Ranciere - After What

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    A f t er W h a t Jacque s RanciOre

    "What comes after the subject?" this author is asked.How would he know? And how would he show? Doeshis audience not repeatedly remark that they do notknow where he is heading? He also knows, of course,that not knowing is too easy a way of creating his ownimage as a philosopher, all the easier in that philosophi-cal questioning habitually knows more than the audience.Not knowing who to name, then, also means settlingdown in an af ter which, by designating the place or thehome of the unknow n one, perhaps says a lot in the endabout his or her identity.

    Questions about time are always advantageous. Totalk about the end, the after, the post - lends a heroic tintto any idea concerning the end of a time when thingswere well-ordered and their meaning established. In thedays of old, not so very long ago, there was -- it is said-- there was a time when all events took place in thelight of grand narratives on self and the world, on G odand on man. Then would come the daring time of newdays and adventurous paths . . . . But the very act withwhich this aba ndonment manifests itself as heroic effortor joyful drift restores a tranquil certainty concerningties and places: we are now in the end or the after. In allruins lies hidden an inhabitable temple which was onceinhabited. Time we call lost is still part of the contin-uum, of archaeology, and of our heritage. It makes senseand leads to. It also gathers: to speak of epoch orepochal means putting together and attributing the samedestiny to those who are doing the thinking in terms ofafter and the indistinct masses who supposedly inhabitthe ruins without knowing it. They are defined by thatvery supposition and thereby give to the corporat ion themission of thinking for them that which is verified intheir very muteness.

    We know that the tranquillity of this dual relation isnot without jolts. From time to time current events makeit obvious that nine-tenths of humanity or even a little

    more suffer from that which the epoch has alreadypassed beyond: the archaic events of hunger, faith, andpeoples. Gloomy sermonizers or pugnacious prose-cutors then denounce the duplicity of the thinkers interms of the after. Tragicomedy and vaudeville makegame against a background of holocaust. Now theguardian of the temple announces betrayal by thecorporation: we must return to the previous assuranceof the subject gathering up meanings and assigningvalues. Soon the keeper of the morgue comes to cryshame by showing that the corporation's values -- orthose values forgotten, or both at the same time -- haveserved the assassins. Yet again, the corporation, onceproud of daring voyages far from the paternal lands ofthe subject, closes ranks in order to protect from anyattempt at parricide him who contemplates the end ofmetaphysics and who is also the only distinguishedmember of the corporation to have maintained somelink, however tenuous, with the assassins.

    These tribunals, periodically established where theaffairs of the corporation encounter any affair or anysense supposed common, are perhaps the ransom forthe commodity which it took over: that of the inter-minable capitalization of a misfortune whose resolutionis indefinitely suspended. The temple and the charnelhouse summoned up at its borders as concrete mani-festations of its forgotten origins or its unacknowledgedend denounce at either limit the space/time wherephilosophical activity deliberately set up shop: that ofthe beginning of the end.

    Indeed, whatever the philosophical good will put toradicalizing the question of the after, the terrain hasbeen clearly marked by three mise en scone schemaswhich have become doxic configurations. Psycho-analytic theory first made the time-after into thetime of the advent of the subject, perhaps thus dis-simulating the enigmatic task of fidelity to the time-to-

    Topoi 7 (1 9 8 8 ) , 1 8 1 - - 1 8 5 .9 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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    182 JACQUES RANCIEREc o m e hidden behind the visibility given to the parricidalevent as origin of the meaningful sequence. Then comesthe schema of extermination, which represents annihila-tion of the subject not only in the form of massliquidation of individuals but also as death with noremains -- no trace, monument or immortality. Thusopen the horizons of a beginning of the end projectedinto the two dimensions of past and future. On the onehand, since a more and more remote past the gene-alogies of horror have been stalking the beginning of evilhistory, that of the subject bearing death; they follow itsmost minute advances. On the other hand, thoughts oftomorrow establish themselves in the twilight timeswhich begin with the advent of the unthinkable. Butafter enigma and horror comes a third schema, evermore triumphant, that of the particular redemptionwhich is involved in the development of patrimonialpolicy. The latter brings into play a new immortality,henceforth attached to a monument and no longer tot ha t which the monumen t represents: colossal assuranceagainst death, holocaust and parricide, able toimmortalize anything, restore any temple, but also makeof every object a monument and familiarize any strange-ness in the direct line of meaning which has escapeddeath.

    The ordering of these three configurations gives usinfinite resources as well as a plurality of times. To voicethe beginning of the end, verbalize in its name is toappropriate for oneself the powers of suspended deathand the voyage through time. We speak in the present o fthe anchor freed, the image undone or the name crossedout. But above all we settle into the singular schema ofthe retrospective apocalypse. We rewrite indefinitely, inthe past tense, the prophecy of the wrong beginning(forgetfulness, disguise -- or, just as well, the lure ofdisguise or of forgetfulness) which makes us sufferendlessly: the sequence of ills resulting from the wrongschema, the forgetful schema of subjectivity. Ethicalfidelity to the recognized uncertainty of the subject andto the act of his t ime - to - c ome then reposes on thethought of extermination and ends up in retrospectiveprophecies of the beginning of the end. But apocalypsein the past tense also continuously exchanges its perfor-matory powers o f threatening death with the resourcesin immortality of the process of patrimony. Thus doesphilosophy succumb to the charms of rewriting, with theinfinite possibilities of metonymy authorized by therichness of the text, the phrases of its history. Philosophyproposes itself as interminable future and offers asdestiny to-the epoch the rewriting which marks every

    phrase of the text like the threat of death and everyutterance of a present event like the displaced repetitionof a phrase of the text. These comings and goingsbetween the past and the future, death and immortalitycreate the schema of an infinite resource which strangelyresembles the reseJ~e in which Heidegger's discourse onthe apocalypse recognizes the essence of technicaldomination. Patrimony, the new technique of immor-tality, has perhaps become the vital element of that veryphilosophy which is motivated by denunciation oftechnical domination. By giving philosophy the newtime to make its statement, patrimony allows it theidentification of the inventory of its own heritage withthe deciphering of the mortal enigma of the new timesand ensures its revenge on the social knowledge whichhad put it aside. From there to philosophy taking aprominent role in all manifestations which conceiveof and celebrate the monument, the archive or themuseum, the outcome seems positive.

    This triumphant use of the beginning of the endshould doubtlessly be considered within the continuityof the schemawhich I had earlier indicated: the deter-mining function o f t ime , free or lacking, as the dividingline which stages philosophical activity by separatingthose who have the leisure to think and those whosebusiness it is not. 1 I had indica ted the continuity leadingfrom the forthr ight affirmation by Plato of the privilegesof the o~zo2O to the tortuous Sartrian analysis of theeffects of a fatigue which takes away from the pro-letarian the time to think. The substitution of the time ofurgency and the time of the beginning of the end for thatof the leisure for philosophy should be thought abou t interms of the schemas which today redefine the staging ofphilosophical activity and organize its dd~a under thenew conditions of that activity in relation to its other:mastery announced in the very name of time charac-terized by abandonment, discourse whose gravity ofutterance is due to accounting for the common destinyof humanity, but which at the same time divides (as inthe seventh book of L aw s) the watchmen of thebeginning of the night from the sleep of the obliviousmasses.

    I am interested, however, in something else: themanner in which this plurality of times plays withhorror and death, summons them up at the edge ofdiscourse and then keeps them at arm's length indefi-nitely. There philosophy is playing with what was onceits own: the assumption of death, the confron tation withfear and the passions that spring from fear -- the frustra-tion of "not yet having enough" and the fear of "no

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    AFTER WHAT 183longer being" which accompany the destiny of the livingpossessed by word and representation. In the infinitereflection of apocalyptic prophecy and of redemptionthrough patrimony, a certain l o g o s is extended of whichthe paradoxical principle was once designated as the veryprinciple of passion: the confusion of times, the per-petual encroachment of the present, that present whichthe Stoic master recommended circumscribing in orderto keep at a distance the intermingling passions ofexpectation and regret. On the contrary, right beforeour very eyes that present continues to expand, swellingwith the comings and goings, gains and losses includedin the idea of the beginning of the end, in the exchangebetween holocaust and patrimony. Everything happensas if displaying the representation were a perfectreplacement for the "use of representations", as ifpassion -- that is, the confusion of times -- had becomethe method.

    Of course the anachronism is only valid here asdisplacement of perspective. We have at our disposalneither "nature" to accompany nor "hegemonic prin-ciple" guaranteed for this use. But that is precisely theproblem: do the themes of the end or the death,eventually interminable, of the subject not live off theidentification of any subjective schema with the arche-types of the s u b f e c t u m or of the s u b s t a n t i a ? Is thisidentification of the "subject" with the wrong schema ofpresence (and thus with the presence of evil) not anonly-too-convenient manner of getting rid of the ques-tion of the present, that is to say, eliminating thequestion of reason as well? If we had to play the familiargame of "forget" and "re turn", I would willingly proposethat what today is most forgotten or undermined is notMan, Thought, Rationality, Meaning or any other of thevictims over which the mourners hover, but simplereason as most basically defined: the art, for each one ofus, of settling accounts with the confusion of times andthe passions of expectation and regret which springfrom it, an art of the present all the more necessary inthat we have lost the assurance of the clearly delineatedpresence of a subject capable of preceding himself. Doesnot eliminating "the" subject with this schema, thepresent with the presence, mean abolishing the instanceof that which -- that who -- is involved with theregulating of time and of fear?

    What comes after the subject? We can say in a waythat nothing comes after the subject, for it is precisely hewho comes after, he who risks continuing on his ownaccount a text already started or a story already begunwho risks transforming, as Zarathustra said, the e s w a r

    into a so wo l l t e i ch es , the very act in which the presentis required to compensate for the lack of its o w n tense.Identifying under every circumstance this will to riskwith a "will to will" conceived of as the ultimate form offorgetting comes down to leaving in the background,behind or beyond the "subject" only the schema of as o m e o n e to whom nothing ever happens: n o n - s u b j e c tfree from discernment of the specific schemas of for-getting, distress or death, free from the necessity ofverbalizing discernment of those schemas and of doingsomething -- some deed -- based on that declaration.Beyond the subject as thus defined, beyond his ichwo l l t e , remains only consent to what i s h a p p e n i n g , inwhich s o m e one substitutes himself for any other in thedarkness of the indiscernible. Let us look, for example,to the commentary made in 1946 by Heidegger on apoem by Rilke giving voice in 1925 to the poetic schemaof this "wish to risk": the very splendor of the com-mentary which reproaches the poet with having thusmissed the bottom of the abyss is also that of the silencecreated around a gap, the meanwhile of the twentyGerman years of which nothing clear is nameable in thediscourse. After the subject, in the identification of thea f t er with the b e g i n n i n g o f t h e e n d , there is no longerany use of time.

    Thus must we think of the n o w , as it were, in the formof the after, in the form of the dissociation of thepresence and the present. But if we so posit the death ofthe subject or his exhaustion, we abandon the only thingwhich counts, which makes a difference: the intervalbetween e s w a r a n d s o w o l l te i c h e s . On the contrary, weknow only very little of this interval, of its use of time, ina word, of the effect of subject. And this very little thatwe know is, precisely, linked to the overly generouscredit we give to the appearances of the subject'sconsistency, especially when this subject takes on theaspect of the other who supposedly is at repose in hisblessed presence, becoming one with his representation.

    That is at least what I attempted to demonstrate byconfronting the schema of that privileged o t h e r of ourpolitical modernity, the subject called variously "pro-letariat", "working class" or "labor movement", succes-sively represented as the hero of a glorious epic,instigator of the holocaus t or, finally, subject, dead fromobsolescence, o f an archaic narrative. 2 I tried to decon-struct the fiction of this a n i m a l l a b o r a n s coming out ofthe caverns of the factory, the mine or the slum, creatinghis image of self through contempla tion of, and pride in,the tools of his trade and gathering for the attack underthe banners of his collective existence. As the basis for

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    1 8 4 J A C Q U E S R A N C I I ~ R E

    the forms of identification and the specific discoursecreating the idea of a class and its combat, I suggestedrecognizing the singular phenomenon of a production ofmeaning which was neither the systemization of theideas generated from the usages of the a n i m a l l a b o ra n shimself nor the awareness of an avant-garde trained inthe reasoning of objective science. I saw rather theproduct of the activity of a random network of individ-uals put, by way of different itineraries, in the positionboth central and out of bounds of spokesmen: not menand women bearing the word of the masses, but bearingsimply the word; individuals separated from theirsupposed fellows because they had been led into thecircuits of a word come from elsewhere and drawn intoauthoring the discourse of the class and the movement,to give them an identity for the very reason that theycould not find the link to their own identificationthemselves. Behind the supposition of an a n i m a llaborans waving the banner, heroic or deadly, of a newh o m o p o l i t i c u s , was necessarily to be seen the schema,both common and singular, of an an imal ra t i ona le ,believing in the words on his banners as does everybeing endowed with speech, every mortal possessedwith language, as we believe, in general, i n w ha t w e say :under cover of duplicity. The Hercu le chrd t i en cele-brated in the 1840s by the editor of A t e l i e r takes on thesame appearance as the horseman -- or centaur -- in thestarry sky of Rilke's sonnet: the union of two who gotogether without meaning or intending the same thing astheir journey's aim; the schema, always sufficient andforever disappointing, of the link, as are in general anyjunction of words and every meeting of speaking beingsrallying round certain words ) To think in terms of theafter where we can exist in relation to the history of thisconnection requires at minimum that we take intoaccount the n o t y e t, the j u s t a m i n u t e and the a l ready nom o r e which mark it in each of its tenses and withoutwhich it cannot be a story.

    From this example, which is more than an examplesince it touches on the exemplary schemas of the otherand the mourning which have structured our times, Ishall offer this sole modest moral: he who wishes to saysomething about the time to come must also repudiatethe schema of the beginning of the end and that of thesupposed nai'vet6 of the other. Discourse on time anddiscourse on the other constitute a common system andclosure. He who wishes to extricate himself -- and noone is required to do so -- must confront the question ofthe subject, his reason and his passion, insofar as that

    question is not only the business of the specialists butalso of all those who live with the discrepancy ofrepresentation, the work of deciphering oneself in the esw a r and the essential fragility of the pact which makes ofa singular reading the principle of a new communi ty. Hemust face up to the necessary effort to deliver thisroving search for meaning, this philosophy outside ofitself, from all the cages -- classes, cultures, mentalities,etc. -- where it must unceasingly be locked by alearned reason both careful to guarantee its specificitythrough the naturalising objectification of its other anddesirous of disposing of this substantial world ofmeanings. This effort corresponds to what I analyzed inanother study as the veri f icat ion o f equal i ty : the exerciseof a reason which can only be grasped through repudia-tion of any temporality proper to one who knows, of anypresumed sharing between an elite of night watchmenand a mass of sleepers? It can also be called explorationof the ignorant reason: that little bit of reason suspendedfrom its sole decision of fidelity, brought into play eachtime in the adventure which leads toward the end of thephrase, the exactitude of the word, the sign of under-standing, the junction/disjunction begun over and overagain.

    Now, after ... the time is fight for exploring theignorant reason, that little bit of reason mixed in eacho n e with the folly of the world, ever suspended from theact leading to its end, from the unexpected countenanceof its decoding. Moral which is definitely temporary,accompaniment to absent nature. Now, a ft er .. , thereinis the place where this adventure comes to pass: thesubject who speaks his truth in division and finds hispeace in connection. Therein is the fragility of thereasonable community which holds together speakingbeings without the guarantee of any law from before thelaw; community which grants the leisure to search forthe exact word while protecting itself from its wounds atany cost. Now, a ft er .. , it is time to return to sender notthe all-knowing question but the brotherly solitude ofthe place from which it continues to reappear

    Sieh , nun he i s s t es zus amm en e r t r age nS t f i ckwer k und T e i l e , a ls s e i es das Ganz e .Di r he l f en wi r d s chwer s e in 5

    No t e s

    L e P h i l o s o p h e e t s es p a u v r e s ( T he Ph i los opher and h i s T oad ies )(Par is : Fayard, 1983) .e L a N u i t d e s p r o l ~ ta i r e s ( Par i s , Fayar d , 1981) ( T h e N i g h t s o f

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    A F T E R W H A T 1 8 5

    Labor, to b e p u b l i s h e d i n 1 9 8 8 b y T e m p l e U n i v e r s i t y P r e ss ,Ph i lade lph ia ) .3 The Sonnets to Orpheus, Firs t Ser ies , Sonne t 11 .4 Le Maftre ignorant (The Igno ran t Mas te r ) (Paris : Fayard , 1987) .5 "See , now we m ust bear the p ieces and par ts toge ther , a s i f theywere the whole . He lp ing you w i l l be hard . " The Sonnets to Orpheus,Firs t Series, Sonn e t 16 . T rans la ted by A . Po u l in , J r. (Duino Elegiesand The Sonnets to Orpheus; B o s t o n : H o u g h t o n M i f f l in C o m p a n y ,1977) .

    U n i v e r s i t y o f P a r i s - V I I I

    2 2 r u e d e B o u r g o g n e7 5 0 0 7 P a r i sF r a n c e

    T r a n s l a t e d b y C h r i s t i n a D a v i s