38 NEW REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION OF OUR TIME determined. would not, however, besomething separate from that which determines it and the unsplittable ensemble of the determinant and the determined would obviously be self-determined. As can be seen, the notions of total determination and toral auconomy are absolute equiva ents. The concept of autonomy is only usefal — or rather, meaningful — when neither of the two extremes (equivalents) is achieved. For if an external intervention is experienced as an interference in the develop- ment of a certain activity, we can indeed propose the need to autonomize that activity in terms of the intervention interfering in its development. ‘The determination by the interfering force is clearly an external interven= tion in this case, since ic is resisted by the person on whom itis practised. ‘Without interference, then, autonomy does not exist. The degree of auconomy may vary, but the concept of total autonomy is devoid ofall meaning. In this sense, autonomy will always be relative, since if one force has the power to interfere and the other the power to resist, the two will be partially effective and neither will manage to predominate exclusively. The field of relative autonomy is therefore a war of position in which neither of the two participant forces ean achieve absolute victory. This once again confirms what our whole analysis has asserced: thac the field of social identities is not one of full identities, bue of their uleimate failure to be constituted. A realistic analysis of socio-political processes must therefore abandon the objectivist prejudice chat social forces are something, and start from an examination of what chey do not ‘manage to be. cis the same with the category of representation. In its literal sense, representation presupposes the presence of someone in a place from which they are actually absent. I is therefore a fltio iuris But this is precisely where the difficulties begin, as the terrain on which representa~ tion takes place is different from that on which the identity of the person represented is constituted. In this sense, representation cannot simply be the transmission bele of a will that has already been constituted, bue must involve the construction of something new. There is thus'a double process: on the one hand, to exist as such, a representation cannot operate completely behind the back of the person represented; and on the other, to be a representation at all requires the articulation of something new which is not just provided by the identity of what is being represented, ‘At chis poine, we find ourselves in the same situation as with autonomy: absolute representation, the total transparency becween the representa ‘ive and the represented, means the extinction of the relationship of representation. If the representative and the represented constitute the NEW REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION OFOURTIME 39 same and single will, che ‘re’ of representation disappears since the same willis present in two different places. Representation can therefore only exist to the extent that the transparency entailed by the concept is never achieved; and that a permanent dislocation exists becween the represen tative and the represented. This opaqueness of the relationship of repre sentation can vary to a greater or lesser degree, but ie must always be preseneif che representation isto take place. 18 The whole argument developed above leads to the growing centrality of the category of ‘dislocation’. As we saw, every identity is dislocated insofar as ic depends on an outside which both denies that identity and provides its condition of possibility at the same time. But this in itself means that the effects of dislocation must be contradictory. If on the one hand, they threaten identities, on the other, they are the foundation on which new identities are constituted. Let us consider the dislocatory effects of emerging capitalism on the lives of workers. They are well known: the destruction of traditional communities, the brutal and exhausting discipline of the factory, low wages and insecurity of ‘work. But this is only one side of the effects, for the workers’ response to the dislocation of their lives by capitalism was not to submit passively, but to break machines, organize trade unions, and go on strike. In this process new skills and abilities were inevitably born, which might not have been the case otherwise. The uncontrolled dislocatory rhythm of capitalism meant that the elementary conditions of survival — once apparently guaranteed in a stable society where the direce producer was not separated from either the land or the means of production (and where the world thus appeared as guaranteed by a divine or natural order) — were now secured as a result of victory in struggle. Society appeared more and more like an order constructed by men. “This means that the generalization of dislocatory relations has a triple effect, giving rise not only co negative consequences but also to new possibilities of historical action. Firstly, che accelerated compo of social transformation and the continual rearticulatory interventions the latter demands lead to a higher awareness of historicity. The rapid change in discursive sequences organizing and constituting objects leads to a clearer awareness of the constitutive contingency of those discourses. ‘The historicity of being of objects is thus shown more clearly. ‘This has a second effect. We maintained earlier that the subject is merely the distance between the undecidable structure and the decision. ‘This means thac the more dislocated a structure is, che more the field of