See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265851392 THE PEOPLE AS RE-PRESENTATION AND EVENT Chapter · January 2015 DOI: 10.13140/2.1.1859.2002 CITATION READS 1 938 1 author: Benjamin Arditi Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México 45 PUBLICATIONS 792 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: The book of Others: Schmitt, Althusser, Laclau, Ranciere and Politics View project All content following this page was uploaded by Benjamin Arditi on 21 September 2014. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.
in Carlos de la Torre (ed.), Power to the People? Populism, Insurrections, Democratization, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, pp. 91-112, 2014. 3 T HE P EOPLE AS R E-PRESENTATION AND E VENT Benjamín Arditi “Ti e people” is such an elusive signifj er that it is tempting to drop it and replace it with one we can really get our hands on. So why don’t we do it? Because this solves nothing: in a non-Cartesian setting “the people,” like “equality,” “justice,” “freedom,” and so many other terms that make up our po liti cal lexicon have a contested meaning. Ambiguity, as Michael Oake- shott claims, is a structural and not a passing feature of the vocabulary of politics. 1 On top of all this, “the people” has been the name adopted by out- casts in modern emancipatory plots—and also invoked in countless rac- ist, xenophobic, and authoritarian narratives—since the French Revolution. You just can’t get rid of such a ubiquitous and resilient signifj er. My starting point for dealing with the term is an article on image spam and the limits of repre sen ta tion in which Hito Steyerl challenges the way we conceive the people in demo cratic settings. She says: “the people are not a repre sen ta tion. Ti ey are an event, which might happen one day, or maybe later, in that sudden blink of the eye that is not covered by anything.” 2 Stey- erl is not judging whether elected offj cials express, distort, or betray the will of those who put them in offj ce but whether the concept of repre sen ta tion is pertinent or not for conveying the nature of the people. Her unstated as- sumption is that the move from repre sen ta tion to event has relevant con- sequences for politics, cultural practices, and so on. Pairing the people with the event is promising but I have reservations about a hasty disposal of repre sen ta tion. Ti is is because “the people” are the site of a bifurcation. It is not that they have two bodies but that we use —-1 the same name to designate two difg erent experiences or modes of being —0 —+1 91 521-58517_ch01_1P.indd 91 521-58517_ch01_1P.indd 91 9/18/14 5:31 PM 9/18/14 5:31 PM
92 Benjamín Arditi of the people, as re- presentation and as event. Ti ese are not ideal types but proto- types or precursors of types. Judging whether one is dealing with one or the other mode of being of the people is not a matter of social or po liti- cal engineering but of polemics. I will examine briefm y the critique of repre sen ta tion to see what kind of mileage one can get from conceiving the people as the site of a split. Focusing on the force of the prefj x “re-” will help me distinguish the repre sen ta tion of the people from its re- presentation: the former comes close to mimesis whereas the latter refers to an activity that partakes in the confj guration of the represented. My discussion of the people as event shadows Jacques Rancière’s understanding of the demos as the part of the uncounted. My examples will be pop u lism and the insurgen- cies that became pervasive starting in 2011, from Tahrir Square and the Spanish indignados to Occupy Wall Street and the Brazilian Free Fare Movement. Repre sen ta tion and the World Steyerl’s claim about the people not being a repre sen ta tion may seem ex- cessive but is not unpre ce dented. In Umberto Eco’s novel Ti e Name of the Rose, Adso of Melk asks his mentor William of Baskerville if the abbey where they are heading is a speculum mundi, a mirror of the world. Ti is is be- cause it houses the fj nest library and the most erudite monks of late medieval Christendom. William responds with a pragmatic observation reminiscent of Conan Doyle and Ockham . He says: “In order for there to be a mirror of the world, it is necessary that the world have a form.” William obviously thinks that the world does not have one. Without a ready- made form to be repeated, repre sen ta tion falters. Contemporary post- foundational thought concurs. It rubbishes the beliefs that thought is a mere refm ection of the world and that society has a unitary structure. Repre- sen ta tion can never be a sure thing because the shape of nature and the oneness of society are suspect notions. Pierre Rosanvallon illustrates the limits of repre sen ta tion as refm ection when he recalls how artists, playwrights, and thinkers struggled with how to represent the people in the fj rst anniversary of the French Revolution. Ti ey tried symbols like the Phrygian hat at the end of a pike, the strength of Hercules brandishing a club, and others, but nothing seemed to capture -1— this new po liti cal subject. “An obscure principle from which everything nev- 0— +1— 521-58517_ch01_1P.indd 92 521-58517_ch01_1P.indd 92 9/18/14 5:31 PM 9/18/14 5:31 PM
Ti e People as Re-presentation and Event 93 ertheless derived, it ultimately became unrepresentable: it became the ‘Yah- weh of the French,’ as a famous engraving proclaimed.” 3 Ti e God of the Jews forbade repre sen ta tion whereas the people eluded it. Rosanvallon raised this question with Claude Lefort in the course of an interview. French art- ists, Rosanvallon said, settled for a gigantic statue cast in plaster on one of the bridges of Paris to convey the greatness of the people and the fact that they now dominated society. Lefort responded that artists were at a loss “be- cause the people are unrepresentable,” particularly in a democracy. 4 Ti e principle of pop u lar sovereignty dissociates power from a body—power is no longer incarnated in a specifj c body—and turns it into an empty place that can be occupied by anyone but owned by none. In the absence of a body, the power of the people becomes unrepresentable, a purely symbolic real- ity. 5 For Lefort, representing the people is also problematic for another reason. Elections might be the archetypical manifestation of pop u lar sovereignty, he says, but they turn the citizen into a statistic: when the peo- ple vote, “numbers replace substance.” 6 What you see in elections is not the cohesion of the sovereign but an aggregate of individuals casting their votes. How can you represent the people if its oneness dissipates in its very mo- ment of glory? By questioning the obviousness of the people, nature, or society, Le- fort, Eco, and Rosanvallon undermine the presupposition that the object of repre sen ta tion is already constituted and ready to be delivered to us by a discourse, a leader, or an or ga ni za tion. Ti ey highlight the structural elu- siveness of the referent rather than the misrepre sen ta tion of the people by their elected offj cials. It is not that repre sen ta tions are bad or imperfect but that they miss the mark. Perhaps this is why Steyerl concludes that the repre- sen ta tion of the people is doomed to fail. In its wake, “all you are ever going to see in the positive is a bunch of populist substitutes and impos- tors, enhanced crash- test dummies trying to claim legitimacy. Ti e image of the people as a nation, or culture, is precisely that: a compressed ste reo- type for ideological gain.” 7 Not everyone agrees with this type of critique. For po liti cal operators the question of whether the people can or cannot be represented is simply irrelevant. Ti ey have little interest in conceptual niceties because for them politics is a very basic experience. It consists of an unwritten contract be- tween those who claim to represent the people—professional politicians, but also union offj cials, feminist leaders, celebrities, or public intellectuals— —-1 and those who are willing to let politicians and others claim that they —0 —+1 521-58517_ch01_1P.indd 93 521-58517_ch01_1P.indd 93 9/18/14 5:31 PM 9/18/14 5:31 PM
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