Hatred of Democracy

Hatred of Democracy JACQUES RANCIERE Translate" by Steve Corcoran VERSO London • New York Contents This edition published by Verso 1006 • Verso 2006 Transiation • Steve Corcorun 2006 First published as La Iwine de la democrati/! La Fabrique 2005 All rights reserved The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted I 3 5 7 9 10 86 4 2 Verso I ntroductioll UK: 6 Meard Street, London WIF OEG USA: 180 Varid Street. New York, NY 1001 4.46 06 www.versobooks.com From Victorious Democracy to Criminal Democracy 5 Verso is the imp,int of New Left Books 2 Politics, or Ihe Lost Shepherd 33 ISBN-13: 978-1-84 467-098-7 .3 Democracy. Republic, Representation ISBN-IO: 1- 51 84 467.098-8 British Librllry Cataloguing in Publication Data 4 The Rationality of a Hatred 71 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Notes 99 Library or Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Index A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of 105 Congress Typeset in Times by Hewer Text UK Ltu Printed in the USA by Quebecor World Introduction A young woman keeps France in suspense with he r story of a make-believe attack; I a fe w adolescents re fuse to take their he adscarves off at sc hool ; social sec urity is running a de ficit; Montesquieu, Voltaire and Baudelaire de throne Racine and Corne ille as te xts presente d at the baccalaureate; wage earne rs hold demonstrations to de fend their re tirement sc hemes; a Grande Ecole create s an alternative entrance sc heme ;2 re ality TV, homosexual marriage and artificialins emination increase in popularity. There is no point looking for what groups together events of such disparate natures. Book after book, article afte r article , programme afte r programme, hundreds of philosophers and sociologists, political sc ientists and psycho analysts, journalists and writers, have already supplied us with the re sponse . All these symptoms, they say, are manifestations of the same illness; for all the se effects there is only one cause. This cause isca lled democ racy, that is, the re ign ofthe limitless de sire of individuals in modern mass society. !. ' _______________________----- ! l' r _ ' ! L��U�lj'·" �w�t••• 2 HATRED OF DEMOCRACY INTRODUCTION 3 It is impera ti ve to see what constitutes the si ngulari ty of this doing he wa s able to set a standard of thought whose resources denunciation. Hatred of democracy is certainly nothing new. have not yet been exha usted: the notion tha t the laws and Indeed it is as old as democracy itself for a simple reason: the insti tutions of formal democracy are appearances under which, word itself is an expression of ha tr ed. It wa s, in Ancient and instruments by which, the power of the bourgeois class is Greece, origina lly used as an insult by those who saw in the exercised. The struggle agai nst appea ra nc es thus became the unnamea bl e government of the multitude the ruin of any pa th leading to 'real' democracy, where liberty and equality legi timate or der. It remained synonymous with abomi na tion would no longer be represented in the institutions of law and for everyone who thought that power fell by rights to those State but em bodied in the ver y forms of concrete life and sensible whose bir th had pr edestined them to it or whose capabi li ties experience. called them to it. And it still is today for those who constr ue The new hatred of democracy that is the subject of this book revelations of divine law as the sole legi timate founda tion on does not stric tly fall under ei ther of these models, though it which to organi ze human communities. The vi ol ence of this combines elements borrowed from both. Its spokespersons all ha tred is certainly on the contemporary agenda . It is not, live in countri es that proclaim themselves to be not just though, an objec ti ve of this book, for a simple reason: 1 have democratic States but democracies toul court. None of them :11 "' nothing in common with those that spread it, and so nothing call for a democracy that would be more real. On the contrary, ;,1 ,I ,I to di scuss with them. they have all had too much of it. Though they don't complain 'I ,I Alongside this hatred of democracy, hi story has bor n witness about the institutions pr of essing to embody the power of the to the forms of its critique. Critique acknowledges something's people, nor do they pr opose any measur es to restrain that existence, butin order to confine it within limits. There have been power. The institutional mechanics that impassioned the con two gr ea t historical forms of cri ti que of democracy. There was temporaries of Montesquieu, Madison and Tocqueville do not the art of aristocratic legi slators and experts who str ove to ma ke inter est them. It is about the people and its mores that they " , � a compr omise wi th democrac y, vi ewed as a fact that could not be complai n, not about the insti tutions of its power . For them ,"� 'I ignored. The drawing up of the United States constitution is the democracy is not a corr upt form of government; it is a crisis of I' classic example of this work of composing forces and of balan civilization afflicting soci ety and through it the State. Whence, II cing institutional mecha nisms intended to get the most possible some movement back and forth that mi ght at first sight seem out of the fact of democracy, all the while strictly contai ni ng it in surpri si ng. Indeed, the sa me critics who endlessly denounce order to pr otect two goods taken as synonymous: the govern that democratic America for havi ng gi ven us all the evils ment of the best, and the preservation of the order of pr operty. associated wi th the respect for differences, minority rights The success of that critique en acte na turally fuel led the success of and affirmati ve action, that undermi ne [French] repU blica n its contrar y. The young Marx had no tr oubles exposing the rei gn uni ver sali sm, are the fir st to applaud when the same America of pr oper ty lying at the foundation of the republica n constitu undertakes to spread its democrac y throughout the world with ti on. The repU blican legislatorshad made no secret of it. Butin so armed force. ------______ �· __' �I.t_t�t_ �' __L- .i�·*'t�r.f�'�'�: UlIII�II ..IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII. �· .' - f� ' ' ••• '.I.". ' ' 4 HATRED OF DEMOCRACY Double discourse on democracy is certainly nothing ne w. 1 We are accustomed to he ar ing that democrac y is the worst of governments with the exception of all the others. But the ne w antidemocratic se ntiment gives the ge neral formula a more From Victorious Democracy troubling expre ssion. Democratic government, it says, is bad when it is allowe d to be corrupted by democratic socie ty, to Criminal Democracy which wants for everyone to be equal and for all difference s to be respected. It is good, on the other hand, whe n it rallies individuals enfeebled by democratic society to the vitality of war in order to defend the value s of civilization, the values pe rtaining to the clash of civilizations. The thesis of the ne w hatred of democracy can be succinctly put: there is only one good democrac y, the one that represses the catastrophe of democratic civilization. The pages that follow will try to analyze the formation of this thesis and dr aw out its stakes. The issue is not simply to de scribe a form of contemporary 'Democracy Stirs In The Middle East': with this title a ideology. For this analysis will al so inform us about the state magazine that carries the flame of economic ne oliberalism of our world and about what this world understands by celebrated some months ago the success of the elections in politics. Acc ordingly, it can help us positively to understand Iraq and the anti-Syrian demonstrations in Beirut.3 Only this the scandal borne by the word de mocracy and to rediscover praise of victorious de mocrac y was accompanied by com the tre nc hancy of its idea. me nt ar ie s specif ying the nature and limits of this democrac y. Democracy tr iumphed, we were told, de spite pr otests by idealists for whom democracy consists in the government of the pe ople by the pe ople, and so cannot be brought to a pe ople by the force of arms. Hence, it triumphed when seen from a realistic point of view, that is, one that se parate s out the pr actical be ne fitsfr om the utopia of the government of the pe ople by the pe ople. But the lesson addressed to the idealists al so urged us to be consistent in our realism. Democracy has triumphed, but one must understand the meaning of this tr iumph: bringing democracy to another pe ople does not simply me an bringing it the benef icial effects ! i ! ____________________ ' ..1�'�t_ j, '_'�•'. �1 '�! I�,.�'Ms.f.tjf..·�!.. ' R'II lI, .. III ........................................................ .. �1r_. �,�·� ' 6 HATRED OF DEMOCRACY FROM VICTORIOUS DEMOCRACY 7 of a constitutional State, elec tions and a fr ee pr ess.

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