International Journal of Philosophy

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An-Arché as the Voice of the People: Jacques Rancière and the Politics of Disagreement

Received: 12 November 2018    Accepted: 13 December 2018    Published: 19 January 2019
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Abstract

An-arché in the thinking of politics and aesthetics beyond the tradition of "political philosophy" of Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt in 20. century, or in contact with the ideas of political emancipation by Joseph Jacotot, and Karl Marx and anarchism, marks the theory of politics as a disagreement (mésentente) in the writings of Jacques Rancière. The intention of this text is to show how and in what way the thinking of the political should confront to the philosophy of politics who always take care theoretically about the politics of norms, postulates and rules of action. Since Rancière believes that political preceded by politics as a police or regime of the oligarchic law in contemporary liberal democracies, and it should be a matter of radical equality among citizens, then it is the fundamental problem of determining politics in an attempt to think of an-arché. In this contingency, we are doomed to a constant struggle with the order of inequalities and chaos in its own vagueness. That must be a reason why we use the word "mysticism" for what comes out of the state in-between two ways of comprehending a politics: (1) as the power of a hierarchically predicated society on which a state is constructed and (2) as a spontaneous struggle for democracy. The true politics of the equality must face what lies in its own bargain. And that is the powerful and chaotic an-arché. The paradox and aporia are not that democracy and freedom are derived from this principle without principles. Anyway, the scandal that rules in neoliberal oligarchy represents a confirmation of the same an-arché. For this reason, its archi-politics, para-politics and meta-politics are "the cunning of reason" of a perverted order of the world where the power of the "police" sets limits to the "politics" of freedom and not vice versa. Contemporary oligarchy is based in this an-arché-ic model of chaos and ambiguity in all its visible and invisible areas of action, from the management of the economy to marketing policy. But the problem with Rancière's metapolitics has been seen from the beginning to be a problem of the impossibility of political without the articulation of power. Equality without power remains unfulfilled by the demands of the "people" as temporary demos.

DOI 10.11648/j.ijp.20190701.11
Published in International Journal of Philosophy (Volume 7, Issue 1, March 2019)
Page(s) 1-16
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

An-arché, Oligarchy, Democracy, Disagreement

References
[1] Marchart, Oliver (2010) Die Politische Differenz: Zum Denken des Politischen bei Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, Laclau und Agamben. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp.
[2] See Davis, Oliver (2010) Jacques Ranciere. Cambridge: Polity Press, and Marchart, Oliver (2011) The Second Return of the Political: Democracy and the Syllogism of Equality, in Paul Bowman and Richard Stamp (eds.), Reading Rancière. London-New York: Continuum. 129-131.
[3] Derrida, Jacques (2005) The Politics of Friendship. London-New York: Verso. 130. See Paić, Žarko (2013) The Community Without Conditions: Deconstruction of the Subject of Modern Politics in Freedom Without Power: Politics in the Networks of Entropy. Zagreb: White Wave. 393-432.
[4] See May, Todd (2008), The Political Thought of Jacques Ranciere: Creating Equality. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
[5] See Beistegui, Miguel de (1998) Heidegger & the Political: Dystopias. London-New York: Routledge, and Young, Julian (1997) Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism. New York: Cambridge University Press, Labarthe, Philippe Lacoue (1990) Heidegger, Art, and Politics. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
[6] See Meier, Heinrich (2006), Was ist Politische Theologie? in Jan Assmann, Politische Theologie zwischen Ägypten und Israel. Munich: Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung. 7-23.
[7] Paić, Žarko (2015) Totalitarianism? Zagreb: Meandarmedia. 135-206.
[8] Rancière, Jacques (2014) Hatred of Democracy. London-New York: Verso. 72-73.
[9] Plato (2003) The Republic. London: Penguin Classic.
[10] Rancière, Jacques (2000) Le partage du sensible: esthétique et politique. Paris: La fabrique.
[11] See Doerr, Nicole, Between Habermas and Rancière: The Democracy of Political Translation, http://eipcp.net/transversal/0613/doerr/en
[12] Rancière, Jacques (2011) The Emancipated Spectator. London-New York: Verso.
[13] Ranciere, Jacques (2000) Le partage du sensible. See about criticism Rancière 's notion of politics in the text by Žižek, Slavoj (2004) "The Lesson of Rancière: Afterword", in Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics. London-New York; Continuum. 69-79.
[14] Rancière, Jacques (1995) Mésentente. 93-131. See Bosteels, Bruno (2010) Archipolitics, Parapolitics, Metapolitics, in Deranty, Jean-Philippe Jacques Rancière: Key Concepts. Durham: Acumen. 80-92.
[15] Rancière, Jacques (1998) Dix Theses sur la politique, in Au bords du politique. Paris: Gallimard. 22.
[16] Rancière, Jacques, ibid. 223.
[17] Mouffe, Chantal (2006) The Return of the Political. London-New York: Verso, and Ernesto Laclau (1996), Emancipation (s). London-New York: Verso.
[18] Rancière, Jacques (1999) Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Minneapolis-London: University of Minnesota Press. 9-10 and 19.
[19] Badiou, Alain (1998) Abrégé de métapolitique. Paris: Seuil, and Badiou, Alain (2008) Philosophy and Politics in Conditions. London-New York: Continuum. 147-176.
[20] Sartre, Jean-Paul (1943) L'etre et le Néant: Essai d'ontologie phénoménologique. Paris: Gallimard.
[21] Aristotle (2000) Politics. London: Penguin Classics.
[22] Rancière, Jacques (1995) Mésentente. 11.
[23] See Paić, Žarko (2013) Freedom Without Power: The Politics in Networks of Entropy. 20-62.
[24] Rancière, Jacques (1998) Aux bords du politique. 65-66 and 225-226.
[25] Rancière, Jacques (1995) Mésentente. 93-131.
[26] Althusser, Louis (1962) Pour Marx. Paris: F. Maspero.
[27] Sartre, Jean-Paul (1960) Critique de la raison dialectique: Théorie des ensembles pratiques précéde de Question de methode, Vol. I. Paris: Gallimard.
[28] Rancière, Jacques (1974) La Leçon 'd'Althusser. Paris: Gallimard, and Rancière, Jacques (1987) La Maitre Ignorant : Cinq Lessons of the Émancipation Intellectuelle. Paris: Fayard.. See more in Davis, Oliver, ibid. 1-73.
[29] Lyotard, Jean-Franҫois (1988) The Differend: Phrases in Disput. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
[30] Rancière, Jacques (1995) Mésentente. 7-8.
[31] Rancière, Jacques (1995) Mésentente. 69-91.
[32] See McCarthy, Thomas (1994) Kantian Constructivism and Reconstructivism: Rawls and Habermas in Dialogue, Ethics. No. 105. 44-63
[33] See Hewlett, Nick (2007) Badiou, Balibar, Rancière : Re-thinking Emancipation. London-New York: Continuum. 84-115.
[34] Rancière, Jacques (1998) Aux bords du politique. 157-158.
[35] Badiou, Alain (2010) A Communist Hypothesis. London-New York: Verso.
[36] Chambers, Samuel A., ibid.18.
[37] Lefort, Claude (1981) L'invention démocratique: Les limits de la domination totalitaire. Paris: Fayard.
[38] Rancière, Jacques (1995) Mésentente. 167-187.
[39] A strong separation of politics and police (le politique and la politique) goes so far that one can often get the impression of man's understanding of the world in secular Christian "good" and "evil" categories. But between these two concepts, the government is mutually conditional. We can here accept the interpretation of Oliver Marchart, who argues that the policy of disagreement and disagreement stands above the existence of "two worlds in one" but is subject to what is termed as "emancipatory apriorism." This means that equality is not only a prerequisite of democratic political action, a prerequisite of its contradiction - the police order. If, then, the idea of a policy contained in the concept of equality, then this term appears almost as the "grounding unfoundation" of democratic rebellion against the order and has revolutionary potential. In this way, Marchart can conclude that it is within the post-foundationalist theory of politics Rancière 's attempt to think politics from the principle of an-arché is nothing other than the path to a-historical conditions. So, this means that the political struggle against "regimes" has the status of "transcendental conditions" of egalitarian politics. - Marchart, Oliver (2011) The Second Return of the Political. 134-135.
[40] Rancière, Jacques (2014) Hatred of Democracy. 71-97.
[41] Aristotle (2012) Nicomachean Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[42] See Thomson, Alex (2011) "On the Shores of History", by Bowman, Paul and Stamp, Richard (eds.) Reading Rancière. London-New York: Continuum. 200-2016.
[43] Marx, Karl (1976) Zur Judenfrage, in Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, MEW, vol. I. Berlin: Dietz. 347-377.
[44] Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia II. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
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    Žarko Paić. (2019). An-Arché as the Voice of the People: Jacques Rancière and the Politics of Disagreement. International Journal of Philosophy, 7(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20190701.11

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    Žarko Paić. An-Arché as the Voice of the People: Jacques Rancière and the Politics of Disagreement. Int. J. Philos. 2019, 7(1), 1-16. doi: 10.11648/j.ijp.20190701.11

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    Žarko Paić. An-Arché as the Voice of the People: Jacques Rancière and the Politics of Disagreement. Int J Philos. 2019;7(1):1-16. doi: 10.11648/j.ijp.20190701.11

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      author = {Žarko Paić},
      title = {An-Arché as the Voice of the People: Jacques Rancière and the Politics of Disagreement},
      journal = {International Journal of Philosophy},
      volume = {7},
      number = {1},
      pages = {1-16},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijp.20190701.11},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20190701.11},
      eprint = {https://download.sciencepg.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijp.20190701.11},
      abstract = {An-arché in the thinking of politics and aesthetics beyond the tradition of "political philosophy" of Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt in 20. century, or in contact with the ideas of political emancipation by Joseph Jacotot, and Karl Marx and anarchism, marks the theory of politics as a disagreement (mésentente) in the writings of Jacques Rancière. The intention of this text is to show how and in what way the thinking of the political should confront to the philosophy of politics who always take care theoretically about the politics of norms, postulates and rules of action. Since Rancière believes that political preceded by politics as a police or regime of the oligarchic law in contemporary liberal democracies, and it should be a matter of radical equality among citizens, then it is the fundamental problem of determining politics in an attempt to think of an-arché. In this contingency, we are doomed to a constant struggle with the order of inequalities and chaos in its own vagueness. That must be a reason why we use the word "mysticism" for what comes out of the state in-between two ways of comprehending a politics: (1) as the power of a hierarchically predicated society on which a state is constructed and (2) as a spontaneous struggle for democracy. The true politics of the equality must face what lies in its own bargain. And that is the powerful and chaotic an-arché. The paradox and aporia are not that democracy and freedom are derived from this principle without principles. Anyway, the scandal that rules in neoliberal oligarchy represents a confirmation of the same an-arché. For this reason, its archi-politics, para-politics and meta-politics are "the cunning of reason" of a perverted order of the world where the power of the "police" sets limits to the "politics" of freedom and not vice versa. Contemporary oligarchy is based in this an-arché-ic model of chaos and ambiguity in all its visible and invisible areas of action, from the management of the economy to marketing policy. But the problem with Rancière's metapolitics has been seen from the beginning to be a problem of the impossibility of political without the articulation of power. Equality without power remains unfulfilled by the demands of the "people" as temporary demos.},
     year = {2019}
    }
    

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