It is vealing what is proper to politics and which philosophy rejects with less concerned with arguing than with what can be argued, the presence Plato and tries, with Aristotle, to appropriate. On the basis of Aristotle's or absence of a common object between X andY. It concerns the tan­ text (and what this text stops short of), we will try to answer the ques­ gible presentation of this common object, the very capacity of the in­ tion, what can be thought of specifically as politics? To think through terlocutors to present it. An extreme form of disagreement is where X this specificity will force us to distinguish it from what normally goes cannot see the common objectY is presenting because X cannot com­ by the name of politics and for which I propose to reserve the term prehend that the sounds uttered by Y form words and chains of words policing. On the basis of this distinction we will try to define first the similar to X's own. This extreme situation-first and foremost-con­ logic of disagreement proper to political rationality, then the basis and cerns politics. Where philosophy encounters both politics and poetry at major forms of "political philosophy" in the sense of a specific mask­ once, disagreement bears on what it means to be a being that uses words ing of this distinction. We will then try to think through the effect of to argue. The structures proper to disagreement are those in which dis­ the return of "political philosophy" in the field of political practice. cussion of an argument comes down to a dispute over the object of the This allows us to deduce a few landmarks for reflection that will clar­ discussion and over the capacity of those who are making an object of it.

Load more

  78

Copy Link