Studiekretsar / Krets 6 2009-2011 

Political Normativity

Introduktion

Inlagd i juli 2008

Political Normativity - Summer University cluster 2009-2011, Circle 6.

Today it has become a political commonplace to claim that the great ideological struggles are concluded. In global politics, the binary cold war logic has been replaced by the hegemony of a unique superpower. In economics, it seems impossible to raise questions concerning the fundamental principles of capitalism. Administration seems to be the answer to every political economic question. Only one kind of political organization of power is legitimate: liberal democracy.

Nevertheless, recent developments in academia and politics point towards a revival of nothing less than a critique of ideology. Questions of normativity are being raised in new ways. Generally speaking, such questions are of two kinds: On the one hand, functioning normativities are being revealed, described and criticised. On the other hand, normative discussions are taking place: Which forms of power, economics and politics can and should be considered legitimate today?

We have established this study circle at the Nordic Summer University to investigate both of these angles which today reappears as urgent and relevant tasks. Aiming at this objective, “Political normativity” serves as a frame for understanding a variety of contemporary political, economic and moral phenomena, singularizing these within the question of how decisions, actions and developments are explained and legitimated with reference to a common good.

The overall project of the circle should be structured around six themes:

Seminar 1: Cynicism and other forms of ideology
The classical Marxist formulation of ideology goes: “They don’t know it, but they do it” (Marx 1972: 88). Ideology according to this formula is a structure of representations, beliefs and convictions which guide us on our journey through life, but which explicitly does so by steering clear of truth. A critique of ideology following this basic idea would consist in the unmasking of it – thereby revealing the unbearable truth of our lives hidden beneath. Ideology is false consciousness, and it is to be countered by confrontation with knowledge of the true state of things. In Kritik der Zynischen Vernunft (1983) Peter Sloterdijk has given a striking revision of this idea. His point is that ideology today seems to have adapted to this form of critique by making the very unmasking procedures central to its own functioning. Thus the basic form of ideological consciousness is “enlightened false consciousness”. As Slavoj Žižek has formulated it, the Sloterdijkian counterpart to the classic Marxist formula would go “They know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it” (Žižek 1989: 29). In other words the primary way in which ideology functions today is through a certain emotional (dis)investment. Such a thesis gives rise to a lot of questions: If ideology functions in this particular way, how can an adequate critique of ideology be formulated? Does ideology enlist other forms of emotionality than cynicism (for instance irony, enthusiasm, happiness, anxiety, boredom)? Does such a change in the functioning of ideology imply a corresponding change in the functioning of for instance political power or capitalism such as the
one suggested by Boltanski and Chiapello in their Le Nouvel esprit du capitalisme (1999)?

Suggested nonexclusive list of litterature:
Bewes, Timothy, Cynicism and Postmodernity, London: Verso, 1997.
Boltanski, Luc and Eve Chiapello, Le Nouvel esprit du capitalisme, Paris: Gallimard, 1999.
Marx, Karl, Das Kapital, Marx und Engels Werke, Band 23-25, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1972.
- Die Deutsche Ideologie, Marx und Engels Werke, Band 3, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1972.
Sloterdijk, Peter, 1983, Kritik der Zynischen Vernunft, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Žižek, Slavoj, The Sublime Object of Ideology, London: Verso, 1989.
Gray, John (2007), Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, London: Allen Lane.

Seminar 2: Absurd capitalism
Capitalism is both the most legitimate and the most absurd economical system ever. It produces positives and negatives on a scale unseen in history. Positively it creates wealth and opportunities not seen before or in other economical system. Negatively it produces poverty, environmental disasters, anxieties and alienations on an equally unprecedented scale. This paradox or connection between the positives and the negatives has been noted by critics since Marx, but has been answered by capitalism itself by claiming capitalism as the only answer to its own negatives. In that sense the critique of capitalism has consistently served to strengthen it by bringing forth a number of capitalistic narratives aiming to prove capitalism as the only system able to procure wealth, security, freedom etc. Of crucial interest here is of course the connection between the critique of capitalism and its legitimization. Capitalism is absurd in and of itself. People work an obscene amount of hours with little or no hope of being adequately rewarded; increased wealth doesn't seem to correlate with an increase in happiness; capitalization doesn't seem to secure the goods capitalized but rather seem to render them insecure etc. If capitalism is absurd, then how come it is also legitimate? Like every other economical system, capitalism does not provide its own legitimating rationale. Rather, it is obliged to find its raison d’être outside itself in the historical and societal values. It takes a lot of ideological work to make it so, to convince people that it is natural and to convert critique into legitimacy. Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Schumpeter and others have analyzed these processes of capitalistic legitimizations in its early and industrial phases as have Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello in its present day form. The seminar asks which forms of legitimization are at work in the political economy of today? Who are the ideologues of contemporary capitalism? How do we analyse the new processes of legitimization and the languages of capitalism?

Suggested nonexclusive list of literature
Marx, Karl, Das Kapital, Marx und Engels Werke, Band 23-25, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1972.
Durkheim, Emile, De la division du travail social, Paris: PUF, 2007.
Weber, Max, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, München: C. H. Beck, 2006.
Schumpeter, Joseph, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, London: Routledge, 1992.
Boltanski, Luc and Eve Chiapello, Le Nouvel esprit du capitalisme, Paris: Gallimard, 1999.
Boutang, Yann Moulier (2005), Le capitalisme cognitif. La nouvelle grande transformation, Paris: Editions Amsterdam.,
Jessop, Bob (2002), The Future of the Capitalist State, Cambridge: Polity.

Seminar 3: The Organization of Power
Since Plato, political theory has debated what makes power legitimate, and at least since Weber, social science has studied the various forms in which power relations are organized in states, bureaucracies, business, and society. These two perspectives are often combined, such as in Habermas’ theory of communicative power, but perhaps more significantly in Foucault’s perspective on governmentality in which normative reflections on the proper government of men are always intermingled with instrumental ideas about what simply ‘works’. Foucault demonstrated this latter duality in (neo-) liberal governmentality, where the key principle is to govern society as little as possible in favour of self-governing principles like ‘laissez-faire’, which also functions as an immanent critique of hierarchical power and the state. In order for the study group to recast a critique of liberal ideology, these perspectives on the actual organization of power are essential, because liberalism is already in itself built on a critique of power and hierarchy. Perhaps one of the true forces of liberalism is its – uncritical – use of market mechanisms to critique all other forms of power in society.
The basic plot of the study circle’s seminar on the organization of power is to put the normative force of various critical theories against the actual forms of power and vice versa, i.e. to discuss how power can also undermine or incorporate critique in some situations. Besides Foucault, critical theory and normative political theory, this involves theoretical perspectives such as Boltanski and Chiapello’s The new spirit of capitalism or Hardt and Negri’s Empire.

Suggested nonexclusive list of literature
Agamben, Giorgio, Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita, Torino: Einaudi.
Boltanski, Luc and Eve Chiapello, Le Nouvel esprit du capitalisme, Paris: Gallimard, 1999.
Hardt, Michael, Negri, Antonio, Empire, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Foucault, Michel, Naissance de la biopolitique, Paris: Gallimard, 2004.
Habermas, Jürgen, Theorie des kommunikativen Handels, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1981.


Seminar 4: The Good Society
Considering the experiences of fascism it is hardly surprising that after the Second World War scepticism has arisen concerning theories of the “essential” community. Specifically, it has often been argued that they are ideological in nature and that nations should rather be understood as “imagined communities” (Benedict Anderson). Or as Linda Singer puts it: The word “community is not a referential sign but a call or appeal.” Again and again “community” is calling – appealing to leftwing activists searching for a new revolting community, to political conservatives longing for a true civil society, to cultural conservatives fighting for the ethnic pure nation and so on. Nevertheless, since the 1980ties positive conceptions of life and community, which dare to be both ontological and political in character, have emerged. Among the most distinguished are Jean-Luc Nancy (in The Inoperative Community), Maurice Blanchot (in The Unavowable Community), Giorgio Agamben (in The Coming Community) and Roberto Esposito (in Communitas). However, the experience of the dangerous link between essentialism and the appeal to community is not absent in these writings. This is illustrated by Nancy’s and Blanchot’s discussion of George Bataille’s involvement in the group “Acéphale” – a radical experiment with the possibility of the non-essential community. From this perspective these contemporary thinkers of political ontology once again poses the ontological question of the good community. The question is: Can we still make sense of such enterprises today? Do we dare to answer the call of community? For this session of study circle 6, we propose to discuss classical philosophical ideas and their genealogy and legitimization. We also encourage empirical investigations or projects in which dialogues between philosophy and other sciences concerning this topic are taken up; especially problems such as the relation between “community” and “society”, between “coexistence” and “organization”, “revolt” and “order” and the role of democracy for the good society seem actual and relevant.

Surgested nonexclusive list of Literature
Agamben, Giorgio: The coming community, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.
Anderson, Benedict: Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed., London: Verso, [1983] 1991.
Blanchot, Maurice: La communauté inavouable, Editions de Minuit, 1983; translation: The Unavowable Community, Barrytown: Station Hill Press, 1989.
Esposito, R.: Communitas. Origine e destino della comunita, Einaudi, 1998.
Nancy, Jean-Luc: La communauté désoeuvrée. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1983; translation: The Inoperative Community, Minneapolis and Oxford: U of Minnesota, 1991
Linda Singer, “Recalling a Community at Loose Ends,” Community at Loose Ends, ed. The Miami Theory Collective (Minneapolis and Oxford: U of Minnesota P, 1991
Sloterdijk, P.: Regeln für den Menschenpark, Ein Antwortschreiben zu Heideggers Brief über den Humanismus, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1999.
Sloterdijk, P.: Sphären I, Blasen: Mikrosphärologie. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am. Main 1998.
Abensour, Miguel (2000), L’Utopie de Thomas More à Walter Benjamin, Paris: Sens & Tonka.
Rawls, John (1971), A Theory of Justice, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Walzer, Michael (2004), Politics and Passion: Toward A More Egalitarian Liberalism, Yale: Yale University Press.
Taylor, Charles (1994), Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Seminar 5: Logical revolt
In current political thinking it is seldom that revolts or revolutions are considered as emancipating events. In recent years, however, several recognized philosophers have revived such ideas by elaborating theories about collective political subjects or political subjectivations. The most prominent among these are Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou and Antonio Negri. The relevance of such theories is increased by the contemporary omnipresence of a political discourse marked by the logic of the “war on terror”. In this context, questions concerning the possible legitimacy of nonstate political actors, violent or not, have acquired a renewed importance. At the same time, all kinds of new revolts are taking place all over the world – in Burma, in the Parisian suburbs, in South America and in Copenhagen. In other words, it seems that, if the age of revolutions is over, it has been replaced by the age of revolts. Now, instead of simply posing questions about the legitimacy of specific political movements, a fruitful way to approach the discussion of the legitimacy of revolts could be to explore different ways of legitimizing and delegitimizing them. How have revolts been legitimized during history, and how are they being legitimized today? Thus, the question is not so much whether Arthur Rimbaud is still right when he claimed that all logical revolts are being destroyed, but rather how a revolt manages to acquire the very appellation ”logical”.

Suggested nonexclusive list of literature
Badiou, Alain Abrégé de métapolitique, Paris: Seuil, 1998.
Critchley, Simon, Infinitely demanding. Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance, London: Verso, 2007.
Negri, Antonio, Il potere costituente: saggio sulle alternative del moderno, Milano: Sugar Co, 1992.
Rancière, Jacques, La haine de la démocratie, Paris: La Fabrique, 2005.
Dussel, Enrique (1980), Philosophy of Liberation, Londond: Wipf & Stock Publishers.
Nancy, Jean-Luc (2008), Vérité de la démocratie, Paris: Galilée

Seminar 6: The Normativity of Violence, the Violence of Normativity
Violence and normativity relate to each other in a way that is both contested and problematic. In a legalist tradition violence is simply understood as the illegitimate use of force (see e.g. Grundy and Weinstein 1974: 8-13). If sublated to its most general and abstract form this idea would seem to imply that violence begins where normativity ends. Violence is unruly, chaotic, and destructive; normativity is what guaranties order, control and lawfulness. There are many who would contradict such a thesis. In Zur Kritik der Gewalt (1965) Walter Benjamin for instance gives a thorough discussion of the ways in which violence functions both as founding and as upholding the law. Thus he argues that there is a certain “Normativity of Violence”, since it is violence that makes normativity possible. This is of course an idea with history. Renaissance political thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and Niccolo Machiavelli were well aware of the crucial link between normativity and violence. A formula by Hobbes has long been classic: “Covenants, without the sword, are but words” (1997: 93).
Yet there is also another well known way of connecting violence and normativity. It has often been stated that normativity itself entails a kind of violence. It is clear that language itself offers endless possibilities for hate speech, stigmatization and exclusion. The real question, however, is if there is a more fundamental linkage from normativity to violence than those that are evident in such violent uses of language. Is there, as Slavoj Žižek has argued, a “more fundamental form of violence still that pertains to language as such, to its imposition of a certain universe of meaning” (Žižek 2008: 1)?
A special juridical case of the relation between violence and normativity is found in emergency laws (martial law, the state of exception, and the state of emergency are all concepts that apply here). According to Benjamin this specific juridical zone of indistinction (to use Agambens concept) gives us a privileged view to pure violence. The classical idea of emergency laws which is found as early as in Gratian, seems today to undergo an ever greater expansion, as the range of situations which are called emergencies seem to undergo a similar expansion. This raises a crucial question: is it at all possible to have a state of right, where the state of exception (to use Benjamins expression) is becoming the norm?
All of these various interrelations between normativity and violence call for further investigation. We believe that it will be most fruitfull to discuss them in a common and interdisciplinary setting. Should it not be expected that insights into the normativity of violence would prove valuable for the understanding of the violence of normativity (and vice versa)?

Suggested nonexclusive list of literature
Grundy, K.W. and Weinstein, M.A., The Ideologies of Violence, Columbus, OH: Charles Merrill, 1974.
Benjamin, Walter, Zur Kritik der Gewalt, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1965.
- Geschichtsphilosophische Thesen, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1965.
Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, London: W. W. Norton and Compagny, 1997.
Žižek, Slavoj, Violence, London: Profile Books
Gratian, Decretum Gratiani, http://mdz.bib-bvb.de/digbib/gratian (23/6 2008).
Zahle, Henrik, ”Kommentar til Henning Kochs Demokrati slå til!”, Ugeskrift for Retsvæsen, 1995 B 32-38
Koch, Henning, Demokrati slå til! Statsretslig nødret, ordenspoliti og frihedsrettigheder 1932-1945, København: Gyldendal, 1994.