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Declarations of Independence: Arendt and Derrida on the Problem of Founding a Republic Author(s): B.

Honig Reviewed work(s): Source: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 85, No. 1 (Mar., 1991), pp. 97-113 Published by: American Political Science Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1962880 . Accessed: 01/02/2013 04:54
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DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE: ARENDTAND DERRIDAON THE PROBLEM OF FOUNDINGA REPUBLIC


B. HONIG
Harvard University

Beginning with Hannah Arendt's depiction of the American Revolution and founding,I criticallyexamineArendt'sreadingof the Declarationof Independence, comparingit with JacquesDerrida'sreadingof (a draft of) the same document,in orderto show that Arendt is careless in her easy dismissal of the declaration'sessentialist moments.Derrida, it seems to me, has a better, more subtle appreciationof the both necessaryand impossiblerole of essentialismin modernpoliticaltheory and practice.I conclude,however, that Arendt nonethelesssucceedsin theorizinga powerfuland suggestive practiceof politicalauthorityfor modernity,a practicethat is uniquelyactivist and appropriate for a democraticpolitics.

The men who create power make an indispensablecontributionto the Nation'sgreatness, but the men who questionpower make a contributionjust as indispensable, especiallywhen that questioningis disinterested, for they determinewhetherwe use power or power uses us. -John F. Kennedy

T he problemto which the title of this essay refers-that of founding a republic-is the problemof politics in modernity. I shall treat Hannah Arendt as a political theorist interested primarily in respondingto this problem. As Arendt conceivesof it, the problemis largelyattributableto the rise of secularismand to the corresponding dearthin modernityof commonlyheld and publiclypowerfulinstruments of legitimation, such as politicalauthority.It is temptingto think of Arendt as a nostalgic or essentialist theoristof authority,a theoristfor whom political authority is (or was) a uniquely ancient and Roman experiencethat was lost, irrevocably,along with the modern

"loss of tradition and the weakening of religiousbeliefs"(Arendt1963, 117-18).1 In my view, however, Arendt does not simply mourn the disappearance of political authorityin modernity;she also celebratesit. Moreover, in the spirit of celebration,she constructsa replacement for it: through her notably fabulist of the Americanrevolutionand rendering founding, she offers a powerful account of a practiceof authorityfor modernity, an account that has receivedscant attention from Arendt scholars. Arendt is ambivalentabout the disappearanceof authority in modernity. On the one hand, it marks the restorationof the world to humanity, the recovery of human worldliness,and new possibilities of innovative political action. On the other hand, it leaves the modern world bereft of the very things that securedthe foundation and longevity of the Roman republic:tradition, religion, and authority. Withoutthe resourcesof authority,it seemsas if the task of foundingand main-

AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW VOLUME 85 NO. 1 MARCH 1991

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the radicalcontingencyof the revolution by speaking the language of restoration, which was indeedtrueto theiroriginalintentions in rebellion.Ultimately, though, 'The greatproblemof politics, which I compare it became clear to them that restoration the circlein geometry to the problemof squaring [is]: How to find a form of government was not the whole goal. Their experience which puts the law above man." Theoretically of public freedom in the revolutionary [Arend adds], Rousseau'sproblem closely reprocess made them value political action sembles Sieyes's vicious circle: Those who get and participation,the act of coming totogether to constitute a new governmentare gether in deliberation,debate, and decithemselvesunconstitutional,that is, they have no authorityto do what they set out to achieve. sion. Free political action is seductive Theviciouscirclein legitimating is presentnot in (1963, 33). ordinary lawmaking, but in layingdown thefunThus, they were moved to complete damental law.... The trouble was-to quote their revolutionary task, seeking in the Rousseauonce more-that to put the law above man and thus to establishthe validity of manend not just liberationbut the reconstitumadelaws, il faudraitdes dieux, "onewould action of the political realm in order to tually need gods." (1963, 183-84)2 enablethe citizenryof the new republicto experiencethe happiness of public freeFor Arendt, then, the problem of politicsin modernityis, How do we estab- dom and political action. Now conscious lish lastingfoundationswithout appealing that this new goal, which they had not to gods, a foundationalistground, or an deliberately chosen, was radically new, absolute?Can we conceive of institutions they both reveledin theirgood fortuneto possessed of authority without deriving be a part of this world-historicalevent and sought comfort from its weightiness. that authority from some law of laws, from some extrapolitical source?In short, They turnedto theory-to the science of is it possible to have a politics of founda- politics-for aid in their task, "the creation in a world devoid of traditional tion of new power." And they turnedto (foundational) guarantees of stability, history, pedanticallydocumentingrepublican constitutions of all sorts, driven, legitimacy, and authority? Arendt Arendt argues, not by the need to learn answers yes, and she turns to the how to "safeguard. .. civil liberties-a American revolution and founding as a model of this possibility. I take her ac- subject on which they certainly knew but by count of the American experienceto be more than any previous republic" need to learn about "the constitution the part of a retheorization of authorityfor a of power"(1963, 149-50). nonfoundationalpolitics. The Quest for an Absolute training lasting institutionsis impossible. Arendt poses the problem, quoting Rousseau:

The American Model


The Quest for Examples Arendt glorifies the American revolutionaries and founders of the American republicfor their great innovations, their courage, their vision. But she faults them for being inadequatelyconsciousof themselves as innovators. Their revolution took them by surprise(1963, 44). Somewhat frightened,they sought to mitigate
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The turn to antiquity,however, constituted not only a searchfor pedagogicexamples; it constitutedalso a searchfor a beginningto anchorthe newly constituted republic. "Politically speaking," the American revolutionaries were right. Arendtargues,to believe that they had to derive "thestabilityand authorityof any given body politic from its beginning." The problem was that "they could not conceive of a beginning except as some-

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thing which must have occurredin a distantpast"(1963, 198). In this respectthen, the turn to antiquity was in quest of reassurancethat the innovation of the revolutionwas not radicalbut derivative. But the reassurance was false, for theiraction was unprecedented. Hence its greatness. The quest for reassurancemarked a lack of faith on the part of the revolutionaries in their own action. This lack of faith led them also to attempt to ground their reconstitutionof the political realm in an absolute, a law of laws that they trustedto serve as "thesource of validity of their laws and the fountain of legitimacy for the new government"(1963, 199). The result was a paradox: "It was precisely the revolutions . . . which drove the very 'enlightened'men of the eighteenth century to plead for some religious sanction at the very moment when they were about to emancipatethe secular realm from the influences of the churches and to separate politics and religiononce and for all" (1963, 185-86). This quest for an absolute in which to ground and legitimate the reconstitution of the political realm is, according to Arendt, deeply misguided. The positing of an absolute undermines the continfeatureof gency that is the quintessential the public realm, the feature in virtue of which politicalfreedomand humaninnovation are possible (1958, 179-240; 1963, 184-85). Moreover, it deprivileges the very human achievement of reconstitution and founding, making it dependent on something external to the human world. And that external something is untenablein the modern era, whether it be god, naturallaw, or self-evidenttruth. Natural law needs "divine sanction to become binding for men" and "the authority of self-evident truth . .. still bears clear signs of divine origin,"while in modernity "the loss of religious sanction for the political realm is a matter of fact" (1963, 190, 194, 196). accomplished
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issueaL But thereis a morefundamental stake here. Even if appealsto an absolute could still bind us, even if religioussanction was still viablefor the politicalrealm, appealsto an absoluteas a groundof politics, in Arendt'sview, would be illicit. For an absoluteis
a truth that needs no agreement since, because of its self-evidence, it compels without argumentative demonstration or political persuasion. By virtue of being self-evident, these truths are prerational-they inform reason but are not its product-and since their self-evidence puts them beyond disclosure and argument, they are in a sense no less compelling than 'despotic power' and no less absolute than the revealed truths of religion or the axiomatic verities of mathematics. (1963, 192)

In politics, the appeal to an absoluteis illicit because of its constative character. The uniquelypoliticalaction, on Arendt's account, is not the constativebut the performative utterance,a speech act that in itself brings "somethinginto being which did not exist before" (1977, 151). Thus, the grandeurof the Declarationof Independence, according to Arendt, consists "Inot]so much in its being 'an argument in supportof an action'as in its being the perfect way for an action to appear in words.... And since we deal here with the written, and not the spokenword, we are confronted with one of the rare momentsin historywhen the power of action is great enough to erect its own monument(1963, 130; emphasismine).4 The Ambiguityof the AmericanRevolution In spite of Arendt's celebratory tone, she is forcedto admitthat the Declaration of Independence does not consistently maintainthe performativeposture she so admires.The preambleto the declaration contains two appeals to a "transcendent source of authority for the laws of the new body politic":an appeal to "nature's god" and an appeal to self-evidenttruths.

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Whatis interesting,though, about the appeal to self-evident truths is that the sentence-"We hold these truths to be self-evident"-is partly performative in character.These famous words, Arendt argues, "combinein a historicallyunique mannerthe basis of agreement[we hold] between those who have embarkedupon revolution, an agreement necessarily relative because related to those who enter it, with an absolute [self-evident]" that signals not agreementbut compulsion (1963, 192). The statement's performative quality Arendt attributes to Jefferson's dim awareness that it was a fallacy that irresistiblelaws were "of the samenatureas the laws of a community." Wereit not for this dim awareness,Jefferson"wouldnot have indulgedin the somewhatincongruous phrase 'We hold these truths to be self-evident'but would have said: These truths are self-evident, namely, they possess a power to compel which is as irresistibleas despoticpower, they are not held by us, we are held by them; They standin no needof agreement" (1963,193). Jefferson's awarenessof the fallacy could be no more than dim because he was caughtin a period of transition.The new political developmentsof his time were "nowhere matchedby an adequatedevelopment of new thought." In particular, "there was no avoidingthe problemof the absolute ... because it proved to be inherentin the traditionalconceptof law. If the essence of secular law was a command, then a divinity, not nature but 'nature'sgod,' not reason but a divinely informed reason, was needed to bestow validity on it" (1963, 195). for the Americanrepublic, Fortunately this problemwas a theoreticalone. This bondage to the "conceptualand intellectual framework of the European tradition" did not, Arendt argues, determine "the actual destinies of the American republicto the sameextentas it compelled the minds of the theorists."For if it had,
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she speculates (somewhat naively), "the authority of this new body politic in actual fact might have crumbledunder the onslaught of modernity-where the loss of religious sanction for the political realm is an accomplishedfact.... What saved the Americanrevolutionfrom this fate was neither 'nature'sgod' nor selfevident truth, but the act of foundation itself" (1963, 195-96). In short, Arendt believes that in practice, the We holdthe performativepart of Jefferson's"incongruous phrase"-won out over the constative part, the reference to selfevident truths. This saved the American revolution because the We hold constitutes the only sort of power that is "real" the sort of power that and "legitimate," "rest[s] on reciprocityand mutuality" and comes into being only "when men join themselvestogetherfor the purposeof action" by binding "themselves through promises,covenantsand mutualpledges" (1963, 181, 175). The appeal to self-evidence stands in opposition to the We hold. It expresses not a free coming togetherbut an isolated acquiescence to compulsion and necessity. The appeal, therefore, coerces and disempowers.It violates the integrity of politics and denatures and disables its practice. This is a crucial point for Arendt, who, throughouther work, insists on the autonomy of the political realmand on the sui generischaracterof politics. In The Human Condition she arguesthat politics should not be held to standardsexternal to it, that it has two precepts of its own-forgiving and promising-precepts that "arenot appliedto actionfrom the outside[but]arisedirectly out of the will to live togetherwith others in the mode of acting and speaking" (1958,245-46). It is now clearthatwhat is unique about these precepts is that they are both performatives; indeed, it is that feature that makes these two practicesordinarily thought of as the subject of ethics-profoundly political in an Arend-

Foundinga Republic
tian schema. As performatives,they are markedby all the features characteristic of actionas Arendtdescribesit: they cannot be judgedtrueor false, rightor wrong (1958, 205). And they cannot make sense in isolation: performative utterances necessarily take place "in concert" and requirefor their success the presence of spectatorsin order to achieve their purpose, which is to bringsomethinginto being that did not exist before. In my view, Arendt wants to celebratethe American Declarationof Independenceas a purely performativespeech act; but in order to do so she must disambiguateit. She dismisses its constative moments and holds up the declaration as an example of a uniquely political act, an act available uniquely to human beings, an authoritative exemplification of humanpower and worldliness. ises and reciprocity for the sake of bringing something new into being.) Properlyunderstoodand performed,the act of foundationrequiresno appeal to a source of authoritybeyond itself: "Itwas the authoritywhich the act of foundation carriedwithin itself, ratherthan the belief in an immortalLegislator,or the promises of rewardand threatsof punishmentin a 'future state,' or even the doubtful selfevidence of the truths enumeratedin the preambleto the Declarationof Independence, that assured stability for the new republic" (1963, 199). Thus, Arendt squares Sieyes's circle by finding the source of authorityin the act of foundation, therebymakingappealsto an absolute, transcendent sourceof authoritynot merely illicit but redundantand unnecessary. Arendt'spoliticalperformative does not requirethe blessingof a constativein order to work. Nor, Arendt claims, did the U.S. Constitution:the preambleto the declarationshe argues, "providesthe sole source of authorityfrom which the Constitution, not as an act of constituting governmentbut as the law of the land, derives its own legitimacy"(1963, 193). Arendttherebyseemsto have foundfor the new world the new thoughtit needed, the thoughtthatenablesit to conceiveof a foundingthatsecures law for a community without appealing to a law of laws and without lapsinginto foundationalism, the thought that salvages political authority for an age unableor unwillingto support the authority of tradition and religion. One might say that Arendt'sprojectis to save authority-to find a way to sustain it-because she realizes that without it therecan be no politics. In a world devoid of authority, we are denied the opportunity to exercise our "humancapacity for building,preserving,and caringfor a world that can survive us and remain a place fit to live in for those who come after us" (1977, 95). This readingof Arendtmay appearimplausiblebecause of what RichardFlath-

The Power of Performatives


We hold, on Arendt's The performative account, empowers an existing community inasmuchas it constitutesa free coming togetherand gives public expression of a shared agreementto abide by certain rules in the community's subsequent being together. The We hold is a promise and a declaration;it signals the existenceof a singularlyhuman capacity: that of world-building(1963, 175). The source of power in this worldbuilding act of foundation is the speech act itself, the declarationof the We hold. And the act of foundationis the sourceof its own authorityas well. In short, power and authority are interdependent, on Arendt'saccount (1970, 47). The authority of the world built by power derives from all that is implied by the fact that that world is the productof power, rather than strength or violence. (What is implied, of course,is that it is the productof free action by equals who act in concert, bound together by mutual prom101

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man calls the essentialistcharacterof her notes that accountof authority.Flathman Arendt asserts "a necessary connection between in authorityand a quite definite and complex constellationof values and beliefs about tradition and religion," meaningthat of ancientRome. According to Flathman, it follows from Arendt's argumentthat once "this particularconstellation of values and beliefs has disappeared,in authorityhas therebydisappeared as well" (1980, 71; emphasis Flathmanargues, original). Furthermore, given Arendt'sinsistencethat power and it is curious authorityare interdependent, that she claims both that authority has disappearedfrom the modem world and yet insists that power has not (263, n. 6). On my reading, however, the problem for Arendtis understoodto be disappears, claimingthat a certainkind of authority, the kind that sustained the Roman republic together with tradition and religion, has disappearedin modernity. This is not, as Arendt herself says, "'authorityin general,'but rathera very specific form which had been valid throughout the Western World over a long period of time"(1977, 92). And it is this specific form of authority-"authority as we once knew it, which grew out of the Roman experienceof foundationand was understood in the light of Greek political philosophy"-that, in Arendt's view, "has nowhere been re-established" (1977, 141). In On Revolution, Arendt gives an account of an alternativeform of authority, the authorityinherentin the performative Declaration of Independenceand in the that "prepracticeof constitution-making ceded, accompanied,and followed [it] in all thirteen colonies." Both, she argues, "revealedall of a sudden to what an extent an entirelynew conceptof power and authority, an entirelynovel idea of what was of prime importancein the political realm had already developed in the New World, even though the inhabitants of
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this world spoke and thoughtin the terms of the Old World"(1963, 166; emphasis mine). Arendt understandsthat we cannot recoverthe lost form of authoritythat sustainedRomefor so long; it is untenable in modernity.But neithercan we exercise our world-buildingcapacitiesin a world without authority.If we love the world, if we are committedto world building-to politics-we must find another form of authority, one that can be sustained in modernity.Only then will we experience the privilegeof political action that is not just revolutionary(1963, 171, 238). Revolutionsare frequentin the modem age (and peculiar to it) because of the failure of traditionalauthority. But most revolutions themselves fail for the same reason. They seek to ground their reconstitutionof the politicalrealmin the same sort of traditionalauthority whose very untenability made their own revolution possible. Arendt tries to get out of this vicious circle by offering an alternative conceptionof authority, one that inheres not in an untenableabsolute, nor in a law of laws, but in the power of reconstitution itself.5 Only the modem conceptionof authority is viable for modernitybecause it requires for its sustenance not a shared belief in particulardeities or myths but a to the authoritative common subscription linguistic practice of promising. Consequently, it assumes a preexisting community but not in the strong sense of "homogeneityof past and origin,"which is the "decisive principle of the nation state"(1963, 174). This is a communityin a weaker sense, bound togetherby common linguisticpractices, not even necessarilyby a single, common, inheritedfirst language. This is a community whose members understand and subscribe to performative practices. Such a community should be able to sustainthis new kind of authority, in Arendt's viewassuming,that is, that it can overcomeits nihilisticcravingfor a law of laws, for a

Founding a Republic
sourceof authoritythat is transcendent or self-evident,assumingthat it can see and be satisfiedwith the power and authority inherentin its own performatives. Conversely, one might say not that Arendtseeks to salvage authorityfor the sake of politics but that she seeks to salvage politics for the sake of authority. To see Arendt'spolitics as a responseto modem nihilism is to make sense of her claim that we need politics for the sake of the world. We cannot live without standards or some stability; yet our traditional sources of stability are no longer viable. Consequently,we are left to the devices of politics and action. Politics is moreimportantthanever becauseit is the only alternative to violent domination, the only sourcein modernityof legitimate rules possessed of authority and capable of addressing"theelementaryproblemof humanliving-together" (1977, 141). Arendt's descriptionof the signing of the MayflowerCompactis enlightening in this context. The partiesto the compact
obviously feared the so-called state of nature, the untrod wilderness, unlimited by any boundary, as well as the unlimited initiative of men bound by no law. This fear is not surprising; it is the justified fear of men who have decided to leave civilization behind them and strike out on their own. The really astounding fact in the whole story is that their obvious fear of one another was accompanied by the no less obvious confidence they had in their own power, granted and confirmed by no one and as yet unsupported by any means of violence, to combine themselves together into a 'civil Body Politick' which, held together solely by the strength of mutual promises 'in the Presence of God and one another', supposedly was powerful enough to 'enact, constitute, and frame' all necessary laws and instruments of government (1963, 167).6

authoritativepractice of promising, and not nihilistic because, by virtue of their power, they are the guarantorsof their own authority. Arendt can do no better than this; she refusesto, in fact, because of her conviction that the "realm of human affairs"is "relativeby definition" (1963, 213). Political action has no anchor: a beginning, it "has, as it were, nothing to hold on to; it is as though it came out of nowhere in either time or space"(1963, 206).7

The Postulates of Promising


Arendt'scharacterization of action as a beginningwith nothing to hold on to is somewhat misleading. In Arendt's own account,a beginningdoes have something to hold on to-the public subscriptionto an authoritative discursive practice in which performative utterancesare understood to possess their own authority as long as they meet the conditionsnecessary for them to function. Arendt's performative politics presupposesa community of promisers, a preexisting community composed of people who may hold different values and beliefs but who, nonetheless, have shared understandingsof what a promiseis, what it meansto make a promise,and what one must do in order for one's performanceto be recognizable as a promise.!In short, promising,even on Arendt'saccount, is a practice.8 Yet Arendtgives no accountof the conditions of the practice. She only tells us why the practiceof promisingis of paramount importanceto those committedto the activity of politicsin modernity.Butif the practice of promising is to be the source of legitimacy in an Arendtian politics, the question of the legitimacyof the practiceand of its own techniquesof self-legitimationmust be addressed. Indeed, FriedrichNietzsche addresses the problem directly: "To breed an animal with the right to make promises-is not this the paradoxicaltask that nature has

Like the parties to the compact, the founders of the American republicbuilt small"islandsof security" in an "oceanof contingency" (1958,237) throughjointaction, promising,and constitutionmaking, all performativesthat are not solopsistic because they presuppose a plurality of participantswho subscribe to a shared
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set itself in the case of man? Is it not the by itself be able to provide the stability real problem regardingman?"(1969, pt. Arendt expectsit to: the stability is com2, sec. 1). ing from somewhere else, possibly from The processby which this problemhas somethingexternalto action'spurelyperbeen resolved historicallyis the object of formativespeechact. And this is precisely Nietzsche'sscathing criticism in the sec- the observationmade by JacquesDerrida draftof) ond essay of On the Genealogyof Morals. in his own readingof (Jefferson's Arendt, however, never addresses these the American Declaration of Indepenquestions, perhaps because she does not dence, a reading that, like Arendt's, shareNietzsche'sambivalencetowardthe focuses on the document'scurious strucconstruction of promisers and the practice tural combinationof constative and perof promising. Promising is the "highest formativeutterance. human faculty." Indeed, Arendt denies Nietzsche's own ambivalence, claiming The Inadequacy of Performatives with approvalthat "hesaw in the faculty Since Arendt dismisses the constative of promises. . . the very distinction which marksoff humanfrom animallife" moments of the declaration, and insists (1958, 245), ignoring the fact that in the that the power of its performative We phraseto which she refersNietzschesays hold is the sole sourceof authorityfor the the problem is how to breed an animal Americanrepublicand its Constitution,it seemslikely that the We of the declaration with the right to make promises. Moreover,Arendt'spracticeof promis- (and of all politicalaction) is the sourceof stability in Arendt's account. Yet if we ing, if it is to do the work she expectsof it, must be highly sophisticated,even ritual- take seriously Arendt'sclaim that action that occurs ex nihilo, if ized.9As such, it would belie the moment is a "beginning" of contingency that, on her account, we are persuadedby her that the We (the characterizes the moment of politics. In- people) does not exist as such priorto the deed, there is an apparentparadox here. declaration,"the question emerges,How Action, which for Arendt consists partly can the We stand as the guarantorof its How can it functionas in the activity of promising, is terribly own performance? riskybecauseit takesplace in a contingent the sole source of stability for the world where its meaning and conse- republic? quences are always underdetermined The problem is posed by JacquesDerif of Indepennot indeterminate. Yet Arendtalso claims ridain his essay "Declarations that promising serves as a "control dence": mechanism,"that it "countersthe enorspeaks"inthe name The "we"of the declaration mous risksof action"by establishing little of the people."But thispeopledoes not yet exist. islands of stability in the radical continThey do not exist as an entity, it does not exist, gency of the public realm (1958, 245-46). before this declaration,not as such. If it gives subject,as birthto itself, as freeand independent The problemis that if promisingis to be a this can hold possiblesigner[of the declaration], source of reassuranceand stability, the inThe signature only in the act of the signature. operationof the practiceof promisingand vents the signer. This signercan only authorize the meaning of particularpromises must him- or herselfto sign once he or she has come to be relatively unproblematic.In that case the end, if one can say this, of his or her own signature, in a sort of fabulous retroactivity. actionas promisingcannotoccurex nihilo (1986, 10) and it will not be as risky-as contingent and unpredictable-as Arendt On Derrida's account, the signers are says it is.j1 On the otherhand, if action is as contingentas that, promisingwill not stuck in Sieyes'svicious circle. They lack
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Foundinga Republic
the authority to sign until they have already signed. The American founders' invocation of "the name of the laws of nature and the name of God" manifests thispredicament. They appealedto a constative, according to Derrida, not (as Arendtwould have it) becauseof a failure of nerve nor becausethey underestimated the power of their own performativebut because they did not overestimate its power. In order to guaranteethat power and secure their innovation, they had to combine their performativewith a constative utterance. They needed "another 'subjectivity' . . . to sign, in order to guarantee it, this production of signature"; for "in this process," Derrida argues, "there are only countersignatures."12
It is still "inthe name of" that the "goodpeople" of America call themselvesand declare themselves independent, at the instantin which they invent for themselvesa signing identity. They sign in the nameof the laws of natureand in the name of God. They pose or posit their institutionallaws on the foundationof naturallaws and by the samecoup (theinterpretive coup of force) in the nameof God, creatorof nature.He comes, in effect,to guarantee the rectitude of popularintentions, the unity and goodness of the people. He foundsnaturallaws and thus the whole game which tends to presentperformativeutterances as constative utterances. (1986, 11; emphasis mine)

act of founding(or signing, or promising) is free of this aporia-this gap that needs to be anchored-and this is a structural feature of language. This gap that marks all forms of utterance is always filled (whetheror not we acknowledgeit) by a deus ex machina-if not by God himself, then by nature, the subject, language, or tradition. Arendt sees that this aporia is a structuralfeature of all performatives.13 But she insists that the aporia, the gap that marks all performatives, can and should be held open. She understands that there is often a felt human need to fill this gap but she does not see it as a systemic, conceptual, or linguistic need. Quite the contrary. The differencebetween her position and Derrida'son this point is made clearby their different assessments of the American declaration'scombinedperformativeand constativestructure.

The Ambiguity of the Declaration, Reconsidered


UnlikeArendt, Derridadoes not see the declaration's structural combination of performativeand constative utteranceas incongruous.It is not a question "of an obscurity or of a difficulty of interpretation, of a problematicon the way to its resolutiono"because "thisobscurity, this undecidabilitybetween, let's say, a performative and a constative structure, is requiredin order to produce the sought after effect" (1986, 9). The insecureperformative is not always and necessarily anchoredby another utterance.The We hold, on Derrida'saccount, is capableof anchoringitself not becauseof its powerful purity as a performative,but because it is in fact both a constativeand a performative. It is unclear whether "independence is stated or produced by this utterance."And its rhetoricalforce derives in largemeasurefrom this unclarity,from the fact that one cannot decidewhich sort

Founding,promising, or signing, cannot occur ex nihilo: "Forthis Declaration to have a meaning and an effect there must be a last instance. God is the name, the best one, for this last instanceand this ultimate signature";that is, God is the nameDerridagives to whateveris used to hold the place of the last instance, the place that is the inevitable aporia of founding(or signingor promising)(1986, 12). In short, Derrida,like Rousseau(and yet quite unlike Rousseau), sees that in order to break Sieyes's vicious circle, in order to posit the law of institutional laws, "i1 [biensur]faudraitdes dieux." The moral of Derrida'sstory is that no
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of the declarationis a guarantor structure of constitutional authority. Recall that For Derrida, the combined constative Arendt identifiesspeech with power and and performativestructureof the docu- characterizes violence as mute (1953, mentand its We hold illustrate beautifully 378). Recall, too, that in her view, cona structuralfeature of all language:that statives are violent, despotic, and disemno signature,promise, or performativepowering: they are not the products of no act of foundation-possesses resources sharedpublicagreement,they demandan to a truth. They are adequateto guarantee itself, that eachand isolatedacquiescence every one necessarilyneeds some exter- not held by us, we are held by them. In nal, systemicallyillegitimateguaranteeto short, they silenceus-hence Arendt'sinwork. This need marksthe Declarationof sistencethat they are illicit in the realmof Independence just as it marks utterances action, which is the realmof speech.Conthat are more quotidian. "This happens sequently,the fact that the Constitutionis every day," Derridasays (indeed, "Every "silent" on this question of ultimate signaturefinds itself thus affected"),"but authority is not overwhelmingevidence it is fabulous"(1986, 10). that the authorityof the republicinheres For Arendt, however, the declaration's in the performativeWe hold. That silence constative moments are marks of impur- can be read equally well-as evidencethat ity, taintingwhat is really, and ought to the constativemomentsof the declaration have been, a purelyperformative act. She contribute importantly to the establishdoes not see that her cherishedperfor- ment of ultimate authority in the new mative We hold is also a constative utrepublic.The silencecan do no more than terance.And so thereis no undecidability confirm the undecidability that Arendt here for her. The other constative resists. In my view, Arendtresiststhis undecidmoments of the declaration are unforability becauseshe seeks in the American tunate errors or lapses, marringbut not declaration and founding a moment of obviating modernity'sgreatest moment, perfectlegitimacy. Insofaras the authorthe momentwhen a new revolutionsplenity of the founding derives from a condidly completedits coursein the founding stative, it is rooted not in power but in of a republic whose authority rested violence. This undecidability, then, deexclusivelyin the power of the purelyperligitimates the republic; and so, for the formativeWe hold. The power of this utsake of her moment of pure legitimacy, terance as a performativeis sufficientto Arendt must do away with it. What produce the sought after effect. Acts of Arendt does not see is that the American founding are not aided, but comprodeclaration and founding are paradigmised, by the unnecessaryand illicit inmatic instances of politics (however imtrusion of a constative. pure) because of this undecidability,not As evidence for her claim that the in spite of it. Derrida'spoint, like Nietzdeclaration (and its performative We sche's,is that in every system (everyprachold) is the sole source of authority for tice), whether linguistic, cultural, or the Constitution,Arendt notes that "the political, there is a moment or place that Constitutionitself, in its preambleas well the system cannot account for. Every which form the Bill as in its amendments that are system is securedby placeholders of Rights,is singularlysilent on this quesirrevocably, structurally arbitrary and tion of ultimate authority" (1963, They enablethe systembut prelegitimate. 193-94). But there are two ways to read are illegitimate from its vantage point. this silence.The alternativesees this same The question, then, for Arendt is, What silence as evidence that the constative of utterance it is: constative or performative (1986, 9).14 106

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placeholder fills this place, the placeof the last instance,in her account? gods in orderto found a legitimaterepublican politics; hence, neitherdo we. This fable of founding is meant to inspireus, just as "the classical examples shining through the centuries"emboldened the Americanrevolutionaries"for what then turnedout to be an unprecedented action" (1963, 196). Arendt'sfable, like all of her spectators' stories, is meantto defineand enablenew horizonsof possibility.It presentsitselfas a recoveryof the originsand heroesof the republic,as an act of memoryand dereification meantto recapture and therebyreenable the revolutionaryspirit that is the vitality of republicanpolitics. The fable must take the place of the constative in order for Arendt to theorize a viable politicsfor modernity,a politics born not of violence but of power, a nonfoundational politics possessed of legitimacy, authority, stability, and durability. Arendt claims that this fable is the product of her commitmentto memory, to the recovery of the Americanrevolutionary spirit;but it invents that spirit. It claimsto be a dereification,a recoveryof origins;but it erases the violence and the ambiguitythat markedthe originalact of founding.And the effect of Arendt'sfable is the same as that of all legitimating fables:to prohibitfurtherinquiryinto the originsof the systemand protectits center of illegitimacy from the scrutinyof prying eyes. Arendt seems to recognizethis. At the end of Willing,she acknowledgesthat she has come to an impasse. Her account of freedom, natality, and the will "seemsto tell us no more than that we are doomed to be freeby virtueof beingborn, no matter whetherwe like freedomor abhor its arbitrariness." The only way out of this impasse,Arendt suggests, is through"an appealto anothermentalfaculty,"that of judgment (1978, 217). Judgmentis the faculty used by the spectatorswho turn actions into stories. It is the faculty used by Arendt as a spectator of the

The Place of Fables


On my reading,Arendtfills the place of the last instancewith a fable, her fable of the American revolution and founding. Froma Derridianperspective,it is appropriatethat she turnsto a fable to hold the place; for all placeholders,according to Derrida, including those that are constativein structure,are fables. RecallDerrida's claim that the signer'sauthorizing himself to sign by signing is a "fabulous retroactivity." By the word fabulous, Derrida signals that this retroactivityis enabledby a fable: "Therewas no signer, by right,beforethe text of the Declaration which itself remains the producer and guarantorof its own signature. By this fabulous event, by this fable which implies the structureof the traceand is only in truthpossible thanks to the inadequation to itselfof a present,a signature gives itself a name" (1986, 10). Arendt herself recognizesthis "inadequation to itself of a present"; her historical fable is an acknowledgment of it and a response to it. Thus, her criticism of the American foundersfor their inabilityto conceive of a beginning that was not rooted in the past mustbe in the serviceof herfable;for she, too, proves to be unable to conceive of such a totally presentevent. Arendt turns to the declarationin the hope that it will provide her with the resourcesshe needs to fill the gap in her own theorizationof a politics of founding. The historicalevent is the inspiration of the fable, but it does not bind it. Arendtdismisses,amongotherthings,the constativestructureof the Declarationof Independenceand insists that the pure performative of the declaration was a sufficient guarantorof the authority of the new republic-in order to fill the place with a fabulous faith, the faith that the Americanfounding fathers did not need
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of resistibility that distinguishessecular law from divine command, political authority from religious devotion. The Americanfounders invoked God (and a whole series of constative anchors) because they (mistakenly)believed that the "essenceof secular law was a command." Their political development, Arendtargues,"wasnowherematchedby Intervention,Augmentation,and an adequate development of new Resistibility:Arendt'sPractice thought";and this is why "therewas no the problem of the absolute" avoiding of Political Authority (1963, 195). It was the New World's In spite of theirapparentirreconcilabil- failure to distinguish secular law from ity, I believe that it may be possible to divine command that left it unable to bridge-or at least negotiate-the impasse comprehendthe fact that "power under betweenDerridaand Arendt.If insteadof the condition of human plurality can dismissing,as Arendtdoes, the constative never amount to omnipotence, and laws moment of founding, we treat that moresidingin humanpower can neverbe abment, as Derridadoes, as an invitationfor solute"(1963, 39). intervention, we could respect Arendt's JacquesDerridarecognizesthis fact. Inprohibitionagainstanchoringpoliticalindeed, his deconstructionof the American stitutionsin an absolutewhile at the same declaration is in the service of this time acknowledging that all acts of found- recognition.He exposes "thewhole game ing are (as Derrida claims) necessarily which tends to present performativeutsecuredby a constative. By this strategy terancesas constative utterances." But he of intervention,we do not deny the con- knows that this exposurecannotbringthe stative moment of founding, but neither game to an end. The game proceeds;and do we succumbto its claim to irresistibil- Derrida,by his very intervention,by his ity. We resistit. Our interventiontestifies adoption of a posture of intervention, to the resistibilityof this (allegedly irre- declareshimself a player. In so doing, he sistible) constative anchor; and it posts joins Arendt in proclaiminghis commitour opposition to the attemptto "putthe ment to resistibility.Like her, he refuses law above man,"to securethe law of laws to allow the law of laws to be put, unfrom all (political)intervention. problematically, above man; but he This notion of resistibility is at the recognizes, more deeply than does center of Arendt's new conception of Arendt, that the law will always resisthis authority for modernity. Recall that for resistance (1987). His unwillingness to Arendt, an absolute is illicit in politics passively accept that is a commitmentto becauseit is irresistible.God, self-evident politicization, resistibility, and interventruths, natural law, are all despotic in tion. And his strategy of interventionis character because they are irresistible. not only consistentwith Arendt'sown acBecausethey are irresistible,they do not count of the practiceof politicalauthority persuade to agreement, they command (as I read it); it is requiredby it. acquiescence.Thus, it is in virtue of their Arendt's theorization of authority irresistibilitythat they are, for Arendt, builds on the close connection in Roman antipolitical.In short, resistibilityis the thoughtand practicebetween the concept sine qua non of Arendt'spolitics.'5 of authorityand a practiceof augmentaOn Arendt'saccount, it is this feature tion: AmericanRevolution and founding. Her of those events is meant fabulistrendering to bridge the impasse of freedom, the abyss that afflicts all performative utterance,all declarationsof independence, all acts of founding.
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violent alternative to his earlier notions about the desirabilityof recurring revolutions" (1963, 250). The ward system, Arendt says, could correct the fatal flaw of the Constitution(which "hadgiven all power to the citizens,withoutgiving them the opportunityof being republicanand of actingas citizens"[1963,253; emphasis oridinal]) by subdividing counties into small republics in which every citizen would have an opportunityto participate in the activity of politics. This republican commitment to politicalaction is importantto Arendtfor Since republics do not rest on one two distinctbut relatedreasons. The first world-buildingact of foundation but are is connected to her motif of selfmanifestly committed to augmentation, realization.In Arendt'sview, human beto the continualpreservationand amend- ings denied the opportunity to exercise capacitieslive an imment of their foundation, they are theirworld-building uniquely endowed with political vigor: poverishedlife, a life that is somehowless Not so the Americanrepublic, however. than human, a life without freedom, without happiness(1963, 255). In it "therewas no space reserved, no room left for the exercise of precisely The second reason is connected to those qualities which had been instru- the character of Arendt's new concepmental in building it." This was, Arendt tion of authority for modernity. Where argues, no mere oversight;the American other theorists of authority, like founders, intent on "startingsomething Rousseau, believe that the problem of permanentand enduring,"succumbedto authority is how to put the law above the charmsof the irresistible absolute.As man, that is, how to makethe law of laws a result,the experience of freepoliticalac- irresistible, Arendtbelievesthe problemis tion remained"theprivilegeof the genera- how to prevent the law of laws from tion of the founders." That privileging, becomingirresistible: she rejectsthe comJeffersonfelt, was an injustice. No con- mandmodel of authorityas inappropriate stitution, in his view, was perfect; and for the humanconditionof living together none should be treatedwith "sanctimoni- in a secularand political world. A pracous reverence." Consequently,he greeted tice of authoritycenteredon an irresistible the news of Shay'sRebellionwith enthusi- law of laws is inappropriate for the postasm: "God forbid we should ever be foundational age for which Arendt theorizesa politics, and it is also deeply twentyyearswithout sucha rebellion," he said (1963, 233), expressinga sentiment antipolitical.It prohibits the practicesof reminiscent of Machiavelli's advice to augmentation and amendment that she princes to reinvigoratetheir rule with a valorizes, and it encouragesa withdrawal repetitionof the violence of their found- from active politics; it deactivates ing about every 10 years. politics. Arendt's account (as I see it) is Arendt does not endorse this reliance aptly summarized by Hanna Pitkin's on violence as a way to reinvigoratethe description of Machiavelli's view, in republic.But she does admireJefferson's which "republican authoritymustbe exerlateridea of a ward system, a system that cised in a way that furtherpoliticizesthe he came to see as "theonly possible nonpeople rather than renderingthem qui109
The very concept of Roman authority suggests that the act of foundation inevitably develops its own stability and permanence, and authority in this context is nothing more or less than a kind of necessary "augmentation" by virtue of which all innovations and changes remained tied back to the foundation which, at the same time, they augment and increase. Thus the amendments to the Constitution augment and increase the original foundations of the American republic; . . . the very authority of the American Constitution resides in its inherent capacity to be amended and augmented. This notion of a coincidence of foundation and preservation by virtue of augmentation . .. was deeply rooted in the Roman spirit. (1963, 202; cf. 1977, 123)16

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escent. Its function is preciselyto keep a politicalmovementor actionthat the people have initiated... from disintegrating into riot, apathy, or privatization" (1984, 88). RecallArendt'sclaimthat the American founders correctly perceived that the authorityof any body politicderivesfrom its beginningbut mistakenlybelievedthat a beginningwas "somethingwhich must have occurred in a distant past." The great good fortune of the American republicwas that this mistakenbelief lost out. The success of the revolution "was decidedthe very moment when the Constitution began to be worshipped";for that constitution-worship, Arendtargues, evidenced the fact that the republicwas built on a beginning that was very present:"IftheirattitudetowardsRevolution and Constitutioncan be calledreligious at all, then the word 'religion' mustbe understoodin its original Roman sense, and their piety would then consist in religare,in binding themselvesback to a beginning" (1963, 198). This constitutionworship has always been ambiguous,its object being "at least as much the constituting act as it was the written document itself." Consequently, Arendt can say both that the "American remembrance of the event" of constitution is what keeps the authority of the republic safe and intact and that the "veryauthority of the AmericanConstitutionresides in its inherentcapacityto be amendedand augmented" (1963, 204, 202). ForArendt, this commitmentto augmentationmaintains a republic and its revolutionary spirit by, in a curious sense, keeping its beginningalways present. Derridaidentifiesthis same structure of maintenanceand calls it survivance, by which he, too, means a kind of preservation throughaugmentation.Here, as with Arendt, survival is not producedby the maintenanceof a presentinto a future in the way that a fixed monumentseeks to preservethe presenceof what is past. For
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Derrida, this maintenanceis an augmentation that takes place by way of translation, by way of a translationthat is called for and heardin the originaltext. Justas, on Arendt's account, the Constitution calls out to be amended,so Derrida's text calls out to be translated: it is not present yet. This is not translation in the ordinary sense: just as Arendt's performative founding could never be content merely to transmita sense of obligation or produce obedient subjects, neither can Derrida's act of translation be "content merelyto transport a contentinto another language, nor just to communicateor to transmit something,"merely to produce comprehension. Translation augments, necessarily. It does not merely copy or reproduce;it is a new linguisticevent, it produces"newtextualbodies."It does not simply preservean original in a practice of mererepetition,it dislodgesthe constative yearnings of the original and finds therethe point of departure for a new way of life-hence Derrida'sclaim that this is survivance not "in the sense of posterity . . . but of 'moreliving',"in the sense of plus de vie and plus que vie (1985, 24-25). This augmentation,says Derrida, is "whatsurvivalis." And this augmentation is, in one sense, arguably like Arendt's practice of authority, which responds to the text or document that seeksto preserveand referto the past moment of founding by augmentingit with another event, another speech act or, as in this case, by an act of translation. Finally, Machiavelli, too, exploresthis structureof maintenance.He sees the importance of maintainingthe act of foundation, understandsthat human institutions need frequent revitalization, and seeks that revitalizationin the return to beginnings, a kind of invitation to augmentation. As Pitkin points out, this returnto beginningsmay be readas a way of frighteningthe population back into obedience, but there is also anotherway to thinkabout it. "Perhaps," she suggests,

Foundinga Republic
"one should construe the forgetfulness that graduallycorruptsa compositebody as reification: a coming to take for grantedas 'given'and inevitablewhat in fact is the productof humanaction."This reification distances citizens from their political institutions. From this perspective, Pitkin argues, the return to origins does not signal the recurrence of violence but a return"to the spirit of origins, the human capacity to originate." If we assumeherethat "inthe beginninglies not chaos but human capacity" (1984, 275-79),17 we can see that Machiavelli's return to beginnings, like Nietzsche's genealogies and Derrida's deconstructions, is a dereificationand a political intervention. Arendt, like Machiavelli, sees that a beginningtoo firmly rooted in the past is in dangerof becomingreifiedand foundational. Our commitmentto augmentation and amendment may derive from our reverencefor a beginning that is in the past; but our practices of augmentation and amendmentmake that beginningour own-not merelyour legacy but our own constructionand performative.The commitment to augmentation protects that which was glorious becauseit was a performative from being sanctified and turned into a law of laws, an absolute whose irresistibility would ultimatelyand necessarilydestroy the uniquelypolitical 18 On this character of the republic. is both a readingof Arendt,augmentation necessaryconditionof politics and constitutive of one form of the activity of politics itself. What Leo Strauss says of Machiavelli applies equally to Arendt: "Foundationis, as it were, continuous foundation"(1978, 44). Since, on Arendt'saccount, the practice of authorityconsists largely in this commitment to resistibility, the practice of authority turns out to be, paradoxically On enough,a practiceof deauthorization. this account, then, Derrida'sown project of deauthorization-his adoption of a
1ll

postureof intervention-becomes part of a practiceof authority,not simplyan unauthorizedassault on the institutionsof authorityfrom some outside. This inclusion is the genius of Arendt'saccount. It is noteworthy that for both Derrida and Arendt, the moment of intervention is the momentof politics. Butfor Derrida, politics begins with the entry of the irresistible absolute; it is the impossible superimpositionof constative on performative utterancethat occasions the Derridianintervention,an intervention thatis political. For Arendt, however, politics ends with the entry of the antipolitical (because irresistible) absolute. Arendt's interventionconsistsin her insistencethat acts of foundingcan and shouldresistthe urge to anchorthemselvesin an absolute. But Arendt's account of authority as a practiceof augmentation and amendment does not, in my view, commit her to this insistence.It commits her only to the insistence that we treat the absolute as an invitation for intervention, that we declare ourselves resistant to it, that we refuse its claim to irresistibilityby deauthorizingit. And this, in effect, is what Arendt herself tries to do in her own interventionist critique of the constative structureof the AmericanDeclarationof Independence. The impassebetween Arendt and Derrida is not easy to bridge,but neitheris it nonnegotiable. If it is at all possible to negotiateit, it is in all likelihoodbecause both these thinkers-Derrida throughhis strategy of intervention,Arendt through her fable of the American Revolutionseem to be inspiredby Nietzsche'scounsel to seek "apast from which we may spring rather than that from which we seem to have derived"(1957).

Notes
WilliamConnolly, Thanksto RichardFlathman, Peter Digeser, David Mapel, Tom Keenan, Tom Eagles,JudithButler,JeffIsaac, and GeorgeKateb.

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Versions of this paper were presented at the 1989 meetings of the American Political Science Association and the Northwestern University Workshop in Contemporary Political Theory. 1. This view, that Arendt's account of authority is antimodernist, is the standard interpretation. See, for example, Richard Flathman 1980, whose account of Arendt I discuss briefly below, and Richard Friedman 1973, who cites Arendt's account as an instance of the "peculiar but interesting and important claim that the very concept of authority has been corrupted or even lost in the modern world, and that it is this loss of understanding that lies behind the confusion over authority prevailing in contemporary thought" (p. 122). 2. Arendt is quoting Rousseau (1985, 3; 1988, bk. 2, chap. 7). In this paper I cite without comment Arendt's use of gendered language. I explore the issue elsewhere (Honig 1991). 3. The words performative and constative are Austin's (1962), not Arendt's. Arendt's description of action as a form of utterance (The "doer of deeds is possible only if he is at the same time the speaker of words" [1958, 178-791), a de novo creation; her identification of this form of utterance with politics; and her characterization of politics as worldbuilding-all lead me to believe that her account draws on the model of the originary performative, the Divine utterance Let there be. 4. Arendt's distinction between an "argument in support of an action" and actions that "appear in words" implies that only performative utterances are speech acts. Austin began with this assumption but later found he could not maintain it and concluded that both performative and constative utterances are speech acts. Note that Arendt is not the only one to make the interesting claim that the written document is the "perfect way for an action to appear in words." See Warner 1987 on the importance of writing, printing, and textuality to the legitimation of the early American republic. 5. Both the new conception of authority and the older Roman one are sustained by the foundings in which they originated. Arendt says that Roman authority was sustained by particular religious and traditional beliefs, but she does also claim that "the very coincidence of authority, tradition, and religion, all three simultaneously springing from the act of foundation, was the backbone of Roman history from beginning to end" (1963, 199; emphasis mine). 6. Arendt makes no note of it but the phrase "in the Presence of God and one another" instantiates the same incongruous unification of a constative and performative utterance as does Jefferson's "We hold these truths to be self-evident." It suggests, contra Arendt, that the confidence the parties had in each other, far from being "granted and confirmed by no one," was guaranteed by "the Presence of God." Although Arendt never mentions it, it is notable that the Mayflower Compact was drawn up in Britain under the sanctioning and supporting gaze of Britain's legal and political institutions, before the colonists left for the uncertain and unknown New World. Moreover, the document was signed on the ship, before the colonists disembarked in America. It would seem that the colonists' "confidence. .. in their own power" was perhaps a little less hardy than Arendt estimates it. See n. 12. 7. Sometimes Arendt toys with the notion that a "principle"might save "the act of beginning from its own arbitrariness" (1963, 212-13; cf. 1977, 156). At other times she concedes that the arbitrariness of beginnings is "complete" (1963, 201). 8. As we know from Austin, discursive practices postulate a vast array of political and cultural institutions that set many of the conditions for discursive felicity: for example, they distinguish and sanction the distinction between those who are in authority and those who are not; that is, they identify the authorized speaker of the performative "I call this meeting to order" as the chair of the board and forbid, punish, and fail to comprehend or sanction the interrogation of anyone who impersonates the chair and usurps the chair's performative privilege. 9. On Austin's account, the felicity of performatives is often secured by the use of formulaic or ritualistic utterance for performative purposes, as in "I declare this meeting adjourned." 10. The same point can be made with reference to Arendt's stories, which (Arendt assumes) are univocal, possessed of a force and meaning that are unproblematic. These are curious assumptions from one so insistent that plurality is the sine qua non of the public realm. Perhaps Arendt's account of the role of stories in politics is too influenced by the Greek model, in which an authoritative poet (Homer) gives the authoritative account of events. 11. Identity is the product, not the condition of action, on Arendt's account (1958, 193; Honig 1988, 86-88; Kateb 1983, 1-51). 12. This claim that signing requires countersignatures again renders problematic Arendt's faith in the power of the We to ensure its own action. In Arendt's process, there are only cosigners; but cosigners, on Derrida's account, are not sufficient to get us out of Sieyes's vicious circle. Hence, the parties to the Mayflower Compact combined "themselves together into a 'civil Body Politick"' not "solely by the strength of mutual promises" but (as Arendt well knows) "in the Presence of God and one another" (emphasis added; see n. 6). The parties invoke the Presence of God because they need the validation of his witness and the security of his countersignature. 13. Arendt believes that this gap marks only the speech acts of her public realm-hence the risk and danger of public action, which she celebrates. Contra Derrida, she assumes that some language is safe

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and unproblematic (or at least uninteresting)nonpolitical, nonproductive, nonperformative speech, which addresses "immediate, identical needs and wants." For this sort of thing, "signs and sounds ... would be enough" (1958, 176). 14. Here Derrida refers to the phrase We the people; I take his argument to apply equally well to the We hold. 15. This identification of politics with resistibility is what leads Arendt to insist on her problematically severe distinction between the public and the private realm. The private realm is the realm of the body, whose demands upon us are, according to Arendt, necessarily irresistible. I suggest that Arendt's public-private distinction would lose some of its (problematic) force if instead of insisting on the inadmissibility of the irresistible to the public realm we responded to it with a Derridian strategy of intervention (see Honig 1991). 16. Arendt is not the only one to note the etymological and conceptual connections between authority and augmentation (see Friedman 1973; Friedrich 1973; Peters 1973); but she alone reasons from them to an account of authority as deeply tied to a practice of augmentation. 17. The return to beginnings will be violent only in regimes that are corrupt, Pitkin argues. Others will respond to nonviolent forms of reinvigoration. 18. The absence in the American republic of something like a ward system that would allow citizens to participate in the political activity of augmentation does not mean that the republic lacks authority. It does mean that "the true seat of authority in the American Republic" is the Supreme Court, which is, in Woodrow Wilson's phrase, "a kind of Constitutional Assembly in continuous session." Consequently, Arendt argues, the American concept of authority is very different from that of Rome: "In Rome the function of authority was political, and it consisted in giving advice, while in the American republic the function of authority is legal, and it consists in interpretation" (1963, 200). This substitution of legal for political authority, together with the failure of the American republic to vouchsafe spaces of freedom for popular participation in politics, marks, according to Arendt, the loss of the American republic's revolutionary spirit. Arendt, Hannah. 1977. Between Past and Future. Enl. ed. New York: Penguin. Arendt, Hannah. 1978. Willing. Vol. 2 of The Life of the Mind, ed. Mary McCarthy. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1985. "Deconstruction in America: An Interview with Jacques Derrida." In Critical Exchange 17:1-32. Eds. James Creech, Peggy Kamuf and Jane Todd. Derrida, Jacques. 1986. "Declarations of Independence." New Political Science 15:7-15. Derrida, Jacques. 1987. "Devant la loi." In Kafka

and the Contemporary Critical Performance, ed.


Alan Udoff. Flathman, Richard E. 1980. Authority and the

Authoritative:The Practiceof PoliticalAuthority. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Friedman, Richard B. 1973. "On the Concept of Authority in Political Philosophy." In Concepts

in SocialandPoliticalPhilosophy,ed. Richard E.
Flathman. New York: Macmillan. Friedrich, Carl J. 1973. "Authority, Reason, and

Discretion." In Conceptsin Social and Political


Philosophy, ed. Richard E. Flathman. New York: Macmillan. Honig, B. 1988. "Arendt, Identity, and Difference." Political Theory 16(1):77-98. Honig, B. 1991. "Toward an Agonistic Feminism: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Identity." In

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Butler and Joan W. Scott. New York: Routledge Press. Forthcoming. Kateb, George. 1983. Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil. Oxford: Rowman & Allanheld. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1957. The Use and Abuse of History. Trans. Adrian Collins. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1969. On the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books. Peters, R. S. 1973. "Authority." In Concepts in

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Flathman. New York: Macmillan. Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 1984. Fortune Is a Woman. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1985. The Government of Poland. Ed. and trans. Willmore Kendall. Indianapolis: Hackett. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1988. On the Social Contract. Ed. and trans. Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis: Hackett. Strauss, Leo. 1978. Thoughts on Machiavelli. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Warner, Michael. 1987. "Textuality and Legitimacy in the Printed Constitution." The Proceedings of

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the AmericanAntiquarian Society, 59-84.

B. Honigis AssistantProfessorof Government, HarvardUniversity,Cambridge, MA 02138.


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