Democracy and Territoriality

I would like to express my thanks to David Campbell and Micheal Dallon with whom I cotaughl a seminar on democracy and sovereignty al John's Hopkins University in the fall of 1990 as well as to the graduate student who participated in Several themes in this pipes emerged through the give and take of these lively seminar discussions Thanks also to Jane Henneu Thomas Dumin, James Der Derian. Dick Flathman Bonnie Honing. Michael Shapiro, Roh walker and Sheldon Wulin for their helpful criticisms of an earlier draft.

J. Rousseau , On the Social Contract With Gen Manuscript and Polnunt f.i Roger Masters ted.) and Judith Masters Trans (New York St Martin's Press 1978. Book I. p 46 discuss this quotation in the context of Rouscrau's general thought on Political Theirs and Modernity (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1998).ch I

P. Ricoeur. The Political Paradox', in William E. Connolly (ed v and the State (New York: New York University Press. 1984 I. p 254.

P. Ricoever deals with these issues much more extensively in The Symbolism of Exit (Boston, MA: Beacon Books. 1967). Here. be comparatively examines the tragic myth', the Orphic myrh' and The Adamic myth' in order in explore what, together. they tell us about the human experience of evil. He privileges the Adamic myth, but he also opposes the conception of original sin Augment draws from it. in which there was initially a pure act of will by Adam followed by hictory of human beings with divided wills. He also tries to fold elements from the other two myths into the Adamic myth, claiming that they complete the insights built into it. Thin, he makes a lot of the role of the serpent in Eden, a being which represents the anterior presence of evil even in the original condition. He thereby tries to fold an element of the tragic experience (where evil resides in the formation of good) within The Adamic myth It is uncertain to me whether this tragic Structure is retained once Ricoeur introduces Christology' into the Piture. To keep the issues as well defined as possible will simply say that I would give priority to the tragic myth and try to build a vision of democratic politics around appreciation of that experience. I suspect that Ricoeur and I part company somewhere in the territory of this divergence in priorilisati4iii of myihic experience%.

The classic response is advanced by Peter Bachrach. The Theory of Democratic Flitism A Critique (Boston, MA: Little Brown. 1967) Other critiques can be found in William E. Connolly (ed.), The Bios of Pluralism (New York: Atherton Press, 1969). especially the essays by Arnold Kaufman and David Keuler ,

Joseph Schumpeter. Capitalism Socialism and Democratory (New York: Harper and Row. 1942), p. 257,

Ibid.p. p. 295

R, Ibid, p. 292.

Ibid., pp. 254 and 263.

M. Wolzer , 'Liberalism and the An of Separation', Political Theory (August 1944). p. 321.

M. Walzer , Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality ( New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 289.

Thomas L. Dumm has advanced this effort impressively in Democracy and Punishment (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press . 1987).

Spheres of Justice continues this politics of concealment through admission in the way it interprets the work of Michel Foucault. Here is a text that might expose, in detail, the conditions Walzer treats as part of his personal knowledge. But the Walzerian reading of Discipline and Punish, Alan Sheridan (trans.), (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970). construes Foucault to say that a series of bureaucratic elites have acquired unaccountable power over prisons (and other institution;!), white 1 read it to say that disciplinary power operates through and over Ihese agents as well in ways that Fender the recurrent cycles of prison discipline and prison reform pan of the 'success' of the prison. These cycles maintain ambivalence inside shared understandings. rather thin contesting the code itself.

Near the end of the hook. this uninlerprcled formulation appear: 'Social meanings need not be harmonious: sometimes they provide only the intellectual structure within which distributions are debated' (p, 314). Assuming that 'social meanings' correspond to 'shared understandings. and that 'sometimes' means more than rarefy and reaches to fundamental issues, this concession, if pursued closely, would require the textto move onto a plane it tries to avoid. One could continue to use Walzerian language once such a concession is made, but to do so the text would have to move onlo a metaphysical plane and andor a ideological philosophy. the diversity of social meanings world then be informed and consensual ised through attuncment to harmonic% in being that transcend them, Alternatively, the text might press the discordance* within these 'meanings' and delineate them within a Foucaullian social ontology. Walzer, though, signals in the Preface that this hook does not wish to move onto the ontological plane. After announcing how the book coheres with arguments by .William Galston and Nicholas Rescher, Walzrr says, 'But, in my view, the pluralism of these two argunrrm, is vitiated by Coalson's Aristutetianism and by Rescher's utilitarianism. My own argument pnrceedc withuut these k,undatianal commitments' (p. !(viii). The upshot of the precedlngcritigue is that the Wulrerian argument expresses its snrial ontology in the vocabularies it selecls and conceals their significance through a reading of 'shared undemanding]' that cannot bear the weight placed utx,n it. AS iwn as the w,eahulary is problematised end the shared understandings are ambigusttd, the strung Walrerian claims wilt either have to be revised or supported by a (conlestable) social unlolagy it can nn longer defer. I have tried to deal with this issue (not, however, with respect to Wither) in William E. Connolly Identity /Diffrence Democratic Negociation of Political Paradox (Ithaca. NY: Cornell University Press. 1991).

Ibid,.pp 31.34

There is a crucial proviso to this one which links politics and the connected intellectual' to issues in other states. One might. Walzer knows, have ethnic identifications that bind one to another State, BS a Jewish-American might be tied to Israel, an Irish-Ameriean to Ireland, a French. Paicsiiiiian to the idea of Palestine, etcWalzer extends connectedness beyond the state. But even httt. it seemsto me that the tine'' separating connected 'iniellecluals from those unconnected to the issue.% in question are Ion lightly drawn by Wal?.er, In an exchange between Walur and Edward Said, Welzer acknowledges the significance of issues with respect to Palestinians inside Israel and then seems to use the law of connectedness lo make them his issues rather than Said's. 'The batlle over the Jewish tradition is my battle; in that sense I am a parochial Intellectual. But It is also a battSe; it ducan't involve, as Said charges. "just going along with one's own people for the sake of loyalty and 'connectcdiiesi"'. See 'An Exchange: "Exodus and Revolution", Grurtd Street (August. 1985). p. 250. It is Walzer's battle, and one imagines him to be an effective wercior in it, ready to oppose those traditions that subvert other understandings he lakes to be more fundamental. But the battle may not be restricted to him. If the bnttle involves the way Israel treats Palestinians. if is Said'e battk too. Just as Said'9 battles are Walzer's 100. (This inevitabitity helps to explain why the debate between these two is so vitriolic and how its terms may embody a tragic dimension difficult for the disputants to assert independently but detectable to a sympathetlc eer listening to them tngether). And if those battles impinge upon contemporary considerations of peace and justice that implicate a large variety of others, then we others, too, are implicated in them, though to differential degrees, The line here it not between the connected and the unconnected or disconnected intellectual, with the former having rights and obligetions and the [after stuck in an abstract world of empty formulalions. Connectedness, in the latc-modem world, is a complcK rcletiun, ombpdyirig varinbie degrees of implication and distanlialion. It is because Walur underplays the intercannectedmsa of peoples, issues. and contingencies in the late-modem world that he is tempted by dichotomy where complex gradations are needed. As his colleague, Clifford Geert);, says somewhere (in print), 'Nobody leaves anybody alone anymore, and never will again', (something like that.) I hope). These multiple modes of conncctcdnesalimplicatlanJdivlslo0 in tht Iate-modem world complicate and multiply the series of binary divisions between inside and oulside, membership and stranger*, shared understandings and limcless principles operating in the Sp6erts of Justice.

Michael Shapiro and Deanne Neaubauer explore these connectionsJdiaconnecli0na creatively in 'Spatlelity and Policy Discourse: Reading the Global City', In R. B. J. Walker and Saul H. Mendlovitz (eds.), CanW rtdirtg Sovereig?Lties: Redr)ening Political CommWnity (London: Lyrme Reiner Publishers, 1990). The essays by Walker and Warren Magnusson In that collection an: also very pertinent to themes developed here. Walker poses a series of problems surrounding 'spatiotempvrai' deiinitlana of politics and Magnusson explores how social movement) trangrtee the boundaries of the stale.

John H. Herz , International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). By 'epistemic realism' I mean: a) a mode of analysis that gives (putative) privilege 10 independent objects not deeply contaminated by ideas, beliefs and ideologies and b) a model that treats entities to have greater causal efficacy the more 'material' and the less 'ideational' they are. By 'political realism' mean a normative conception of politics that treat) as most reaUnorma?/ necessery those truitiea epistemicai4y endowed with status and that adjnsl its politicid Imaginary to correspond to persistent fealures of political life. In the first study, Herz's epidemic and political realism cohere nicely; in the second, he retains the semblance or political realism by giving up large chunks of epislefnic realism.

lbid., p. 40.

There are several issues posed by the question which will bypass. One of them is na corollary issue involving models of interpretation such as hermeneutics. rational choice theory and discursive theory which do Incorporate ideational dimensions into their accounts of practice but sometimes implicitly demeteriafise these practices, treating them as if they were constituted simply as conversations rather than as discursive practices that have become materialised in bodies, lerritories, dispositions, obdurate hebits. identities, unconscious presumptions, Institutional interjections. err. Tbesc two typologies constantly seem to reproduce each other.

Herz, op at in note 18 pp 40 41

Ibid p 57.

in particular, it made it cavict for the members of the family and sovereign statest to observe self denying standards at home by providing them with an ather for the wordlike and expansioned inclinations in the vast realism outside Europe that p 67

lbid. p 104

Ibid,. p 108

Herz, The Territorial State Revisited Reflexions on the Future of the Nation State. Po (Fall 1968), p 15.

Ibid., p. 21.

Ibid. p. 24.

Ibid. p 25.

Ibid

A presentation of the problematisation of final markers must balanced eventually by one the explores how the polities of naturalisation and denaturalisation circulates encountering disturbances and reconsolidating itself on new terms This balance is short circurted in the present essay in the inetrests of concentraring on key ingredient in the democratic echos. I have iried so foNtut this circuit further in political Theory and Modernity and IdentyDifferent r. Nietzsche i, the hern here lie dr,es nm, a, lnme nf his followers and crilicr suggecl, contend Iht the self ean simply creatt ilself uur nf nothing mrcr the clvallrnge lo nld 'idnls'lmarkcn has succeeded. Ivr the dens;ty nf language. Ihe riicratex nf x,wial rn.nrdinatian, Ihe small size of the hunran 'chamher nf ennst'inusness', pcychic y,ressurrs in i/un*o1ilaie idenrily end Ilu fat) Ihal an identity is inrrrexced upon unc befurs one has the resources rn eManrine it genealogically set limitations In the scope of self and social recanslroction To (real ihe irlf, fmr instance, as a work of an is not to create oneself from crralch. hul lu wutk crrativcly amf mmlcstly un e str uf cnntmgcm rhar:lclcrislics lhal havc already become entrench«1 in Ihe cclf as 'cecund nature This may he Ihr lime, as ucll, In irulicare that rhr ethic Ihar infnrms !hit nrienrnlion In democracy is neither an elluc nf command m,r a tclrnluFic;d erhic uf atlunemenl lo hann,mies in being. It slices between these two traditional alternatives by fostering attonement tothe 'rich amhiguiry of life', accrpring rhe telcological nx,de of elhirnl cultivalinn hul nrH thr social unnrlugy in which it is traditionally ly sct, That irwe. tot). is discussed in IdentityDifference. op in nare !4

The phrase 'dissolution of final markcls' is coined hy Claude Lelon, (irons havid Marcy, Uemrrrrory and Prrlirifvrl Theory. (Minneepalis, MN: Universily of Minnesota Prcss. 19$A). prefer 'pmNemttitatiim of nna! marktrs'. fifi). htcame they havt no) hftn dis«)!vtd. hut mntt actively prnblemelised in modern fifc and. secund, hecause my cnncrprinn nf democracy includes the conlestation of markers you may take to be final, hut no! Iheir necessary elimination. LefOr1 corrrcis those theories of democracy Ihat restrict it to a mode or governance hy playing up the way democratic practice both dissulves old ctnaintifi and respond, pulitically 10 their dissolution. Ilis puinr of contrast is loialirarianism. He opposes democracy to toialilarianism in a way whirh def)eLt attention from ways in which democratic elections might be colonised for totalirrrian purpnsc.s. He also fails to consider the case for a mode of democratisatinn that eaceeds the buundaries of the state even while it also operates within those boundaries. With those two provisos, Lefnrr's characterisalion of dcmocracy is closer to my own than any nlher considered in this essay.

One way lo test what happens when the sovereignlY side of democracy suffocates the disturbance side is to examine a theory of democracy that actively supports this priority. Carl Schmitt, The Crisis nf Parfiamrnfarv Denuxrary (Cambridge, MA: MIT Preas, i9g$), made this implicetion clear white he was. in 1922, a theorist of democratic sovereignty. 'Every acluat democracy rests on the principle that nol only are equals equat but unequals will not be treated equally. Democracy requires, therefore, firs) homogeneily and second - if the need arises- elimination or eradication of heterogeneity' (p. 9). The text make. dear that it does nut rake much for the need to arise in Schmilt's mind.

I have discussed the globalisation of contingency in Idenri»uDiJfrrrnrr. o/t rir., in note 14. chs. and 7: and 'A Review Symposium on Richard Rorty'. History of the Human Sciences (August. 1990).pp. 104-08.