Posthegemonic Comments
Laclau’s reading of Rancière makes his politics synonymous with class struggle (“in which class doesn’t really mean class”) and so ultimately it would seem that his post-politics just means the achievement of a classless society. But as Laclau points out, the dissolution of class for Marx was the simplification of social structure under capitalism. But since Marx was off, and a simplification of the economic structure doesn't translate seamlessly into the realm of the social, we now have quite the opposite: a set of increasingly complicated social structures wherein class plays just one role out of an exponentially-increasing set of roles to be played…some of which are clearly just as important and oftentimes much more important than class. So how does the proposed end of politics help? I don’t understand how R’s post-politics meshes with his characterization of the desirability of irreducible heterogeneity rather than homogeneity (i.e. classlessness) as a characteristic of “the people.”
On democracy: I’m fer’ it 
and its past/current/future correction. And I guess my simple question would be: in what way is thinking a post-democracy better than aspiring to democracy? I don’t know, and I suppose I’ll have to read R. for myself. But given the urgency of the times, it does seem a bit gratuitous. And I can’t help it…the image it brings to mind is Popper’s “perfect zoo of perfect monkeys.”
Tracy, just quickly (and I'm going to add more to my post later)...
Yeah, class struggle is important for Rancière. It's a defining form of social split/antagonism. And as such, as far as he's concerned, it's essential to democracy/politics. He's no fan of post-politics.
But I should add that the Rancière on whom Laclau comments is mainly a later Rancière, in which the demos appears as the uncountable. There's a link, no doubt, but I'm only reading On the Shores of Politics here.
More soon...
Your question in the first paragraph gives me pause. I'd have to say that yes, there are sociopolitical configurations that do without democracy: dictatorships immediately come to mind.
We are obviously now moving into a tame form of money- and consumption-driven global dictatorship which seeks to preempt conflict by watering down any and all issues through linguistic sleight-of-hand, as pointed out by Steven Poole in his book _Unspeak_.
Also, this reminds me of _One-Dimensional Man_ by Marcuse and how those of us who are still capable of marcusian negative thought are under increasingly ferocious siege.
Keep up the good work.
Jorge, thanks for this. Beyond the question as to whether or not there is politics under dictatorships (which are often described as "anti-political" regimes, after all; see, say, Loveman and Davies's The Politics of Anti-Politics: Military Regimes in Latin America), there's the anthropological critique: what about non-Western or so-called primitives societies? Are they also somehow non-political?
"But I should add that the Rancière on whom Laclau comments is mainly a later Rancière, in which the demos appears as the uncountable. There's a link, no doubt, but I'm only reading On the Shores of Politics here."
The link, as I understand it, is that the working class has historically been one category of the "uncountable" or one category not counted within the dominant definition of who counts and can/should be represented, both politically and aesthetically. Politics happens when such uncounted groups ('les sans part'), amongst whom one could include women, sexual minorities, illegal immigrants ('les sans papiers' in French), demand to be counted in an act of 'political subjectification'. I think this is a fairly consistent concern in Ranciere both 'early' and 'late', although I don't think "On the Shores of Politics" could really be characterised as early Ranciere (that would be more his contributions to "Reading Capital", his rejection of Althusser in "La Lecon d'Althusser" & his work with the "Revoltes logiques" gang through the 70s).
Anyway, good to see you engaging with Ranciere, keep going...
Jezzer, yes, basically that same process of "political subjectification" features also in On the Shores of Politics. It's just that the term "the uncountable" doesn't explicitly feature in the same way that I recall Laclau discussing it. And I couldn't remember if it was the working class (or other minorities) who constituted the "sans part" or the demos itself. Makes more sense to be the former.
Nah, and I wouldn't call this "early" Rancière, either. Though it seems his career has had plenty of stages. Me, I still want to read The Nights of Labour. One of these days...
I haven't managed to finish "Nights of Labour" either, although I have started it on a couple of occasions. "The Ignorant Schoolmaster" is quite jolly too (& much shorter) & very good on what's wrong/anti-democratic about the French republican model of education as means for securing political equality.
Jezzer, yeah, my buddy Sebastian is a big fan of The Ignorant Schoolmaster, which I should also read at some point. There's also a Rancière reading group on going here in town, though I haven't been able to make any but the first meeting. So it's Rancière a go go.
hi Jon,
Please let me know what you think if you read the Ignorant Schoolmaster. Fair warning, though, I have a crush on that book such that I'm not capable of critical distance. If you do read it, Sebastian's probably got a copy of the pamphlet that Situaciones wrote using it - they did a year long discussion group on it with folk from one of the MTDs and a local alternative school in Buenos Aires. I've not read it yet. There's also a pretty in depth (two chapters) discussion of Ranciere in Badiou's Metapolitics which is worth a look. Ranciere's someone I really want to read a lot more of, I find him really provocative.
Cheers,
Nate
Nate, I'll get to The Ignorant Schoolmaster, but I doubt it'll be any time soon.
I'm not sure what I think of Rancière. As I say, I'm most interested in reading The Nights of Labour. I'm less convinced by his more recent stuff.
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