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Diacritics.
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DISSENTINGWORDS
A CONVERSATIONWITH
JACQUESRANCIERE
Davide Panagia:
In your writingsyou highlightthe political efficacy of words. In TheNames of History,
for instance,this emphasisis discussed most vividly in termsof whatyou referto as an
"excess of words" that marks the rise of democraticmovements in the seventeenth
century.Similarly, in On The Shores of Politics, you begin your discussion with an
excursuson the end of politics as the end of the promise.Finally,in Dis-agreementyou
speak of "the part of those who have no-part"as voicing a "wrong"for the sake of
equality.
In each of these instances, however, your treatmentof words (and language more
generally) is very differentfrom those thinkersof the "linguisticturn"in political philosophy who expoundon an ethics of deliberationas the first virtueof moderndemocracies. For that matter,your approachis quite differentfrom those thinkerswho focus
on the aporiasof language as such.
Couldyou discuss this thematicof the proliferationof wordsin yourthinkingabout
democraticpolitics?
Wouldit be fairto characterizeyourresearchon andexpositionof democraticthinkas
ing a "poeticsof politics"?
Ranciere'sReply:
In orderto addressyour question adequately,it would be wise to enlarge the sense of
"linguisticturn"you invoke. In its most generallyacceptedsense, the linguistic turnin
philosophyconsists in ascribingto linguistic processes certainphenomenaand specifiable modes of relatingobjects attributed,in a previous instance, either to factual processes or lines of thought.This approachis not limited to the two figures you invoke in
your question. The linguistic turn also has two stages of development that, from my
experience, have been more noticeable in France than in the United States. The first
phase, then, emerged with Levi-Straussand his structuralapproachto social relations
foundedon a linguisticmodel of relationality,subsequentlyreprisedin Lacan'spsychoanalytic notion that "the unconscious is structuredlike a language"that, in its turn,
conjoins the energeticmentalprocesses Freuddiscusses to linguisticpractices.The primacy of "thelinguistic"thus grantedlanguageall the propertiesof the FreudianunconMy deepest debt of gratitudegoes to Jacques Ranciere, whose willingness to participate in this
interviewwith such thoughtfulattentivenessis testamentto his commitmentto an ethos of intellectual generosityand critical engagement.This interviewcould not have been possible without
the institutionalandfinancial supportof the Johns Hopkins UniversityCenterfor Research on
Cultureand Literature.In this regard,I would especially like to thankFrances Fergusonfor her
advice and encouragement.A special note of gratitude also goes to Kirstie McClure,who not
work but also taught me to appreciate the importanceof an
only introducedme to Rancibere's
mode
historically inflected
of political thinking.
diacritics30.2: 113-26
113
114
115
116
2
Davide Panagia:
Many of your more recentwritingsfocus on the classically vexed relationshipbetween
doxa and philosophy,where you considerthis problemto be a problemfor politics. In
this regardyou state in your preface to Dis-agreementthat "the basis of philosophy's
dispute with politics is the very reductionof the rationalityof disagreement"[xii]. In
your precedingworks, however,you give a more generousaccountof this tension when
you state that "it will perhapsbe more interestingto take a closer look at the duplicity
involved in this realization/suppressionof politics, which is simultaneouslya suppression/realizationof philosophy"[On the Shores of Politics 3].
Did a change take place in your position regardingthe relationshipbetween philosophy andpolitics fromthe time you wrotethe articlesthatcompriseOn the Shoresof
Politics to the time when you wrote Dis-agreement?
If so, what broughtaboutthis change in emphasisbetween the "duplicity"of politics andphilosophyon the one hand,and the dialecticaloppositionbetween philosophy
and politics on the other?
Ranciere'sReply:
You're correctin sensing a shift. There is a notable developmentbetween the first essays in On the Shoresof Politics (writtenfrom 1986 to 1988) andDis-agreementor my
"Dix theses sur la politique"(writtenfrom 1994 to 1996).3A development,that is, not
only in my own thinkingbut also in the political context that I was respondingto and
addressing.
In orderto explain and markthis shift more clearly,we might begin by delimiting
what has been a constantconcern in my intellectualpursuitssince the 1970s: namely,
the desire to evince what I call "la metapolitique,"4by which I mean that element that
bringspolitical or ideological "appearances"back to the realityof socioeconomic relations-whether or not this reality is conceived in terms of a Marxistnotion of production or a Tocquevillianidea of equality.What is ultimatelyimportantfor me is to dismiss the facile oppositionbetween a plane of appearancesand a plane of realityand to
show, as I attemptedin The Nights of Labor,how it is that the "social"-a category
supposedly intended to explain away and therebyrefute the "ideological"-is in fact
constitutedby a series of discursive acts and reconfigurationsof a perceptivefield.
It is from this problematicthat I began, in the 1980s, to tackle the question of
democracy.Here I pursueda double-sided imperative:on the one hand, I wanted to
refutethe Marxistoppositionbetween "real"and"formal"democracywhile at the same
time refutingthe notion thatthe shapeof democracycan be easily reconciledwith constitutionalforms of governance.Thus, the essay that discusses "the forms of democracy"in On the Shoresof Politics5is an effort at tryingto eschew this doublereductionist gestureby grantingthe democraticmode of being its properstatusas a mode of being
in common [existenceen commun].In orderto constitutesuch an image, it was incumbent upon me to inscribe in this logic of rehabilitationand play of appearancescertain
3. Althoughnot yet available in English, "Dixtheses sur la politique" appearsas an appendix to the second edition of Aux bords du politique.
4. For afurther elaborationof this concept,see Rancibere
'sDis-agreement,chapter4: "From
Archipoliticsto Metapolitics."
5. See chapter2: "TheUses of Democracy."
117
conceptualizationsthat were responsive to various heterogeneouslogics. In this manner, I reintroducedPlato's critique of a democraticconception of the good [le "bon
plaisir" de l'hommedemocratique]so as to extractfrom it a positive notion of democracy as a mode of being and as a collective form of symbolizationthatstandsin opposition to the notion of democracyas a mere form of state. I then incorporatedinto this
more playful notion of democracytwo other principles:first, Aristotle's notion of an
"artof politics,"which involves the abilityto domesticateappearancesandto use "good
devices" (i.e., good sophismata)in orderto "demonstrate"[fairevoir] democracyto the
democrats,oligarchyto the oligarchs,etc.-thereby guaranteeingthe existenceof friendship within the polity. Secondly, I turnedto the practicesof workersof the 1830s who
askedfor "equalrelationswith the owners"and whose strikesbecame a stagingof such
a form of equality.I thus placed on the same plane of appearance-that is, on the same
configurationof appearancesand the same valorizationof the "artificial"dimensionof
a being in common-the workers'politicalpracticeof a transgressiverepresentationof
equality and the art of government,both of which functionedto create a trompel'oeil
effect of friendshipbetween the rich and the poor.Withthese examples in mind, I contrasted this more "positive"notion of appearanceand "artificeof equality"to those
practicesof demystificationthatreproducethe old cognitive schema (exemplified,for
instance, in Bourdieuviansociology) thatassumes the operationof power by means of
the subject'sown misrecognition.
This latterframeworkquicklyreveals itself as untenablein "TheEnd of Politics or
The Realist Utopia"essay.6This text is intendedas a philosophicalcommentaryon a
particularelectoralevent:namely,Mitterand's1988 reelectionand the mise-en-sceneit
involved. In response to Chirac, who presentedhimself as the spokespersonfor the
"new forces" of a productiveeconomic life in France,Mitterandpresentedhimself as
the archaic patriarchwho symbolically guaranteedthe integrity of the social whole
againstthe ever-presenthazardsof civil war and social dissolution,a menace that took
hold in Francewith the spectacularrise of the extremeracistrightmost vividly embodied in Le Pen's xenophobicparty.The essay in questionthus stages a fundamentalparadox that,upon laterreflection,appearedto me as a kind of sophism.Mitterand's"comedy of the archaic"became identifiedwith the kind of artof politics thatcould appease
conflict. This pacific artof politics becamefurtheridentifiedwith anAristoteliannotion
of a "politicsof friendship,"all the while keeping an eye on the Freudianwisdom that
opposes the necessity of symbols for a neuroticlife in common to the great psychotic
catastrophe.Politics, I suggested,has always consistedin suppressing"thepolitical"so
as to realizeit. Admittedly,this positioninsists too stronglyupon a valorizationof democratic artifice. It tends to identify this artifice with a "comedyof power,"and the text
demonstrateshow "thesuppressionof the political"is, in effect, an ambiguousexpression. This "comedy of power"had the pretenseof driving away the prepoliticalpack;
but, in orderfor this to occur,it also had to do away with the politicalitself, thatis, with
the structuralantagonismof a life in common. The essay thus affirmsthat that which
opposes itself to the fury of the silent, the purehatredof "theother,"is not peace but a
differentkind of struggle:it is not a "comedyof power"but a divisive act of the demos
understoodas the power of dissolution.Thatis, it is the idea of political conflict understood as a specific kind of symbolizationof alterityand not the paradingof the kind of
power thatacts as the guarantorof "theOne."
In my text, therewas thus an untenableconflationof "thepolitical,"understoodas
the power of a disincorporatedcollectivity, with the art of politics, understoodphilosophicallyas thatmode of governancethatcan guaranteepeace.Toputthe matterbluntly,
6. Rancihre,On the Shores of Politics, chapter 1.
118
the Aristotelian art of governmentdoes not heal Marxist metapolitics:the 1980s did
announcethemselves as a "returnto the political"but this returnto the political and,
more emphatically,to "politicalphilosophy"quickly became equatedwith a returnto
orderper se; andthe problematicalliancebetweenthe wisdom of Mitterand("thecomedian of power")andthatof Aristotle("thephilosopher")became the rule thatstructured
the alliancebetween those who govern and "politicalphilosophers."The returnto "political philosophy"in the prose of Ferry,Renaut, and other proponentsof what is referredto, on your side of the Atlantic, as "New FrenchThought"simply identifiedthe
political with the state, therebyplacing the traditionof political philosophy in the service of the platitudesof a politics of consensus; this occurringall the while underthe
rubricof wantingto restoreand protectthe political againstthe encroachmentsof the
social. What also became strikinglyapparentwas that what was initially endorsedas a
"politicsof consensus"was wholly otherthanthe "partyof social peace":the consensus
model resultedin the destructionof the political along with the reestablishmentof racism and xenophobia.Consensus in effect became the suppressionof the litigiousness
constitutiveof the political, andidentitarianismbecamethe flip side of this suppression;
thatis, it became the maladyof consensus politics.
It thus seemed crucial to challenge the marriageof the political with this "artof
friendship"or this "living in common"thatconfoundsthe manifestationsof the political with the shrewdnessof power.It was necessaryto "takea closer look"7at this realization/suppressionof the political that exemplified an Aristotelianpolitics of friendship. It was necessary to show that this form of parapoliticsbelongs to the same suppressive logic as a Platonicarchipoliticsthat attemptsto abolish a democraticspace in
order to institute a community of "the One" or, further,a Marxist metapolitics that
assigns to democraticinstancesthe profoundrealityof relationsof productionandclass
exploitation.It was necessary,finally,to pinpoint,at a globallevel, politicalphilosophy's
gestureof distancingthe political underthe pretextof groundingpolitics on an ideal of
an orderedliving in common.In my own work,I demonstratedhow thatwhich is proper
to the political is precisely an absence of the "proper."It is from the political's litigious
characterof supplementaritythat one may derive the "simple necessities" of a life in
common or the general attributesof a "politicity"[de la politicite]. Under these three
forms-archipolitics, parapolitics,and metapolitics-the encountersbetween philosophy and the political have been conflictual encounterswhereby philosophy's primary
move has been to extractthe inherentqualityof dissension from the political eitherby
suppressingit (Plato), by pacifying it (Aristotle),or by displacingit (Marx)in orderto
grantthe political its "truefoundation."
It was crucialfor me to markthis fundamentaltension in orderto distinguishpolitics from the projectof consensus and its rationalizationin the "returnof the political"
movement in France.But that which initially separatesdoes not stop itself from interof philosophyis just suchan instanceof confluence.
mingling:the suppression/realization
On the one hand, political philosophy incorporateswithin itself those political paradoxes it attemptsto eschew-and the Aristotelianuse of contrarietiesis an exemplary
instance of this: these contrarietiesare welcomed by Aristotelianthinking; they are
reworkedand reformulated.And in this manner,the enterpriseof philosophyprovided
the political with scenariosand scenes of dissension.This gesturedoes not merely refer
to the old adageof puttingon ancientgarbfor the sake of producingmodernrevolutions
but ratherevinces [shows, demonstrates,or illustrates]how those contract scenarios
implicit in the concept of sovereignty--elaboratedin orderto ground and protect the
7. In his original French reply,Ranciereuses this Englishexpressionandplaces it in quotation marks.
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3
Davide Panagia:
It has been commenteduponby some thatit is hardto categorizeyour writings.Thatis,
your work is at once philosophicaland literary,historicaland political. I have at times
been asked, when discussing your works in a public setting, to explain whetheryou are
a philosopher,a historian,a politicalthinker,or a literarycritic.It seems to me thatthese
questions are misleading.That is, I find the critical force of your writings to rest on a
sense of contemporaneityof forms andhistoricalsensibilities.By this, I meanthatyour
writingsmake at one and the same time a gesturetowardone form of knowledge (i.e.,
philosophy) while discussing another (i.e., politics). As well, there is a sense of
contemporaneityin your use of historical examples and your discussion of historical
figures.
In this regard,especially, I am remindedof your treatmentof Jacototin your The
IgnorantSchoolmaster,where the historical example of the figure of Jacototalso addresses a series of questions broughtto the fore duringthe debates regardingeducational reformin Francein the mid 1980s.
Can you commentupon the role thatthe historicalexample, whetheran event like
Mitterand'sreelectionor a figurelike Jacotot,plays in your writingsandyourparticular
sense of the historical?
Am I correct in characterizing your treatment of these matters as one of the
of historicalemergences?
"contemporaneity"
Rancikre'sReply:
By the notion of contemporaneityI understandtwo things:the first is that an object of
reflection commandsthe apertureof a specific temporality.That is, it commandsthe
presence of a process of writing,of the constructionof a specific form of writing,oriented towardan intrusiveencounterwith a specific mode of thinkingthat, in its turn,
creates a particularthought-eventby interruptingthe organizationof a class of objects
or a series of performances.Thinkingfor me is always a rethinking.It is an activitythat
displaces an object away from the site of its originalappearanceor attendingdiscourse.
Thinkingmeans to submit an object of thoughtto a specific variationthat includes a
shift in its discursiveregister,its universeof reference,or its temporaldesignations.In
the case of Mitterandthat you mention, I extractedthe event of an election from the
field of political sociology in order to conceptualize a variationof the foundational
narrativesof political philosophy. I considered how it is that that which is given to
thoughtas an object of political inquirywas also a mise-en-schneof variousroles and
posturesand not necessarilythe contentof policy programsor theirrelationto different
social forces, economic imperatives,etc. It is this stagingthatdeterminesthe conditions
for a constitutiverethinking;that is to say, it is a restaging.The elaborationof these
"momentsof thinking"is for me the task of a philosophythatchallengesthe boundaries
separatingthe classes of discourses.Returningonce again to my TheNights of Labor I
120
extracted those worker's texts from their socioeconomic links so as to read them as
antiplatonicphilosophicalmyths while at once exposing the history of a specific generationof peoples markedby such a foundationalevent as the Parisrevolt of July 1830,
an event thatplayed a role comparable,perhaps,to the one May '68 played for my own
generation(with its own battle cry that"Nothingwill be as before").In both instances,
what is requiredis a staging of this mythico-philosophicalevent that marksthe advent
of thinkingfor those who were not initially destined to think.This staging implicatesa
theoretical frameworkthat is, at once, a biographicalframework:one that does not
focus exclusively on life historiesbut ratheron privilegedmomentsof experienceof a
life that becomes a kind of writing (the equivalent, I would say, of those interlacing
monologues comprisingthe lives of six people found in VirginiaWoolf's The Waves).
Similarly,in TheIgnorantSchoolmaster,I extracteda characterthathad the stature
of a curiositywithinthe historyof pedagogy.This historyis comprisedof such curiosities, of such stories of original or delirious inventorswho overcome seemingly insurmountablechallenges which then become the groundingfor a mad prehistoryof "reasonable"methods of teaching and learning.With Jacotot,I uncovereda figure whose
"originality"was groundedprecisely in his ability to interrogatethe traditionallink
between utopianextravaganceand a reasonablemethodology,and I projectedthis figure bluntly upon the scene of the pedagogicaldebatesoccurringin Francewhile I was
writing:debates that, at the time, opposed those sociologists who proposedthe reduction of inequalitiesby adoptingcertainmethodsof learning(more amenableto various
disenfranchisedclasses) to proponentsof a "republican"school of pedagogicalthought
that promotedthe ideal of equality of learningthrougha universalismof knowledge. I
thus organizeda "contemporaneousconfrontation"by presentingJacototnot as the representativeof a rehabilitativeeducationalstrategybut rather,as a philosophico-mythical figurewho marks-in all his philosophicalandpoliticalradicality--certainegalitarian stakesby not makingequalityan end thatneeded to be achieved but ratherby consideringit the axiom of a kindof thinking.Whatwas requiredwas a specific enunciative
form that abolished the distance between these two poles. TheIgnorantSchoolmaster
could thusjust as well be readas a philosophicalnarrativeof a purelyfictitioushero as
muchas it couldbe readas the contemporaryexcursusof an atemporalstudentof Jacotot.
To constructa specific present-that is, a sound chamberfor the resonancesof an
event of thinking-thus requiresa double transgression.On the one hand, it is incumbent to transgressthe divisions of discourse:divisions thatseparatethe disciplines(philosophy, political science, history,etc.), the divisions of noble and profanediscourse,
the divisions between a logic comprisedof links in a chain of real events and the logic
of a chain of fictionalevents. On the otherhand,it is imperativeto revokethe authoritative principlederivedfromthe succession of historicalevents.And it is the implications
derived from this second transgressiveimperativethatI understandto be criticalto an
idea of contemporaneity.To conceptualizethe "contemporaneity"of thoughtrequires
the reliance on a certainanachronismor untimeliness.
In the early stages of my work there was, without a doubt, a desire on my partto
returnto some historical"real"in orderto overcome a "metaphysicsof history."Specifically, I beganby searchingin the archivesfor examplesfromthe writingsof workers
so as to respondto the Marxistdiscourseon history,on the workers'movement,etc. But
I quickly realized that such a returnto the "real"did not, in and of itself, change the
theoreticalterms of the game. It was entirely useless to discover a mode of speaking
properto workers [une parole ouvridre]that the Marxist enterprisehad overlooked.
Whatis necessaryis to liberatesuch a word from the dictatesof historicismitself since
it is indubitablythe case thathistoricismis as much a discourseof propriety-of keeping things "in theirplace"-as any other.Wheneverwe say "suchand such an example
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4
Davide Panagia:
In a 1996 TimesLiterarySupplementreview of your On the Shores of Politics the reviewer refersto your work as "desirabledissent."Dissensus is, of course, an important
aspect of your work and is a primary"anti-principle"of your notion of democracy.In
contradistinctionto the consensus-orientedliberalideal of equalityas the "summation"
of political interest,you posit "division"as the political calculus par excellence.
I have the sense thatyour discussion of dissensusas a democraticmode of thinking
also involves a critiqueof leftist politics in Europe.On this rendering,"division"as a
privileged anti-principleof democraticaction is intendedto counterthe centripetaltendencies of currentleftist political partiesthat, for the sake of a broaderelectoral base,
move closer and closer to the center.Immediateexamples thatjump to mind are Tony
Blair's vision of the Labourpartyin Britainor Italy'sUlivo partyformedby the current
Presidentof the EuropeanCommission,Romano Prodi.
Could you comment on this importantlylitigious anti-principleof dissensus and
how you distinguishit from conventionalaccountsof democracyas the competitionof
interestsbetween individualsand groups?
Rancihre'sReply:
In effect, my reflections on politics were orientedtowarda considerationof the development of the consensualistideology both in Franceand with regardto Europeansocialism throughoutthe 1990s. Herethe difficultyis in identifyingwhatconsensusmeans:
it doesn't merely refer to a taste for discussion and/orsocial and political peace. Consensus refers to the configurationof a field of perception-in-common,an instance of
what I have called the "partitionof the sensible,"even before it becomes a predisposition towarddeliberation.Consensusmeans the sharingof a common and nonlitigious
experience: its essence is the affirmationof the preconditionsthat determinepolitical
choice as objective and univocal. "Consensusdiscourse"in political thought asserts
that political action is circumscribedby a series of large-scaleeconomic, financial,demographic, and geostrategic equivalences. Under this rubric,politics-conceived as
the action of governments-consists in the adoption of the constraintsof these large
equivalences along with an attitudeof arbitrationdirectedat the residualand marginal
possibilities left behind. On the basis of "thegiven," the rightand the left are supposed
to make differentchoices; to do more (the left) or do less (the right) regardingredistribution.In this regard,the left might make moreof the "social"or the "cultural,"but this
is only marginal.The ideal of consensus affirmsthat what is essential to a life in common dependson objective equilibriumstowardwhich we may all orientourselves.
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WORKSCITED
Peter.
"Desirable
Dissent."
Rev. of On the Shores of Politics. TimesLiterary
Carrier,
14
June
1996:
29.
Supplement
Ranciere,Jacques.Dis-agreement:Politics and Philosophy.Trans.Julie Rose. Minneapolis : U of MinnesotaP, 1998.
. "Dix theses surla politique."Aux bordsdupolitique. 2nd ed. Paris:La Fabrique,
1998. 164-85.
. The IgnorantSchoolmaster:Five Lessons in IntellectualEmancipation.Trans.
and intro.KristinRoss. Stanford,CA: StanfordUP, 1991.
. The Names of History: On the Poetics of Knowledge.Trans.Hassan Melehy.
Forewordby HaydenWhite. Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP, 1994.
. TheNights of Labor: The Workers'Dreamin Nineteenth-CenturyFrance. Trans.
John Drury.Philadelphia:TempleUP, 1989.
. On the Shoresof Politics. Trans.Liz Heron.London:Verso, 1995.
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