Review of Thinking Radical Democracy

Symposium has published my review of Martin Breaugh, Christopher Holman, Rachel Magnusson, Paul Mazzocchi, and Devin Penner (eds.), Thinking Radical Democracy: The Return to Politics in Post-war France. A well-edited volume has to avoid numerous pitfalls: issues of consistency, varying quality of contributions, and overall coherence. Breaugh et al. have done an excellent job in avoiding those potential problems. My overview:

The essays collected in Thinking Radical Democracy aim to situate the political thought of Rancière, Abensour, and Balibar within a tradition of radical democratic thought in postwar France that conceptualizes democracy as divisive and emancipatory. The book includes chapters on the “forbearers” of the return to radical democracy (the “French” Arendt, Merleau-Ponty, and Pierre Clastres), the critics of totalitarianism (Lefort, Castoriadis, and Debord), and concludes with essays concerning Rancière, Balibar, and Abensour. Despite the many differences between these figures, the authors and editors of the present volume argue that the radical democratic tradition is defined by its threefold exploration of  “politics, division, and democracy.”

It's longer than most reviews for Symposium but there's a reason. One of my goals in reviewing the book was to bring to the forefront how there is an important distinction between politics (la politique) and the political (le politique). I think that, in general, the attempt to foreground the possibilities of politics through first defining the political also opens the possibility that definitions of the political could come to police politics. I outline this problem in the review, so read all the way to the end.

No! No! No! We Need the Elite!

Peter Gratton has found an exemplary specimen of reactionary republicanism. Today's Der Spiegel has an article by Herfried Münkler entitled "Democratization Can't Save Europe." Münkler argues that:

In light of this failure of the elites, it is hardly surprising that we are hearing renewed calls for the democratization of Europe. Suddenly, the people are expected to fix what the elites have botched. Since they are already being asked to pay for the problems caused by the elites, many believe that the people should have more say in how and by whom Europe is controlled.

As reasonable as this might sound, by no means does it make as much sense as it seems at first glance. Even after the democratization of Europe, the elites in Brussels and Strasbourg will still be in charge. The only option available to the European people, to the extent that they can be referred to as such, would be to react to obvious failure by voting their leaders out of office -- and to vote an opposing elite to take their place. Whether this would fundamentally change anything is open to question. [...]

Pushing for the democratization of Europe is akin to playing a reckless game that can quickly lead to European disintegration. Those who see democratization as a logical reaction to the crisis may not even be aware of this risk. They see democratization as an automatic reflex in response to the crisis. But democracy needs the kinds of conditions that do not exist in Europe today.

Not convinced? Me neither. Peter points out that Münkler has recycled all the usual arguments as to why democracy won't work outside of the Western world, and turned them toward Europe itself. But these claims aren't the only howlers. Without any irony, Münkler points out that Europe has always been run by elites (which is why, apparently, it can't ever change...):

Europe was a project of the elites from the very beginning, but with the proviso that democratization would happen at the next available opportunity.

Of course, all promises of democracy have really been a "proviso" (read "noble lie") to legitimate the European project in the eyes of the people. And yet he concludes with the same promise he's just deflated:

The key step is a political reconstitution of Europe, a reconstitution in which democratization would be a real option and would not pose the threat of decline and disintegration.

This is the world of austerity: the elites fail but don't really fail, finance capital crashes but people's benefits, mortgaged homes, collective bargaining, decent wages and job security are blamed and attacked.

Gratton on Nancy's "The Truth of Democracy"

Peter Gratton's review of Jean-Luc Nancy's The Truth of Democracy is up on the CSCP website, in advance of its publication in Symposium (here).

Much in the way that I work with Rancière, Gratton takes Nancy as a starting point for thought, as a kind of provocation: in this case, about democracy, which has been used and abused by anti-democrats, and yet still is "unrivalled as a name for political aspirations the world over." He highlights the way that Nancy critiques the notion that democracy could name the activity of sovereign and autotelic, showing how politics-- democratic politics-- is a politics in common, that is organized as a distribution (partage) that is not organized through calculation or administration (Peter notes a similarity between Nancy and Rancière on the term partager and 'equality').

I am drawn to this review, in addition, because Gratton identifies several of those features that had frustrated me about Nancy's work when I was writing about it years ago (for my MA, to be precise). One of the most frustrating is his recourse to Heidegger's highly tenuous 'history of metaphysics'. Here's Peter again:

In this way, Nancy, like Giorgio Agamben and Heidegger before them both, accede to a view of history that mirrors the rise and fall of Western metaphysics: Heidegger’s analysis of das Man is mistaken for a sociology, and the societal ennui of Western Europe, no doubt powerful, is said to be mirrored across the world. [...]

It is puzzling that Nancy takes for granted that the impasses of democracy in Europe and the U.S. are a mark of the political the world over, which itself would be a direct result of impasses in Western metaphysics. But if the age of such world pictures is over, as Nancy himself argues here, what of this picture Nancy himself projects? The truth of democracy, if there is such a thing, should first take on this archaic European supposition, which is itself a haunting superstition, indeed a sovereign imposition, denegating the truth of democracy as such.

I agree wholeheartedly with Peter's conclusion. A few comments of my own: reading this review it struck me that in opposition to Nancy, Rancière would reject this identification of the destiny of metaphysics and democracy, especially because Rancière poses egalitarian logic as a direct challenge to 'political philosophy' of, for instance, Plato and Aristotle. Nor does politics have to take place in a European framework. Which is why, perhaps, people have been drawing connections between the recent uprisings in North Africa and elsewhere and the work of Rancière (myself, Peter, and Scu at Critical Animal) or Fanon (here) and not Jean-Luc Nancy.

The US, Iran, and Democracy

In 1776 Thomas Paine wrote a revolutionary tract titled "Common Sense." He hoped to arouse rebellion of American colonists against the British. The tract's thesis is essentially that a democratic-republic is far superior to a monarchy. He wrote, "The king is not to be trusted without being looked after , in other words, that a thirst for absolute power is that natural disease of monarchy." Ironically in 1953 the US, collaborating with the British that Americans once fought to be independent of,overthrew democracy in Iran. The US government replaced the Iranian government with a tyrannical monarchy.

The long term repercussions of US involvement in Iran arguably resulted in the anti-American Islamic Revolution of 1979. This short film produced during the George W. Bush presidency argues that a bombing campaign/war with Iran in the future may also produce undesirable results in the future. Presently US President Obama and Israel continue to articulate the possibility of such an aggressive scenario.