http://criticallegalthinking.

com/2013/01/30/reclaiming-democracy-an-in
terview-with-wendy-brown-on-occupy-sovereignty-and-secularism/
Wendy rown is a !ro"essor o" !olitical #cience at the $niversity o"
%ali"ornia in erkeley and is the author o"& amongst many others&
Walled #tates& Waning #overeignty '(one ooks 2010)
Celikates * Jansen (C*J):
Let us start with a general question about the current state of demo-
cracy. In your contribution to the book +emocracy in What #tate you
write: Berlusconi and Bush, Derrida and Balibar, Italian communists
and amas ! we are all democrats now". #here seem to be two $os-
sible res$onses to this diagnosis of an e%alted discourse of democracy
that seems to accom$any, and e&en to be functionally intertwined
with, the multi$le $rocesses of de-democrati'ation that you also de-
scribe in this article that we witness in our society: either we could
give up the word democracy because& being hi,acked by its enemies& it
no longer "unctions as a critical and emancipatory alternative, (it has
become a neoliberal fantasy" as )odi Dean has argued*, and to look "or
other concepts& e.g. communism.
+o that"s one $ossible reaction.
#he other reaction would be to fight for the word and to insist on the
gap between a radical understanding o" democracy and its liberal
democratic& low-intensity state-"orm mani"estations& and to emphasi-e
how democracy is intertwined with rupture& opposition& resistance.
,ould you sketch your $osition in this debate-
Brown: .ell you can $robably guess that I am in fa&or of trying to re-
habilitate the term, gi&e it substance, reawaken its $otential, not only
for emanci$ation and equality but also for a notion of $o$ular so&er-
eignty. .hate&er $o$ular so&ereignty might mean in contem$orary na-
tional and $ost-national $olitics the link between democracy and $o$-
ular so&ereignty is one we /ust can"t gi&e u$. #here are many reasons
that I don"t fa&or the idea of surrendering the term. 0ne of them is that
political terms are always re-signi"iable and contestable& even as they
carry sedimented histories that make some re-signi"ication very di""i-
cult.
,ommunism" certainly doesn"t come with any less difficulty in terms of
its histories, its instantiations, its $ossible formations, than democracy
does ! it /ust ha$$ens to be a different set of difficulties. ,ould we get
communism to signify democracy today- #hat"s a challenge. It might
work this way for serious students of 1ar%, but a$art from that, the
,old .ar legacy of a discursi&e o$$osition between freedom and com-
munism is a $owerful one. I"m not sim$ly saying that state communism
established the o$$osition, I"m saying that ,old .ar discourse did and
that we will be reco&ering from that for a long time. +o that"s one
reason.
But the second reason has to do with the contested nature o" demo-
cracy itsel". . don/t accept that it has been con0uered "or a neoliberal
"antasy, I think that the question of its meaning is at the centre of left-
right $olitics today in the 2uro-3tlantic world. . think that the aspiration
"or the promises that it holds out is the reason that the 1rab #pring
took place under the sign o" democracy. .t wasn/t so that they could
have more neoliberalism& it was so that they could have a modest say
in who governs and how they/re governed.
It was to gain a modest $urchase on what liberal democracy has long
$romised, namely uni&ersal rights, re$resentation, equality before the
law, etc. 4ow if those $romises ha&e ne&er been fully reali'ed, the &ery
inter&al between the $romise and the reali'ation holds out the $ossib-
ility for democratic work. +o when I gi&e a summary of characters who
all claim to be democrats, and ob&iously are not all on the same team,
my $oint is really that it has become &ery easy at this $oint in history
to call democracy anything where e&en minimal elections combined
with the free market a$$ear. #hat"s ob&iously a terribly hollowed-out
and terribly limited meaning, and it has nothing to do with democracy
in the most basic etymological and $hilological sense: demos5cracy,
the $eo$le rule. 2lections and the free market ha&e nothing to do with
the $eo$le ruling.
But as I said at the beginning, gi&en that $olitical terms always are re-
signifiable, that they"re always $orous, that they"re always floating, we
can"t say that this is a wrong use of democracy, we can only say that
it"s a thin, a limited, and an unemanci$atory one. But I do think the
term can be reclaimed $olitically, because I already think it"s contested
today. I don"t think there"s been some kind of trium$hant conquest of
the term. #hat"s $recisely what the 6reek elections yesterday were
about, whether democracy was to be equated with neoliberalism or
something else. #hat"s $recisely what the 3rab +$ring was about, and
that"s what current struggles re$resented by grou$s like 0ccu$y are
about. In each case, there"s an effort to reclaim democracy as some-
thing that has to do with more equality than it has been used to signify
in recent neoliberal decades, and also more control by the $eo$le.
C*J: .ith regard to the return of communism in leftist discourse, you
$ointed to a strategic $roblem ! the fact that this discourse also
comes with its own set of $roblems, its own assum$tions, historical
baggage, etc. .ould you also say that it suffers from a certain obli&i-
ousness to something that a 7oucauldian might want to insist on,
namely the social conditions and framings of $olitical $ractices-
+ometimes the return to communism has a somewhat decisionistic and
e&en heroic undertone to it, which insists on the autonomy of the $olit-
ical act, that is strangely obli&ious of these $ower relations and how
they frame and limit $olitics. I was wondering how you would frame
this $roblem with the discourse.
Brown: 7oucault had one way of naming this $roblem, which was to
suggest that communism, 1ar%ism more generally, ne&er de&elo$ed
what he called a $olitical rationality of its own and as a result was ter-
ribly a&ailable to other $olitical rationalities, anything from absolutism
to liberalism. Long before 7oucault, others ha&e $ointed out that
there"s a &ery thin theory of $olitics in 1ar%, not only in his critique,
but also in the &ery brief imaginary he gi&es us of communism, one
that"s entirely focused on the organi'ation of $roduction and the eman-
ci$ation that the organi'ation of $roduction, owned and controlled col-
lecti&ely, would offer indi&iduals and the whole. I think you"re right that
e&en today when $eo$le s$eak of communism as an alternati&e they
are eliding the fundamental question of who controls, who rules, who
go&erns, what the a$$aratuses are and what the com$atibility or in-
com$atibility is of communism with direct democracy. 3nd briefly
I would say that in &ery, &ery small scale it is $erfectly $ossible to ima-
gine the relation of communism to direct democracy as being a &ery
good one, e.g. in workers" coo$erati&es or other kinds of collect-
i&es ! but at the le&el of the nation-state, let alone the world- It"s im-
$ossible to imagine that. 3nd that"s where we ha&e to do our thinking.
It"s unrealistic, but on the other hand that doesn"t mean we want to
say, as somebody like +la&o/ iek does, that yes of course we must
ha&e the &iolent and the brutal arm of the state at the le&el of the
larger $olitical economy, because that"s the only solution. I"m gi&ing
a crude &ersion of his account, but he would be ha$$y with it, I think.
I am not suggesting that we gi&e u$ on communist ideals, but that we
need to do a great deal of work to think about its &iability in a global-
i'ed twenty-first century and we need to think through the $roblem of
$olitics.
C*J: In your contribution to +emocracy in What #tate, you also $oint to
the $ano$ly of social $owers and discourses constructing and con-
ducting us" that seem to $ose a limit to democratic control8 to the fact
that we and the social world are relentlessly constructed by $owers
beyond our ken and control", which seems to undermine notions of
so&ereignty, according to which the addressees of social norms should
be their authors, and self-legislation at the heart of the modern idea of
democracy, and to make it necessary to rethink democracy more in
terms of its being embedded in forms of go&ernance and sub/ecti&ation
(or citi'eni'ation*. .hat would a 7oucauldian notion of democracy look
like that takes such $ower relations into account- .hat are the theor-
etical resources and the $ractical $ossibilities of such a notion of
democracy-
Brown: I don"t think it is $ossible to think democracy from
a 7oucauldian $ers$ecti&e for se&eral reasons, and I think it"s telling
that 7oucault himself seemed utterly uninterested in the question of
democracy. I don"t mean he was an anti-democrat. e became inter-
ested in the question of counter-conducts, indi&idual efforts at crafting
the self, to sub&ert, interru$t or &i&isect forces go&erning or con-
structing us, but that"s &ery different from attending to the question of
democracy. I want to say one other thing here before I then directly
answer your question. I"&e lately been rereading his lectures on neolib-
eralism and one thing I"m &ery struck by is that there is an absent
figure in 7oucault"s own formulation of modernity, when he offers us
the $icture of homo economicus and homo /uridicus as the two sides of
go&ernance and the human being in modernity. 7oucault /ust says
you"&e got on the one hand the sub/ect of interest, homo economicus
and on the other hand homo /uridicus, the deri&ati&e from so&ereignty,
the creature who"s limiting so&ereignty. But for 7oucault there"s no
homo $oliticus, there"s no sub/ect of the demos, there"s no democrat,
there"s only a creature of rights and a creature of interest. It"s an e%-
tremely indi&idually oriented formulation of what the modern order is.
#here"s the state, there"s the economy and then there"s the sub/ect
oriented to the economy by interests and toward the state by rights.
But isn"t it striking for a 7rench thinker that there"s no democratic sub-
/ect, no sub/ect oriented, as $art of the demos, toward the question of
so&ereignty by or for the $eo$le- ere 7oucault may ha&e forgotten to
cut off the king"s head in $olitical theory9 #here are /ust no democratic
energies in 7oucault.
+o one of the reasons one can"t think democracy with 7oucault has to
do with his own inability to think it. #he other reason has to do with the
e%tent to which he has gi&en us such a thick theoretical and em$irical
account of the $owers constructing and conducting us ! there"s no
way we can democrati'e all of those $owers. +o I think there one has
to acce$t that if democracy has a meaning for the left today, it"s going
to ha&e to do with modest control of the $owers that go&ern us o&ertly,
rather than that of $ower tout court. +o it"s going to be a combination
of the liberal $romise and the old 1ar%ist claim about the necessary
conditions of democracy. It"s going to be at some le&el a reali'ation of
the 1ar%ist critique of the liberal $romise. .e ha&e to ha&e some con-
trol o&er what and how things are $roduced, we ha&e to ha&e some
control o&er the question of who we are as a $eo$le, what we stand
for, what we think should be done, what should not be done, what
le&els of equality should we ha&e, what liberties matter, and so forth. It
will not be able to reach to those 7oucauldian de$ths of the conduct of
conduct at e&ery le&el. #he dream of democracy $robably has to come
to terms with that limitation. If we can, we will be able to sto$ gener-
ating formulations of resistance that ha&e to do with indi&idual conduct
and ethics. In other words, I think that the way 7oucauldian, Derridean,
Le&inasian and Deleu'ian thinking has derailed democratic thinking is
that it has $ushed it off onto a $ath of thinking about how I conduct
myself, what is my relation to the other, what is my ethos or orienta-
tion toward those who are different from me ! and all that"s fine, but
it"s not democracy in the sense of $ower sharing. It"s an ethics, and
maybe e&en a democratic ethics. But an ethics is not going to get us to
$olitical and economic orders that are more democratic than those we
ha&e now. #he danger of theory that has too much em$hasi'ed the
question of the self"s relationshi$ to itself, or to micro$owers, as useful
as it has been for much of our work, is that it has derailed left demo-
cratic thinking into a $reoccu$ation with ethics.
C*J: In your recent book Walled #tates2 Waning #overeignty, you
argue that the walls that are increasingly being built all o&er the 2uro-
3tlantic world to kee$ migrants out are irrational: walls are the sym-
bols of so&ereignty at the time of its definiti&e waning, while not being
effecti&e in re-establishing so&ereignty in $ractice. If we look at it from
a go&ernmentality $ers$ecti&e, walls do ha&e a certain $ractical ef-
fecti&ity in connection to other bordering $ractices such as detention
and de$ortation. In the 2uro$ean :nion, for instance, there is definitely
no 7ortress 2uro$e, but there is $o$ulation regulation. #here is both
em$irical regulation, and also regulation of what we consider desirable
future citi'ens and sel&es: formal citi'enshi$ makes way for the selec-
tion of $ersons on the basis of ethnicity, religion, $o&erty, education.
.hat is your &iew of those de&elo$ments-
Brown: #here is a difference between border control and walls. .hat
ha$$ens at immigration, at the air$ort, is e%tremely effecti&e in de-
termining who gets in and who gets out. ;ou don"t get in without
a $ass$ort. But walls are much less effecti&e at this. +o the reason
I was s$ecifically dealing with walls and not border controls is to under-
stand why walls ha&e arisen at a time when those kinds of security and
immigration technologies, check$oints, border controls, are so a&ail-
able and effecti&e. 1y question was, why $our billions of dollars into
these $articular edifices that are crude, that are surmountable, that
can be tunneled under, that can be circum&ented in many ways-
3nd yet, my claim is not that walls are merely" symbolic and ha&e no
effects. #hat"s already an im$o&erished understanding of the symbolic.
.alls in many cases are shoring u$ an image of nation-state so&er-
eignty that is weakening as so&ereignty, that is detaching from states
themsel&es. I"m not saying that state so&ereignty is finished, I"m not
saying that there"s no such thing as states, I"m not making the claim
that all we ha&e are transnational $owers now. I also acce$t the formu-
lation that one of the things we ha&e in nation-states are new forms of
go&ernmentality $roducing who the we" is: who"s in, who"s out, who"s
needed, who"s not needed, identities that are raciali'ed, ethnici'ed,
and religioni'ed," sometimes in incoherent yet consequential ways.
7or e%am$le, in :+$ost-<== discourse, there is a constant interchange-
ability between the dark, the Islamic, the 3rab and the 1iddle 2astern
that scrambles who $eo$le actually are. +o yes, there are these new
forms of go&ernmentality and securiti'ation, and there is an intersec-
tion between what ha$$ens at the borders and what ha$$ens within.
#here are forms of $olicing, securiti'ing, categori'ing and identity-
making that saturate the internal li&es of nations engaged in them, and
that do not /ust ha$$en at their borders. 3ll this is &ery im$ortant.
But I was writing a different book. It was focused on /ust one question:
country after country today is building walls ! concrete, iron, barbed
wire, brick, $le%iglass walls. Literal, obdurate ob/ects. 7or the most
$art, they are not &ery effecti&e as $art of this go&ernmentality that
you ha&e described. In many cases, they actually make the $rocess
more difficult, because they make it more difficult to see, to monitor,
to check, and to classify and categori'e what"s on the other side or
trying to get in. #hey are also $roducing more and more criminality at
the borders that they limn. #hey intensify organi'ed crime to smuggle
in $eo$le, goods, drugs and wea$ons. +o my question was this: during
a $eriod in which we ha&e a go&ernmentality of securiti'ation that also
intersects with neoliberal regulation of labour, why these walls-
#he other question in the book is: what does it mean to say that
nation-state so&ereignty is waning- .here are we- .hat is the $ost-
.est$halian $olitical formation that both refers to and beyond the
nation-state- .e ha&e nascent and struggling $ost-national constella-
tions, e.g. the 2:. .e ha&e im$ortant transnational institutions, the I17,
.orld Bank, .orld ,ourt, and so forth. But we are still nation-state
centric, e&en as state so&ereignty is being weakened by globali'ation
itself, by the flow of ideas, religions, labour, ca$ital, $olitical mo&e-
ments, across borders. 4eoliberal rationality is also weakening state
so&ereignty. 4ow can this hel$ us understand why these walls are
being built- .alls which are not fundamentally abetting the go&ern-
mentality you describe ! they"re hugely e%$ensi&e and often $roduce
more and worse &ersions of the $roblem that they would $ur$ortedly
address as they intensify &iolence and crime, and make more e%-
$ensi&e the immigration and smuggling they aim to interdict. 3re these
walls resurrecting an imago of the nation and the so&ereignty of the
state e&en as both recede materially- 3nd does this in turn generate
a certain $olitical imaginary with which we (theorists and acti&ists*
need to reckon today-
C*J: 0ne inter$retation could be that your understanding of walls
would hel$ us e%$lain why $henomena such as de$ortation and deten-
tion are taking $lace.
Brown: >art of what I"m suggesting is that what walls do is hel$ to es-
tablish the us" and the them," the threat of the outside to the su$-
$osed $urity and integrity of the inside. ,ertainly this facilitates deten-
tion, de$orting, and &ery harsh forms of go&ernmental regulation. ;et
again I was trying to isolate something about walling that was different
from the whole $ano$ly of border control on the one hand, and go&ern-
mentality and managing multiculturalism on the other. 1aybe it"s less
acute here in 2uro$e $recisely because most of this is ha$$ening in the
absence of actual walls. ere you ha&e the imago of fortress 2uro$e",
and the arguments about fortress 2uro$e," without the actual fortress.
.hereas what we"re looking at in the :nited +tates is now ?@A miles of
wall (out of a $lanned B,AAA*. #he concrete $ortions are not quite as
tall as the se$aration barrier in Israel, but they are mammoth. It costs
CB= million $er mile to build and will cost another estimated CD billion
to o$erate and maintain o&er the ne%t BA years. Do you gras$ these
numbers- 3nd the Border >rotection 3gency had to re$air more than
E,AAA breaches in the wall in BA=A alone. #he wall is not sto$$ing
a thing, but it is ha&ing a tremendous effect on the 3merican $olitical
imaginary.
C*J: .hat do you think of inter$retations like those of .illiam .alters,
who stresses that there is also some resistant agency within the
walling, for e%am$le by the organisations that fill water tanks on the
:.+.-1e%ican border- ,ounter-conduct takes $lace throughout different
le&els of society, by squatters, but also by lower-le&el go&ernments,
churches, border $ersonnel, 460s, medical $ersonnel, and, not to
forget, irregulari'ed migrants themsel&es. 6i&en what you were saying
before regarding the indi&idualist $ers$ecti&e on resistance, how do
you see their contribution to the formation of com$le%ly layered iden-
tities from within", $articularly in contrast to the highly securiti'ed, re-
actionary ones that you highlight in your book-
Brown: ;es, but that said, let me be clear, I think these more indi-
&idual or smaller efforts of resistance matter, both because sometimes
you"re literally sa&ing a life, and also to the e%tent that they can be
$art of a broader $olitics of resistance. .e, like you, are ha&ing a big
struggle o&er the question of who we are and what the $lace of so-
called new" immigrants is in the we". #his is a huge struggle, and
a com$licated one in the :+ about belonging, about healthcare, about
education, about the $rice of labour. It touches e&erything. 0kay, so
here"s how it $lays out in the desert borderlands. #here are self-
designated 3ngels" who lea&e bottled water and ma$s out in the
desert where the immigrants cross, trying /ust to hel$ them stay ali&e
during their crossing that the wall has made more difficult. 0n the
other side, there are organi'ed grou$s who go and $ick u$ those
bottles of water, or re$lace them with foul bottles of water, to actually
$oison and kill the migrants, or $ick u$ the ma$s that the 3ngels"
lea&e and re$lace them with ma$s that lead nowhere, that is, to their
death. #here"s a &ery concrete $olitical struggle going on there
between non-state agents. #o the e%tent that this struggle is known, to
the e%tent that it"s $ublici'ed, to the e%tent that it gains a $olitical
face, it"s not nothing. +o, on the one hand, there"s a moral side to the
story, trying to sa&e a life. 0n the other hand, there is a $olitical battle
going on between two citi'en grou$s, with big symbolic things at stake.
3nd to the e%tent that it gets into the larger $olitical discourse, it"s
doing a lot of work.
C*J: #he bad thing is that we can"t say resistance is /ust on the side of
the 460s $ro&iding the water.
Brown: 4o. #he 1inutemen" who I talk about are the ones who are
gallo$ing through the desert and $icking u$ the clean water and re$la-
cing it with foul water, and $icking u$ the ma$s and re$lacing them
and so forth. +o they are engaged in resistance, right- 2&en if it"s res-
istance to the failure of the state to $ersecute illegal entrants.
C*J: .e would be interested to know more about the struggle o&er the
we," and how it"s linked to recent $rotests, resistance mo&ements.
0ne thing that was much debated within and around the 0ccu$y .all
+treet mo&ement, and that you also ha&e been em$hasi'ing in your
comments on it, is that one of the successes seems to be in showing
the $ossibility of a new sense of collecti&ity. +ome $eo$le think that
this is already a huge achie&ement, because this mode of we" as
a $rogressi&e collecti&ity didn"t seem $ossible. ,ould you say a bit
more about this collecti&ity, and, more concretely, about where from
today you see the $ossibilities and limitations of the 0ccu$y mo&ement
and how it frames this kind of collecti&ity or $olitical action-
Brown: #he 0ccu$y mo&ement was e%citing when it eru$ted in the :+.
I"m going to s$eak from the $ers$ecti&e of the :+, because it is e&ery-
where, but the one I know best is there. It was e%citing for the reasons
you /ust described, the re-emergence of the demos. .hat was telling
was that it emerged not as a set of labour unions, students, con-
sumers, etc. but as a kind of mass that I want to suggest is the effect,
in $art, of the neoliberal destruction of solidarities, the destruction of
unions, the destruction of se$arate grou$s or forces within the demos.
(#hose destructions ha&e been &ery literal at the le&el of law in
the :+o&er the $ast ten years* +o one thing that was interesting about
the emergence of the <<F was that it was an emergence as a mass of
indi&iduals coming together, not as &arious kinds of grou$s making an
alliance. #his is $artly the effect of the neoliberal breakdown of the
demos into indi&iduals rather than grou$ solidarities, and 0ccu$y is the
first ma/or left e%$ression of this reconfiguration. #he second thing I"d
note is that 0ccu$y has been successful, in the :+, in changing the
con&ersation about equality and inequality. 4o matter whether 0ccu$y
re-emerges in a massi&e way and becomes the future of left social or-
gani'ing or not, it has still succeeded in an e%traordinary and unanti-
ci$ated way in making it $ossible, in a way that wasn"t the case /ust
two years ago, to critici'e the dee$ly inegalitarian effects of the neolib-
eral order. It has also reintroduced into mainstream liberal discourse
the idea of the &alue of $ublic goods. ;ou can see 0bama make the
shift. ;ou can see the Gegents of the :ni&ersity of ,alifornia make the
shift in the wake of 0ccu$y. #hey don"t credit it e%$ressly, but you can
see the shift in the discourse. #hose are two things ! legitimate e%-
treme inequality and the destruction of $ublic goods ! that I thought
neoliberalism was /ust going to $roduce so successfully that we would
not be able to reco&er, we wouldn"t be able to get them back into our
con&ersations. I think there ha&e been tremendous effects of 0ccu$y in
this regard.
#he beauty of 0ccu$y and the difficulty for 0ccu$y was its attachment
to hori'ontalism. 3s we were saying in the beginning of this inter&iew,
it is one thing to ha&e the commitment to direct democracy, and abso-
lute $artici$ation in e&ery decision, in a grou$ of twel&e, or e&en fifty.
It"s another thing to do that across thousands and still another to do
that across millions, and in an ongoing way. It"s not $ossible. +o what
do we do with that- I think many $eo$le in 0ccu$y are asking this
question. It raises a whole other set of issues, about the difference
between leaders and rulers, the difference between $artici$ation and
&oice on the one hand and absolute shared decision-making on the
other. It raises questions that radical democratic theory has asked for
a long time, but hasn"t had to answer immediately. +o it"s time to do
that work and I think many $eo$le in&ol&ed with 0ccu$y want to do
that work. I think e&en the die-hards got worn out by the ten-hour gen-
eral assembly that $roduced one decision about tomorrow"s action.
3nd you will not get ordinary $eo$le to do that work. +o that"s one big
issue facing 0ccu$y.
#he other thing I want to talk about is the $roblem of 0edi$ali'ation in
$olitics, and what it means to get your target right. .hat is beautiful
about 0ccu$y is the focus on the destruction of $ublic goods, the $ro-
duction of a debt and deri&ati&es economy that dri&es most $eo$le
down while consolidating wealth for the few, and the im$ortance of re-
co&ering decision-making and democratic rule for the $eo$le ! those
are all wonderful things to affirm. But the difficulty is that many times
attachments to tents or skirmishes with the $olice derail that larger
agenda. #he $olice, the state, the one-on-one collisions with what was
taken to be the face of $ower, became distracting to the $oint of ab-
sor$tion, which I want to call a certain 0edi$ali'ation, and a $ersonific-
ation of $ower in the father, the state, the co$s, or the chancellor of
a uni&ersity. 0nce you do that, you"&e lost the big $icture and lost the
big agenda. +o some of the occu$ations I"&e seen or been a $art of
ha&e run aground here. .hen the focus becomes .ill we be able to
kee$ our tents here- .hat are the $olice going to do ne%t- .hy didn"t
the mayor or the chancellor $rotect our occu$ation-," then you"re /ust
ha&ing an ordinary kind of scra$ o&er $ro$erty rights, $olice $ower and
hierarchy. 3t that $oint, the big and s$lendid agenda of 0ccu$y gets
lost. #his $roblem is es$ecially acute in student $olitics.
C*J: 0ne challenge seems to be institutionali'ation without re$rodu-
cing the $roblems of formal forms of $olitical $arties, $olitical organi'a-
tions, etc8 another $roblem is what you"&e described as 0edi$ali'ation,
sometimes a militant infantilism that one can"t confront state $ower
directly. ;et another $roblem seems to be with the effecti&ity of largely
symbolic $rotest. I can"t hel$ going back to 1arcuse"s idea of re-
$ressi&e tolerance in terms of how the state reacts to $rotests. It"s al-
ways a double strategy, it seems. 3cce$t nice forms of $rotests that
are easily controllable, that might still be radical in some sense, but do
not really $ose a challenge, e&en celebrate them. 7or instance, in
6ermany, e&ery ma/or $olitician seemed to be in fa&our of 0ccu$y. #he
chancellor, 1erkel, the o$$osition, e&eryone. It"s great that those
young $eo$le bring u$ these im$ortant questions. 2&en in this un-
orthodo% way, that"s really nice. #hat"s what our democracy is about."
+o on a symbolic le&el, the $rotest was immediately saniti'ed, intro-
duced into the $olitical cycle, etc. 3nd of course, this one strategy of
answering goes hand in hand with the criminali'ation of forms of
$rotest that do not as easily lend themsel&es to this first kind of re-
s$onse. #his is a $roblem that all kinds of ci&il disobedience or $rotests
in that tradition seem to face. ;ou can"t go down the militant road, be-
cause that ends u$ with a fetishi'ed idea of attacking the state on the
street, but on the other hand symbolic $rotests also seem to run into
real $roblems concerning their effecti&ity.
Brown: #hese dangers though don"t cancel the im$ortance of $rotests.
#he ,i&il Gights 1o&ement, for e%am$le, faced both of those dangers,
as did other grou$s that followed in the ci&il rights frame, and still
I think we can say there was success. But of course: those are social
reform mo&ements. .ith 0ccu$y, we"re talking about the fundamental
restructuring of the economy. 3nd here, the double dilemma that
1arcuse outlined and that you /ust re$rised so well is &ery a$t. #hat
said, I don"t think there are many alternati&es. #he thing about di-
lemmas in $olitics, and about $arado%es in $olitics, is that you often
/ust ha&e to na&igate them. ;ou can"t /ust say 0h well, there must be
some $urer form". >olitics is such an im$ure field, and you ha&e to
ha&e a stomach for that im$urity, as .eber reminds us in >olitics as
a Hocation." >olitics is fundamentally im$ure and $arado%ical, which is
why so many $eo$le make the turn to ethics. It feels like it will be
cleaner, and you"ll be able to e%ecute a com$lete and coherent sen-
tence in ethics. ;ou"ll be able to say, this is what my ethical conduct
should be, this is what it will be, and this is what it is." >olitics does not
o$erate like that. It features un$redictable ga$s between intentions,
actions and effects. It features a medium in which $rinci$le" can back-
fire or sim$ly be irrele&ant.
I do think you"re right about the res$onse in most of the 2uro-3tlantic
world to 0ccu$y, being #his is good, and in fact we"ll e&en make
a s$ace for this as long as it doesn"t take a &ery militant form."
:nfortunately, I think this leads some acti&ists to think that militancy
must be the ne%t ste$. #hat means &iolence, or tangling with the $o-
lice, or occu$ying a building they will not let us occu$y. .e"re then in
the game", as 7oucault would $ut it, that the administrators ha&e or-
gani'ed, where this is okay and that"s not okay and therefore you go
for what"s not okay. But where is the agenda, where"s the $olitical
$oint- 3n e%am$le of this containment ha$$ened at the :ni&ersity of
,alifornia. It was &ery funny. #he $resident of the uni&ersity combined
with the dean of the law school and someone from $ublic relations to
ha&e a forum called ow should we handle the ne%t 0ccu$y-" 3nd it
was all about de&elo$ing best $ractices," for $ree&ent $lanning, and
for ci&ilian watch, and for monitoring8 best $ractices should certain
things eru$t. It was all about fitting this whole thing into a neoliberal
go&ernance language that e&erybody was su$$osed to $artici$ate in:
all the stakeholders". +o the co$s, and the students and the staff and
the faculty and the administrators were su$$osed to show u$ as stake-
holders and $lan the ne%t 0ccu$y together, to establish what would
and would not be best $ractices for $artici$ants, $olice, etc. It was al-
most a comedy &ersion of neoliberal buy-in" and consensus, e%ce$t
the 3dministration was &ery serious about it.
C*J: ow do you consider your own role, and that of leftist intellec-
tuals, in thinking about 0ccu$y and other mo&ements and changes at
the moment- .hat can the $olitical theorist do when on the one hand,
we seem to ha&e become teachers in a kind of factory-like educational
en&ironment, and on the other hand, the classical role of the $ublic in-
tellectual is no longer un$roblematically there. 0n the one hand, the
changing media en&ironment has seemed to dislocate the classical
figure of the $ublic intellectual, on the other hand, it seems to also
ha&e been bound u$ with a set of $retty $roblematic, e$istemological,
social understandings, quasi-$aternalistic authoritarian in some re-
s$ects. #here are ob&iously many differences between $ublic cultures
which frame the $ublic intellectual in &ery different ways, and which
$lays a &ery different historical role in the :+, in 7rance, in 6ermany, in
the 4etherlands, etc. But we were wondering what you thought about
the self-understanding of critical theorists today.
Brown: I find the fetishism of the" $ublic intellectual $articularly an-
noying today, so let me instead say something about what critical
theory can offer, or how it articulates, with these $olitical mo&ements.
0n the one hand, I continue to think that the most im$ortant way that
academics can contribute to what I"m going to call roughly a left
agenda" (reconcei&ing democracy in a more substanti&e and serious
way, addressing the organi'ation of life by ca$ital, re-establishing the
&alue of $ublic goods*. #he most im$ortant thing that we can do is be
good teachers. By that, I don"t mean teaching those issues8 I mean
teach students to think well. .hate&er we are teaching, whether it"s
>lato or 1ar%, economic theory or social theory, 4iet'sche or 3dorno,
we need to be teaching them how to read carefully, think hard, ask
dee$ questions, make good arguments. 3nd the reason this is so im-
$ortant is that the most substanti&e casualties of neoliberalism today
are dee$, inde$endent thought, the making of citi'ens, and liberal arts
education as o$$osed to &ocational and technical training. .e faculty
still ha&e our classrooms as $laces to do what we think is &aluable in
those classrooms, which for me is not about $reaching a $olitical line,
but teaching students that thinking is fundamental to being human and
is increasingly de&alued e%ce$t as a technical $ractice. #his is an old
claim, from the 7rankfurt +chool, but it"s on steroids now. +o I belie&e
our most im$ortant work as academics is teaching students to think
dee$ly and well. 0ur books come and go.
0n the issues of the day, the blogos$here and its relati&es actually
ha&e a $retty big im$act. +o when critical theorists do s$eak intelli-
gently about something current, and that s$eaking is ca$tured and dis-
seminated through social media, it can be significant. +o maybe we
differ a little on the question of what the media has done to the $ublic
intellectual. If the $ontificating $ublic intellectual in Le 1onde is on the
wane, I do think she or he is on the rise in these other $laces. 1aybe
I"m encouraged in this area because in the :+ we"&e always had
a dearth of intellectual life in most of our media until now. .hen we
talk about $ublic intellectuals, we"re talking about a tiny grou$ who
read the 4ew ;orker or #he 4ation, which is about .AAA= $ercent of our
$o$ulation. By contrast, the new media has made it $ossible for ser-
ious analysis to circulate in all kinds of ways. ,ritical theory should
take ad&antage of this. It affords a relation between $olitics and the
academy not /ust through books or classroom lectures but through
e$isodic inter&entions.
C*J: ;ou ha&e recently written critically about secularism. In 7rance
and elsewhere, we ha&e seen that critical reflection on secularism has
been taken u$ ! and stimulated and $olitici'ed ! by right-wing, con-
ser&ati&e and5or anti-emanci$atory organi'ations. 3$$arently one has
to be &ery careful when being critical about secularism. >erha$s it"s
im$ortant to stress that there are different &ersions of secularism and
that we need to think critically about these &arious &ersions. 0r if one
critici'es secularism more or less generically, it seems im$ortant to for-
mulate the as$ects we do want to sa&e, in terms of basic rights, for in-
stance. .hat"s your &iew on that-
Brown: In a way, we"re back to the democracy question. Do we hang
on to the term, secularism, and try to gi&e it some new sha$e, or
abandon it- I say we hang onto it. But you"re also $osing the $roblem
of right-wing a$$ro$riations of left-critiques. #here is always a danger
that one"s internal critiques of left or liberal discourse will be a$$ro$ri-
ated by the right. #hat"s the $eril of doing those kinds of critiques,
whether it"s a critique of identity $olitics or certain as$ects of fem-
inism, or 0edi$ali'ation in $rotest $olitics. 4ow the contem$orary
3merican right, of course, has its own inde$endent source of anti-
secularism. #hey accuse liberals and leftists of secular-humanist ni-
hilism," which means we"&e em$tied out the world of meaning. #hat
said, the right also backed two wars that took $lace under the sign of
they"re fundamentalists, we"re secular," we"re tolerant, they"re intol-
erant." +o things are all mi%ed u$ here.
4ow, to your question: what is to be sa&ed- I don"t think we can an-
swer it generically, because I think there are distinct formations of sec-
ularism, &arieties of secularism, so we ha&e to ask it in the conte%t of
the secular discourse in each society that secularism go&erns. .hat
I am committed to trying to sa&e in the:+ conte%t is the im$ortant dis-
tinction between church and state, a distinction that aims to secure
a religion-free $ublic realm and $ersonal religious freedom. It doesn"t
do either com$letely, of course, but one then has to figure out how to
e%tend secularism beyond its ,hristian->rotestant roots, so that it can
make good on its $romises. 0ne also has to gi&e u$ the idea that there
is some neutral, secular s$ace. +o it"s a question of making these $rob-
lematic conceits $art of our li&ed work on secularism.
If we lea&e the terrain of secularism for a moment, this might become
clearer. .e used to ha&e these debates about whether uni&ersalism"s
absurd or useless, whether there"s always a constituti&e outside. .ell
of course, there"s always a constituti&e outside, nothing is truly uni-
&ersal, but that the same time one doesn"t want to gi&e u$ on the no-
tion of uni&ersal inclusion of all humanity into the Iantian idea of the
dignity of humans, or the idea that e&eryone is entitled to sur&i&al as
well as thri&ing beyond sur&i&al. But one has to know at the same time
that there will always be a constituti&e outside, that the uni&ersal will
ne&er truly be uni&ersal. #here will always be some humans who are
not human enough" to be included. )ust as with secularism, it will
ne&er achie&e the neutrality it $retends to ha&e. .e must always be
$ushing it toward a greater neutrality, knowing that it won"t achie&e it,
that it will always be o$erating from a stand$oint, and it will always be
a religious stand$oint. +imilarly, knowing that secularism doesn"t
sim$ly address religion but defines it, we can become attenti&e to what
it"s defining. .hat is it saying religion is- .hat counts as religion, and
what does it cast as good religion and bad religion- #hese become
things for us to work on, $olitically, in the culture but also in law. #his
is how we might sa&e something like secularism. Instead of saying
Don"t attack it, it"s all we"&e got to $re&ent the o$$osite" where the
o$$osite is imagined as theocracy or fundamentalism, I think secu-
larism becomes strengthened by becoming more self-critical and a&ail-
able to re&ision. I think it"s an emanci$atory and inclusi&e modality for
all $olitical cultures, but it unfolds in different ways in India, #urkey,
2gy$t, 6ermany. 3nd it will also be wea$oni'ed in different ways in
each $lace. +o we sa&e" it $recisely by working on its false conceits,
and attem$ting to remake secular law and secular debates8 rather than
by burying these conceits, or sim$ly defending secularism as better
than the alternati&es.
3obin %elikates teaches political and social philosophy at the
$niversity o" 1msterdam. 4e is the vice-director o" 1#%1 and a co-
editor o" 5risis.
6olande 7ansen is a 3esearcher at the 1msterdam %enter "or
8lobalisation #tudies '1%8#) o" the $niversity o" 1msterdam.
.e Jthe inter&iewersK would like to thank .endy Brown for ha&ing this con&ersation
with us in 6iessen, at the conference Democracy and Gesistance ()une =L M BA, BA=B*,
as well as )ulien Iloeg and 4ina agel for assistance in transcribing the inter&iew.
(,,* Irisis, BA=B, Issue N
www.krisis.eu
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