Dissenting Words a Conversation With Jacques Ranciere

8/9/2019 Dissenting Words a Conversation With Jacques Ranciere

1/15

Dissenting Words: A Conversation with Jacques Rancire

Author(s): Jacques Rancire and Davide PanagiaSource: Diacritics, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 113-126Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566474.

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2/15

ISSENTING

W O R S

A

CONVERSATION

WITH

JACQUESRANCIERE

Davide

Panagia:

In

your writings

you

highlight

the

political

efficacy

of words. In

The

Names

of

History,

for

instance,

this

emphasis

s

discussed most

vividly

in

terms of

what

you

referto as an

excess

of words

that

marks the rise of

democratic movements

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,

n

Dis-agreement

you

speak

of

the

part

of those who

have

no-part

as

voicing

a

wrong

or the sake of

equality.

In

each

of these

instances,

however,

your

treatmentof words

(and

language

more

generally)

is

very

different rom those thinkersof the

linguistic

urn

n

political

phi-

losophy

who

expound

on

an

ethics of deliberationas the first

virtue

of

modern

democ-

racies.

For that

matter,

your approach

s

quite

different rom those

thinkerswho focus

on

the

aporias

of

language

as such.

Couldyou discuss this thematicof theproliferation f words n yourthinkingabout

democratic

politics?

Would

t

be fairto characterize

our

researchon and

exposition

of

democratic

hink-

ing

as

a

poetics

of

politics ?

Ranciere's

Reply:

In orderto address

your question adequately,

t would be wise to

enlarge

the

sense of

linguistic

urn

you

invoke.

In

its most

generallyaccepted

sense,

the

linguistic

turn

n

philosophy

consists

in

ascribing

o

linguistic processes

certain

phenomena

and

specifi-

able modes

of

relating objects

attributed,

n

a

previous

instance,

either to

factual

pro-

cesses or

lines of

thought.

This

approach

s

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

structural

pproach

o

social relations

founded

on a

linguistic

model

of

relationality, ubsequently eprised

n

Lacan's

psycho-

analytic

notion

that

the unconscious is structured ike a

language

that,

in

its

turn,

conjoins

the

energetic

mental

processes

Freuddiscusses to

linguistic

practices.

The

pri-

macyof the inguistic husgranted anguageall thepropertiesof the Freudianuncon-

My deepest

debt

of

gratitudegoes

to

Jacques

Ranciere,

whose

willingness

to

participate

in

this

interviewwith such

thoughtful

attentiveness s testament o his

commitment

o

an ethos

of

intel-

lectual

generosity

and critical

engagement.

This

interviewcould not have been

possible

without

the institutionaland

financial

support of

the Johns

Hopkins University

Center

or

Research on

Culture

and Literature. n this

regard,

I would

especially

like to

thankFrances

Ferguson

or

her

advice and

encouragement.

A

special

note

of

gratitude

also

goes

to Kirstie

McClure,

who not

only

introducedme

to

Rancibere's ork but also

taught

me

to

appreciate

the

importanceof

an

historically inflected

mode

of political thinking.

diacritics / summer

2000

diacritics 0.2:

113-26

113

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3/15

scious

along

with

those of a Marxist

notion

of

infrastructure. he

Saussurian

pposition

between

langue

and

parole provided

a

privileged

status

o a

linguistic

model whose role

was that of a

general

aw that

unconsciously

structures he

behavior

of individualsand

societies.

It is

on

the

basis

of

these

parameters

hat the

structuralistmoment

of

the

linguistic

turn was constituted.

At

one and the same

time,

the

analysis

of

speech

acts

became first and foremost a

symptomatic

analysis

of those

procedures

of

misrecognition

hat

inguistically

structured

oth

the behavior

of individualsand social

relations.

When we

read

Le

Capital

with

Althusser,

he

interpretive

nd

methodologi-

cal schema

for

linguistic

phenomenaoperated

ike a

kind of

policing

of the

enunci-

ated :

hat

s,

a search or those unsuccessful

(i.e.,

inadequate)

modes

of

expression

hat

exemplify

such

symptomatic

procedures

of

misrecognition.

The second

phase

of the

linguistic

turn constituted tself more

ambiguously.

For

those who shared

ntellectual

experiences

similar to

my

own,

this version involved a

critique

of

the

langue/infrastructure

odel;

that

s,

a furtherand more favorableconsid-

erationof the value of the politicaland the linguistic games thereinthat,accordingto

the

Althusserian/Marxist

model

(and,

indeed,

with structuralismmore

generally),

were

to be treatedas

ideological

artifacts. n a

very

real

sense,

it all

began

with

the

May

'68

assertion

hat we are all

German

Jews -an

entirely deological

statement,

he

validity

of

which,

if

analyzed

at

the level of its

content,

one finds to rest

entirely

on the

capacity

to

overturn

he

political

relationship

between

the

orderof

designations

andthatof events

by emphasizing

he

gap

that

separates ubject

and

predicate.

From

there,

an entire field

of

understanding peech

acts

as

political gestures opened up:

a field that

reconfigured

the division between words

and

things

while

rearranging

he distinctionbetween

legiti-

mate and

illegitimate speakers(i.e., claimants).

This

was the focus of

my

historical

researchon

the

writings

of

nineteenth-century

rench

workers,

which resulted in

my

The

Nights of

Labor

I

treated these texts not as documents that either

expressed

or

concealed

the

real

conditions of the

workers and

the forms of

domination

hey

had

enduredbut ratheras evidence of the controversial

polemical configurations

esulting

in

that form of

political subjectivity

known as

the

worker.

This for me has meant

paying

a different sort of

attention

to

language

than that

found

in

the tradition

of

critique.

As I

understand

t,

this

lattertradition ombines a

position

of radical

politics

with a

practice

of

interpretive uspicion

guided by

the idea

that

words

always

hide

somethingprofound

below the

surface;

he hermeneutic

mpera-

tive is thus to examine these substrataof meaningin order to get at some even more

profound

ecret.

In

most

cases,

such

a

profound

ecret

s,

in

fact,

an

instanceof

domi-

nation either

imposed

or endured-even

if it

means

that

the mode of domination

n

question

is

merely

the

dominationof

language

itself

(i.e.,

Roland Barthes's

langue

fasciste ).

If the

fracturebetween these two

forms

of the

linguistic

urn has not been

as

readily

visible

in

the

American

context

as

it

was

in

France,

it is

without a doubt

because

in

the United States these two modes of

understanding

anguage

melded to-

gether

into one

overarching

ogic

of

suspicion.

This is

also

a result of the manner

n

which

certainof these latter

conceptualizations

stablisheda

link

between he two

modes

of the linguistic turnyou invoke, withoutbelonging exclusively to either one. This is

precisely

what has

happened

with Derridean

deconstruction

n

America:

n

practice,

t

was includedas an

interpretive

chema thatendorsed

he

symptomatic eading

of the

Althusserian

variety by elucidating

those

critical

ruptures

hat

comprised

the fabric of

the

text.

At

the

same

time,

Derridean

deconstructionaltered he structural-Marxist

p-

proach,

as it

is,

in

itself,

divided between two modes: on the one

hand,

there

is

the

practice

of

denunciative

critique

and on the

other

a

practice

of infinite

readings.

My

own intellectualeffort has been to think

the

distance

[6cart]

between

words

differently:

that

is,

neither on the model of a hermeneuticsof

suspicion

nor on

the

114



4/15

deconstructive

model of an interminable

digging through

the strata of

metaphorical

meaning.

My approach

begins

from a different

reading

of Plato's

critique

of

writing.

Here,

the central

question

for

me rests

upon

the

politically

fertile

potential

of the

oppo-

sition between

two

differing

accounts of how

words

circulate. The

silent word

of

writing,according

o

Plato,

s

thatwhich will

sway

no matter

what-making

itself

equally

availableboth to those entitled to use it and to those who are not. The

availability

of a

series of words

acking

a

legitimate

speaker

and

an

equally legitimate

nterlocutor nter-

rupts

Plato's

logic

of the

proper -a

logic

that

requires

everyone

to be in

their

proper

place, partaking

n their

proper

affairs.This excess

of words hat

I

call

literarity

dis-

rupts

he relation

between

an orderof discourse

and

ts

social

function.That

s,

literarity

refers

at

once to the excess of words available

in

relation to the

thing

named;

to that

excess

relating

o

the

requirements

or the

production

of

life;

and

finally,

to an

excess

of

words vis-&-vis he modes of communication hat function to

legitimate

the

proper

itself.

We can conclude,then,thathumansarepoliticalanimalsbecausethey areliterary

animals: not

only

in the

Aristotelian

sense

of

using language

in

orderto discuss

ques-

tions

of

justice,

but also because we are confounded

by

the excess of words

in

relation

to

things.

Humans are

political

animals,

then,

for

two reasons:

first,

because we have

the

power

to

put

into circulationmore

words,

useless and

unnecessary

words,

words

thatexceed the functionof

rigid

designation; econdly,

because

this

fundamental

bility

to

proliferate

words

is

unceasingly

contested

by

those

who claim

to

speak

correctly -

that

is,

by

the masters of

designation

and classification

who,

by

virtue of

wanting

to

retain

heirstatusand

power,

flat-out

deny

this

capacity

o

speak.

This is

what

happened

during

he

English

Revolution

of the

seventeenth

century,

when certain

popularpreach-

ers

learnedand

began

to

use the word

tyrant

which,

technically

peaking,

efers

to an

ancient form of

power)

as a

term

of

political

contest. It

is

also

what occurredwith some

workers

in

the nineteenth

century

who

began

to

put

into circulationthe word

prole-

tariat,

which

literally

means those who

multiply

and refers to a class of

peoples

in

ancient Roman times

whose sole existence

was

defined

in

terms of

their

reproductive

capacity.'

In

reappropriating

hese abandoned

erms,

these

seventeenth-century reach-

ers and

nineteenth-century

workerswere able to

designate

an entire

category

of

politi-

cal

subjectivity.

Political

subjectivity

thus refers to

an enunciative

and

demonstrative

capacity

to

reconfigure

the relation between the

visible

and the

sayable,

the relation

betweenwordsandbodies:namely,whatI refer to as thepartitionof the sensible.

It

is

in this

respect

that

I

have

put

into

operation

what

I

call a

poetics

of

knowledge.2

in

order o think what

you

refer to as a

poetics of politics.

The

poetic

s

distinguished

from

the

notion of

critique

s

suspicion

discussed earlier

by

its

ability

to

give

value to

the

effectivity

of

speech

acts. To affirm the

nature

of

the

poetic

n

politics

means

to

assert

first and foremost that

politics

is an

activity

of

reconfiguration

f

that which

is

given

in

the

sensible.

What

is

more,

this

activity

also

distinguishes

tself from various

forms of

political

realismand also from the deliberative

democraticmodel

of

communi-

cative

rationality

of the

linguistic

urn

you

invoked.

When one distances

oneself from

the symptomaticmode of critiquementionedpreviously, hereby aking ntothoughtful

considerationthose words used

in

various forms

of

sociopolitical

interlocution,

one

finds oneself

in

a

problematic

relationwith the Habermasian

ritique

of neoconserva-

tive

poststructuralism, long

with those

denunciativeattacks on

post-'68 thought

that

include a return o Kant and

the

Enlightenment,

and

so

on.

1.

According

to

the Oxford

English

Dictionary

(2nd

ed. on

CD-Rom)

entry

or proletariat,

the term

refers

to

the owest class

of

the

community

n ancient

Rome,

regarded

as

contributing

nothing

to

the state but

offspring.

2. SeeRanciere's

heNamesof

History:

On

the

Poeticsof

Knowledge.

diacritics / summer 2000

115



5/15

To return o the first

part

of

your question,

then,

what

radically distinguishesmy

thinking

rom

a

communicative

ationality

model

is

that

I

do not

accept

the

premise

hat

there is a

specific

form

of

political

rationality

hat

may

be

directly

deduced from the

essence

of

language

or

from

the

activity

of communication.

The

Habermasian chema

presupposes,

n the

very

logic

of

argumentative xchange,

the

existence of

a

prioriprag-

maticconstraints hat

compel

interlocutorso enter ntoarelationof

intercomprehension,

if

they

wish

to be self-coherent.

This

presupposes

urther

hatboth

the interlocutors

nd

the

objects

about which

they speak

are

preconstituted;

whereas,

from

my perspective,

therecan be

political

exchange

only

when there sn't such a

preestablished greement-

not

only,

that

is,

regarding

he

objects

of debate but also

regarding

he status of the

speakers

hemselves.

It is this

phenomenon

hat I call

disagreement,

and it

is

this

logic

of

disagreement

hat

s

exemplified

in

the

plebeian

secession at Aventin o

which I

often

refer: the

patricians

at

Aventin

do not understandwhat

the

plebeians say; they

do not

understand he noises that come out of the

plebeians'

mouths,

so

that,

in

order to be

audiblyunderstoodandvisibly recognizedas legitimate speakingsubjects,the plebe-

ians

must

not

only

argue

heir

position

but must

also

construct he

scene

of

argumenta-

tion

in

such a manner hat

the

patriciansmight recognize

it

as a world

in

common. The

principle

of

political

interlocution

s

thus

disagreement;

hat

is,

it

is

the discordantun-

derstanding

f both the

objects

of referenceand the

speakingsubjects.

In

order o enter

into

political

exchange,

it

becomes

necessary

to invent the scene

upon

which

spoken

words

may

be

audible,

n which

objects may

be

visible,

and

ndividuals

hemselves

may

be

recognized.

It is in this

respect

that we

may speak

of a

poetics of politics.

In

order to account for

this,

we

require

a

poetics of knowledge.

This

means

an

operation

on the

objects

of

knowledge

andon the modes of

knowing

that

brings

them to

the level

of a

common

language

and

of

the

invention,

within this

common

language,

of

various modes of

argumentation

nd

manifestation.

For

example,

in

The

Nights

of

La-

bor

it was

necessary

for me to extractthe workers' texts from the statusthat social or

cultural

history assigned

to

them-a manifestationof

a

particular

ulturalcondition.

I

looked

at these texts as

inventions

of forms

of

language

similar

to

all others.The

pur-

chase of

their

political

valence

was thus

in

their revindicationof

the

efficacy

of

the

literary,

of

the

egalitarian

powers

of

language,

indifferentwith

respect

to

the statusof

the

speaker.

This

poetic

operation

on the

objects

of

knowledge puts

into

play

their

po-

litical

dimension,

which elides

a

sociocultural

reading.

This

same

operation

can

occur

with thediscoursesof knowledge: t wouldrequire hatone subtracthe sociologicalor

historical

discourse,

for

example,

from

the forms

of

autolegitimationupon

which

it

rests

by arguing

for

the

specificity

of their

objects

and

methods. This does not mean

having

to assert that these discourses are

nothing

other than fictions or

processes

of

metaphorization,

s some would have us believe. Rather t

requires

he assertionthat

these

knowledge-discourses,

ike

other modes of

discourse,

use common

powers

of

linguistic

innovation

n

order o

make

objects

visible and available

o

thinking,

n

order

to create connections between

objects,

etc.

This

requires having

to

reintegrate

hese

discourses

into a

generally

accessible

mode of

reasoning

or form of

language

so that

everyone may partake n this creativeactivityof invention thatallows for a redescrip-

tion

and

reconfiguration

f

a

common worldof

experience.

While a

poetics ofpolitics

is

a

challenge

to the

opposition

between

legitimate

and

illegitimatespeakers,

a

poetics

of

knowledge

presents

a

challenge

to the divisions between

the

disciplines

and the dis-

coursesof

knowledge.

116



6/15

2

Davide

Panagia:

Many

of

your

morerecent

writings

focus on the

classically

vexed

relationship

between

doxa and

philosophy,

whereyou consider this problem o be a problemfor politics. In

this

regard

you

state

in

your preface

to

Dis-agreement

that the basis of

philosophy's

dispute

with

politics

is

the

very

reduction

of the

rationality

of

disagreement

xii].

In

your preceding

works,

however,

you

give

a more

generous

accountof this tension when

you

state that

it will

perhaps

be more

interesting

o take a closer look at the

duplicity

involved

in

this

realization/suppression

f

politics,

which

is

simultaneously

a

suppres-

sion/realization

of

philosophy

[On

the Shores

of

Politics

3].

Did a

change

take

place

in

your position regarding

he

relationship

between

phi-

losophy

and

politics

from

the time

you

wrote the articles hat

comprise

On

the Shores

of

Politics to the time whenyou wroteDis-agreement?

If

so,

what

brought

about

this

change

in

emphasis

between the

duplicity

f

poli-

tics

and

philosophy

on

the one

hand,

and the dialectical

opposition

between

philosophy

and

politics

on

the other?

Ranciere's

Reply:

You're correct

n

sensing

a

shift.

There is

a notable

development

between the

first

es-

says

in

On

the Shores

of

Politics

(written

rom 1986 to

1988)

and

Dis-agreement

or

my

Dixtheses sur la

politique

written

rom 1994 to

1996).3

A

development,

that

is,

not

only

in

my

own

thinking

but

also

in

the

political

context that

I

was

responding

o and

addressing.

In

order

o

explain

and markthis shift more

clearly,

we

might begin by delimiting

what has

been a constantconcern

in

my

intellectual

pursuits

since the

1970s:

namely,

the desire to evince what

I

call la

metapolitique, 4

y

which

I

mean that

element that

brings political

or

ideological

appearances

ack to

the

reality

of

socioeconomic

rela-

tions-whether or not this

reality

is

conceived

in

terms of a Marxist

notion

of

produc-

tion

or

a

Tocquevillian

dea of

equality.

What

is

ultimately mportant

or me is

to

dis-

miss the facile oppositionbetween a planeof appearances nd a planeof realityand to

show,

as

I

attempted

n The

Nights

of

Labor,

how it

is

that the

social -a

category

supposedly

intended

to

explain away

and

thereby

refute the

ideological -is

in

fact

constituted

by

a

series of

discursive acts and

reconfigurations

f a

perceptive

field.

It

is from

this

problematic

that

I

began,

in the

1980s,

to tackle the

question

of

democracy.

Here I

pursued

a double-sided

imperative:

on the one

hand,

I

wanted to

refutethe

Marxist

opposition

between real nd

formal

emocracy

while

at

the

same

time

refuting

he notion thatthe

shape

of

democracy

can

be

easily

reconciled with con-

stitutional

forms

of

governance.

Thus,

the

essay

that discusses the forms of democ-

racy

n

On

the

Shores

ofPolitics5

s

an effort at

trying

to

eschew this double reduction-

ist

gesture

by granting

he

democratic

mode of

being

its

proper

tatusas a mode of

being

in

common

[existence

en

commun].

n

order o constitutesuch an

image,

it was incum-

bent

upon

me to inscribe

in

this

logic

of rehabilitation nd

play

of

appearances

ertain

3.

Although

not

yet

available in

English,

Dix theses sur

la

politique appears

as

an

appen-

dix to

the second edition

of

Aux

bords

du

politique.

4.

For

afurther

elaboration

of

this

concept,

see Rancibere

s

Dis-agreement, hapter

4: From

Archipolitics

to

Metapolitics.

5. See

chapter

2:

The

Uses

of Democracy.

diacritics

/

summer 2000

117



7/15

conceptualizations

hat were

responsive

to

various

heterogeneous

ogics.

In

this man-

ner,

I

reintroduced

Plato's

critique

of a

democratic

conception

of

the

good

[le

bon

plaisir

de

l'homme

democratique]

o as

to

extract rom it

a

positive

notion of democ-

racy

as a

mode of

being

and

as a

collective

form of

symbolization

hat

stands n

opposi-

tion to

the

notion of

democracy

as

a

mere form of

state. I then

incorporated

nto this

moreplayful notion of democracytwo otherprinciples:first,Aristotle's notionof an

artof

politics,

which involves the

ability

to domesticate

appearances

nd

to

use

good

devices

(i.e.,

good sophismata)

n order

o demonstrate

faire

voir]

democracy

o the

democrats,

ligarchy

o the

oligarchs,

etc.-thereby

guaranteeing

he existence

of

friend-

ship

within the

polity. Secondly,

I

turned o the

practices

of workersof the

1830s who

asked for

equal

relationswith the owners and

whose

strikes

became

a

staging

of such

a form of

equality.

I

thus

placed

on

the same

plane

of

appearance-that

is,

on the same

configuration

of

appearances

nd

the same valorizationof

the artificial

imensionof

a

being

in

common-the workers'

political practice

of a

transgressive epresentation

f

equalityandthe art of government,both of which functioned o createa trompe 'oeil

effect of

friendship

between the rich

and

the

poor.

With

these

examples

in

mind,

I con-

trasted this more

positive

notion

of

appearance

and artifice

of

equality

to

those

practices

of

demystification

hat

reproduce

he

old

cognitive

schema

(exemplified,

for

instance,

in

Bourdieuvian

ociology)

that assumes

the

operation

of

power by

means of

the

subject's

own

misrecognition.

This latter ramework

quickly

reveals itself as

untenable n TheEnd of

Politics

or

The Realist

Utopia

essay.6

This

text

is

intendedas a

philosophical commentary

on

a

particular

lectoralevent:

namely,

Mitterand's1988 reelection and

the

mise-en-scene

it

involved.

In

response

to

Chirac,

who

presented

himself

as

the

spokesperson

for the

new forces

of a

productive

economic life

in

France,

Mitterand

presented

himself

as

the

archaic

patriarch

who

symbolically

guaranteed

he

integrity

of the

social

whole

against

the

ever-present

hazardsof civil war and social

dissolution,

a menace

that took

hold

in

France

with the

spectacular

ise of the extremeracist

right

most

vividly

embod-

ied in Le Pen's

xenophobicparty.

The

essay

in

question

hus

stages

a fundamental

ara-

dox

that,

upon

later

reflection,

appeared

o me as a kind of

sophism.

Mitterand's com-

edy

of

the

archaic

became identifiedwith the kind of art

of

politics

that could

appease

conflict. This

pacific

artof

politics

becamefurther

dentified

with anAristoteliannotion

of

a

politics

of

friendship,

all the while

keeping

an

eye

on

the Freudianwisdom that

opposes the necessity of symbols for a neurotic ife in common to the greatpsychotic

catastrophe.

Politics,

I

suggested,

has

always

consisted

in

suppressing

the

political

so

as to realize t.

Admittedly,

his

position

nsists too

strongly

upon

a

valorization

f demo-

cratic

artifice. It tends to

identify

this artifice

with a

comedy

of

power,

and

the

text

demonstrateshow the

suppression

of the

political

s,

in

effect,

an

ambiguousexpres-

sion.

This

comedy

of

power

had the

pretense

of

drivingaway

the

prepoliticalpack;

but,

in order

or

this to

occur,

t

also

had

to do

away

with

the

political

tself,

that

s,

with

the structural

ntagonism

of a life

in

common.

The

essay

thus affirms

that

that

which

opposes

itself

to the

fury

of the

silent,

the

pure

hatredof the

other,

s not

peace

but a

differentkind of struggle: t is nota comedyof power but a divisive actof thedemos

understood

as the

power

of

dissolution.That

s,

it

is the idea

of

political

conflict

under-

stood as a

specific

kind of

symbolization

of

alterity

and not the

parading

of the kind of

power

thatacts as the

guarantor

f theOne.

In

my

text,

therewas thus

an

untenableconflationof the

political,

understood

as

the

power

of a

disincorporated ollectivity,

with the art of

politics,

understood

philo-

sophically

as thatmode of

governance

hat

can

guarantee eace.

To

put

the matter

bluntly,

6. Rancihre,

On

the

Shores

of

Politics,

chapter

1.

118



8/15


9/15

rights

of

princes

in

the face of

aristocratic,

popular,

and

religious

revolts-serve to

produce

a

revolutionary

mise-en-scene of

the

rights

of the

people.

In a

similar

fashion,

Marxist

scenariosdo not

stop

the

alimentationof dissension

onto the same

democratic

stage

they

ferventlyattempt

o overcome.

Finally,politics

and

political

philosophy

have

not

stopped

pillaging

each other'sarsenal o

as

to

perfect

t

and

use it

against

each other.

3

Davide

Panagia:

It has been commented

upon by

some that t is hard o

categorizeyour

writings.

That

s,

your

work is

at once

philosophical

and

literary,

historicaland

political.

I

have at

times

been

asked,

when

discussing your

works

in

a

public setting,

to

explain

whether

you

are

aphilosopher,ahistorian,apoliticalthinker, r a literary ritic.Itseems to methatthese

questions

are

misleading.

That

is,

I

find

the

critical force of

your writings

to rest on a

sense of

contemporaneity

f forms

andhistoricalsensibilities.

By

this,

I

mean that

your

writings

make at

one and

the same time a

gesture

toward

one

form of

knowledge

(i.e.,

philosophy)

while

discussing

another

(i.e.,

politics).

As

well,

there is a sense of

contemporaneity

n

your

use of

historical

examples

and

your

discussion of

historical

figures.

In

this

regard,

especially,

I

am

reminded

of

your

treatmentof Jacotot

n

your

The

Ignorant

Schoolmaster,

where the historical

example

of

the

figure

of

Jacotot

also

ad-

dresses a series of

questions brought

to

the

fore

during

the debates

regarding

educa-

tional

reform n

France

n

the mid

1980s.

Can

you

comment

upon

the role that the historical

example,

whetheran event

like

Mitterand's

eelectionor a

figure

ike

Jacotot,

plays

in

your writings

and

yourparticular

sense of the historical?

Am I correct

in

characterizing

your

treatment of these matters

as one of

the

contemporaneity

f historical

emergences?

Rancikre's

Reply:

By

the notion of

contemporaneity

understand

wo

things:

the first is that an

object

of

reflection commands

the

aperture

of

a

specific temporality.

That

is,

it commandsthe

presence

of a

process

of

writing,

of the constructionof a

specific

form of

writing,

ori-

ented toward an intrusiveencounter

with

a

specific

mode of

thinking

that,

in

its

turn,

creates

a

particular hought-eventby

interrupting

he

organization

of a class of

objects

or a series of

performances.

Thinking

or me is

always

a

rethinking.

t is

an

activity

that

displaces

an

object away

from the site of

its

originalappearance

r

attending

discourse.

Thinking

means to submit

an

object

of

thought

to a

specific

variation hat includes

a

shift

in

its discursive

register,

ts

universe

of

reference,

or

its

temporaldesignations.

In

the case of Mitterand hat

you

mention,

I extracted he event of an election from the

field

of

political sociology

in

order

to

conceptualize

a

variationof the

foundational

narratives

of

political philosophy.

I considered how it is that that which is

given

to

thought

as

an

object

of

political inquiry

was also a mise-en-schne

of variousroles and

postures

and not

necessarily

he contentof

policy

programs

or theirrelation o different

social

forces,

economic

imperatives,

tc. It is

this

staging

that

determines

he

conditions

for

a

constitutive

rethinking;

hat is to

say,

it

is a

restaging.

The elaborationof these

momentsof

thinking

s for me thetask of a

philosophy

that

challenges

the boundaries

separating

heclasses of discourses.

Returning

once

again

to

my

The

Nights of

Labor I

120



10/15

extracted

those worker's texts from their socioeconomic links

so

as to

read them as

antiplatonicphilosophical myths

while at once

exposing

the

history

of a

specific

gen-

eration

of

peoples

marked

by

such a

foundational

vent as the Parisrevolt of

July

1830,

an event that

played

a

role

comparable,perhaps,

o

the

one

May

'68

played

for

my

own

generation

with

its

own

battle

cry

that

Nothing

will be

as

before ).

In both

instances,

what is requireds a stagingof this mythico-philosophical vent that marks he advent

of

thinking

or those

who were not

initially

destined

to

think.

This

staging implicates

a

theoretical

frameworkthat

is,

at

once,

a

biographical

framework:one that does not

focus

exclusively

on life histories

but rather

on

privileged

moments

of

experience

of a

life

that

becomes a

kind

of

writing

(the

equivalent,

I

would

say,

of

those

interlacing

monologues comprising

he lives of six

people

found

in

Virginia

Woolf's The

Waves).

Similarly,

n

The

Ignorant

Schoolmaster,

extracted

a

character hathad

the stature

of

a

curiosity

within

the

history

of

pedagogy.

This

history

s

comprised

of such

curiosi-

ties,

of such stories of

original

or delirious inventorswho overcome

seemingly

insur-

mountablechallengeswhich then become thegrounding or a madprehistoryof rea-

sonable methods of

teaching

and

learning.

With

Jacotot,

I

uncovereda

figure

whose

originality

was

groundedprecisely

in

his

ability

to

interrogate

he

traditional

ink

between

utopianextravagance

and a

reasonable

methodology,

and

I

projected

his

fig-

ure

bluntly upon

the scene of the

pedagogical

debates

occurring

n

Francewhile

I

was

writing:

debates

that,

at the

time,

opposed

those

sociologists

who

proposed

the reduc-

tion of

inequalities

by

adopting

certain

methodsof

learning

more

amenable o

various

disenfranchised

lasses)

to

proponents

of

a

republican

chool of

pedagogicalthought

that

promoted

he

ideal of

equality

of

learningthrough

a

universalismof

knowledge.

I

thus

organized

a

contemporaneous

onfrontation

y

presenting

Jacototnot

as

the

rep-

resentativeof a rehabilitative ducational

strategy

but

rather,

as a

philosophico-mythi-

cal

figure

who marks-in all

his

philosophical

and

politicalradicality--certain

egalitar-

ian stakes

by

not

makingequality

an

end

that needed to be achieved

but rather

by

con-

sidering

t the axiom of a kind of

thinking.

Whatwas

required

was a

specific

enunciative

form that abolished the distance between these

two

poles.

The

Ignorant

Schoolmaster

could thus

ust

as

well be

read as a

philosophical

narrative

f

a

purely

fictitious

hero

as

muchas it could be readas the

contemporary

xcursusof an

atemporal

tudentof

Jacotot.

To

construct

a

specific

present-that

is,

a sound chamber

or the resonancesof

an

event

of

thinking-thus requires

a double

transgression.

On the

one

hand,

it is

incum-

bent to transgresshe divisions of discourse:divisionsthatseparatehedisciplines(phi-

losophy, political

science,

history,

etc.),

the divisions of noble

and

profane

discourse,

the divisions between a

logic comprised

of links in

a chain of

real events and the

logic

of

a

chain of fictional

events. On the other

hand,

t is

imperative

o revoke the

authorita-

tive

principle

derivedfrom the

succession

of

historical

events.

And it is the

implications

derived from this second

transgressive mperative

hat

I

understand o be

critical to an

idea of

contemporaneity.

To

conceptualize

the

contemporaneity

f

thought

requires

the

reliance

on a

certainanachronism r

untimeliness.

In

the

early

stages

of

my

work

there

was,

without

a

doubt,

a

desire on

my part

to

return

o

some historical real

n

orderto overcome

a

metaphysics

of

history. Spe-

cifically,

I

began

by

searching

n

the archives or

examples

from

the

writings

of

workers

so as

to

respond

o the

Marxistdiscourseon

history,

on the

workers'

movement,

etc. But

I

quickly

realized that such a return o the real did

not,

in and of

itself,

change

the

theoreticalterms of the

game.

It was

entirely

useless

to discover a mode of

speaking

proper

to workers

[une

parole

ouvridre]

hat the Marxist

enterprise

had overlooked.

What

is

necessary

s

to liberatesuch a word from

the dictates of

historicism tself since

it

is

indubitably

he case

thathistoricism

s

as much a discourse

of

propriety-of keep-

ing things

in

their

place -as

any

other.Wheneverwe

say

such

and such

an

example

diacritics / summer

2000 121



11/15

pertains

o a

philosophy,

a

history,

a

literature,

or

a

sociology,

we are

at

one

and the

same

time

asserting

that these

things

can be

explained

only

in terms of

their

specific

place

and time: Jacotot

belongs

to his

time,

proletarians elong

to an

age

of

capitalism,

etc. This is

the fundamental

conception

of

history

established

by

the

histoire des

mentalit6s

xemplifiedby

the

Annales

school:

LucienFebvredemonstrates ow

Rabelais

cannot be an atheist because atheism was not a

concept

availablein Rabelais's

time;

while

Leroy-Ladurie

emonstrates,

n

a similar

ashion,

how the

Cathar

heresy

was the

result of

the

lifestyle

of

a

specific village.

In

these latter nstances there

is

also a

prin-

ciple

of

contemporaneity

t work but it is a sense of

contemporaneity

hat is in

direct

contrast

o the one I

propose

in

my writings.

It is a

sense of

contemporaneity

hat re-

stricts

nquiry

as it assertsthatone can

only

thinkwhat a

specific

time

and

place

allows

us to

think.It is

yet

another

nstanceof thatPlatonic

mpulse

to

the

proper

have been

discussing

throughout

his

interview,

and

t is

this

impulse

that structureswhat

I

oppose

in

my

intellectual

pursuits.

To

explicate

a

phenomenon

by referring

t to it's

time

means to putintoplay a metaphysicalprincipleof authority amouflagedas a method-

ological precept

of historical

nquiry.

WhatI

attempted

o

explicate,

both in

TheNames

of History

and

Dis-agreement,

s how the

limit

of this

mode

of

thinking

can be

found in

extreme nstances ike historical

revisionism; .e.,

thatwhich cannotconform o

a

legiti-

mate time could not have occurredand thereforenever existed.

My

own sense of

contemporaneity pposes

this

identitarian

resentism.

It is al-

ways untimely

or

anachronistic.

n this

manner,

o

markthe event

of a worker'sutter-

ances

presupposes

he

restaging

of certain

ntirely

anachronistic,

ymbolicoppositions-

those found

in the

etymology

of

proletarius

or in the

ancient

philosophical

heorization

of

leisure

otium].

There s

thinking

when one

authorizesoneself

to think-within the

context

of a different ime and

place-what

that

particular

ime considered

llegitimate

to

thinking.

Jacotot s a

figure entirely

constructedwithin an

Enlightenment

rame of

reason.

We

can

assertthat he is of another

ime

than the one in which he intervenes-a

time,

that

is,

even

stranger

han our

own.

But this

is not

the end of

the

story;

rather,

he

end of

the

affair

s

thatJacototderails he

logic

thatconnects a Cartesian

pirit

of natu-

ral

enlightenment

with

that of

Enlightenment

eason itself and with a certain

sense

of

institutional

progress

hat sustainsmodem educational

ystems.

In

short,

he transforms

Enlightenment

reason

into

a

folly.

Such

a

notion

of

reason had

promised

a future

of

progress

by

entrusting

o educators he

slow

and determinedconduct of individuals

and peoples. This ideal of progressthus coincides perfectlywith the progressof an

educational

system

based on the

historicist

notion of a

slow

and careful educationof a

people; equally applicable

to

that

pervasive

sociologizing

vision

that,

in

our

day,

is

committed o

the reductionof

cultural

nequalities.By

combining

he

pedagogical

ogic

of the

Enlightenment

with

the Cartesiannotion that

everyone possesses

natural

eason,

Jacotottransforms

Enlightenment

eason into

somethingseemingly

foolish

in

the

light

of

conventionalwisdom.

He derives the mad notion that all

intelligence

is

equal

and

that

this

equality

is a

presupposition

hat

requires

demonstrationand not a

goal

that

needs to

be

attained;

and

finally,

he

derives

the

notion that the ideals of

progress

and

progressivemovementare,in and of themselves,principlesof inequalityby proposing

equality

as

a

social end and

entrusting

certain

educational

experts

with the task

of

reducing

heeffects of the clashbetweenan

equality

o come with

existing inequality

means,

in

short,

to institute

inequality

as a

principle

whose

reproduction

s

infinite.

Jacotot

thus contrastshis ideal of intellectual

emancipation

o the common ideal of

progress

hatsustainsboth

the

large

and small

undertakings

f

the educationof children

and

peoples

of

all

ages.

It is

this

radical

and

provocativegesture

that

I

found

necessary

to evince. But

in

order o do

this,

it

was

inadequate

o

simply oppose

Jacotot's deas to

those that were

currently

n

place.

Rather t became

necessary

to constitute he

present

122



12/15

of a

unique

history

so as

to create a fracture

n our own

present;

by

which I mean in our

own manner

of

according

to

the

present

its

past

and its

future,

and the conditions of

possibility

and

potentiality

contained herein.It is this sense of narration ndevocation

that

I

privilege.

Admittedly,

t would be banal to assert that such and such a thinker

s

our

contemporary.

However,

it seems to me a different

thing

altogether

o constructa

contemporaneity

etweena thinker's

hought

andourown: in order o constitutea mo-

ment

in

thinking,

a

moment

that

gives

itself

to

thought,

t

is

perhapsalways necessary

for thereto

be

two

temporalities

at

work;

n

order

o constitute

an

object

of

thought

t is

perhapsequally

necessary

to have two

different

registers

of

discourse

in

play.

4

Davide

Panagia:

In

a

1996

Times

LiterarySupplement

eview of

your

On the

Shores

of

Politics

the

re-

viewer

refers

to

your

work

as

desirabledissent. Dissensus

is,

of

course,

an

important

aspect

of

your

work and

is

a

primary anti-principle

f

your

notion

of

democracy.

In

contradistinction

o the

consensus-oriented

iberal

deal

of

equality

as

the summation

of

political

interest,

you posit

division as

the

political

calculus

par

excellence.

I have the sense that

your

discussion

of

dissensus

as a

democratic

mode

of

thinking

also involves a

critique

of

leftist

politics

in

Europe.

On this

rendering,

division

as a

privileged anti-principle

f democratic

action is

intended o counter

he

centripetal

en-

dencies

of

current

eftist

political parties

that,

for the

sake of a

broader

electoral

base,

move closer andcloser to the center.Immediate

examples

that

ump

to mindare

Tony

Blair's vision of the

Labour

party

n

Britainor

Italy's

Ulivo

party

ormed

by

the

current

President

of the

European

Commission,

Romano

Prodi.

Could

you

comment

on

this

importantly

itigious

anti-principle

of

dissensus and

how

you

distinguish

t from conventional

accountsof

democracy

as the

competition

of

interestsbetween

individuals

and

groups?

Rancihre's

Reply:

In

effect,

my

reflections on

politics

were oriented

oward

a

considerationof

the

devel-

opment

of the

consensualist

deology

both

in

France

and

with

regard

o

European

o-

cialism

throughout

he

1990s.

Herethe

difficulty

s in

identifying

what

consensusmeans:

it

doesn't

merely

refer to a taste for

discussion and/orsocial

and

political peace.

Con-

sensus refers

to the

configuration

of

a field

of

perception-in-common,

n

instance

of

what

I

have

called the

partition

f

the

sensible,

even before it becomes a

predisposi-

tion towarddeliberation.

Consensus means

the

sharing

of a common

and

nonlitigious

experience:

its essence

is the

affirmation

of

the

preconditions

hat determine

political

choice as

objective

and

univocal. Consensusdiscourse

n

political thought

asserts

that

political

actionis circumscribed

by

a seriesof

large-scale

economic, financial,de-

mographic,

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

attitude

of

arbitration irectedat the residualand

marginal

possibilities

left behind. On the basis of the

given,

the

right

and the left are

supposed

to

make

different

choices;

to do more

(the

left)

or do less

(the

right)regarding

edistri-

bution.

In

this

regard,

he left

might

make more of the social or the

cultural,

ut this

is

only marginal.

The ideal of

consensus

affirms

that

what is

essential to a life

in

com-

mon

depends

on

objective

equilibriums

owardwhich we

may

all orientourselves.

diacritics / summer 2000

123



13/15

Now,

this affirmationof

objective

givens

handled

by

the

experts

n

power

s

precisely

the

negation

of the

political;

it defines what

I

have

proposed

to call

the

po-

lice. '

The

category

of the

police,

as

I

intend

t,

is

neither

a

repressive

nstrument

or

the idea of a controlon

life theorized

by

Foucault.

The

essence of

the

police

is the

principle

of

saturation;

t is a

mode of the

partition

of

the

sensible

that

recognizes

nei-

ther ack nor

supplement.

As conceived

by

the

police,

society

is a

totality

comprised

of

groups performingspecific

functions and

occupying

determined

spaces.

From the

ancient divisions of the ordersof

society

to the modern

gestation

of the

flux

of

wealth,

populations,

and

opinions, history

is

replete

with

examples

of

this

phenomenon.

The

political

is what disturbs his

order

by introducing

either

a

supplement

or

a

lack. The

essence of the

political

is

dissensus;

but dissensus is not

the

opposition

of interestsand

opinions.

It

is a

gap

in the sensible: the

political persists

as

long

as

there is a

dissensus

aboutthe

givens

of

a

particular

ituation,

of

what is

seen

and what

might

be

said,

on

the

question

of who

is

qualified

to see or

say

what is

given.

This means that the

political

is

notcomprisedof the conflict of interestsand values betweengroupsnor of the arbitra-

tion

by

the

state

between

these

values and interests.The

political

is

comprised

of

spe-

cific

subjects

that are outnumberedwith

respect

to the

count

of the

objective

whole

of

the

population.

t is this definition

of

politics

that

s

involved in

the

very concept

of the

demos.

The

demos

is thus neither he sum of the

population

nor the disfavoredelement

therein;nor,

nversely,

s it its ideal

representation.

We know thatthe term

democracy

derives

historically

from the Athenianname of

the

reformsenacted

by

Clisthene,

who

reorganized

he ancient tribes into demes:9

erritorially

eparated ircumscriptions;

n

abstractand artificial

space

that

was

constituted

as such. This constitution hattered he

territorial

ower

of the

owners, and,

more

generally,

t shattered

logic

thatconsecrated

power

to those who had

a

natural ntitlement o exercise

it.

It

is this

symbolic

rupture

that

is,

for

me,

the

instituting

principle

of

politics.

The

demos

is,

properly peaking,

an

excessive

part-the

whole of those who are

nothing,

who do

not

have

specific proper-

ties

allowing

them to exercise

power.

This is

what

is

stated,

a

contrario,

n

an

astonish-

ing

section of Book III

of Plato's

Laws.

This text first adumbrates ll

the

necessary

itles

required

o exercise

power:age,

birth,wealth,

knowledge,

andvirtue.

Now,

at

the end

of

this list

is an

anomalyregarding

a kind

of

power

attributed o chance

(Plato

ironically

refersto this as the

choice of

god );

t is a

specific

kind of

power

for

those who are not

entitledto exercise

power.

Plato,

the

quintessential pponent

of

democracy,

has

given

it

its most crystallinedefinition:democracyis not a political regime, in the sense of a

constitutional

orm;

nor is it

a

form of life

(as

we learn

throughTocquevillian

sociol-

ogy)

or a culture

of

pluralism

and

tolerance.

Democracy

s,

properly

peaking,

he

sym-

bolic

institutionof

the

political

in

the form of the

power

of those who are not entitledto

exercise

power-a

rupture

n the orderof

legitimacy

and domination.

Democracy

s

the

paradoxical

power

of those who do not count:the count of

theunaccounted

for. '

The notion of dissensus thus means

the

following:

politics

is

comprised

of a

sur-

plus

of

subjects

that

introduce,

within the saturated

order of the

police,

a

surplus

of

objects.

These

subjects

do

not

have

the

consistency

of coherentsocial

groups

united

by

commonpropertyor a commonbirth,etc. They exist entirelywithin the act, andtheir

actionsare the manifestationof a

dissensus;

that

is,

the

making

contentious

of

the

giv-

ens of a

particular

ituation. The

subjects

of

politics

make visible

that which is not

8. See the

chapter

entitled

Wrong:

Politics and Police in

Ranciere's

Dis-agreement.

9. Demes were

townships

or

divisions

of

ancientAttica.

In

modem

Greece the term

refers

to

communes.

10.

In

Dis-agreement,

Ranciere

ormulates

this

paradox

in

this

way:

Politics exists wher-

ever

the

count

of

parts

and

parties

of

society

is

disturbed

by

the

inscriptionof

a

part of

those

who

have no

part

[123].

124



14/15

perceivable,

that

which,

underthe

optics

of a

given perceptive

field,

did not

possess

a

raison

d'

tre,

that

which did not have

a

name.

The extremecase of this is

exemplified

in

the

parable

of

plebeian

secession

of which

I

spoke

earlierwhere the

patricians

ould

not

even hear

that the

plebeians

were

speaking

and

where the latterhad to construct

a

po-

lemical

scene

so

that

the noises

that

came

out of their mouths could

count as

argu-

mentativeutterances.This extremesituationrecalls what constitutes he

ground

of

po-

litical action:

certain

subjects

hatdo not

count

create

a common

polemical

scene where

they put

into contention

he

objective

status

of

what

is

given

and

impose

an examina-

tion

and discussion

of those

things

that

were not

visible,

hat were not accounted or

previously.

Consensus

is thus

not

anothermanner

of

exercising democracy,

ess heroic

and

more

pragmatic:

one

does

not

practice

democracy except

under

the

form

of

these

mises-en-scenes that

reconfigure

he

relations

of the visible and the

sayable,

that create

new

subjects

and

supplementary bjects.

Consensus,

hus

understood,

s

the

negation

of

the democraticbasis for politics:it desires to have well-identifiablegroupswith spe-

cific

interests,

aspirations,

values,

and culture.

On

this

rendering,

hen,

your metaphor

of

centripetal

and

centrifugal

orces

is mis-

leading.

Consensualistcentrism flourishes with the

multiplication

of

differences

and

identities. It nourishes

tself with the

complexification

of

the

elements

that need to be

accounted

for in

a

community,

with the

permanentprocess

of

autorepresentation,

ith

all

the elements and

all

their differences:

he

larger

he

number

of

groups

and identities

that need

to be

taken

into account

in

society,

the

greater

he need for arbitration.The

one of consensus nourishes tself

with the

multiple-or,

perhaps,

with

a certain dea

of the

multiple

that allows itself to be

objectified

and counted. What consensualism

rejects,

on the other

hand,

s the

multiple

thatfunctionsas a

supplement

o the count

and

as

a break n the

autorepresentationalogic

of

society,

that

is,

the

supplementary

mul-

tiple

of

politicalsubjects.

We

know

thatconsensualism's aste for the free

circulation

of

wealth

has,

as its

corollary,

a

concern

to

limit the

circulationof

populations

and

espe-

cially

of

poorer

populations.

Our

governments-declaring

themselves

obligated

to

the

principle

of the free circulationof

goods

and,

through

nternational

greements,

ommit

themselves

to

the

progressive

dissolution

of

ancient nationalistand

protectionist

sys-

tems-rediscover all the

prerogatives

of

the

nation-statewhen

they

choose

to limit im-

migration.

European socialists arewholeheartedly ommitted o thislogic.As for the emer-

gence

of

alternativemovements,

his is

entirely

dependent

upon

the

possibility

of

creat-

ing

new forms of

subjectification

hat

break

with

the

actual

separation

of

domains

of

contestation.

Ancient forms of

political subjectification-the

subjectification

of work-

ers,

for

instance-rested

on

the

capacity

to

universalize

particular

onflicts as

general

instances of dissensus and

were

based

on

large-scale

scenes of confrontationbetween

the

logic

of

politics

and the

logic

of the

police.

In this

regard,

hose

internationalist

nd

anti-imperialist

movementsof the

1960s addressed heir

own

states as ones

engaged

in

colonial or neocolonial wars.

Today,

his scene

is

fractured.The

responsibility

of order

is dividedin anindecisivemannerbetweennation-states,nternationalnstitutions,and

a faceless world-order:

a center that

is both

everywhere

and

nowhere.

Certainly

the

capitalist

order-or

disorder-engenders

formsof

struggle.

There

are,

ata national

evel,

social

movements committed

o the

struggleagainst

the destruction

of

ancient

systems

of social

protection.

These movements are not

merely

movements that defend

privi-

leges

that the

majority

opinion

denounces.

They

have a

political

signification

n that

they

contest

the

consensualist

dogma

regarding

he existence of

objective

social

givens

against

which

the nation-statewould

be

helpless.

There

are

nationaland

international

movements

that attack consensualist

logic by illuminating

the forms of exclusion it

diacritics

/

summer 2000

125



15/15

engenders,

movementsof the

unemployed,

of

the sans

papiers

hatthe state

excludes

from the

free circulation

t

endorses

by

not

granting

them

legal

status.

There

are,

finally,

movements

hat

address

nternational

conomic

institutions,

as

we

witnessed in

Seattle. These different

kinds

of

movements have

in

common

a desire

to

question

the

consensualist

ogic

and to

bring

to

the

fore the

contradictions f

consensualism.At

the

sametime,theyalso share n a desire to challengethe old oppositionsbetweenpolitics

and

syndicalism,

or

the

avant-garde

nd mass

movements.But it is true thatthe

separa-

tion of these scenes

makes their unification

nto

transversal

orms

of

subjectification

close to

impossible:

there is no statist scene

to

confront.

The

struggle

is

against

the

march6

mondial hat s

everywhere

and nowhereso thatthere s no

incarnation f the

adversary

on

a

specific

scene. The

struggle

against

iberal

globalization

hus

results

n

a

confusion,

in

giving support

o

the

nation-state s

such.

However,

the modes of intellec-

tual

justification

of

the consensualistorderhave lost the

authority hey

had at the

begin-

ning

of the

previous

decade. Politics

today

is

difficult,

but it is

rethinkable:

t is once

again possibleto separatepolitics,

in

principle, romthegestationof the flux of popula-

tions and

goods.

Conducted

and translated

by

Davide

Panagia

WORKS

CITED

Carrier,

Peter. DesirableDissent.

Rev.

of

On the Shores

of

Politics. Times

Literary

Supplement

14

June 1996: 29.

Ranciere,

Jacques.

Dis-agreement:

Politics

and

Philosophy.

Trans.

Julie

Rose. Minne-

apolis

: U of MinnesotaP, 1998.

.

Dix

theses

sur a

politique.

Aux

bords

du

politique.

2nd ed. Paris:

La

Fabrique,

1998.

164-85.

.

The

Ignorant

Schoolmaster:Five Lessons

in

Intellectual

Emancipation.

Trans.

and intro. KristinRoss.

Stanford,

CA: Stanford

UP,

1991.

. The Names

of History:

On

the

Poetics

of

Knowledge.

Trans. Hassan

Melehy.

Foreword

by Hayden

White.

Minneapolis:

U

of

Minnesota

P,

1994.

. The

Nights of

Labor:

The

Workers'Dreamn

Nineteenth-Century

rance. Trans.

John

Drury.Philadelphia:Temple

UP,

1989.

. On theShoresof Politics. Trans.Liz Heron.London:Verso,1995.

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