Balibar divides up politics into three concepts—emancipation, transformation, and civility. Throughout this discussion, he comments on the inevitable “us versus them” politics in society. Subject politics comes into play when we look at the active versus passive citizen because only subject-citizens are able to be active in society. However, Ranciere goes further to define a citizen as someone who has a right to speak, but what if they aren’t able to do that? This is where the role of emancipation comes in. Due to this disidentification, the minoritarian does not have the time or right to be political because they are los desechables. If politics revolve around what is seen and what can be said about it, the minoritarian often does not have the time due to the economic hardship to be seen or say anything. Balibar argues that there is a way to come into visibility as victims but what is the effect of this? Is there a healthy way to appropriate victimhood and is that a form of emancipation that Ranciere is calling for?
Category Archives: Week 1
performance and politics
As we have entered a world beyond the limit of structural violence, Balibar wonders whether our politics can be thought of as heteronomy of heteronomy, constituted by the fusion of the problem of violence and the problem of identity. The politics which takes as its object the violence of identities he terms ‘civility’, and he posits three theorems on identity in response: all identity is transindividual; we should speak of identifications rather than identity; and, every identity is ambiguous.
I’m curious about the potential connections to be made between these three theorems relating to identity and the three ways of distributing the sensible as forms of art and forms that inscribe a sense of community—the surface of depicted signs, the split reality of the theater, and the rhythm of a dancing chorus—posited by Rancière. The transindividuality of identity positions it in bonds validated among individual imaginations: is this like a sort of economy of ‘depicted’ (or, ‘embodied’) signs? “The aesthetic regime disrupts the apportionment of spaces in favor of immanence of thought in sensible matter”: as the apportionment of spaces makes “double beings” out of the worker, could ‘identifications’ be a pathway towards a disruption of current modes of doing and making? How is the rhythm of a dancing chorus bolstered by the ambiguity of individual identity? Mouffe posits that artistic and cultural practices can offer spaces of resistance: can the connections between identity and the distribution of the sensible be articulated as agonistic interventions within the context of counter-hegemonic struggle?
Colectividades
En una crítica al racionalismo liberal, el cual pregona una idea de consenso “armonioso” entre perspectivas y valores; y descarta la existencia de una dimensión antagónica, Chantal Mouffe propone pensar ‘lo político’ no desde la mirada individualista (como lo haría el pensamiento liberal) sino desde la perspectiva que reconoce la presencia de identidades colectivas y que surge a partir de diversas relaciones sociales: “The political refers to this dimension of antagonism which can take many forms and can emerge in diverse social relations. It is a dimension that can never be eradicated.” (2).
Me interesa conectar la relevancia que tienen las identidades colectivas tanto en el pensamiento de Mouffe como en el de Étienne Balibar, pues el autor también dedica una parte de su texto no solo a reconocer su existencia sino la importancia que tienen a la hora de reflexionar sobre ‘lo político’, pues la emancipación política solo se consigue en el reconocimiento mutuo del otro como sujeto político y eso solo sucede en la colectividad: “No one may be liberated or elevated to a position of equality –let us say, may be emancipated– by an external, unilateral decision, or by a higher grace. Only reciprocally by mutual recognition, can this be achieved. The rights which form the content of equal liberty are by definition individual rights (…) However, since they cannot be granted, thy have to be won, and they can be won only collectively.” (4). Es decir, si se hace un repaso por la historia (dimensión clave en el pensamiento de Balibar), solo a través de movimientos colectivos es que se ha conseguido el reconocimiento por parte del Estado: “multitudes –‘ordinary’ citizens, classes, mass parties – have come together to force the state to recognize their dignity, and to introduce norms of civility into public service or the public sphere” (33). Así, el ‘nosotros’ demarcado de un ‘ellos’, cobra una relevancia fundamental tanto en las ideas de Mouffe como en las de Balibar.
Antagonismo e agonismo no Brasil atual
Enquanto lia os textos foi impossível não pensar sobre a atual situação política do Brasil. A ideia de antagonismo de Chantal Mouffe parece muita adequada para analisar o retorno do autoritarismo no país. O antagonismo destrutivo, ou seja, radicalização da divisão entre nós e eles, a tentativa de aniquilação de tudo que é identificado por “eles” (ou por “nós”) como sendo ligado a “nós” (ou “eles”), a identificação do “outro” como inimigo, o não reconhecimento da pluralidade e a não lealdade aos princípios democráticos definem perfeitamente o que acontece atualmente no Brasil. A visão de Mouffoe sobre a importância das práticas artísticas e culturais na resistência contra hegemônica e a ideia de partilha do sensível de Rancière me levou a pensar sobre as instâncias que são os principais alvos de ataques do governo atual. A educação e a arte, assim como os seus agentes, suas instituições, seus temas, seus conteúdos e seus símbolos, vêm sofrendo constantes ataques no Brasil desde 2016. A noção de partilha do sensível como “o sistema de evidências sensíveis” que revela que pode e quem não pode tomar parte, quem pode e quem não pode participar, me lembra a ideia defendida por Jorge Larrosa da escola como “tempo livre”, ou seja, como um tempo/espaço no qual todos podem participar. O ataque a escola e a universidade pública no Brasil, assim como aos artistas, as obras e instituições de arte, tem claramente o objetivo de aniquilar os espaços da participação democrática, espaços onde a crítica e a prática do agonismo ainda parecem possíveis. Os textos me instigaram a pensar também nas formas de resistência contra o autoritarismo que surgem no âmbito educacional e artístico no Brasil contemporâneo.
El agonismo y el espacio público según Chantal Mouffe
[en ESPAÑOL] Chantal Mouffe provee un esquema simple pero abarcador sobre sus usos de los conceptos políticos que informan sus tesis. Es crítica férrea de la política (neo)liberal contemporánea que, en sus mecanismos profundos, pone la democracia en jaque al proponer un consenso objetivo ilusorio que elimina la posibilidad de un ejercicio libre de la democracia propiamente dicho en un contexto pluralista globalizado. Al tomar una postura agonística—que reconoce un oponente político como adversario y no enemigo, que presupone un respeto mutuo en una competencia por los afectos de una mayoría del electorado—reconoce que la política democrática es una confrontación directa entre proyectos hegemónicos sin la posibilidad de una reconciliación final. En su capítulo “Agonistic Politics and Artistic Practices”, desmorona la dicotomía entre la política y el arte y presenta el quehacer artístico como un lugar de intervención, de resistencia y, sobretodo, de crítica capaz de retar el imaginario social necesario para la reproducción capitalista. Lo interesante del asunto es que el neoliberalismo es tan abarcador que también tiene la capacidad de destruirse a sí mismo: en ese afán racionalista-universalista-occidenal, las naciones-estados hipercaptalistas y hegemónicas protegen los derechos de libre expresión que posibilitan, en primera instancia, la concepción, creación y difusión de prácticas artísticas subversivas. Por tanto, el neoliberalismo ahora tendría que crear consensos ilusoriamente mayoritarios que creen oposición frente a la resistencia a la vez que defiende su derecho a resistir. Entonces, ¿cómo es que el Estado resiste la resistencia? Varios ejemplos puertorriqueños me brincan en la memoria: vayas de metal para contener las marchas multitudinarias, como las reces; apagar los micrófonos de los contrincantes en los hemiciclos senatoriales; liberar gases lacrimógenos a las once de la noche, luego de varias horas de protesta, por parte de los policías frente a la casa de gobierno en San Juan. Pero hay práticas artísticas que no se callan, que prefieren alborotar incluso en medio de las protestas, y menciono un ball queer (al estilo de Paris is Burning o de la serie Pose) que se realizó a plena luz de día en la Plaza de Armas en el centro del Viejo San Juan durante las protestas en contra del gobernador este verano pasado. Las cuerpas queer intervinieron en las protestas y aportaron sus voces y sus cacerolas a las manifestaciones, impusieron su estética y voluntad queer a las masas reclamando su derecho a la libre expresión, exigiendo el fin a toda violencia heteropatriarcal y capitalista, especialmente la del gobernador. Escogieron un espacio público y frecuentado que, según el lente agonístico, no fue para alcanzar un consenso, sino para sublimar sus preocupaciones democráticas e interceder en pos de las víctimas más marginadas del gobierno actual.
[in ENGLISH:] Chantal Mouffe is a determined critic of contemporary (neo)liberal policies that, in their deep mechanisms, threatens democracy by proposing an objective and illusory majority, which in turn eliminates the possibility of a proper free and fair democracy within the context of a pluralistic globalization. By taking an agonistic stance—which recognizes a political opponent as an adversary and not an enemy, which presupposes a mutual respect un a competition for the affection of an electoral majority—Mouffe recognizes that democratic politics is a direct confrontation between hegemonic projects without the possibility of final reconciliation. In “Agonistic Politics and Artistic Practices”, she discards any easy dichotomy between art and politics and presents artistic creations as a place of intervention, resistance, and, above all else, criticism capable of challenging the social imaginary necessary for capitalist (re)production. What is interesting is that neoliberalism is so encompassing that it also even has the capacity to self-destruct: in its rationalist-universalist-Western zeal, hegemonic hypercapitalist nation-states protect freedom of speech rights which make possible, in any case, the conception, creation, and diffusion of subversive artistic practices. Neoliberalism will now need to create an illusory consensual majority which creates an opposition to the resistance while at the same time defending their right to resist. Therefore, how does the State resist resistance? Various examples from Puerto Rico jump to memory: metal hurdle fences to contain multitudinous marches, as if cattle; turning off opponents’ and dissenters’ microphones in Senatorial hearings; releasing tear gas at eleven at night, after hours of protests, by the police in front of the governor’s mansion in San Juan. Yet there still are artistic practices that refuse to be silenced, which prefer disrupting even during the protests, and I mention a queer ball (to the tune of Paris Is Burning or the series Pose) held in broad daylight in the Plaza de Armas in the heart of Old San Juan during the protests against the governor this past summer. Queer bodies intervened during the protests and contributed their voices and their pans to bang with, imposed their queer aesthetic and will on the masses reclaiming their right to free expression, demanding an end to all heteropatriarcal and capitalist violence, especially the governor’s. They chose a frequented public space which, from an agonistic lens, not to reach a consensus, but to sublimate their democratic concerns and intercede in the name of the most marginalized by the current government.
Protected: 377
A dimension of a Placard
A ‘surface’ is not simply a geometric composition of lines. It is a certain distribution of the sensible
Jacques Rancière
That statement and Rancière’s further critique of Plato’s mute function of writing and painting reminded me of the use of placards in pickets and marches. Placard – a two-dimensional surface which combines both visual and textual aesthetics – is associated with an expression of political position in democratic society. Placards in single pickets (as group protests are prohibited) got viral in Kazakhstan this summer. Statements did not involve a direct opposition message, but were quotes from constitution or phrases as “you cannot run away from truth”. However, placards became politically significant in my country because each act led to a police detention. Those detentions brought up a hypothesis that a placard as a surface is considered political. The prove didn’t make wait for it: public appearance with an empty white placard immediately attracted attention of police. Therefore, placard might be a mute or whatever dimensional sign but it can carry a sensible political aesthetic.
Lingering question of the paradoxical premise of politics
A fundamental yet complicated question lingers in my head while reading: what is the premise to follow or assumption that we are making when we talk about politics？Where does political right comes from, or how it is constituted remains inexplicit to me. However, it is crucial as it determines the perspective from which we interpret politics as a part of human society as well as humanity.
It is indicated that “autonomy becomes a politics when it turns out that part of society (and hence of humanity) is excluded-legally or not-from the universal right to politics” (Balibar, 6), which seems to suggest that political rights only come into being with its opposite counterpart of oppression begins and politics only a form of establishment created by human but not humanity. Similarly, Mouffe used terms of “hegemonic nature of every kind of social order and envisaging society” to characterize politics (Mouffe, 2). If that is true, then the relationship between “natural right” (such as liberty, equality) and “political (or probably legal) right” becomes truly paradoxical. As natural right should be universal and independent from all different traditions, cultures, legal systems and governments, the formation of politics- although in the name of emancipation- to some extent violates the nature of human rights itself.
To be political or not
In literary theory, especial in the academia world of China, we talked a lot about how to distinguish “the art for the people” and “L’ art pour L’art“. In Rancière’s universe, none of these definitions make sense, because art is no longer about consensus or for certain purpose(14), it is autonomy. It is mind-blowing because my expectation for art was only what Rancière would call as the representative regime of art.(43)
His critics about Madame Bovary is inspiring. As we usually think Emma’s story as an ethical story, Rancière thinks Emma was trying to bring art into life, (but the rising of bourgeois and capitalism would not allow this, so she must be killed, as Rancière claims in another essay) and his idea of aesthetic of daily life merges in that part.(55 )
Chantal Mouffe is more radical, sometimes even speaks from an opposite standpoint of the other two. By putting the mode of production into question, she challenges the possibility of building up the ensemble. In Mouffe’s idea, not even Marx’s definition of class is applicable, Identity is more solid in describing the ineffable changes of modern or postmodern life. She also thinks distinguishing political and non-political art is not necessary，because it is to symbolize social relations. (91)
Etienne Balibar holds an opinion in between, he reclaims the difference between “politics” and “political”, the autonomy of politics and the politics of emancipation seams testified for the artistic concept of Rancière.(2)
Hegemony, dissent, transformation
This week’s authors share a common political vocabulary and offer a particularly critical lens for thinking about questions of democracy, although not necessarily agreeing on the purposes and strategies of political action. For Mouffe (2013), “What liberal democratic politics requires is that the others are not seen as enemies to be destroyed, but as adversaries whose ideas might be fought, (…) but whose right to defend those ideas is not to be questioned.” (07)
Dissent, in Mouffe’s agonistic political landscape, is “always present” (09) in the need for “consensus” (08), as a constitutive character of social division and as “a confrontation with no possibility of final reconciliation” (17). Jacques Rancière, on the other hand, stresses the importance of disagreement as a perception that “simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it” (12). Rancière calls this apportionment the “distribution of the sensible”. And different from Mouffe’s agonistic theory that presupposes an equal political ground among peers in equal conditions of appearance, the distribution of the sensible “reveals who can have a share in what is common to the community” (12), “it defines what is visible or not in a common space, endowed with a common language” (13), and “is a delimitation of spaces and times, of the visible and the invisible, of speech and noise, that simultaneously determines the place and stakes of politics as a form of experience” (13). The “stakes of politics” is precisely what is put into the debate in Étienne Balibar’s text, where the author questions the limits of that which is politically recognizable, relating this intelligibility to pre-existing structures of power that determinate the inside and outside spaces of our political life.
As Balibar points out, it is not enough to recognize the plural, striated and hegemonic sphere of politics. One must take into account the different conditions of appearance for each individual to take space within “the political”. Mouffe’s agonist vision fails to encompass the actual consequences each “outsider” is exposed to in order to take a stand against hegemonic structures of power. To put it simply, Mouffe interpretation “sublimates” the real, material risks involved in the struggle against dominant consensus and hegemonic political violence.
The horizon of the political
I do not think that one can envisage the nature of the agonistic struggle simply in terms of an ongoing contestation over issues or identities. One also needs to grasp the crucial role of hegemonic articulations and the necessity not only of challenging what exists but also of constructing new articulations and new institutions.
(Mouffe 11)
For me, this quote from Mouffe’s text summarizes her argument for the transformative potential, and need, of the political. Mouffe locates the potentiality for the establishment of counter-hegemonies in the hegemonic structure itself, which is always subject to “undecidability” and “contingency.” The political, then, should work to “disarticulate it in an effort to install another form of hegemony” (2). Thus, political action does not end at deconstruction, but requires the proposal of other possibilities; new “modes of visibility” to follow Rancière. I found Mouffe’s argument against consensus especially pertinent to the political situation of the Democratic Party today, which is often described as having arrived at an impasse, visualizing the “safe route” as a path to electoral victory (a strategy that is not necessarily successful, as we have seen); one only needs to recall Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s words in July’s debate when she questioned of her fellow candidates, “Why run for President just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for?”
Regarding art’s role in the political, firstly, I agreed with Mouffe’s argument for activism to take on public spaces and institutions because they are “always striated and hegemonically structured” (91); I am reminded of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s’ “Enactments of Power,” in which the Kenyan National Theater becomes a site of struggle as well as a performance space that is “never empty,” but rather a “complex interplay of the entire field of internal and external relations…in the context of time and history” (14). I also liked Mouffe’s transition from examining the “transformation of the work process” (87), new forms of production, to her argument that critical artistic practice takes as its terrain of contestation the “agonistic production of new subjectivities” (90)– Balibar enters here in his observation that politics is “change within change, or the differentiation of change” (12).
If art is able to touch us on an affective level, its power “to make us see things in a different way” (Mouffe 97), here I connect Mouffe’s agonistic politics with Rancière’s aesthetic regime of art, which operates upon a disturbance of the sensible (63). Mouffe’s argument that “every order is predicated on the exclusion of other possibilities” (2) dialogues well with Rancière’s focus on visibility and how art can expand the field of intelligibility. For example, Rancière, citing Flaubert among others, expounds literature’s place in dismantling the representative regime’s hierarchical vision. By horizontalizing both meaning-making by leaving interpretations open, and creating new modes of visibility of who is able to be seen, literature engages in a politics that is not defined by the notion of equivalence present in the “universal exchangeability of commodities” (55); its political potential rather lies in the destabilizing of existing hierarchies of language.