[[!meta title="Stasis Before the State: Nine Theses on Agonistic Democracy"]] * Athor: Dimitris Vardoulakis * References: * https://www.worldcat.org/title/stasis-before-the-state-nine-theses-on-agonistic-democracy/oclc/1000452218 * https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/2009359 * https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1xhr6vd * https://www.academia.edu/35908382/Vardoulakis_Stasis_Before_the_State_--_Introduction * https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823277414/stasis-before-the-state/ * Topics: * Ruse of sovereignty. * Diference between justification and judgement. ## Excerpts This question would be trivial if sovereignty is under­ stood simply as the sovereignty of specific states. The question is pertinent when we consider the vio­lence functioning as the structural princi­ple of sovereignty. Sovereignty can only persist and the state that it sup­ ports can only ever reproduce its structures—­political, economic, ­legal, and so on—­through recourse to certain forms of vio­lence. Such vio­lence is at its most effective the less vis­i­ble and hence the less bloody it is. This in­ sight has been developed brilliantly by thinkers such as Gramsci, u ­ nder the rubric of hegemony; Althusser, through the concept of ideology; and Foucault, as the notion of power. It is in this context that we should also consider Carl Schmitt’s definition of the po­liti­cal as the identification of the e ­ nemy. They all agree on the essen­ tial or structural vio­lence defining sovereignty—­their divergent accounts of that vio­lence notwithstanding. The prob­lem of a space outside sovereignty is com­ [...] Posing the question of an outside to sovereignty within the context of the mechanism of exclusion turns the spotlight to what I call the ruse of sovereignty. This essentially consists in the paradox that the assertion of a space outside sovereignty is nothing other than the as­ sertion of an excluded space and consequently signals the mobilization of the logic of sovereignty. [...] To put this in the vocabulary used h ­ ere, the at- tempt to exclude exclusion is itself exclusory and thus reproduces the logic of exclusion. [...] Turning to Solon’s first demo­cratic constitution, I ­will suggest in this book that it is pos­si­ble by identify­ ing the conflictual nature of democracy—or what the ancient Greeks called stasis. Agonistic monism holds that stasis is the definitional characteristic of democ­ racy and of any other pos­si­ble constitutional form. Sta­ sis or conflict as the basis of all po­liti­cal arrangements then becomes another way of saying that democracy is the form of e ­ very constitution. Hence, stasis comes be- fore any conception of the state that relies on the ruse of sovereignty. The obvious objection to this position would be about the nature of this conflict. Hobbes makes the state of nature — which he explic­itly identifies with democracy —­ also the precondition of the commonwealth. Schmitt defines the po­liti­cal as the identification of the enemy. [...] ent power. Is t ­ here a way out of this entangled knot? Antonio Negri’s most significant contribution to po­ liti­cal philosophy is, in my opinion, precisely at this juncture. His intervention starts with his book on Spi­ noza, The Savage Anomaly, in which he distinguishes between potentia (constituent power) and potestas (con­ stituted power). 20 It is most explic­itly treated in Insur- gencies, which provides an account of the development of constituent power in philosophical texts from early modernity onward and examines the function of con­ stituent power in significant historical events. 21 The starting premise of this investigation is the rejection of ent power. Is t ­ here a way out of this entangled knot? Antonio Negri’s most significant contribution to po­ liti­cal philosophy is, in my opinion, precisely at this juncture. His intervention starts with his book on Spi­ noza, The Savage Anomaly, in which he distinguishes between potentia (constituent power) and potestas (con­ stituted power). 20 It is most explic­itly treated in Insur- gencies, which provides an account of the development of constituent power in philosophical texts from early modernity onward and examines the function of con­ stituent power in significant historical events. 21 The starting premise of this investigation is the rejection of and avoiding the ruse of sovereignty. 23 The appeal to constituent power gives Negri the means to provide an account of democracy as creative activity. This has a wide spectrum of aspects and implications that I can only gesture t ­ oward ­here. For instance, this approach shows how democracy requires a convergence of the ontological, the ethical, and the political—­which is also a position central to my own proj­ect (see Thesis 6). Consequently, democracy is not reducible to a con­ stituted form, and thus Negri can provide a nonrepre­ sen­ta­tional account of democracy. This is impor­tant because it enables Marx’s own distaste for representative democracy to resonate with con­temporary sociology and po­liti­cal economy—­a proj­ect that starts with Negri’s involvement in Italian workerism and culminates in his collaborations with Michael Hardt. Besides the details, which Negri has been developing for four de­cades, the impor­tant point is that this description of democracy and constituent power is consistently juxtaposed to the po­liti­cal tradition that privileges constituted power and sovereignty. 24 There is, however, a significant drawback in Negri’s approach. It concerns the lack of a consistent account of vio­lence in his work. [...] Without a consideration of vio­lence, radical democracy ­w ill never discover its agonistic aspect, namely, that conflict or stasis is the precondition of the po­liti­cal and that, as such, all po­liti­cal forms are effects of the demo­cratic. In other words, Negri’s obfuscation of the question of vio­ lence can never lead to agonistic monism. Production of the real: Second, the state of emergency leading to justification does not have to be “real”—it simply needs to be credi­ ble. Truth or falsity are not properties of power—as Fou­ cault very well recognized—­and the reason for this, I would add, is that power’s justifications are rhetorical strategies and hence unconcerned with validity. This is the point where my account significantly diverges from [...] If we are to understand better sovereign vio­lence, we need to investigate further the ways in which vio­lence is justified. Sovereignty uses justification rhetorically. In­ stead of being concerned with w ­ hether the justifications of actions are true or false, sovereignty is concerned with ­whether its justifications are believed by ­those it af­ fects. Torture: Greek po­liti­cal philosophy. 4 Hannah Arendt also pays par­tic­u­lar attention to this meta­phor. According to Ar­ endt, Plato needs the meta­phor of the politician as a craftsman in order to compensate for the lack of the no­ tion of authority in Greek thought. ­These Platonic meta­ phorics include the meta­phor of the statesman as a physician who heals an ailing polis. 5 The meta­phor of craftsmanship is used as a justification of po­liti­cal power. craftsmanship is used as a justification of po­liti­cal power. The meta­phor persists in modernity, and we can find examples much closer to home. Mao Zedong justifies the purges of the Cultural Revolution on the following grounds: “Our object in exposing errors and criticizing shortcomings is like that of curing a disease. The entire purpose is to save the person.” 6 Whoever does not con­ form to the Maoist ideal is “ill” and needs to be “cured.” Similarly, George Papadopoulos, the col­o­nel who headed the Greek junta from 1967 to 1974, repeatedly described Greece as an ill patient requiring an operation. The dic­ tatorial regime justified its vio­lence by drawing an anal­ ogy of its exceptional powers to the powers of the head surgeon in a hospital emergency room. Th ­ ese operations on “patients” took place not in hospitals but in dark po­ lice cells or in vari­ous forms of prisons or concentration camps. And the instruments of the “operations” ­were not t ­ hose of the surgeon but rather of the torturer and in many cases also of the executioner. The analogy be­ tween the surgeon and the torturer is mobilized to pro­ vide reasons for the exercise of vio­lence. An emergency mobilizes rhetorical strategies that justify vio­lence, ir­ respective of the fact that such a justification may be completely fabulatory. -- 32-33 Razão instrumental: Let us return to consider more carefully how sover­ eign vio­lence always strives for justification. This means that we can characterize the acts of sovereignty as con­ forming to a rationalized instrumentalism. Sovereign vio­lence is instrumental in the sense that it always aims toward something—it is not vio­ ­ lence for vio­ lence’s sake. This means that the desired outcome of sover­ eign vio­lence is calculated with the help of reason. The extrapolation of vio­lence in instrumental terms is noth­ ing new. For instance, Hannah Arendt pres­ents instru­ mentalism as the defining feature of vio­lence. 7 Yet the instrumentalism of sovereign vio­lence is not as self-­ evident as it may at first appear. For instance, as Fran­ çois Jullien shows, the conception of an instrumental thinking as appropriate to the po­liti­cal arises in ancient Greece, and it does not characterize the Chinese cul­ ture, including even the ways in which warfare is con­ ceived. 8 The impor­tant point, then, is to remember that the instrumentality of reason in the ser­v ice of a justifi­ cation of vio­lence is a characteristic of sovereignty as it is developed in the Western po­liti­cal and philosophical tradition. The “invention” of the instrumentality of reason is an impor­tant moment in the history of thought, and its “inventors,” the ancient Greeks, amply recognized its importance. In fact, their tragedies are concerned pre­ cisely with the clash between the older forms of thinking and new forms exemplified by instrumental reason. The best example of this is perhaps the Oresteia. In the first play of the trilogy, Agamemnon is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra. In the second play, Orestes, Agamem­ non’s son, responds by killing his ­mother. In the third play, the Eumenides, the court of Athens is called to de­ cide w ­ hether Orestes’s murder was justified. The alter­ natives are that he is e ­ ither guilty of matricide pure and simple or that his act was a po­liti­cal one aiming to ­free Argos of a tyrant. Th ­ ere is, then, a standstill or stasis—­ and I draw again attention to this word, to which I w ­ ill return ­later—­between the two dif­fer­ent l ­ egal frame­ works: one legality privileging kinship, the other privi­ leging instrumental rationality whereby the murder of Clytemnestra is justified by the end of saving the city from a tyrant. The judges’ vote is a tie, at which point the goddess Athena, who presides over the proceedings, casts the vote to f ­ ree Orestes of the charge of matricide. Calculative reason prevails as the mode of the po­liti­cal. But at the same time, it should not be forgotten that the vote was equally split. For the ancient Athenians, it is impossible to reconcile the two dif­fer­ent legalities—­the politics of kinship and the politics of instrumental reason. Justice persists in this irreconcilability, despite its tragic consequences. -- 33-35 Soberania como persuasão e interpretação: In other words, the absoluteness of sovereignty has nothing to do with the power of sover­ eignty as it is exercised through its institutions—­the police, the army, the judiciary, and so on. Rather, the absoluteness of sovereignty is an expression of the rhe­ torical and logical mechanisms whereby sovereignty uses the justification of vio­lence to dominate public de­ bate and to persuade the citizens. The exercise of sover­ eignty is the effect of an interpretative pro­cess. Differently put, this entails that the justification of vio­lence is more primary than the legitimate forms assumed by constituded power. Without an effective justification, any government loses its mandate to govern, even though its decisions and po­liti­cal actions, its policies, and its legis­ lative agenda may perfectly conform to the law of the state. -- 52-53 Democracia: How can democracy as the other of sovereignty be mobilized to respond to sovereignty’s justification of vio­lence? This final question is, I believe, the most fun­ damental po­liti­cal question. It essentially asks about the relation of sovereignty and democracy. What is re­ quired at this juncture in order to broach the relation between democracy and sovereignty further is a better determination of democracy. -- 53 > The first ever democracy was instituted through the Solonian reforms that were > introduced to counteract a chronical political no less than social crisis in > Athens. The crisis was the result of a protracted animosity between the rich > and the poor parties. The confrontation was largely because of material > inequalities, such as the requirement to hold property in order to be a > citizen, and the economic inequalities that were threatening to turn into > slaves a large portion of the poor population who had defaulted on their > payments. Unsurprisingly, given the sensitivity of these issues, tensions > ran high, and the city often found itself in conflict or stasis, with the two > sides taking arms against each other. The situation had reached an acute > crisis, at which point the Athenians re­ solved that they had to take decisive > action. They turned to Solon, who was largely viewed as impartial and wise, to > write a new constitution for the city. He responded by compiling the first ever > democratic constitution. > > [...] > > The crisis is the condition of citizenship and residency within > Athens and even of the possibility of the operation of the state. Solon's law > does not describe mea­sures whereby the crisis can be avoided. Instead, it > describes how everyone is required to participate in it -- as if the aim is to > accentuate the crisis. Those who avoid conflict will be punished. The > democratic overcoming of crisis consists in the institutionalization of > crisis within the constitution. According to Solon, his fellow Athenians need > to recognize the illusion that the implementation of measures can always > prevent crisis. According to Solon, democracy consists in the dispelling of > that illusion. This does not mean that certain measures or policies cannot and > should not be devised to ameliorate or evade predictable crises. Rather, it > highlights that such mea­sures are never adequate. Or, to put it the other > way around, Solon sees crisis as a way of being, as a condition of existence, > and he is determined that his democratic constitution aknowledges this. > > -- 57-58 > Democracy does not seek to be charitable to the other but instead affords the > other the respect to give them a voice to express their opinions as well as to > debate and rebuke these opinions. > > -- 73 > These insights amount to saying that a democratic being is conflictual > -- which is to say that it cannot find certainty in any political regime > promising unity or in a state characterized by order, peace, and stability. > Rather, democracy in this sense is a regime that is inherently open to the > possibility of conflict without any underlying structure to regulate this > conflict or to resolve it to some­ thing posited as higher. > > -- 76