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Equaliberty Chapter 1
Equaliberty Chapter 1
BALIBAR
EQUALIBERTY
POLITICAL ESSAYS TRANSLATED BY JAMES INGRAM
EQUALIBERTY
A JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN CENTER BOOK
TIENNE
BALIBAR
EQUALIBERTY
POLITICAL ESSAYS TRANSLATED BY JAMES INGRAM
Duke University Press Durham and London :o:
La Proposition de lgalibert by tienne Balibar,
:o:o Presses Universitaires de France.
En glish translation by James Ingram
:o: Duke University Press.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free
paper
Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker
Typeset in Minion by Westchester Book Group
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Balibar, Etienne.
[Proposition de lgalibert. En glish]
Equaliberty : po liti cal essays / tienne Balibar ;
translated by James Ingram.
pages cm
A John Hope Franklin Center book.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isv ,8- o- 8::,- ,,,o- : (cloth : alk. paper)
isv ,8- o- 8::,- ,,o- (pbk. : alk. paper)
:. Citizenship. :. Democracy. ,. Po liti cal science
Philosophy. i. Balibar, Etienne, :: Proposition
de lgalibert. Translation of: ii. Title.
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CONTENTS
ioviwovu vii
i1vouUc1io. Te Antinomy of Citizenship :
PART ONE
THE STATEMENT AND INSTITUTION OF RIGHTS 33
: Te Proposition of Equaliberty ,,
: Te Reversal of Possessive Individualism o,
, New Refections on Equaliberty: Two Lessons
PART TWO
SOVEREIGNTY, EMANCIPATION, COMMUNITY (SOME CRITIQUES) 133
What Is Po liti cal Philosophy? Notes for a Topography :,,
, Communism and Citizenship: On Nicos Poulantzas :,
o Hannah Arendt, the Right to Have Rights, and Civic
Disobedience :o,
, Pop u lism and Politics: Te Return of the Contract :8,
vi Contents
PART THREE
FOR A DEMOCRACY WITHOUT EXCLUSION 197
8 What Are the Excluded Excluded From? :
Dissonances within Lacit: Te New Headscarf Afair :o
:o Secularism and Universality: Te Liberal Paradox ::,
:: Uprisings in the Banlieues :,:
:: Toward Co- Citizenship :,
cociUsio. Re sis tance, Insurrection, Insubordination :,,
o1is :, wovxs ci1iu ,, iuix ,,
FOREWORD
Te present collection brings together three series of texts that extend
over a period of twenty years and are thus coextensive with the larger
part of my recent work in po liti cal philosophy. Some of them have al-
ready appeared in other frameworks; others have remained unpublished
in this form until now. In or ga niz ing them in a rational fashion, I have
sought to present them not, to be sure, as parts of a system, but nonethe-
less as correlative dimensions of a problematic centered on what I call in
the introductory essay the antinomies of citizenship.
I
Te frst series of essays outlines the general idea of a dialectic of in-
surrection and constitution that I presented in :8 (at the Confrences
du Perroquet) in Te Proposition of Equaliberty, the complete version
of which is produced here. It was subsequently extended by New Refec-
tions on Equaliberty (pre sen ta tions from :oo: :oo, in En gland and
Mexico), in which I compared the idea of a demo cratic power associated
with the invention of rights with the institution of social rights within
the framework of the national- social state, the crisis of which we are expe-
riencing today, and discussed its tendency to reduce anthropological dif-
ferences to so cio log i cal categories. Owing to the place the examination of
Robert Castels theses on social property occupies in this discussion, and
viii Foreword
also to the importance I place on the analysis of the category of property
in a general sense as a constitutional mediation of equaliberty, compet-
ing with community, I have inserted between these two moments a ge-
nealogical investigation of the reversals of possessive individualism,
presented in : at the conclusion of a Cerisy colloquium on property.
2
Te second series brings together some critical analyses devoted di-
rectly or indirectly to the works of contemporary theorists whose writings
have been particularly useful for me: Hannah Arendt, Nicos Poulantzas,
Ernesto Laclau, Roberto Esposito, and Jacques Rancire. Te list is by no
means exhaustive; it would be easy to show that there are more absences
than presences, partly made up for by references I give elsewhere. For me
the point is, above all, to emphasize, in the form of confrontations or re-
readings, the essentially contested (as W. B. Gallie would say) character
of the concepts of po liti cal philosophy I use (sovereignty, emancipation,
community, and others), and to extend certain explications in a dialogi-
cal form when circumstances of commemoration or study have given me
the opportunity.
3
Te third series of texts collects interventions and analyses provoked
by contemporary episodes of sometimes violent confict where what is at
stake is the form of citizenship, within republican institutions or at their
frontiers in par tic u lar, conficts in France in the last years that have
highlighted the intensity of the postcolonial dimensions of politics
(around secularism, nationality, and security).
4
I have entitled them For
a Democracy without Exclusion as a way of indicating their general
stakes: what I call elsewhere, following others (Boaventura de Souza
Santos), the demo cratization of democracy in my view the only think-
able alternative to the de- democratization (Wendy Brown) of contem-
porary societies. And I conclude them with a proposal for co- citizenship
in the world of migrations and diasporas in which we now live, which is
like the institutional pendant to the insurrectional proposition of equa-
liberty, and tries to work out its realization in a par tic u lar, but strategic,
domain.
By way of conclusion I reproduce a meditation on Re sis tance, Insur-
rection, Insubordination, written for the Festival dAvignon in :oo,. I
hope that it will not seem exaggeratedly emotional or subjective. It is also
an occasion to insist fnally on the critical dimension of politics as I de-
fend it, not only in theory but in practice, and thus on what distinguishes
Foreword ix
citizenship conceived as a guaranteed status from citizenship as the exer-
cise of constituent power.
References to the initial publications and subsequent modifcations to
the texts are given in the notes. My thanks go frst to Jacques Bidet, G-
rard Dumnil, Emmanuel Renault, and Jacques Texier, who welcomed the
original edition of this work, which corresponds exactly, in my view, to
what can be understood by a current confrontation with the heritage of
Marx and Marxism, into their collection [Actuel Marx Confrontations,
with Editions de Seuil]. Tey also go to the colleagues, friends, institu-
tions, and journals who have solicited and previously published the essays
collected in this book. To Mehdi Dadsetan, whose irreplaceable assistance
has been coupled with a sympathy that is precious to me. And in par tic u lar
to Yves Duroux, who encouraged me to attempt this synthesis, helped me
get rid of what was useless or redundant, and as always, since we were
students together benefted me by his judgments and his ideas with an
unparalleled generosity.
INTRODUCTION
THE ANTINOMY OF CITIZENSHIP
When I initially proposed this topic, I made a strange but perhaps sig-
nifcant mistake.
I
Outlining a discussion of the antinomies of citizen-
ship, I lef out the word democracy. Te reader could conclude that in
my view the notion of citizenship is what counts, and that democracy
represents only a qualifcation to which we can retrospectively attribute
more or less importance in its defnition. Such hierarchical or, as Rawls
would say, lexicographical considerations are by no means second-
ary. Tey go to the heart of debates that oppose a republican (or neo-
republican) conception of politics to a (liberal or social) demo cratic
conception of politics, and in a sense the very understanding of po liti cal
philosophy, and therefore of its critique, depends on it, as Jacques Ran-
cire and Miguel Abensour, each in his own fashion, have recently un-
derlined.
2
Not only do I not want to subordinate the consideration of
democracy to that of citizenship. I maintain that democracy better
still, the demo cratic paradox, according to Chantal Moufes felici-
tous formulation represents the decisive aspect of the problem around
: Introduction
which po liti cal philosophy gravitates, precisely because it makes the in-
stitution of citizenship problematic.
3
Citizenship has known diferent
historical fgures, and there can be no question of reducing some to others,
even if we could ask what is transmitted under the name and by means
of these translations.
4
Between them there is always an analogy, con-
nected to its antinomical relation to democracy as a dynamic of the
transformation of politics. When I qualify this constitutive relation of
citizenship as antinomical, which at the same time puts it in crisis, I refer
to a philosophical tradition that has insisted on two ideas in par tic u lar: a
permanent tension between the positive and the negative, between pro-
cesses of construction and destruction; and the coexistence of the im-
possibility of resolving the problem (or resolving it defnitively) and the
impossibility of making it disappear. My working hypothesis will be
precisely that at the heart of the institution of citizenship contradiction is
ceaselessly born and reborn in relation to democracy. In other words, I
will seek to characterize the moments of a dialectic that includes both
historical movements and relations of force, as complex as they are, and
the conditions for articulating theory with practice.
Tis is to say that I see nothing natural in the association of citizen-
ship and democracy. And yet I want to extend a theme that runs, with
infections, through a complex tradition from Aristotle to Spinoza to
Marx, and makes democracy the natural regime or most natural form
of citizenship.