°πολιτικον, πολιτικa
Discussions of Schmitt’s concept of the political (das politische) prompted a whole series of explorations that turned around the difference between politics and the political or, as rendered in French and Italian, respectively: le politique and la politique, il politico and la politica. I’ll add πολιτικον, πολιτικa - though I’m not sure of how or whether this has traveled or might be read back (and wonder whether I have the tenacity required) through Plato and Aristotle.
Whether the concept of the political can be ascribed to Arendt as well as Schmitt has been a matter of debate, but it’s become more or less accepted that Arendt did indeed write of the political. ( Contrariwise, see eg, Though, if anyone has access to John Ely’s “The Polis and ‘the Political’,” Thesis 11, 46, 1996, I’d be glad of a read.)
I’m not entirely sure about all of what might be at stake in attributing to Arendt a concept of the political or refuting such. But, whereas for Schmitt it is indeed concepts and the capacity to determine them which is significant (to determine, in advance, who is friend or enemy), for Arendt, the political retains all of its adjectival sense.
For her, it is emphatically a matter of doing, of action, it “arises out of acting and speaking together,” more or less without encumberances, determination (except perhaps for the possession of language). There are problems with such a formulation: the proposition of politics as a form of disembodiment; the question of whether language is possessed or whether, in the conduct of politics, it possesses us (or to underline the point: grants what ‘us’ means, and as a property); the very sense of the vita activa and its confluences with the figures of the activist and active citizen (see previous post); and likely more.
That said, Arendt’s sense of the political is nevertheless grounded in the instance of difference. As is Schmitt’s, to be sure, but without Schmitt’s metaphysical dualism of friend and enemy. Moreover - and Adriana Caverero will discuss this at length in, for instance, “Politicising Theory” - there is much to be said for Arendt’s critique of the Platonic sense of the political, of the work of politics as representation, and the eminence accorded to vision therein.
But, and here are some further reservations I have with Arendt, while the second aspect of this - the supremacy of vision - might fruitfully be discussed in relation to the primacy of visibility and recognition - and, in particular, the relation of this nexus to that of rights, though I’m not sure Arendt would agree here -, I’m much less convinced of Arendt’s critique of the vita contemplativa that accompanies her construal of politics as theatre, as performance.
For while I remain committed to a sense of politics as inseperable from the materiality of its expressions, it doesn’t follow that this has to be defined in terms that remain tributary to ‘the public sphere’ (or, as Virno would have it, the non-state public sphere). Even if the sense of this public arena could be distinguished from its aspects of visual pre-eminence (and Cavarero’s privileging of the voice is one such attempt), Genet’s approach to the question of a decision that takes place “in solitude” remains, for me, the more provocative question. (See previous posts here and here.)
The provocative nature of this comes to the fore, I think, when considering the intersections between the so-called cognitariat (or, more broadly, the communicative aspects of labour) and, as Lazzarato puts it, the injunction to speak, communicate, be a subject. Which is to say, and to paraphrase Genet, it is therefore in solitude that I can believe I am not lying, that a political decision can be made, that an invitation be accepted, or responsibility (response) undertaken - or not.
In any case, the shift from the neutral das politische to its rendering in the distinction between the masculine le politique and feminine la politique has been explored by Lefort, Castoriadis, Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe, more. But I am not at all sure of the extent to which this has been explored with more than a gesture toward the questions of sexual difference, of the relation between, say, la politics construed as lacking in le concept of the political. Though, that for another time perhaps - but in the meantime, you can go read influxus on the somatic and J-L Nancy.
Obviously more and better comments later, but something significant in the history of “the political” as it is represented in thought is Senaca’s (IIRC) translation of Aristotle’s Politics into Latin: he translates “political animal” as “social animal.” I don’t recall if Arendt ever discusses this in detail, but I can’t imagine that she didn’t. The bibliography of my proposal I sent you has an extensive passage - a footnote - with a list of standard texts in the history of Greek philosophy of the meanings of “political animal.” Worth reading (the articles; not my text!).
Craig [January 27, 2007 @ 3:58 am]
I’m just in and out at the moment. But a copy of John Ely’s “The Polis and ‘the Political’” is here (2mb-pdf):
http://www.influxus.org/shelf/elyj.pdf
influxus [January 27, 2007 @ 12:17 pm]
Influxus, many thanks, as always.
Craig, I’ll look into it - thanks for the tip. (Seneca was such a strange chap.) Also, I only got through a few pages of your dissertation proposal, but it really looks great and will get back to it. The Cavafy is a nice touch.
s0metim3s [January 27, 2007 @ 1:44 pm]
Interesting stuff. Is there a German terminological distinction here as well? If so, how does the gender match up? Schmitt’s “das” indicates neuter.
Nate [January 27, 2007 @ 4:51 pm]
Yes, das is neuter, but it became transposed as le in French. See the last para of the post, Nate.
The terminological distinction is approached in various ways in those discussions - schematically, la politique has sometimes been defined as policies or, in other cases, specific political practices, etc. Whereas le politique is, at least in most of those discussions, defined as institutionalised politics. See Castoriadis, Lefort, Nancy … - and all of them have quite different takes.
ps. Craig, you’re right - Ely insists that Arendt does not talk of ‘the political’ but, rather, ‘the social’ and ‘the rise of the social’ - that the attribution of the former to Arendt is due to, in the main, Habermas’ etatism. There are bits of the essay (and thanks to both Influxus and Steve) that I think are persuasive and interesting, but not all. Worth a read, though I’m just in the middle of it now. … But I’m not sure how easy it is to completely pull apart Arendt’s civic community from Schmitt’s territorial state. Maybe the question of identity is key here.
s0metim3s [January 28, 2007 @ 2:51 pm]
Sorry, rapid late night reading. The same distinction exists in Spanish, la politica and lo politico, though I never remember which is which. Is there a corresponding term in German which contrasts to das politische or does that embrace both senses?
Nate [January 29, 2007 @ 5:56 am]
Not that I know of. I’m straining against my lack of languages, but I think the das politische is similar to the political, in the sense that it’s an adjective. Grammatically, it should be ‘the political this’ or ‘the political that’. It’s Schmitt who makes this into a noun, and subsequent discussions which (perhaps echoing Schmitt I think, given his already pronounced dualism, though I think they would disagree) who insist on the pair ‘the political - politics’ (largely defined as ‘unity - plurality’). I also think this parallels Negri and Hardt’s constituent - constituted pair, though I’m not sure whether they actually talk about it in these terms.
Also neuter does not always mean the absence of gendering, it could mean gendering by default - like that joke about the doctor (which I can’t recall, but the joke relies on the listener assuming the doctor is male).
And, as I mentioned, there’s still some commitment to insisting that Arendt does indeed talk of the political - such as this recent conference.
There are readings of Arendt - though here I would have to disagree - which read her argument about politics arising out of speaking and acting together without encumberances as a kind of neutering, and hence defaulting to a masculine subject of politics. But, for Arendt, and contra the most insistent liberal (perhaps also communitarian) readings of her work, politics is about the encounter with and of difference. Though, I baulk at her commitment to language as the condition of politics, her Aristotelianism.
s0metim3s [January 29, 2007 @ 1:29 pm]
Thanks for that. Much to mull.
Nate [January 31, 2007 @ 4:14 pm]