The Part.
Notes on People’s Politics in Jacques Rancière
This paper suggests a philosophical re-reading of popular
communication and the role of People in western democratic systems.
Rancière’s anti-elitist notion of democracy helps to reframe the
discussion of the People as a key-concept of our political systems: it
is not defined by an en-or decoding instance or a notion of identity,
but by a particular mode of conflict-making, as an action of «a part
that has no part». Drawing from heterogeneous material (especially, La
Mésentente and other political works), it is argued that the problem of
the People arises when a functional system has to represent something
that transgresses the system’s universality as an equality instance against
ordinary decision-making. That which the system has to exclude to
become a political system re-emerges as a ‘part that has no part’, thus
pointing at a universality that is, on the one hand, an opportunity
for a further universalization and, on the other, a threat to the very
universality of the political system. The ‘People’ thus acquires a hybrid
position by articulating these two dimensions: Rancière has explored
the consequences of the equality’s presumption — that everyone is
immediately and equally capable of thought. Against those who argue
that only the appropriately educated or privileged are authorized
to think and speak, Rancière’s most fundamental assumption is that
everyone thinks. Everyone shares equal powers of speech and thought,
and this «equality is not a goal to be attained but a point of departure, a
supposition to be maintained in all circumstances».