Sustaining Rancière: Organising Dissent and Aestheticizing Equality (Part 1/3)

Dissertation from Ideology and Discourse Analysis course, 2015.

Introduction

I haven’t posted anything in a while because I’ve been finishing off my thesis, which has taken up all of my brain power. Its finally done (other than my viva at the end of next month) and I’d like to get back into posting occasional articles here. With that in mind, I thought it’d be a good idea to upload my MA dissertation from back in 2015. While it’s quite a departure from the articles I’ve uploaded here it does contextualise sections of the thesis which relate to Rancière’s politics, which are ideas I’d like to introduce in future articles here. It was written around 7 years prior to the start of this blog and was aimed at a more academic audience, so it may not be of interest to every one, since it doesn’t speak in such common language and might presuppose a basic grasp of Rancière’s politics (though I hope to have introduced the key terms in fairly accessible terms). It also doesn’t directly speak of cybernetics, which is the key centre point around which most of the articles here orbit (in part because it was written a year or two before I discovered cybernetics myself) but in future articles I hope to make the relationship between my thoughts on cybernetics, organisation and Rancièrian politics more explicit. In a sense, this is the first step towards bringing these three themes together, since it aims to show that Rancière’s politics is resonant with organisation and governance (despite that being denied by some scholars) and cybernetics is arguably the “science of organisation”¹ though I would prefer to call the latter a discourse.

This text will be uploaded in three sections over the course of a couple of weeks. After that, I hope to have a some other posts near completion, which will return to the less academic style that I want this blog to focus on.

Abstract

A growing number of writings on the political and aesthetic thought of Rancière have emerged in the last decade or so, making the implications of his novel conception of politics a flourishing area of debate in contemporary theoretical discourse. His subversive understanding of politics has led some to interpret his work as antagonistic to all forms of organisation, ordering, or what he categorises as ‘policing’. In this essay I challenge a purely antagonistic understanding of Rancière’s politics, arguing that although his notion of politics emerges as an interruption of police orders, politics does not imply an uncritical hostility to any and all forms of organisational ‘policing’. First, I show that dissent can be incorporated into, and made to flourish within, organisational practices (or forms of ‘policing’), illustrating the practical implementation of this through the recent work of Frederic Laloux. Next, I show that organised groups (what Rancière has called ‘aesthetic communities’) can work to produce new ways of seeing, being, and doing, and that these activities can reorder the distribution of the sensible, bring into sight new manifestations of equality. I characterise these manifestations as stages of equality, and conclude by portraying the organisations which engage in these aesthetic practices as theatres of equality. Such organisations are both compatible with Rancière’s theoretical framework and represent a new way of thinking about how to organise politically outside of the bureaucratic and highly stratified limits of party politics.

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Politics and the problem of organisation

For Rancière, the partition of the sensible is the field of implicit laws governing the sensible order, defining what can be understood as intelligible. “[T]he sensible order” is that which “parcels out places and forms of participation in a common world by first establishing the modes of perception with which these are inscribed”,² thereby constraining the possibilities of what can be said, thought, made, or done.³ Within a given society, it is the “police order” which determines this distribution of the sensible, determining the organisation of powers, as well as the “the distribution of places and roles, and the systems for legitimizing this distribution”⁴; this police order conditions what can be understood as viable speech, and what is interpreted as the mere voice of the animal, expressing unintelligible pleasure or pain.⁵ Any given society’s “social and political hierarchy and more generally the social and political system”⁶ are a product of the distribution of the sensible, which is ordered and divided by the police order. Put simply, for Rancière, policing is what might traditionally be considered “the art of politics”: the ordering of society, the management of positions and roles, the distribution of powers, and so on.⁷

Opposing this distribution of the visible and sayable is what Rancière defines as politics. Politics adjusts the distribution of the sayable and doable by verifying the non-hierarchical logic of equality, which can be understood as the performative disruption of the distribution of the sensible by the instantiation of an egalitarian logic which verifies equality. This supposition of equality produces what Rancière calls a disagreement, articulating a tension between the hierarchical distribution of roles (policing) and the logic of the equality of every speaking being with every other speaking being (radically undermining any and all such distributions). Political action does not oppose the dominant distribution of places and roles with an alternative, perfectly egalitarian distribution, but rather disrupts the distribution of the sensible with the order of no order; the indiscriminate equality of everyone with everyone else (although this is, inevitably, presented as an alternative and imperfect distribution of places and roles). For Rancière, there is no grounding for a legitimate right to rule. Neither birth nor nature legitimise a leader's position as ruler.⁸ It is only the "drawing of lots"⁹ which can provide a legitimate basis for leadership; it is a title that is governed by chance, an anarchic title;¹⁰ it is the "the title specific to those who have no more title for governing than they have for being governed."¹¹ For Rancière, this egalitarian denial of the right of anyone to rule anyone else is the essence of democratic action, and the essence of politics itself.

This conceptualisation of politics has led Rancière to describe his understanding of democracy as "ungovernable"¹², in the sense that democracy cannot be associated with a type of organisation of society. On the contrary, democratic politics is precisely that which disrupts the organisation of a society, exposing dissensus within it and referring to a shared common world only in "adversarial terms"¹³. For Ranciere, democracy is an expression of conflict rather than consensus.¹⁴ This implies that political action cannot lead to a stable form of non-oligarchic rule, since politics is that which disrupts the dominant system of rule and articulates dissensus within it. It is for this reason that Rancière describes democracy as a scandal, long since entrusted as a just form of rule, but in fact not a form of rule at all. What Rancière's work reveals is that the truth of democracy is "nothing but the absence of a title, that the government of societies cannot but rest in the last resort on its own contingency."¹⁵

Does this lead to a concept of politics which is unable to be organised or managed without becoming a form of policing - without becoming that which opposes politics? If democracy is ungovernable, then is there any hope of politics becoming organised, institutionalised, or collectivised in opposition to an unjust police order, or is politics bound to be forever reintegrated into the oligarchic order of policing? Hallward has claimed that Rancière’s notion of politics is fated to be "extremely fragile, uncertain, ephemeral"¹⁶ while Hewlett has claimed that for Rancière there can be no form of political organisation which is not unjust.¹⁷ Hallward criticises Rancière’s conception of politics as being "unabashedly sporadic and intermittent"¹⁸ and accuses him of being unable to theorise a way for political gains to be made, as well as how to "hold on to such gains and use them to enhance a capacity to make additional gains".¹⁹ Although these writers appreciate Rancière’s political orientation and the benefits of his position, their analysis of his writings expresses a view of his work which is, in the end, doomed to failure.²⁰ At times, particularly in his earlier writings, Rancière himself can be read as endorsing this pessimistic interpretation of his work, arguing in Disagreement that politics is the interruption of the prevailing "natural order of domination"²¹ which "actually happens very little or rarely".²²

However, taking a broader look at Rancière’s writings confirms that he more often takes a more optimistic view, claiming that equality (which is the universal axiom of politics)²³ is "constantly and everywhere attested to"²⁴ implying that although there can be no societal regime grounded in equality, every social configuration consists of a multiplicity of equalities and inequalities; viewing policing as the unequal distribution of roles and positions, which constitutes the limit of that social configuration; and politics as the force which disrupts that configuration with the egalitarian logic of equality. Both are ineliminable forces, mutually dependent upon one another. Just as there can be no democratic regime free from the unequal logic of policing, the reverse is also true: "inegalitarian society can only function due to a multitude of egalitarian relations."²⁵ It seems then, that Rancière’s position does not conceive of politics as a momentary glimmer of equality in a sea of inequality. However, Hewlett and Hallward’s accusations still leave us with an unsolved difficulty in Rancière’s work. If we understand Rancière’s conception of politics to be the act of speaking as an equal then Hallward and Hewlett’s criticism can be read as articulating the difficulty involved, for Rancière, in developing ways of speaking together to adjust the boundaries of the partition of the sensible, as well as amplifying and sustaining such speech. To put it another way, Hallward and Hewlett can be seen as making the claim that Rancière is unable to incorporate the organisation of dissensus into opposition against the police order.

In this essay I wish to explore the possibility of overcoming this apparent resistance to collectives sustaining speech as equals. This does not imply that I will argue that political speech can become stable, solidified, or institutionalised within a controlled structure. It does imply, however, that dissent from the order of policing can be imperfectly organised and contingently sustained under particular circumstances. A political organisation developed with this aim in mind could be seen as an exploration of our ability to process a wrong through "mechanisms of subjectification"²⁶ with the aim in mind of making visible a proof, or verification, of equality.²⁷ Rancière makes it clear that such a political organisation could not "achieve substantial form as a social institution"²⁸ but could create a space in which equality can be reiterated and verified in an "insubstantial community of individuals engaged in the ongoing creation of equality."²⁹ However, the insubstantial nature of such an organisation would not preclude the possibility of agreeing on ways of organising and acting (however imperfectly) as a community of equals.³⁰³¹

Additionally, as has already been implied, any proposed political organisation cannot claim to be free of policing,³² or without the inequalities that policing implies. According to Chambers, any verification of equality is, for Rancière, impure³³  and therefore any political organisation will also be an impure staging³⁴ of equality. A Rancièrian political organisation would not be without power or the exercise of power per se, as Rancière made clear when asked by Hallward how we might "organise a true popular mobilisation without recourse to power, the party, authority, etc?", responding:

"I’m not saying you need absolutely no power. I’m not preaching spontaneity as against organisation. Forms of organisation and relations of authority are always being set up… Politics may well have to do with powers and their implementation, but that doesn’t mean that politics and power are one and the same."³⁵

Additionally, Chambers has clearly articulated the intertwined relation between police and politics, and the impure character of the latter, stating that:

“We must say, then, not just that politics is not pure, but more, that politics is that which renders impure. Rancière formulates the point in many different ways. Politics is dissensus. Politics is a splitting into two. Politics is a rupture of the logic of the arkhe. Politics is subjectification in the form of disidentification." [Emphasis in original]³⁶

In his book, The Lessons of Rancière, during his analysis of the notion of policing in Rancière, Chambers introduces the notion of "the politics of the police"³⁷ in order to meditate on ways of "changing, transforming, and improving our [existing] police orders."³⁸ In contrast to this, what follows can be considered to be thoughts on the 'policing of politics': the attempt to develop ways of organising, ordering, and facilitating political capacities through the implementation of practices and agreements which can be characterised as forms of policing. My aim is therefore not to advocate the elimination of policing, but to elaborate on the possibility of developing "good”, or at least improved, forms of policing.³⁹

I will also, through the course of this essay, utilise the work of Laloux in his recent study Reinventing Organisations, to illustrate the practical implementations of what can be understood as "good policing",⁴⁰ or organisational techniques which do not rely on either the oligarchic logic of hierarchies or the undemocratic (or depoliticising) logic of consensus.⁴¹ His study claims that organisations have been developed that overcome the inefficient, anti-democratic, and oligarchic features which have come to be expected from contemporary organisations. While he does not articulate his argument in Rancièrian terms, his study problematizes the view that hierarchical forms of organisation and management are the most efficient means of organising people and utilising their skills. Rather than propose a theoretical argument to defend this position, he shows that such forms of organisation are already being practically implemented, providing examples of existing organisations that are more participatory, adaptive and efficient than conventionally organised businesses. His explication of new organisational practices may be interpreted as examples of political (in the Rancièrian sense) means of organisation. I would, however, hesitate to conclude from this that the organisations he investigates could all be considered political organisations. My reason for this hesitation should become clear in the second half of this essay (at the beginning of the section marked ‘aesthetic organisation’), in which I consider the role of aesthetic practices in the development of an organisation's political trajectory. Despite this, I invoke Laloux’s work here to demonstrate the possibility of incorporating a dissensual (which is to say, political) dimension into organisations in a way which is capable of being sustained over time and reinforcing a logic of equality, which some writers have erroneously claimed is inevitably intermittent, momentary and antagonistic to any form of organisational governance.⁴²

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Part two of this essay can be found here.

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1. Beer, Stafford. Designing Freedom.

2. Rancière J. (2013), The Politics of Aesthetics, Bloomsbury publishing plc, New York.

3. ^

4. Rancière J. (1999), Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, University of Minnesota Press, London.

5. ^

6. Hewlett N. (2007), Badiou, Balibar, Rancière: Re-thinking Emancipation, Continuum International Publishing Group, New York.

7. Consequently, it is vital that policing in Rancière’s sense is not confused with the police in a colloquial sense. The latter is a particularly violent example of the former, but the former might include any form of distribution, ordering, or governance whatsoever, including both democratic and anarchist forms of organisational practice/process. The importance of this distinction can hardly be overstated.

8. Rancière J. (2007), Hatred of Democracy, Verso Books, New York.

9. Rancière J. (2001), Ten Thesis on Politics, in Theory & Event. Vol.5, No.3

10. Rancière J. (2007)

11. Rancière J. (2007)

12. Rancière J., Heron L. (1995), On the Shores of Politics, Verso books, United Kingdom.

13. ^

14. Rancière J. (2004)

15. Rancière J. (2007)

16. Hallward P., Rancière J., (2010) Politics and aesthetics an interview, in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 8:2, Routledge, London.

17. Hewlett N. (2007)

18. Hallward P. (2006), Staging Equality, in the New Left Review: Jan/Feb 2006.

19. ^

20. Hewlett N. (2007)

21. Rancière J. (1999)

22. ^

23. Rancière J. (2004)

24. Rancière J. (2007)

25. ^

26. Rancière J. (1999)

27. ^

28. Rancière J., Heron L., (1995)

29. ^

30. ^

31. My use of the terms politics, policing, democracy, and community will be roughly synonymous with Rancière’s. While I will generally use the term ‘political organisation’ to describe the kind of political body advocated here, the term ‘political community’ will be used at times to specifically refer to the group of speaking beings who make up such a body.

32. Chambers S. (2012), The Lessons of Rancière, Johns Hopkins University, Oxford

33. Chambers S. (2011), Jacques Rancière and the problem of pure politics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore

34. Hallward P. (2006)

35. Hallward P., Rancière J., (2010)

36. Chambers S. (2011)

37. Chambers S. (2012)

38. ^

39. Rancière J. (1999)

40. ^

41. Laloux F. (2014), Reinventing organisations: A Guide to Creating Organisations inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness, Nelson Parker, Belgium

42. While his work does have some interesting resonances with the possibility of organising ‘politically’ in a Rancièrian sense, if I were to be writing this essay today I would be significantly more critical of Laloux’s research and would refer to a wider range of organisations and practices as examples of organised or ‘staged’ expressions of political organisation. Despite the promising implications of his work, characterising Laloux’s research as altogether beyond the confines of the ‘neoliberal’ form of dominant social relation was overstated in this essay. I have learned of many other forms of self-organising practices and forms of relationships over the years since writing this essay which fit with a Rancièrian politics with less ambiguity.