Politics, Identification, and Subjectivization Author(s): Jacques Rancire Reviewed work(s): Source: October, Vol.

61, The Identity in Question (Summer, 1992), pp. 58-64 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778785 . Accessed: 16/07/2012 20:24
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and Politics, Identification, Subjectivization

JACQUES RANCIERE

In a sense, the whole matterof my paper is involved in a preliminary question: In what language will it be uttered?Neither my language nor your language, but rather a dialect between French and English, a special one, a with dialectthatcarriesno identification anygroup. No tribaldialect,no univeral for an in-between dialect,constructed the aims of thisdiscussion language, only of is an of and guided by the idea that the activity thinking primarily activity and that anyone is capable of makinga translation. translation, Underpinning of thiscapacityfor translation the efficacy equality,thatis to say,the efficacy is of humanity. I will move directlyto the question that framesour discussion. I quote fromthe thirdpoint of the listof issues we were asked to address: "What is the political?" and roughlyspeaking,I would answer:the politicalis theencounter Briefly between two heterogeneous processes. The firstprocess is that of governing, of and it entails creatingcommunity consent,which relies on the distribution I of shares and the hierarchy places and functions. shall call this processpolicy. The second process is that of equality. It consistsof a set of practices guided by the suppositionthat everyoneis equal and by the attemptto verify thissupposition.The proper name forthisset of practicesremainsemancipation. I In spite of Lyotard'sstatements, do not assume a necessarylink between the idea of emancipation and the narrativeof a universalwrong and a universal victim.It is true that the handling of a wrong remains the universalformfor the meeting between the two processes of policy and equality. But we can question that encounter. We can argue, for example, that any policy denies between the two processes. In equality and that there is no commensurability I advocated the thesisof the French theorist book TheIgnorant Schoolmaster, my of emancipation, JosephJacotot,accordingto whom emancipationcan only be the intellectual emancipationof individuals.This means thatthereis no political the law of policy and the law of equality.In order for a political stage, only stage to occur, we must change thatassumption.Thus, instead of arguing that

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equality,and I shall take the policy deniesequality,I shall say thatpolicywrongs of to be the place where the verification equalityis obliged to turn into political the handling of a wrong. So we have three terms:policy,emancipation,and the political.If we want we to emphasize their interplay, can give to the process of emancipation the I name of politics. shall thus distinguishpolicy,politics,and the political-the politicalbeing the field for the encounterbetween emancipation and policy in the handling of a wrong. A momentousconsequence followsfromthis: politicsis not the enactment Put of the principle,the law,or the selfof a community. in otherwords, politics has no arche, it is anarchical. The very name democracy supports this point. As of Plato noted, democracyhas no arche, no measure. The singularity the act of instead of an archein-is dependent on an originarydisthe demos-a cratein order or miscount: the demos, or people, is at the same time the name of a communityand the name for its division, for the handling of a wrong. And because beyond any particularwrong,the "politicsof the people" wrongspolicy, the the people is always more or less than itself.It is the power of the one more, which confuses the rightordering of policy. power of anyone, and action is due Now for me the currentdead end of politicalreflection to the identification politicswiththe selfof a community. of This may occur in the big community in smallerones; it may be the identification the process or of of governing with the principle of the communityunder the heading of unithe reign of the law, liberal democracy,and so on. Or it may be, on versality, the contrary, the claim for identity the part of so-called minoritiesagainst on the hegemonic law of the ruling culture and identity. The big community and the smaller ones may charge one another with "tribalism"or "barbarianism," and both will be rightin theircharge and wrong in theirclaim. I don't assume that they are practicallyequivalent, that the outcomes are the same; I only assume thattheystemfromthe same questionableidentification. theprimum For of movens policy is to purport to act as the self of the community, turn the to of governinginto natural laws of the social order. But if politics is techniques frompolicy, cannot draw on such an identification. different it One something can object that the idea of emancipationis historically related to the idea of the self in the formula of "self-emancipation the workers."But the firstmotto of of any self-emancipation movementis alwaysthe struggleagainst "selfishness." This is not only a moral statement(e.g., the dedication of the individual to the militantcommunity);it is also a logical one: the politicsof emancipation is the The logic of politics of the self as an other, or, in Greek terms, a heteron. is a heterology. emancipation Let me put thisdifferently: process of emancipationis the verification the of the equalityof any speaking being withany other speakingbeing. It is always enacted in the name of a category denied either the principle or the consequences of that equality: workers,women, people of color, or others. But the

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enactment of equality is not, for all that, the enactmentof the self, of the in or attributes propertiesof the community question. The name of an injured that invokesits rightsis alwaysthe name of the anonym,the name community of anyone. If Are there universal values transcendingparticularidentifications? we and identity, we are to break out of the desperate debate betweenuniversality must answer thatthe onlyuniversalin politicsis equality.But we mustadd that equality is not a value given in the essence of Humanityor Reason. Equality exists,and makes universalvalues exist,to the extentthatit is enacted. Equality is not a value to which one appeals; it is a universal that must be supposed, is verified,and demonstratedin each case. Universality not the eidosof the are of to community which particularsituations opposed; it is, first all, a logical in of operator. The mode of effectivity Truth or Universality politicsis the a of discursiveand practicalconstruction a polemical verification, case, a demonstration.The place of truthis not the place of a ground or an ideal; it is in always a topos,the place of a subjectivization an argumentativeplot. Its does not mean tribal. language is always idiomatic,which, on the contrary, When oppressed groups set out to cope witha wrong,theymay appeal to Man is or Human Being. But the universality not in those concepts; it is in the way of demonstratingthe consequences that follow from this-from the worker being a citizen,the black being a human being, and so on. The logical schema of social protest,generallyspeaking,may be summed up as follows:Do we or do we not belong to the categoryof men or citizensor human beings,and what or is followsfrom this?The universality not enclosed in citizen humanbeing;it in is involved in the "what follows," itsdiscursiveand practicalenactment. Such a universality may develop throughthe mediationof particularcatFor instance,in nineteenth-century France, workersmightconstruct egories. the logic of a strikein the formof a syllogism:Do French workersbelong to the categoryof Frenchmen?If not,the Declarationof Rightshas to be changed. it. If so, theymustbe treatedas equals, and theyact to demonstrate The question become more paradoxical. For instance,does a Frenchwoman belong to might the categoryof Frenchmen?The questionmaysound nonsensicalor scandalous. However,such nonsensicalsentencesmay prove more productivein the process of equality than the mere assumptionthata woman is a woman or a workera worker.For theyallow these subjects not only to specifya logical gap that in turn discloses a social bias, but also to articulatethisgap as a relation,the nonof The construction place as a place, the place for a polemical construction. nor is it the demonstration such cases of equalityis not the act of an identity, of the values specificto a group. It is a process of subjectivization. of It What is a process of subjectivization? is the formation a one that is not a selfbut is the relationof a self to an other.Let me demonstratethiswith uses occurs in respect to an outmoded name, "the proletarian."One of its first

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leader Auguste Blanqui was France when the revolutionary nineteenth-century forrebellion.The prosecutorasked him: "What is your profession?" prosecuted He answered: "Proletarian."Then the prosecutor:"It is not a profession."And of the response of Blanqui was: "It is the professionof the majority our people of political rights."From the vantage point of policy,the who are deprived prosecutor was right: it is no profession.And obviouslyBlanqui was not what is usually called a worker.But, fromthe vantage point of politics,Blanqui was was right:proletarian not the name of any social group thatcould be sociologically identified.It is the name of an outcast. An outcast is not a poor wretch of in humanity;outcast is the name of those who are denied an identity a given meant "prolificpeople"-people who make order of policy. In Latin, proletarii a children,who merelylive and reproduce without name, without being counted was thus well-suitedfor as part of the symbolicorder of the city.Proletarians the workersas the name of anyone, the name of the outcast: those who do not belong to the order of castes,indeed, those who are pleased to undo thisorder (the class that dissolves classes, as Marx said). In this way,a process of subjecor tivizationis a process of disidentification declassification. Let me rephrase this: a subject is an outsider or, more, an in-between. Proletarians was the name given to people who are togetherinasmuch as they are between: between several names, statuses,and identities; betweenhumanity and inhumanity, citizenshipand itsdenial; between the statusof a man of tools and the statusof a speaking and thinking is being. Politicalsubjectivization the enactment of equality-or the handling of a wrong-by people who are together to the extentthat theyare between. It is a crossingof identities, relying on a crossing of names: names that link the name of a group or class to the name of no group or no class, a being to a nonbeing or a not-yet-being. This networkhas a noticeable property:it always involves an impossible an thatcannot be embodied by he or she who utters identification, identification it. "We are the wretchedof the earth" is the kind of sentence that no wretched of the world would ever utter.Or, to take a personalexample, formygeneration with politicsin France relied on an impossibleidentification-an identification the bodies of the Algerians beaten to death and throwninto the Seine by the French police, in the name of the French people, in October 1961. We could not identify with those Algerians,but we couldquestion our identification with the "French people" in whose name they had been murdered. That is to say, we could act as politicalsubjectsin the interval the gap betweentwoidentities, or neither of which we could assume. That process of subjectivizationhad no proper name, but it found its name, its cross name, in the 1968 assumption "We are all German Jews"-a "wrong"identification, identification terms an in of the denial of an absolutelyessentialwrong. If the movementbegan withthat which sentence,its decline mightbe emblematizedby an antithetical statement, served as the titleof an essay published some years afterby a formerleader of

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we the movement:"We were not all born proletarians." Certainly were not; we to are not. But what followsfromthisis an inability draw consequences froma withan anybodythat has "being" that is a "nonbeing,"froman identification no body. In the demonstrationof equality the syllogistic logic of the either/or withthe parawe or are we not citizensor human beings?) is intertwined (are tacticlogic of a "we are and are not." of In sum, the logic of politicalsubjectivization, emancipation,is a hetera logic of the other,for three main reasons. First,it is never the simple ology, it assertionof an identity; is always,at the same time,the denial of an identity an other, given by the ruling order of policy.Policy is about "right" given by names, names that pin people down to theirplace and work. Politicsis about "wrong" names-misnomers that articulatea gap and connect with a wrong. and a demonstration Second, it is a demonstration, always supposes an other, or argument.It is the stagingof a common even if thatother refusesevidence place that is not a place for a dialogue or a search for a consensus in Habermasian fashion. There is no consensus, no undamaged communication,no of settlement a wrong. But there is a polemicalcommonplace for the handling of of a wrongand the demonstration equality.Third, the logicof subjectivization alwaysentails an impossibleidentification. of Only by dismissingthe complexity this logic can one oppose the past The littlenarratives. to grand narrativesand the universalvictims present-day was in factmade of so-called grand narrativeof the people and the proletariat And the concept of narof a multiplicity language games and demonstrations. rative itself,like the concept of culture,is highlyquestionable. It entails the of identification an argumentative plot witha voice, and of a voice witha body. between is But the life of politicalsubjectivization made out of the difference and culture So betweenidentities. narrative the voice and the body,the interval The process of equality to entail the reversionof subjectivization identification. does not mean the assumptionof a is a process of difference.But difference The place forthe of or different identity the plain confrontation two identities. out of differenceis not the "self" or the cultureof a group. It is the working of topos an argument.And the place for such an argumentis an interval.The to place of a political subject is an intervalor a gap: being together the extent thatwe are in between-betweennames, identities, cultures,and so on. This is, to be sure, an uncomfortable gives position,and the discomfort of is to the discourse of metapolitics. Metapolitics the interpretation politics way from the vantage point of policy. Its tendencyis to interpretheterologyas illusion, and intervalsand gaps as signs of untruth.The paradigms of the of approach is the Marxistinterpretation the Decmetapoliticalinterpretation of laration theRights Man and of theCitizen 1789. It assumed that the very of of was betweenmanand citizen the hallmarkof delusion: lurkingbehind difference of of the celestialidentity the citizenwas the mundane identity a man who was

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in fact an owner. Today the current styleof metapoliticsteaches us, on the contrary,that man and citizen are the same liberal individual enjoying the universal values of human rightsembodied in the constitutions our demoof cracies. But the styleof politicsas emancipationis a thirdone: it assumes that of the universality the declaration of 1789 is the universality the argument of to which it gave way,and that is due preciselyto the veryintervalbetween the two terms,which opened the possibility appealing fromone to the other,of of of them the termsof innumerabledemonstrations rights, includingthe making who are counted neitheras men nor as citizens. rightsof those and pessimistic. First,we are not My conclusion is twofold:both optimistic The distinctionis trapped withinthe opposition of universalismand identity. and a logic of identification-between ratherbetween a logic of subjectivization not and particularism. The distwo ideas of multiplicity, between universalism course of universalismmay be as "tribal"as the discourse of identity. could We experience this during the Gulf War, when many heralds of universal culture turned out to be heralds of clean universalweapons and undetailed death. The true opposition runs between the tribal and the idiomatic. Idiomatic politics constructslocallythe place of the universal,the place for the demonstrationof equality. It dismissesthe desperate dilemma: either the big communityor the smaller ones-either community nothingat all. It leads to a new politicsof or the in-between. Much of the discussionthismornMy second conclusion is less optimistic. ing dealt withnew formsof racismand xenophobia and our failureto formulate effectiveresponses. There is more at issue here, however. In France, for instance, the new racism and xenophobia should not be viewed as consequences of social problems that we cannot confront,e.g., as the effectsof objective of problems raised by the immigrant population. Rather,theyare the effects a void, of a previous collapse-the collapse of emancipatorypoliticsas a politics of the other. Twenty years ago we were "all German Jews"; that is to say, we were in the heterological logic of "wrong" names, in the political culture of conflict. Now we have only "right"names. We are Europeans and xenophobes. It is the demotion of the political form,of the political polymorphismof the one other,that creates a new kind of other, that is infrapolitical. we Objectively, have no more immigrant than we had twenty we people years ago. Subjectively, have many more. The difference this: twenty is the "immigrant" had years ago an other name; theywere workersor proletarians.In the meantimethis name has been lost as a political name. They retainedtheir"own" name, and an other that has no other name becomes the object of fear and rejection. The "new" racism is the hatred of the other that comes forthwhen the politicalprocedures of social polemics collapse. The politicalcultureof conflict may have had disappointingoutlets. But it was also a way of coming to terms with somethingthat lies before and beneath politics:the question of the other

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as a figureof identification the object of fear. This morningCornel West for told us that identity about desire and death. I would say that identity first is is about fear: the fear of the other,the fear of nothing,whichfindson the body of the other its object. And the polemical cultureof emancipation,the heterthat fear.The new ological enactmentof the other,was also a way of civilizing the outcomes of racismand xenophobia thusrevealthe verycollapse of politics, reversionof the politicalhandling of a wrong to a primal hate. If my analysis is correct,the question is not only "How are we to face a politicalproblem?" but "How are we to reinventpolitics?"