French Studies, Vol. LXVII, No. 4, 522 534 doi:10.

1093/fs/knt148

` RE, NANCY THINKING EQUALITY TODAY: BADIOU, RANCIE

CHRISTOPHER WATKIN MONASH UNIVERSITY
Abstract Recent work on Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancie ` re has rightly identied equality both as a central theme in their own thinking and as the key notion in contemporary radical political thought more broadly, but a focus on the differences between their respective accounts of equality has failed to clarify a major problem that they share. The problem is that human equality is said to rest on a particular human capacity, leaving Badious axiomatic equality and Rancie `res assumed equality vulnerable to the charge of having a blind spot for some of societys most vulnerable. This article introduces an alternative understanding of equality drawn from the thought of Jean-Luc Nancy, an equality that does not rely on a human capacity to guarantee or verify it but rests on Nancys notion of sense. The article explores the advantages of Nancys account of equality in relation to sense over and against an alternative reading that focuses on Nancys evocation of the suffering human body, before addressing, in conclusion, the problems with which Nancys idea of equality will have to grapple, and why, despite these problems, it is still preferable to the Badiouian and Rancie `rian approaches.

Downloaded from http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on March 29, 2014

There has been much recent interest in the question of equality in contemporary French thought, in the main clustering around the work of Jacques Rancie ` re and Alain Badiou.1 Indeed, the question of equality is at the heart of the political thought of these two gures of the left.2 Central to the current debate are not so much the arguments for equality of opportunity over equality of outcome, or vice versa, nor even how equality fares in democracy or Communism, but rather the prior and more fundamental issue sometimes labelled moral equality. This prior
1 The past decade has seen a proliferation of such publications in French studies and beyond, most notably: Peter Hallward, Badious Politics: Equality and Justice, Culture Machine, 4 (2002), , http://www.culturemachine .net/index.php/cm/article/view/271/256 . [accessed 23 May 2013], and his Staging Equality: On Rancie ` res `re: Rethinking Emancipation Theatrocracy, New Left Review, 37 (2006), 109 29; Nick Hewlett, Badiou, Balibar, Rancie (London: Continuum, 2007); Todd May, Jacques Rancie ` re and the Ethics of Equality, SubStance, 36.2 (2007), 20 36; Gert Biesta, Toward a New Logic of Emancipation: Foucault and Rancie `re, Philosophy of Education Yearbook (2008), 169 77; Jeff Love and Todd May, From Universality to Equality: Badious Critique of Rancie ` re, Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, 12.2 (2008), 51 69; Todd May, The Political Thought of Jacques `re: Creating Equality (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008); Nina Power, Which Equality? Badiou Rancie and Rancie `re in Light of Ludwig Feuerbach, Parallax, 15.3 (2009), 63 80; Charles Barbour, Militants of Truth, Communities of Equality: Badiou and the Ignorant Schoolmaster, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42.2 (2010), ois Bon and Jacques Rancie ` re, French Studies, 64 251 63; and Oliver Davis, The Radical Pedagogies of Franc (2010), 178 91. 2 ve nement (Paris: Seuil, 1988), le For Badiou, in LEtre et le galite est la politique, de sorte qua contrario tout e nonce ine galitaire, quel quil soit, est antipolitique (p. 82); and, in Conditions (Paris: Seuil, 1992), equality is the best term philosophically to seize the current state of the politics of emancipation (p. 226). For Rancie ` re, in Aux bords du politique (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), equality is lafrmation juridico-politique fondamentale (p. 91); it is also, for `re, p. 2), and the central theme him, a starting point for any denition of politics (Hewlett, Badiou, Balibar, Rancie `re, p. 119). For Nina Power, equality operates as a of his political thought (May, The Political Thought of Jacques Rancie vital presupposition (perhaps the most vital presupposition) for [Badious and Rancie ` res] intellectual and political projects as a whole (Which Equality?, p. 64).

# The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for French Studies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

THINKING EQUALITY TODAY

523

issue can be framed in terms of the question who has a claim to equal treatment? In other words, when it is held as in Aristotles foundational account of equality that we should treat like cases alike and different cases differently,3 on what basis is it decided that two or more cases are alike, or that two or more cases are different? Or, to put the question at its simplest: who is equal, and why? Recent work, because it has failed so far to tackle this question head on, has not adequately crystallized the problems inherent in thinking equality today. Furthermore, a propensity to focus on the differences between Badiou and Rancie ` re has served to elide those points on which they agree but which, nonetheless, remain problematic. My intention here is to build on this recent work by clarifying the important question who is equal?, by demonstrating why this question brings to light a serious problem for both Badiou and Rancie ` re, and by drawing on the thought of Jean-Luc Nancy to suggest an approach to the question of equality that avoids the problem. The appeal to human capacity The framework within which the debate has hitherto been conducted pits Badious account of equality as an axiom or maxim that is declared against Rancie ` res framing of equality as an assumption that is veried. For Badiou, equality must be understood in terms of truth and the subject, notions he elaborates tre et le ve nement and then in the second volume of this work, Logiques des rst in LE 4 mondes. In the latter Badiou introduces the idea of the egalitarian maxim. In order to illustrate how the maxim works he gives the example of Spartacus and the Roman slave revolt, under the egalitarian maxim Nous, esclaves, voulons et pouvons, comme tout le monde en a le droit, retourner chez nous (p. 78). A group of individuals is incorporated as a subject of such a maxim when they declare and live faithfully in accordance with it in the present. This temporality is important: the egalitarian maxim is neither a programme of social reform nor an aspiration for a future society, but an unequivocal declaration in the present. For Badiou, a political situation either has this egalitarian axiom or it does not, and equality is therefore not an empirical claim about an actually existing state of affairs (it is not an equality of statutes, of revenue, of opportunity, and so on); it is declared by a subject (singular or plural the term is ambiguous in Badiou) as the truth of a present situation: Le galite politique nest pas ce quon veut ou projette, elle est ce quon de clare au feu de le ve nement, ici et maintenant, comme ce tre.5 qui est, et non comme ce qui doit e It is important to stress here that this declaration of equality rests on and requires a particular human capacity on the part of those who would be incorporated as its subject. For Badiou, equality rests on the capacity to think and, in tre et le ve nement) or to be thinking, to be seized by a truth (in the language of LE
See Aristotle, Politics, III .13 and V.1; and Nicomachean Ethics, V.3. tre et le ve nement, 2 (Paris: Seuil, 2006). (Page numbers for quotations from Alain Badiou, Logiques des mondes: le the works of Badiou, Rancie ` re, and Nancy are, where necessary, given in parentheses in the text.) 5 ge de me tapolitique (Paris: Seuil, 1998), p. 112. Alain Badiou, Abre
4 3

Downloaded from http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on March 29, 2014

524

CHRISTOPHER WATKIN

`se incorporated into an Idea (in Logiques des mondes) or a hypothesis (in LHypothe ge de me tapolitique : communiste 6). He makes this point in the Abre
galite E signie que lacteur politique est repre sente sous le seul signe de la capacite proprement humaine. [. . .] La capacite proprement humaine est la pense e, pre cise ment, et la pense e nest rien dautre que ce par quoi le trajet dune ve rite saisit et transit lanimal humain. Ainsi une politique digne tre interroge de e par la philosophie sous lide e de justice est-elle une politique dont lunique axiome ge ne ral est: les gens pensent, les gens sont capables de ve rite . Ainsi une politique touche-t-elle a ` la ve rite pour autant quelle se fonde sur le principe e galitaire dune capacite au discernement du juste, ou du bien, tous vocables que la philosophie appre hende sous le signe de la ve rite dont le collectif est capable. (p. 111)

It is clear that, in Badiou, equality and human capacity are intimately interwoven. It is an axiom that people think and that we, as thinkers, are capable of (being the subject of a) truth. It is not the case for Badiou, however, that all people without exception are equal, but rather that those incorporated as the subject of an Idea are equal in so far as they remain faithful to that Idea. Before he or she is incorporated into an Idea, an individual is a human animal governed by desires and opinions, and among human animals there is only inequality. For such a human animal to be incorporated in a truth, it must possess a certain capacity, namely a capacity to think, to be traversed by a truth. In short, to be equal, human animals must be capable of truth, and, even if we allow that there are collective subjects with a generalized capacity to think, it is hard not to see such human animals as second-class citizens. This raises the question: do all human animals without exception or do all groups of human animals have the capacity to be incorporated into an egalitarian maxim? Given the requirement of the capacity for truth, it is by no means clear that Badiou can sustain his specic claim from Logiques des mondes that [a `] tout animal humain est accorde e, plusieurs fois dans sa bre ` ve existence, la chance de sincorporer au pre sent subjectif dune ve rite (p. 536). But what of those without the capacity to think sufciently to apprehend a truth and be seized by it, for example the senile, those with severe mental disabilities, or those who die very young? Can they ever, on this model, be equal? In order to understand the problem that Badiou has at this point, we need to differentiate between the Idea of equality and the fact of equality. Badiou has no qualms with the principle that all are equal, precisely because the afrmation of universal equality need bear no relation to any actually existing state of affairs: Pas de politique lie e a ` la ve rite sans lafrmation afrmation qui na ni garantie ni ge , p. 112). Universal preuve dune capacite universelle a ` la ve rite politique (Abre equality is simply afrmed as a hypothesis, a truth (in Badious sense), or an Idea. Badious problem, then, is not de jure that some human animals cannot be equal, because he has no need to prove his afrmation of the universal capacity for political truth. He does, however, have a de facto problem created by the double
6

Downloaded from http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on March 29, 2014

`se communiste (Paris: Lignes, 2009). Alain Badiou, LHypothe

THINKING EQUALITY TODAY

525

assertion (1) that equality pertains only to the subject of a truth, not to human animals, and (2) that a decision is necessary, and in each life possible, that would take a human animal from being merely a human animal to being incorporated into a truth. A subject requires the capacity to hold itself to a truth, to be faithful to the truth, but some human animals simply do not possess such a capacity. Rancie ` res account of equality is substantially different, but it nds itself saddled with the same problem. Equality for Rancie ` re is not an axiom to be declared but an assumption to be veried. Whereas Badious maxim of equality is declared independently of any currently existing state of affairs, Rancie ` re claims to verify an actually existing equality using as his only tool the very claims to inequality that seek to deny it. His argument is that inequality is self-contradictory because equality is the hidden assumption of any claim to inequality:
Downloaded from http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on March 29, 2014

Il y a de lordre dans la socie te parce que les uns commandent et que les autres obe issent. Mais pour obe ir a ` un ordre deux choses au moins sont requises: il faut comprendre lordre et il faut comprendre tre le quil faut lui obe ir. Et pour faire cela, il faut de ja `e gal de celui qui vous commande. Cest cette e galite qui ronge tout ordre naturel.7

Rancie ` re is saying that any slave who has the capacity to understand and obey an order is de facto equal with the master giving the order, because he or she is equally able to comprehend and respond to instructions. What this exposes for Rancie ` re is the contingency of the current order and le galite de nimporte quel tre parlant avec nimporte quel autre e tre parlant (La Me sentente, p. 53). This ase sumption of equality is important for Rancie ` re not least because it creates a space where equality can stake its claim and be veried.8 In other words, acting on the basis of assumed equality shows that assumption to have been correct. Equality is neither given nor demanded; it is practised and veried.9 So Rancie ` res verication follows a reasoned argument about inequality presupposing equality, whereas Badious declaration seeks to seize an as yet inexistent universal equality. Methodologically, Rancie ` re works closely with certain privileged examples. I shall briey sketch two of the most important in order to demonstrate his prosentente Rancie blems with human capacity. First, in La Me ` re discusses the revolt of the plebeians on the Aventine hill in 494 BCE .10 The patricians refuse any discussion with the plebeians, considering that they make noise, not words, being incapable of rational discourse. However, Menenius Agrippa goes to speak with the slaves in order to convince them of the justice of their inequality, which for Rancie ` re is already to have conceded their equality:
La chose est simple a ` formuler: du moment que les ple be iens pouvaient comprendre son apologue lapologue de line galite ne cessaire entre le principe vital patricien et les membres exe cutants de la ple `be , cest quils e taient de ja `, tout aussi ne cessairement, e gaux. (p. 47)

7 8 9

sentente: politique et philosophie (Paris: Galile Jacques Rancie ` re, La Me e, 1995), p. 37. Rancie ` re, Aux bords du politique, p. 65. tre ignorant: cinq lec mancipation intellectuelle (Paris: Fayard, 2004), p. 227. Jacques Rancie ` re, Le Ma ons sur le 10 sentente, pp. 45 47. Rancie ` re, La Me

526

CHRISTOPHER WATKIN

The plebeians can understand and respond rationally to the argument put to them, demonstrating their equality as speaking beings. The second example is from Le tre ignorant, where Rancie Ma ` re appeals to the innovative educational methods of Joseph Jacotot (1770 1840). Jacotot demonstrated that even pupils who are considered stupid and to have little or no capacity for learning can be shown to be remarkably intelligent. His method, as Rancie ` re reconstructs it, hinges on assuming equality of intelligence, for admitting any inequality of intelligence will always lead to the intelligent caste shepherding the stupid multitude.11 The assumption is adopted in turn by Rancie ` re je fonctionne toujours sur le principe jacotiste que le galite est une pre supposition et non un but a ` atteindre12 and is pursued to the point where he declares equality and intelligence to be synonymous terms: [i]l en va de la raison comme de le galite qui lui est synonyme. Il faut choisir de lattritre ignorant, p. 221). buer aux individus re els ou a ` leur re union ctive (Le Ma What or rather whom these examples exclude, however, are those with an impairment sufciently grave to bar them even from participating in a linguistic or educational context in the rst place, a context where methods such as Jacotots or Menenius Agrippas can be deployed. This framework does not engage with those who cannot speak or understand orders (because of severe disability, senility, or extreme youth, for example), and therefore we can see that there are not simply two groups (say, the patricians and the plebeians) but three: in addition to the patricians who argue for inequality, and the plebeians who demonstrate their equality by speaking and understanding, there are those who have no share in the example as Rancie ` re presents it, those without the capacity to enter a dialogic context in the rst place. Furthermore, it will not do to say that Rancie ` re does not intend to address such cases, for this merely conrms the invisibility of those without a share, a position that he criticizes when the patricians refuse to recognize the plebeians. Rancie ` re, however, is quick to defend himself against the objection that he is unveriably assuming a universal equality of intelligence:
Mais jamais nous ne pourrons dire: toutes les intelligences sont e gales. Il est vrai. Mais notre proble `me nest pas de prouver que toutes les intelligences sont e gales. Il est de voir ce quon peut faire sous cette supposition. Et pour cela il nous suft que cette opinion soit possible, cest-a ` -dire quautre ignorant, p. 79) cune ve rite inverse ne soit de montre e. (Le Ma

Downloaded from http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on March 29, 2014

This is an important clarication, but it does not let Rancie ` re off the hook. As was the case with Badiou, the problem is not with the de jure assumption that all are equal, but with the de facto restriction of the discussion of equality, as demonstrated in the examples of the Aventine revolt and Jacotots teaching methods, to those with the capacity to speak and to obey. Even given Rancie ` res deployment of equality as an emancipatory tool and not an exhaustive theory of the polis, it still remains that some of those least able to defend themselves against unequal
tre ignorant, p. 218. Rancie ` re, Le Ma Jacques Rancie ` re, Les De mocraties contre la de mocratie: entretien, in Giorgio Agamben and others, mocratie: dans quel De etat (Paris: La Fabrique, 2009), pp. 95 100 (p. 98).
12 11

THINKING EQUALITY TODAY

527

treatment are overlooked: precisely those who have no share in the examples Rancie ` re chooses, who do not have a voice to speak in their own defence, and who cannot understand and follow orders. So both Badious and Rancie ` res accounts of equality are problematic to the extent that they rely on a particular human capacity, respectively the capacity to think, or the capacity to understand and speak. For Badiou, the problem lies in the de facto incapacity of some human animals to deploy the necessary intelligence actively to hold themselves to a truth, and for Rancie ` re the problem is in overlooking the de facto incapacity of some to speak and understand orders. In both cases the capacity is necessary for equality, and so in both cases it is far from clear that all can be equal. Some of those least able to assert their own equality are off the radar. Nancy, equality, and capacity In light of the foregoing analysis, it is important that the current debate around equality confront the capacity problem and move towards a thinking of equality that is less susceptible to the charge of having a structural blind spot for some of societys most vulnerable and least able to argue their corner. It is in this vein that I now turn to an examination of equality in the work of Jean-Luc Nancy. Although Nancys account of equality is not without its own problems, he does point the way to a compelling and much-needed alternative to the reliance on capacity. raire,13 but I Nancys engagement with equality begins as far back as LAbsolu litte propose here to set out his avoidance of the capacity problem by focusing mainly tre singulier pluriel on ideas of general equivalence and incommensurability from E and on the extended discussion of equality in relation to sense in LAdoration, the recent second volume of his deconstruction of Christianity.14 Nancys treatment tre singulier pluriel is explicitly independent of any determinate of equality in E quality or capacity shared by the equal singulars, a term that roughly equates (though not without some confusion, as we shall see below) to human beings in their irreducible plurality.15 In preparation for his own account of equality, Nancy closes off two possible understandings. First, singulars are not equal in some abstracted, capitalodemocratic regime of e quivalence ge ne rale where anything is exchangeable with anything else; any good, any value, any idea, or any person can be substituted for any other according to the universal equality of market exchange.16 Secondly,
13 raire: the orie de la litte raire du romantisme allemand Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, LAbsolu litte (Paris: Seuil, 1978). 14 construction du christianisme, 2 (Paris: Jean-Luc Nancy, Etre singulier pluriel (Paris: Galile e, 1996); LAdoration: de Galile e, 2010). 15 The plurality is not secondary for Nancy but equally coeval with singularity, ineradicably present in the plural singulars. Singulus, he notes, does not exist. See Jean-Luc Nancy, Le Sens du monde (Paris: Galile e, 1993), p. 109. 16 Nancy shares this rejection of general equivalence with Badiou, who dismisses democracy and capitalism, along with Plato, as the equivalence of the equivalent and the non-equivalent: Le galite institue e entre line gal et le gal nest autre, pour nous, que le principe mone taire, le quivalent ge ne ral qui barre tout acce `s a ` des diffe rences re elles, a ` lhe te roge ` ne comme tel, dont le paradigme est le cart entre une proce dure de ve rite et la liberte des opimocratie: dans quel nions; see Alain Badiou, LEmble ` me de mocratique, in Agamben and others, De etat, pp. 15 25 (p. 20).

Downloaded from http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on March 29, 2014

528

CHRISTOPHER WATKIN

singulars are not equal because of something they have in common, be it a shared intelligence, a shared capacity to understand and follow orders, or anything else. Singulars have nothing in common and are, in fact, incommensurable with each other. It is this very incommensurability, rather than any shared capacity, that serves as the basis for their equality. What singulars have in common is nothing other than their singularity itself, their incommensurability:
Il y a une commune mesure qui nest pas un e talon unique applique a ` tous et a ` toutes choses, mais qui est la commensurabilite des singularite s incommensurables, le galite de toutes les origines-de-monde, lesquelles, en tant que les origines quelles sont, chaque fois, sont strictement insubstituables en ce sens, parfaitement ine gales , mais ne sont telles que pour autant quelles sont toutes e galement les unes avec les autres. Cest une telle mesure quil nous revient de prendre. tre singulier pluriel, pp. 98 99) (E

Nancys singular plurality, then, is a way of asserting equality among those with no common measure, among those who have no common quality to act as the bearer of their equality. To have recourse to any such quality would create community as communion, a closed circle of insiders sharing a common trait who inevitably exclude those who do not share their unifying quality. But for Nancy the plural of singular plurality is not a communion; it is nothing but the exposure (exposition) of singulars each to the other, an exposure that can never itself be substantialized and made into one further quality or capacity. It is not and cannot be a property or trait that any of the singulars possesses. In Martin Crowleys elegant phrase, it is cette exposition quen commun nous navons pas.17 In so far as Nancys account of equality makes no reference to any determinate property, quality, or capacity, it avoids the problem identied above with Badious and Rancie ` res approaches. In contrast to Badious egalitarian maxim, equality for Nancy is a fact, a feature of singular plural ontology. It is therefore not contingent on any decision or on any incorporation into a subject for it to be effective. Nancy has no equivalent for Badious distinction between the subject of a truth and human animals. In contrast to Rancie ` re, the fact of equality for Nancy is not a fact about any human capacity, so it does not and cannot exclude anyone, either explicitly or implicitly. These differences mark Nancy out as occupying a distinctive position in the debate around equality, but his account is not, however, free from difculties of its own. One important difculty is that, in moving away from a capacity for intelligence or for following orders to the broader, indeterminate notion of incommensurability, Nancy is unable, on the basis of this incommensurability alone, to distinguish between humans and animals, or indeed between humans and all living things, or even between human beings and any other thing at all. All things are, rigorously, singular; none can be exhaustively substituted for any other. So why, on the basis of incommensurability, would the equality of singulars not extend beyond the human, animal, or even plant kingdoms? This might be called the problem of
17

Downloaded from http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on March 29, 2014

Martin Crowley, LHomme sans: politiques de la nitude (Paris: Lignes, 2009), p. 95.

THINKING EQUALITY TODAY

529

equalitys unlimited expansion. If Nancys account of equality is to assert itself in the space opened by Rancie ` res and Badious difculties with capacity, how will it respond to this objection? Nancy is alive to this difculty, and he gives it its fullest expression to date in tre LAdoration. He begins, perhaps surprisingly given what has been shown from E singulier pluriel, with what looks like a retreat to asserting a human capacity as the tres de langage que nous sommes (p. 10), basis for equality. Human beings, ces e tres parare equal as a function of our capacity to use language: Cest en tant que lants que les hommes sont libres et e gaux (p. 13). Indeed, Nancy argues that equality and language are coeval in a way that seems very closely to echo Rancie ` res argument about the capacity to understand and obey orders:
il faut penser que les de buts de lhumanite co ncident avec le de but de le galite et que le sens de la justice est pre sent tout de suite, indissociable des hommes. [. . .] Une chose montre simplement que les premiers hommes, tout autant que nous, sont dans le juste et linjuste: cest le langage. Lhumanite se de nit par le langage. De `s quil y a des hommes, il y a le langage. Et ne pourrait-on pas dire que le langage est ve ritablement la chose la plus juste du monde? Pour que le langage apparaisse, pour que nous puissions nous parler, il faut quil y ait la reconnaissance des uns par les autres. Le langage signitre a e que lon se comprend les uns les autres, et pour se comprendre, il faut e `e galite .18
Downloaded from http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on March 29, 2014

So Nancy has a response to the problem of unlimited expansion, namely that equality is a particularly human, indeed a quintessentially human, feature, and that the expansion of equality therefore stops with those who use language. But surely this lands him with exactly the same problem identied above in Badiou and Rancie ` re: if human beings are equal by virtue of possessing a command of language and an ability to recognize that command in others, what of those human beings who, for one reason or another, lose or never possessed such a capacity? And a second, larger question also needs to be asked: what is new here? what if anything differentiates Nancys position at this point from the identication of on man as the speaking being going back through Heidegger at least as far as the zo logon echon of Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics? The answer to both of these questions is found when we consider the way in which Nancys specic account of language is part of his more general treatment of sense. At the point where Nancy identies human beings as beings of language, he tres parlants que continues with a telling parenthetical remark: Cest en tant que les hommes sont libres et e gaux (et cest du langage que peut e ventuellement se saisir une extension plus large de ces proprie te s) (LAdoration, p. 13). It is our use of language that makes us human and makes us equal, but it is also by virtue of language that this equality is not limited to speaking human beings. We know as soon as we speak, Nancy argues, that language addresses itself (and indeed addresses us) to the outside of homogeneous signication and communication.19 It addresses us to what, in Le Sens du monde, he calls the sens, or the signiance, of

18 19

rence sur le juste et linjuste (Paris: Bayard, 2007), pp. 45 46. Jean-Luc Nancy, Juste impossible: petite confe LAdoration, p. 10.

530

CHRISTOPHER WATKIN

signications: the meaningfulness of the world that will always be in excess of any determinate signications we choose to give it.20 In LAdoration Nancy develops this thinking by arguing that all language is addressed to sens, to the excess of meaningfulness over any determinate meaning. Human beings, to be sure, do have a unique place as beings of language, beings with a particular role of making sense of the world, but all human language is an adoration of sense, where adoration is understood etymologically as ad-oratio, a speaking towards. Crucially and this is why Nancys account is not merely a on logon echon motif this excess of sense to which language is reworking of the zo addressed is not the property or preserve of human beings alone:
La parole sadresse ainsi a ` ce qui lexce `de souverainement; elle vaut, cette parole, comme acce `s a ` cet exce `s, acce `s ouvert a ` travers lhomme a ` la totalite des existants du monde et au dehors qui les me partage, quils ont en partage; lhomme, le parlant, existe au nom de, en faveur de, on pourrait me tre comme celui qui doit dire en raison de la totalite des existants du monde: il en rec oit sa raison de rendre raison du monde. (LAdoration, p. 100)

Downloaded from http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on March 29, 2014

To recap: language addresses (ad-ores) the excess of la totalite des existants, and although language comes through (a ` travers) human beings, sense is not an exclusively human property. In fact, in this frame we cannot speak of language (understood as the adoration of sense) as a capacity at all. As Nancy explains in tude du ne gatif, to speak of human beings as beings of sense need not Hegel: linquie imply any capacity or property:
Si Je surgit, chaque fois, comme lidentite de luniversel et du singulier Je ne tant rien dautre quun surgissement, un jet de sens en soi, sans contenu de termine , cela na lieu que pour autant que Je est partage entre tous e galement. Non seulement comme une proprie te e gale de tous les parlants-et-pensants, mais comme cette proprie te qui ne va a ` rien dautre qua ` se supprimer comme proprie te distincte du parler et du penser, comme proprie te dune conscience-en-face-de, pour se reme, hors des consciences et des signications.21 trouver hors delle-me

Sense, then, is anything but a human property or capacity; it is that which decentres the human, turns us outside ourselves to be addressed by and to adore the excess of the totality of existents. This is the difference between those who see language as a human capacity and Nancys account of the adoration of sense through human language. Equality is intimately connected to language, but not in the sense that all beings who have the capacity to speak and/or understand and/or think thereby verify their equality or are seized by its maxim; rather it is through (human) language that the excess of sense over the signication of any existent is manifested. The excess of sense is not something we possess but something to which we are exposed:
Tel est lincommensurable auquel nous sommes expose s: non seulement incommensurable a ` nous et me. Telles sont la chance et la jouissance de la a ` tout autre e tant, mais incommensurable a ` lui-me
20 Sens for Nancy is the condition of possibility of any determinate signications, any determinate meanings, whatsoever. He explains that sens is ante rieur a ` toute signication, quil les pre -vient et qui les sur-prend toutes, tout autant quil les rend possibles, formant louverture de la signiance ge ne rale (ou du monde) dans laquelle et selon laquelle il est tout dabord possible que viennent a ` se produire des signications (Le Sens du monde, p. 21). 21 tude du ne gatif (Paris: Hachette, 1997), p. 54. Jean-Luc Nancy, Hegel: linquie

THINKING EQUALITY TODAY

531

pense e: quelle est essentiellement rapport a ` lexce dence en soi, a ` lexce dence absolue qui est celle de tre aussi bien que le monde ou le sens. (LAdoration, p. 23) ce quon peut nommer le

It is humans who are beings of language, but language manifests the innite excess of the sense of being or of the world, not just of human beings. This difference between language as capacity and language as adoration of sense also points to an important distinction between our present reconstruction of equality in Nancy and an approach that would take another path through his thought, building a reading of equality around the motif of the suffering human body. This alternative approach is tempting but fails to address the capacity problem. The reading would proceed by rejecting the founding of equality on some human activity (speech, thought. and so on) and would instead seek to argue that we are all equal not because of our abilities but because of our limits, our needs, our incapacities our nitude. We cannot sustain ourselves without food, water, and air; we each have fragile, vulnerable bodies. In short, this approach would argue that our equality is a function of our capacity to suffer.22 There are two main objections to the suffering body approach, namely that it is an ethics of victimhood that reduces the human to the animal datum of its tortured body in an oppressive metaphysics of pity,23 and that it is internally compromised because it relies on the continued existence of the very inequalities that it purports to militate against: the resistance against inequality requires that there be inequalities to resist, and beyond this resistance such a position struggles to provide a constructive political vision. The rst of these charges stems from a misunderstanding of Nancys position, for the suffering body is no mere mass of tortured esh but an attestation of what Nancy calls the spacing of bodies, or in other words our singular plural being as such. The point is not that the victim is a victim but that the victim is indelibly singular and ineradicably human; far from reducing the human to the animal datum of its tortured body, the point is precisely that the human cannot be reduced to a body through suffering and torture. The charge that this position is internally compromised is more difcult to dismiss, however. The demand for equality in the face of needs and suffering is indeed at some level parasitic on the apprehension of inequalities, of unjust suffering, of unmet need, and this leaves the account of equality in question always taking a remedial, palliative, or reactive role with regard to inequality. Routing an understanding of equality in Nancy primarily through
22 This is a possible, indeed plausible, route through Nancys thinking about equality. In Juste impossible he argues te le fait que lon something very close to this position in relation to human needs: Il faut que nous gardions en te ne peut pas se poser la question de le galite des personnes singulie ` res sans penser tout dabord a ` le galite des per tre satisfaits de manie sonnes en tant quelles ont un certain nombre de besoins qui doivent e ` re e gale (p. 42). Furthermore, in Corpus (Paris: Seuil, 1992) he explicitly draws the link between equality and the suffering human body: Cest une condition commune: non les espaces mesure s, mais les espacements sont tous e gaux, tous de me lumie me ` re. Le galite est la condition des corps. Quoi de plus commun que les corps? Avant toute autre chose, communaute veut dire lexposition nue dune e gale, banale e vidence souffrante, jouissante, tremblante (pp. 44 45). It is my contention that this account of equality is, for all its merits, both signicantly different from the nexus of equality and sense I am elaborating here, and in addition less persuasive as a response to the capacity problem. 23 `cle (Paris: Seuil, 2005), pp. 246 47, 248 49. See Alain Badiou, Le Sie

Downloaded from http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on March 29, 2014

532

CHRISTOPHER WATKIN

sense, as I am seeking to do here, however, furnishes a much more proactive position, one of the ad-oration and celebration of the excess of sense in all existents, which of course includes the suffering and those with acute unmet needs but does not stop with the ending of local suffering or the meeting of local needs. Over and above these two objections, however, the suffering-body approach shares the capacity problem with Badiou and Rancie ` re The issue is this: although this position may have replaced action with passion, it is still a question of our capacity to suffer. Just as there are some uncomfortable cases for Badiou and Rancie ` re of humans without the capacities for intelligence or for speech that they respectively privilege, so also are there those whose capacity to suffer (physically, psychologically, or otherwise) is greatly impaired or absent, and thus the problem of capacity remains. Nancys response to the problem of capacity must come not through turning to the suffering human body, but through the relation between equality and language. Conclusion Where, then, does this understanding of equality from LAdoration t in the landscape of current debate? First and most importantly I hope to have shown that it provides a compelling response to the uncomfortable complicity between human equality and human capacity. While Badiou and Rancie ` re would, of course, want to resist the idea that their accounts of equality leave open the possibility that some vulnerable individuals or groups remain outside equalitys ambit, it is nevertheless the case that, as long as moral equality is hung from the hook of a determinate human capacity, the de facto exclusion of some individuals or groups who fail to manifest the capacity in question cannot properly be guarded against. That this door has been left open is sufcient, in my opinion, to prompt us to seek an alternative approach. Whereas a certain capacity for Badiou and Rancie ` re is necessary at some level in order to secure equality (whatever that may mean in practice), for Nancy the human capacity for language as the adoration of sense makes manifest the incommensurability not only of human beings but also, as we have seen, of all existents. And given that Nancys account of equality is one of equality between incommensurables, this means that there is no possible basis on which to restrict equality to those existents who happen to be able to speak or think in a particular way. In other words, while still acknowledging the specicity of human language, Nancy takes a decisive step away from an approach to equality that makes it contingent on a human capacity. In as much as it also takes a step away from the ambiguous position in which Badious and Rancie ` res accounts leave some of the most vulnerable, this alone is enough for it to merit the same level of attention and scrutiny that their accounts have recently received. Secondly, thinking equality in terms of sense avoids the problems attending accounts of equality (including the account from Nancy that starts from the suffering body) that focus on needs and determinate human weaknesses, avoiding thereby the telling criticisms often levelled at such an ethics of victimhood.

Downloaded from http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on March 29, 2014

THINKING EQUALITY TODAY

533

If the account of equality I am commending avoids these problems, however, it is not without its own difculties. I have already drawn attention to the problem of unlimited expansion: if equality is not routed through a determinate capacity, then why stop at human beings? Why not then animals? And then plants? And then . . . .24 I showed why this was a problem for Nancy if we take only his equation of equality and incommensurability into account, but now that Nancys insistence on the specicity of human language has been introduced, we have a more complicated situation, and a choice, to face. Why stop at human beings? Because human beings alone are beings of sense? Nancys account of sense will not allow us to make sense into a property in this way. So are we to conclude that Nancys equality escapes the capacity problem (and those issues attendant on a focus on the suffering or needy body) and a crude formulation of the problem of unlimited expansion, only to be left with innite expansion via an afrmation of the specicity of human beings as beings of language through whom the excess of sense is addressed? There are two possible ways to deal with this second iteration of the problem of unlimited expansion, and we must choose one or the other. The rst would be to seek to work the human specicity for language itself into a solution. The argument would run something like this: all existents are incommensurable and their excess of sense is to be adored, but, because human beings alone are beings of language, they deserve special treatment. In other words, all existents are equal (qua incommensurable), but some are more equal than others (qua language users). To my eyes this is a deeply unsatisfactory and problematic conclusion because it amounts to a reication of adoration into a possession, into a capacity, in just the way that Nancy so carefully seeks to avoid, and so it reintroduces all the problems attendant on the capacity approach that Nancy has laboured, rightly, to circumvent.25 The second way to respond to this position, perhaps less crisply conclusive but in my view overwhelmingly preferable, is to refuse to close down the problem of unlimited expansion if such a closing down comes at the price of reintroducing a determinate capacity into the equation of equality. We must be careful not simply to see this problem of innite expansion as equivalent to the capacity problem, such that to face one problem is much the same as facing the other. The capacity
24 I am grateful to Martin Crowley for his clarication of this problem in the course of a generous question-and-answer session after his paper The Politics of Finitude at the Cambridge Twentieth and Twenty-First Century French Research Seminar, 23 November 2010, in which he reprised and developed themes from Nancys LHomme sans. 25 I am grateful to Dirk Baltzly for pointing out to me the similarities between this capacities approach and Martha Nussbaums capabilities approach as developed in The Quality of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006), Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of Americas Tradition of Religious Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2008), and Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Nussbaums construal of equality is more sophisticated in that it seeks to take into account ten different human capabilities rather than routing equality through one alone. As listed in Creating Capabilities (pp. 33 34), the Central Human Capabilities are (1) life, (2) bodily health, (3) bodily integrity, (4) senses, imagination, and thought, (5) emotions, (6) practical reason, (7) afliation, (8) relation to other species, (9) play, and (10) control over ones environment. The great problem with the capabilities approach, however, is not in the particular capabilities that it chooses to foreground (although there are indeed problems with Nussbaums choices and exclusions), but, at a more fundamental level, that it focuses on central human functional capabilities at all. It has not escaped the capacity problem.

Downloaded from http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on March 29, 2014

534

CHRISTOPHER WATKIN

problem seeks to draw the boundaries of equality, even despite itself, and it is inherently conservative, policing equalitys borders. The problem of unlimited expansion, however, follows quite the opposite dynamic: we begin with a riotous, excessive equality and then seek as Nancy is trying to do with his exploration of human beings as beings of sense to make sense of that equality. With the capacity problem, the difculty is around those who are excluded those who cannot be seized by a truth, those who cannot access an educational or linguistic context of verifying equality. With the problem of unlimited expansion, the difculty is around those who are included animals, plants, all life . . . . The problems of exclusion and inclusion are not, to say the least, the same problem, and it is for this reason that, in my opinion, Nancys approach to equality has much to recommend it over Badious and Rancie ` res. Given the choice between the capacity problem and the problem of unlimited expansion, it would be preferable to grapple with the latter: better to work on restricting an overabundant notion of equality than on expanding an overly narrow one. To adapt what jurisprudence knows as Blackstones ratio, we might say: Ten times better that the unequal be accorded equality than that the equal be denied it.26

Downloaded from http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on March 29, 2014

26 The principle better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer is expressed by Sir William Blackstone in his Commentaries: with notes of reference to the Constitution and laws of the Federal Government of the United States, and of the Commonwealth of Virginia, ed. by St. George Tucker, 5 vols (Philadelphia: W. Y. Birch and A. Small, 1803), V, 443.