Interview Jacques Ranciere

8/13/2019 Interview Jacques Ranciere

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The ConversantInterview pro jects, talk poetries, em bodied in quiry.

ContributorsSam ple Pag e

October 30, 2013

Pablo Bustinduy with Jacques Rancière

Jacques Rancière

T his inter view took place during the summer o f 2013, in Par is. T he conver sation is structured in two par ts; the f irst concer ns the relations o f language and wr iting, the second the r elations o f language and politics (as well as some concluding thoughts on the current politics o f Eur o pe ). The conce pt o f tr anslation sets the context o f the conver sation and acts as a brid ge between the two parts. T hisinterview was or iginall y conducted and r ecor ded in Fr ench and tr anscribed/ tr anslated to res pect the

f idelit y o f the original inter view.

Pablo Bustinduy: I had the chan ce to m eet you w hile translating one of your books into Spanish, and I guessyou’ve had m any con versations of the kind w e had then . I was looking at your library and won dering: do youknow how many languages y our work h as been translated in to? Do you have copies of those editions?

Jacques Rancièr e: It’s dif f icult to know , because there h ave been dif f erent ty pes of translations—books,articles, also pirated translations—and there are m any that I sim ply don’t know about. There are probablytranslations of my work into at least 20 dif f erent languages, includin g many that I cann ot read, of course, like

Japan ese, Korean, Chin ese, Turkish or Arabic. I do have plenty of those books. For m e, many of them aresomething like souvenirs of a relationship, not ex actly ob jects of collection but of some sort of witnessing…witnesses of a f riendship, a connection, the f act that th ere are people who read the Korean or Turkish equiv alentof what I tried to conv ey in T he I gnor ant Schoolmaster , f or instance.

PB: I am interested in the lim its of this “equivalence.” You hav e alw ays had a philosophical interest indisagreem ents and m isunderstandings, in th eir ef f ects and sig nif ications. Wh at is your attitude towards themisunderstan dings that are at tim es ref lected in the translations of your w ork?

JR: Evidently , I know there is a considerable risk of misinterpretation, and it is enough to see what people, even



those who read the original French texts, can do w ith a syntagm like par tage d u sensible. Recently a young person in China asked m e whether aisthesis meant sensation or perception . He certainly knew that aisthesis is aGreek word associated w ith these two m eanings, and he w as asking which on e I would select. This is a classical

problem : thinking the meaning of a concept in term s of an identif ication of the thin g that it designates. I could onlyanswer that aisthesis is not the nam e of a specif ic reality, but rather the concept of a regim e of experience thatinvolv es a certain m ode of relating sen sation, perception and m eaning. On th e one h and, a concept is not a word.It is the operator of a displacem ent of the ordinary f orm of connection between states of things an d meaning s. On

the other han d, a concept still convey s a multiplicity of conn otations that are attached to w ords. For instan ce, inFrench it is very hard to keep at bay the conn otations of Christian Eucharist attached to the w ord partage . Intranslating it to another lan guage, you have to choose betw een words convey ing the sense of “share” and wordsconveying that of division and ex clusion. The w orst case is that of the word mé sentente , which has beentranslated as “disagreem ent.” Of course, th is conveys th e usual m eaning of the word in French , but the conceptthat I created m eans m uch m ore. It plays w ith th e dif f erent meanin gs of entendr e, which in Fren ch means at oncehearing, understanding and agreeing. Thus, it m eans a f orm of polem ical rationality, which is very precise and yetremains untranslatable. Th e gap betw een the languages redoubles th e gap betw een word and concept.

On W riting

PB: I was thinking that, during the years of your ph ilosophical training, writin g becam e the ob ject of acertain suspicion or m istrust. Th is attitude could take th e f orm of the critique of ideology, of certain

psych oanalytic precautions, of the practices of genealog y and deconstruction…in general, all these seem ed tohave in com mon a sort of critical distan ce towards the ef f ects of writing itself , as w ell as an exploration of the

blind spots that intervene in the very operation of reading , as a reader “translates” a text into a specif ic reg ime of visibility and intelligibility . Is th ere a connection betw een the risks of misinterpretation in the translation or th ereception of a text—the gaps or m argins th at you just spoke of —an d such a suspicion of the lim itations,excesses, or dang ers of writing?

JR: I don’t know if there w as such mistrust and precaution tow ards th e dan gers of writing. One needs toremem ber that, on the contrary, there w as a sort of f aith, a som ewhat m aterialist f aith in the signif ier. My youthcoincided w ith this epoch of great f aith in the materiality of the sig nif ier; I would say that the m istrust w as mostlydirected towards im ages, tow ards any thing that “m ade im ages” or “turned in to images.” Ag ainst that, I w ould saythat there w as a contrary sort of trust in th e text: the idea that on e needed to stare at th e text, to look at it upclose, to read at a distance that could let th e text appear as a pure signif ier, a text w ithout im age, while at thesame time there was obviously a whole netw ork of images being developed in and around this vision. In th oseyears, I don’t th ink th ere was a proper critique of writing ; betw een 1960 and ‘70, structuralism was in a certainway a philosophy of truth, of the truth of writing.

PB: What do you understand by “im age” as it relates to th e act of writing? Is all w riting a production or amanipulation of images?

JR: I was not making a personal statem ent about w riting. I was just sum ming up the structuralist belief of thattime: truth was put on the side of the signif ier -on th e relation of one sig nif ier to other signif iers- while the signif iedwas put on th e side of ideolog y, or, in Lacanian term s, on the side of the im aginary. Everyth ing that involv ed therelation of the signif ier to a ref erential reality was suspected of being an “image,” a ref erence to the self -eviden ceof the g iven. Think of the criticism of the “reality ef f ect” that Barthes opposes to the self -organ ization of the text.Such a criticism rested on the assim ilation of the image to th e appearan ce. If you th ink instead of the im age as an



operation , as I tried to do in T he Future o f the I mage, it is clear that writing uses im ages, and conversely , thatthere are tropes in visual art.

PB: One could say that th is f aith in a text w ithout im age is in itself pretty old; one could trace it in th e analyticdream of a writing without n oise or style, the idea of a philosoph y that could reduce itself to a series of transparent signs, pure acts of though t and com munication.

JR: Yes, it is th e old am bition to reach a lang uage that would say exactly what it say s; it is the driv e and the pretention to def ine; it is this com pletely craz y idea, w hich inspires a trend w ithin analytic philosophy, of makingcoincide beginning and def inition. This is an ideolog y that our Hegelian training, I m ay say, has com pletely kept at

bay. Despite everythin g, and in so f ar as w e were raised as dialectician s, we were sh aped in to a w ay of thinkingthat is aw are of the f act that beginnings hav e nothing to do w ith def inition s, that def inition s com e at the end, thatnothing is in itself in the word, an d that concepts are on ly in the m ode of a motion, that they are the result of a

process. Already in the structuralist m oment th ere w as a clear opposition to th is analy tic position, but there was,noneth eless, a deep f aith in writing itself too. And there w as that other f ront as well, related to the world of

psych oanalysis, this idea according to w hich truth is som ething that is written , even written on the body. This w ascertain ly not m y main aspiration back then. But when I becam e more sensitive to the f act th at words are never

def initions of things or states of things but are like weapons exch anged in com bat, in dialogue, I naturally f ound myself very f ar away f rom such a conception of language.

PB: In w hat sense is this criticism not applicable in th e case of poetry? On e could perhaps understand certainam bition s of poetry precisely along these lines: a language that says exactly w hat it says.

JR: Yes, there is a certain ideology of poetry as a sort of original lan guage. There is this whole Heideggerianconstellation aroun d the idea of a language that w ould be closest to being. Having spent m any years w orking inthe archives, I never f ound this idea v ery attractive. What has interested m e most about poetry, as w ell asliterature, is precisely the ways in w hich w ords spend their tim e moving and circulating, copyin g one another,

transf orming into one another. I am very f ar aw ay f rom all these ideas of a f irst and original lan guage,includin g the case of poetry. This is what I tried to say in the book on Mallarm é. The g reat dram aturgy of the“throw of the dice” is in itself a take on Vig ny’s bouteille à la mer, which is a way of sayin g that all poetry an d most poets com e back to w hat is already w ritten; th ey transf orm what has already been w ritten.

PB: You have m entioned th at words are weapons th at are exch anged in a com bat, and now you insist upon th ef act that there is no such thing as a blan k pag e: w e alway s think against the background of what has already beensaid; we write upon constellations and im ages that are alway s already there. Is w riting, then , a kind of com batagainst th e past, against th e presence of the past in th e present? Is this the tem porality they are inscribed upon ?And if that is the case, does writing im ply the n ecessity of self -ref lection or self -critique?

J.R: Writing im plies the necessity of a relation to words th at already exist, that convey multiple m eanings an d allow f or multiple f orms of re-appropriation. I m entioned the polem ical use th at takes up the words of theadversary and m akes them mean som ething else or ch anges th eir value. This relation to anoth er use of the wordsis not the sam e as a polem ical relation to th e past. Th e latter has tw o main aspects: on the one hand, it m eans the

possibility of re-enacting w ords that w ere more or less disused (I have m entioned som ewhere that “proletarius”was an outdated word in the tim es of the Rom an Em pire). On the other hand, it m eans that the words you useare not your ow n words, that your “person al” use of the words belongs to the im personal lif e of language. Whileoral speech alw ays con veys the idea that you are the origin of your words, w riting makes you f eel that you com e“af ter,” that you are the ef f ect of the im personal lif e of words. It is not a com bat again st the past. Rather, it is a



balance between the w ill to m ake words yours and the acceptance of the f act th at they com e f rom elsewhere and will go elsew here. I think this is w hat is im plied in the exten ded sense of translation that I borrow ed f romJacotot’s thinking of intellectual em ancipation. Em ancipation also im plies that you are aware of the lim its of “self -critique.”

PB: Let m e move brief ly to the “other side” of writing. Som e of your recent work f ocuses on th e idea of thespectator. You h ave written about the ideological underpin nings of the con struction of spectatorship, the

production of passivity as a kind of political apparatus. I w ant to ask you about th e public of philosophy an d whether it is the ob ject of a similar construction. Is there a parallel betw een the spectator and the public, betw eenthe spectator an d the reader?

JR: Philosophy has tw o kinds of public: on the on e hand it speaks to students, who, f rom the poin t of view of the institution , are in a situation of depen dence. On th e other hand, it speaks to readers—that is, to anybody.Moreover, the philosopher is som etimes called by the m edia to speak to a public body of listeners, w hich is asindeterm inate as th e public of spectators in a theater. For m e, the sim ilarity between them lies in the f act th at theunderstanding of the reader, the spectator an d even th e studen t is n ever dependent on your will. Even when the

public is determ ined, as in the case of the studen ts, they are at the sam e time indeterm inate, they are anyone, and

we have to talk to th em as one does to a person who, in any case, has an intelligence of her own, the sam ecapacities as any other. As reg ards to the gen eral public, I hav e alw ays ref used the absolute rule of the media:the im perative to reach out, to low er the bar so as to put oneself within the reach of “the public .” At theuniversity , I alw ays tried as m uch as I could to talk to studen ts at all levels, and I alw ays ref used to m ake thedistinction betw een dif f erent publics: lovers of philosophy, studen ts at the university, people w ho are interested inart an d museum s…

PB: So y ou are sayin g that one can proceed as an “ign oran t writer” af ter all.

JR: Yes, at least as a writer who is ign orant of his own ef f ects; in any case, w e are alw ays ig norant of our own

ef f ects. One can write by addressin g anyone, everyone, whom ever, by trying to say well w hatever on e has tosay, and this is determ ined by what we are talking about, n ot by the people whom we speak to.

PB: Doesn ’t this im ply a certain renun ciation of rhetoric? How can writing then pro ject its ow n task, its owntem porality towards the f uture? Isn’t the calculation of ef f ects one of the essen tial aspects of any intellectualintervention?

JR: There is a distin ction to be m ade. What you calculate is the best way of saying what you h ave to say , whichsim ply m eans of know ing what is it th at you say , with in the lim its of such self -know ledge. Th is means that the f irstwho benef its f rom the clarif ication of though t, the f irst w ho experiences its ef f iciency , is oneself . This happen s on

the condition that you don ’t make th e process of clarif ication dependent on the idea that you are addressing a public th at is m ore or less learned, m ore or less clev er. Even when it com es to publics of “non-specialists,” the point is not whether they f eel that you reach out to them ; the poin t is w hether th ey f eel that you hav e som ething tosay th at deserv es th eir attention.

PB: Let m e get back to the relation between philosophy and its public. The philosopher Dm itri Nikulin noted once in a lecture that today , in th e hard scien ces, nobody w rites books anym ore; research is m ade alm ostexclusively th rough articles, and this is in creasing ly happening in the f ield of the social scien ces, too. Ph ilosophy ,howev er, is still very attach ed to the book as a f orm. Do you thin k that books entail in them selves a certain statusof the w ord, or a certain relation to an d between w ords, that philosophy ref uses to abdicate?



JR: Let m e say f irst that I don’t thin k that there is any thing proper to philosophy in itself . The labor of philosophyis alw ays a work of elucidation that is don e amidst w hat has already been said, already been w ritten. For m e,writing is essen tially a process of research, and th ere is never a separation between th e matter upon which

philosophy works and the writing of philosophy itself . Similarly, I believe that “the book” has not on e but m anyf orms, that th ere are dif f erent books, in the plural. Used in th e singular, I would say, the f orm of “the book” is thef orm that is suspected and cursed precisely by those w ho would w ant philosophy not to be poetry, poetry not to

be literature, w riting not to be writing. Th ink f or instance of Pow er Point: one pro jects on a screen or a wall not

only a f ew images, but a series of poin ts, f irst point, second poin t, third point, and people watch the sentences onthe screen; we hav e the im pression that there is no lon ger writing, that if we suppress the coordin ates of writing,we can hav e som ething like science, a naked and pure science that would then present itself . Needless to say, Icouldn ’t be f arther f rom such a spirit. We alw ays write texts, and those texts can assum e dif f erent f orms,includin g, of course, the f orm of the article. But it is un deniable that today, th e ideolog y of the article m akes it sothat, even in philosoph y, even in th e routin e of the so-called hum an sciences, those who w rite books are

becom ing suspicious. Those w ho are “good” w rite articles, because the article is som e sort of allegory of ascience that w ould present itself without garm ents.

PB: Certain trends of critical sociology have been obsessed with the m ission of theorizin g the general relation

between language and power. Can we reach such a f ormula, a th eory, a conception of the relations betw eenwriting and power? Can we still h ave a stron g notion of “ideology” without any such th eory behind it?

JR: I don’t th ink w e can have a general theory, especially when one raises the question of what we mean and understand by writing , because th ere are dif f erent concepts of writing that im ply dif f erent relations betw eenwriting and power. Writing m ight ref er to a reserved science, a dom ain that only the f ew can enter. Such was the

pow er of the priests in many religion s or the pow er of the mandarins in China. You can also thin k of f unnyexam ples as that of the f amous Sov iet Con stitution, w hich was “the f reest in th e world” but to w hich nobodycould have access. The concept of writing that I hav e put f orward stands at the opposite of this, but it certainlydoes n ot cov er all the practices and m odes of writing . Rather, it ref ers to that m ovement of words spreadin gamong dif f erent orders and “speaking” to people who were n ot their norm al addressees, producing ef f ects thatwe are never quite sure of , so that we of ten do not know w hat th ey are. I h ave always insisted on cases in whichwords do not end up producing the ef f ect that w as in tended, but rath er the exact opposite ef f ect; w ords that arere-translated, re-coded by their auditors, integrated in new sorts of linguistic sequen ces, af f ected by their sensesof the tolerable and the intolerable, of the just an d the un just. This m ovement escapes the will an d the in tention of the one who put th ose words f orward an d con f irms the idea of writing as a sort of language that circulateswithout protection or saf eguards. I don ’t thin k that w e need a “strong notion of ideology,” if this m eans a theory

based on the traditional idea th at power works th rough dissim ulation, w hich m eans that it works by exploiting theincapacity of the ig norant. Power does not work through dissim ulation. It works through consen sus, w hich m eans

the restriction of the possible way s of constructing the given , the m eanin g of that given and thereby the possible.That’s why the f irst problem is to reopen perceptive possibilities, to in vent new possible con nections of events,new w ays of making sense, rather than constructin g a general theory on the relations of pow er and lang uage.

PB: I wonder about the relation between th is whole lif e of writing begin ning af ter its death, and the risks of misunderstan dings, m isperception s and m isinterpretations that w e were mentioning bef ore. Both seem to escapeany f orm of control by the writer or the author, w ho is then him self lef t in a certain position of passivity.

JR: Yes, but f or me this loss of control is really part of what we can ref er to w ith the concept of art. This is precisely w hat distinguish es w riting, though t and theory understood as art f rom that which presen ts itself as



science, as the f ormulation of truths in a lan guage that claim s to be f ree of am biguities. When we do what we calltheory, w e produce sequences of words th at say som ething, that are an interven tion in the f ield of signif ications,

but th at alway s end up som ewhere else. It is necessary to consen t to this departure, even if it means th at one will be f orced to intervene again later.

PB: My f irst question on translation w as aim ed precisely at this point, because th e translator is in a certain sensethe f irst critic of each w ork. The translator is f orced to m ake choices. He ven tures into that no m an’s lan d

between the reading of a work and the rendering of it into another language (which is a sort of rewriting ), and heis exposed to that delirium in which on e can believ e to h ave un derstood the text better than the text itself . Thereis the issue of the ethics of translation, how f ar can one go, what are the m argins of this kin d of work an d whathappens there. So I am curious to know about y our attitude in this respect: m ust there be a principle of trust or conf idence towards the translator? Is this also part of that productive loss of control that you alluded to bef ore?

JR: I think that the translator is af ter all guided by a global principle of f idelity. What I would ask f rom atranslator is f or him to trust the text. Very of ten, w hat happens is that the translator is conf ronted with a ch oice

between an idea that he understands and the language that he speaks, an d he f aces the im possibility to ex pressthe f ormer in the latter. Very of ten I am told: “This cannot be said in English, or in Spanish or in Germ an,” and I

usually reply to this: “But it can not be said in French either!” Th is is where th e question of translation is posed, because the translator is not just anoth er reader—he is som ebody who w ill hav e som eone com ing af ter him ,saying: “This is not what the auth or meant; th is can not be said in this way ; this w ord does not ex ist in our language.” So I alw ays try to rem ind tran slators of the f act that an author is alw ays som eone w ho f orces thelanguage, and that con sequently the challen ge f acing the translator is the f ollowin g: how w ill I f orce the languageso that what I say will both echo that other f orcing by th e origin al text and still reson ate in m y ow n language.

On Politics

PB: There is an interesting tension betw een, on the one han d, the f idelity principle an d, on the other, the need to

f orce th e language. I was thinking of something that might sound very dif f erent, but perhaps there is a con nectionto be m ade. In the relations between th eory an d practice, in a political contex t f or exam ple, the m odel you h avealway s com batted is one that conceives the application of theory as a sort of translation , a translation of thoughtor speech in to actions, bodies and f acts. But one could think that in th e relation betw een ideas and practicesthere is also a certain principle of f idelity ; there are ideas th at inspire; there are watch words an d concepts thatgenerate their own f orces, because they stand f or principles to w hich we are bound by a certain commitment, asort of political loyalty or f idelity, even if one is of ten oblig ed to f orce them , to exercise som e sort of violenceagainst th em, in order to m ake them productive an d to stabilize the very realities upon which they stand.

JR: But it is n ecessary to realize that here too w e are in the realm of a certain f orcing. Th ere are tw o im portant

things to be noted. The f irst is that we m ust put an end to this way of thinking that th ere is som ething called though t that is here and som ething else called action that is there. A theory is alway s an assem blage, th eassem bling of intellectual acts, and a practice is also an assem bling of intellectual acts. So we do n ot pass f romtheory to practice, we m ove f rom a series of f orms of intellectual action to another series of f orms of intellectualaction. The second th ing is that there is f orcing f rom both sides, so that in the end the question is h ow do w etranspose th at f orcing f rom one side to th e other. Th is is a m ovement that goes in both directions—som ethinghappens in th e streets, an d there is an interpretive f orcing that say s, this is no lon ger a dem onstration, th is is anoccupation, and of course “occupation” m eans som ething com pletely dif f erent, so that on e is f orced to ask thenext question : if what we are doin g is not sim ply to protest or to dem onstrate, but to occupy , how does that



translate or n ot into ef f ects? There is a sort of constant ref erral, a constant back and f orth between f ormulationsand ef f ectuations, an d each tim e one is f orced to participate in that m ovement, in that very m ovement of f orcing.

PB: What is th e role of critique with in that m otion of constant ref erral? Has it a f orce of its own? Is thin kingreduced to a problem of orientation, w here th ere is no outside to that m ovement at all?

JR: I am a bit suspicious of the way of thinking that isolates “critique” as a specif ic f orm of intellectual activity ,im plying a specif ic ability to say what words truly m ean or to see w hat rem ains hidden to ordinary people. If weleave aside “critique” as a specif ic social activ ity, telling to readers or spectators what they should like and dislike, critique h as no f orce dif f erent f rom the f orce of thinking in general. It is a m atter of discern ing and amatter of displacing. This f orce is applied in dif f erent con texts to dif f erent objects. Thinking is n ot reduced to a

problem of orientation; it deals with the rearrangem ent of the relations betw een the perceptible, th e sayable and the doable, w hich is inh erent in intellectual research an d in social practice as w ell.

PB: Well, one could prov ocatively say that there is an unbalance betw een these two dim ensions. There arecertain ly many instances f or the production of discourse—w e have ref ined an d interesting theories—but on ecould say that they mostly stay at the level of though t, that they do not h ave m uch of a grip on social reality, th at i

is all a great m onologue of theory. And there is th e persistent idea am ong m ovements of resistan ce that it isnecessary to “m ove into action .” It could be interesting to think that th e revolutionary question par excellence,W hat is to be done ?, should be doubled in these contexts by a secon d one, W hat is to be said ?, and how m ustit be said. Perh aps this anxiety could be understood in the sense that w e have advanced on this secon d assem blyline much more than on the f irst, to use your own term s.

JR: Yes, but I would say that th e opposition is essentially not between w ords an d actions, but rather betw eenactions and the consequences of those actions. Th e real problem appears once we relinquish the m odelaccording to w hich th ere is som ething called Th eory , there is som ething called the Class th at is arm ed by Th eory,and there are the Stages that will lead step by step to the Rev olution. What we hav e then are always series of

actions to w hich w e try to give a satisf actory f ormulation, in order to illum inate or clarif y them. Hence, w e hav e aseries of acts an d a series of f ormulas, but one still n eeds to ask: to what wider, com mon sequence do thesewords an d these actions belong? In what tem porality are they inscribed? In a sen se, there is no dif f erence here

between words and actions, because words can alway s claim that it is actions that m ust verif y them , but there isa moment when actions m ust verif y them selves too—they m ust prove that th ey bear w ithin them a tem porality , asignif ication and a world of their own.

PB: Does such a w orld presuppose hence the need f or an autonom y of language, f or a vocabulary and agrammar of one’s ow n?

JR: Yes, I think that f ormulation is alw ays an essential aspect, because f ormulation also m eans to put som ethingin f orm, to g ive a f orm to it. Th ere are people in th e streets, but people can be an d do all sorts of dif f erent thin gsin the streets: think f or exam ple of the recent m ass dem onstrations ag ainst equal m arriage in France, w hich countamong the most im pressive in Europe in recent tim es. Form ulation is essential to def ine w hat we do, to w hatworld belong s what we do, w hat w orld does it open. It is clear, concerning what we were sayin g bef ore, thatwords are not enough on their own, th at actions are needed, but it is non etheless true that actions are judg ed inrelation to their own words, that they live in and th rough them.

PB: But we do con stantly mobilize political words that are n ot new, w ords that are in f act pretty old, that are likewounds w hich have been reopened: capital, represen tation , violence, party, the State, organ ization, dem ocracy.



Perhaps on e could say th at in such circum stances a polarity or polysem y appears w ithin th ese words th at had been silenced or did not ex ist bef ore, an d that th is distance between dif f erent m eanings and signif ication s becom es then politically f ertile. But, in turn, th at would gen erate th e f ear of a new closure, of the redef inition thatwill put an en d to th e movement and h ence to the very possibilities and potentialities of transf ormation . Is thissomething that you w ould deem typical of a political m oment, of a moment of intervention? Is there a w ay toescape th is instance that bef alls w hen digressions are closed and the political w ounds of language “heal” again?

JR: I would not put this in term s of a timeless necessity but as som ething proper f or the situations in which welive. Now, f or exam ple, w e are in relation to this double closure that is signif ied, on the one hand, by theintegration of all the supposedly lef tist discourses in the global discourse of today’s capitalism , and on the oth er hand, by th e log ic of the party , the vanguard, the log ic of Marxism . So we hav e a hegem onic discourse and adead discourse, and the task is to reviv e the words of that dead discourse, includin g the words which thatdiscourse itself had cov ered, buried, appropriated, because those are the words that can m ake a dif f erence in the

presen t. When I republished som e of the texts f rom the journal Les Révoltes Logiques in a book called T heScenes o f the Peo ple , the introduction was titled “The Big Words.” There are w ords like People, Em ancipation,etc., that can be considered too g reat, too big, too serious to be used ligh tly, but th at still need to be reopened,turned into objects of strugg le. We m ust re-introduce dif f erence in them once again. In this sense, I care about

keepin g the sign if ier of “the people” precisely because it is th e signif ier of a conf lict about th e meaning of theword itself (while f or instan ce, every body can agree in prin ciple on the word “m ultitude”). The problem is that weactually never agree; in som e sense, politics is precisely th e con f lict about what “the people” m eans.

PB: What about “com munism”? Is it one of these sw ear words too?

JR: I think that com munism is indeed one of those w ords, on th e condition that we em ploy it together with theconsciousness of its own history. We cannot act as if communism was sim ply the signif ier of a politics of the idea:communism is the signif ier of a history that w e know , we know precisely what it signif ied in term s of appropriations, of diversions, of criminal dev iations. Today, it is still the nam e as w ell of several regim es,

includin g what is perh aps the m ost developed capitalist reg ime in th e world, Ch ina. So I th ink th at we can only bring into play the n ame of communism by con f ronting what w e want to resign if y with the very history of theword. I think that this is doable, that these are w ords that we can try to breath e new lif e and v alue into. But if thistranslates into a m erely provocative g esture, if it is m obiliz ed on ly to the rescue of an exh austed anti-dem ocraticdiscourse, then I cannot see the point of it.

PB: Democracy also has a v ery long history behin d it. Is this w ork of memory and consciousness sim ilarlynecessary in the case of democracy, even in th e restricted sense in w hich you h ave em ployed the w ord?

JR: That is w hy I h ave always pref erred the word “em ancipation,” because it has n ever been the nam e of a

regime, and hence of a crim inal gov ernment either. That said, I think that “dem ocracy” is still the sign if ier that it ismost urgent to re-signif y. In the f ield of the conf lictiv e sign if ications of the people, of the power of the people,there is a wealth of f orces to be m obilized that can not be f ound an ywhere else.

PB: Many people are approaching the question of the mobilization of those f orces in terms of a “constituent pow er”…

JR: I would just say that it is im portant n ot to be duped by words, because it is not enough to attach the word “constituent” to create som ething real, an actual sub ject that w ould be the sub ject of a con stitution, the sub ject ofa people f rom the f uture. If the word leads us to believe that in some sense such a sub ject is already th ere, then it



is probably a harm f ul thin g. We have to giv e to th e word “constituent” its inchoative m eanin g; we must try toconstitute som ething that has a center of gravity of its ow n. In that respect, the word is still very im portant.

PB: This ref ers as well to th e question of the institution, to th e relation between autonom ous m ovements an d thelogic of representation. In ref erence to the European con text, do you have hopes f or the advances of the “lef t of the lef t” on the in stitutional f ront?

JR: I believ e that such in stitutionaliz ation is only m eaningf ul if it can be truly autonom ous an d independent f romthe dynam ics in w hich the so-called “lef t” is alw ays already placed. In France, the ex perience of this “lef t of thelef t” has been too of ten a sim ple m irror ref lection of the “righ t of the rig ht”; that is, the party that constantly triesto justif y its being outside the sy stem so as to have its own place in the system itself . This is obviously not a valid

perspectiv e f or the f uture. Such a perspective would require the possibility to interven e in an d to transf orm thecurrent European order, including its mechan isms of institutional representation, w hile at the sam e time keeping

both f eet on its ow n groun d. There is a m inimum of autonom y that must be consolidated in order to be able toact against w hat the system itself proposes and organ izes. That said, I would not w ant to play th e part of theexiled internation al leader, telling people what they should an d should not do.

PB: You just pointed h owever tow ards an essential problem of scale. Today , the critical issues are decided atthe level of the European m arkets and the contin ental structures of political and econom ic power. I w anted toask you about another signif ier, that of “Southern Europe,” w hich today seems to m any the on ly platf orm thatcould perhaps accum ulate enough f orces to reach such a meaningf ul level of autonom y.

JR: The opposition between the South and the North is an ov erly determ ined one. It resonates in a history thatis in itself older, because the North/South polarity began to f unction as soon as the East/West polarity started tolose its prim acy. Af ter the end of the Cold War an d the collapse of the Sov iet Em pire, the opposition of Northand South, m eaning the opposition of the capitalist coun tries and the so-called un derdeveloped coun tries of theThird World, cam e to the f ore. I think that th is case retain s som ething of this partition. The North/South divide

still designates the relations betw een the capitalist hard core and the m ost exposed f ringes of labor. However,this is a com plex construct, because it sim ultaneously desig nates the contem porary f orm of economic dom inationand a certain sort of war of paradig ms. According to the dom inant logic the South corresponds to th e image of laziness, of those w ho live of f the State and th e rich , the sam e old them e of the working, protestant, thrif ty Northversus the catholic, spendthrif t, parasitic South . Of course, it is alw ays interesting to rev erse th ese sch emas, tomake this sort of relation polem ical, but I still don ’t thin k that th e world of labor, w hat w e used to call the

proletariat, can be f ederated under th e con cept of the South. Th ere is certainly som ething im portant in it, becausethe South today designates all those w ho suf f er most violently the ef f ects of the European world order, but I amless certain that it positively designates an opposition f orce to that order. When the European Union cam e to beidentif ied with the Europe of f inance capital, this created in f act a new partition, m arginalizin g the countries wherethe social benef its conquered by the social m ovements w ere still an obstacle to the power of the market. We canconceiv e of rethinking a Europe that would be the Europe of labor, a social Europe again st the Europe of capital.But politics always h appens locally. We can dream of a new International. But an International is the associationof movements that have dev eloped in local strugg les.

PB: So w hat are the chan ces f or the dem ocratiz ation of Europe?

JR: Europe, as it ex ists, is an oligarch y in which the real pow er belong s to a Com mission that has n ot beenelected. Th e European Parliam ent hardly m eets the requirem ents of so-called “representative” dem ocracy, letalone being capable to f ight against the join t power of the market an d the European Com mission. A dem ocratic



Europe can only be the con junction of political f orces th at are autonom ous w ith regard to the current f orms of national or internation al represen tation , as with those w ho occupied the Puerta del Sol in Madrid. To th e extentthat the European govern ment is increasing ly akin to the power of f inancial institutions, we can certain ly say that“real dem ocracy now ” involves a f rontal opposition to capitalism .

PB: These debates about dem ocracy, institution alization and representation of ten lead to the sam e crossroads,where dif f erent political positions translate dif f erent conceptions of pow er—the revolutionary notion of theconquest of pow er, f or instance, an d the m odel accordin g to w hich all pow er is a relation , a capillary bond,which can on ly be built and exerted f rom below. Apart f rom the f act th at both sides f ace their own strategiclimitations, th ere is a m oment in which they reach the point of silence, w here they can no longer engag e in anexchange w ith one an other, and this clearly posits a political problem f or the lef t. Is there a w ay out of thisscenario?

JR: We are f ar f rom our startin g point, and I hav e never done w ell in the role of the prophet. There is certainly a point w here scholarly disputes about pow er and rev olution becom e silent, because they have ex hausted all therhetorical possibilities allowed by the com bination of those signif iers. My point is alw ays the sam e: the f utures canonly stem f rom the conf igurations of the present. Theref ore the only point that is worth debatin g today con cerns

the possibilities of ex pansion and duration of the f orms of auton omy that have been manif ested in the recent“occupy” m ovements or oth er sim ilar m ovements. If we look sim ultaneously at th e grow th of f ar-right movementclaiming that they are the real people, the alternative to the dom inant oligarchic system , the debate is about w hat“the people” m eans today, about th e tension betw een “dem os” and “ethnos” th at resurf aces with the f ailure of our olig archies.

PB: Now I have to translate the interview …

JR: We are always trapped in the paradox an yways.

Jacques Rancière (Algiers, 1940) is a philosopher an d emeritus prof essor at the University of Paris St Denis. Hehas w ritten exten sively on politics, aesthetics, th e philosophy of equality and em ancipation. His m ost recen tlytranslated book is Aisthesis:Scenes f rom the Aesthetic Regime o f Art , tran slated by Zakir Paul.

Written by Editor1 Posted in Novem ber 2013 Tagg ed with Jacques Rancière , Pablo Bustinduy

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