[[!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/ ## 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