The poverty of political culture Jacques Do} . here a quest is associated with s¢ ly nd in itself, che aquest for a higher register, bue the result of a malaise, the product of that malaise, the imposition of a perspective, the search for a decour. [And this is perhaps what paradoxically makes for its political timeliness. ‘At a time when political discourses have for us with their derisory repetitions and insipid confusion, 1 such a procedure seems to be the only one which is sufficiently modest, the one that is most appropriate for those who perceive that the ration: alisations upon which they want to orient their behaviour are at 0 ‘with what surrounds them, and serve merely to mask their frustrations, affording only the satisfaction of their reproduction. At a time when (the ‘new pol despises socialism (cerrorism in Germany Htaly), the at least p al aband perhaps the only way to avert the aristocratic scorn (‘new which such a situ le to engender. ture consists first of al ber of classical texts, pri sophy (Hobbes, Rousseau, Saint-Just, Say, Ricardo, Marx. ..). ICis a kind of art of which amounts either to taking them as dogmatic bibles oF denous them as carriers of nefarious id save that of cither speaking or else of bi Is in history. Ag we classical texts, Mich certain nu fren after the ev natie and contradour political culture. Readers and followers of Foucault have thus seen the emergence from the archives of a motley collection of authors and 1g5 which spoke of the institutions of our world, the objects of life, schools, hospitals, prisons, asylums, the dreams they bear, issues they pose, ina language which is so explicit that it seemed, to those who only knew of the great classical texts, either eynical or cooked up by the author. Such an operation would perhaps have but localised effect if its sustained effort did not result in erasing the break not only between the great works and the ‘archives’ bur also between the register of the real and that of theory, and thus the necessary conditions for condemning 2 text to either speak the truth or hide reality, It is lear that a serious consideration of this work shows thar it is not a matter of surtounding the great with a plethora of under-labourers, but of providing another level for the reading of texts, another configuration. The reading of a text is no longer a question of assessing its coherence and detecting its hidden intents or the it betrays, Ie is to identify the whiel s between a knowledge which it produces and a power which it programmes, it is to evaluate its strategic functioning in a field of forces. In this game, we know what is lost 1¢ text, the sole and unique text, the text whose only purpose ‘would be to speak the truth, whose only effect is to produce fraternity and consummate history. We also know what is thus gained: the poss xy of escaping once and for all from the derisory hope that there cexists& place where history is written, ‘The monstrous State tical culeue is also the systematic pursuit of an antagonism berween two essences, the tracing of a principles, two levels of re ‘There is no political culeure whi decided on good or bad grounds — no matter which — that capitalism is ot the unique or even the principal source ofall evil on earth than one rushes to substitute for the opposition between capital and labour that between State and civil society. Capital, as foil and scapegoat, is replaced by the State, that cold monster whose limitless growth ‘pauperises’ social life; and che proletariat gives way to civil society, that is co say to everything capable of resisting the blind rationality of the State, to everything that opposes it at the level of customs, mores, a Wg sociability, sought in the residual margins of society and promoted to the status of motor of history One would have nothing to object to this representation except the ening theoretical price which one has to pay for accepting it. Consider the State for example What is this State which is denounced ism and the terrorist groups of Germany and Iraly? It is never the effective State, the one born of the specific history Western countries, but always an adequate, shadow over our history of another figure of the State, a monstrous figure of course, whose stigmata or foreboding signs one then proceeds to detect. ‘This State is the Soviet State when one is denouncing the growth of the role of the Western State as the product of an old tradition of the left, steeped in Marxism and for which any solution to social problems must involve an expansion in the role of the State. It little matters to our promoters of a new political culture that the development in the role of 1¢ State in Western countries with the enactment of social welfare legislation has corresponded, since the end of the nineteenth century, y of revolution. It also le matters to them that th sry where Marxism has succeeded in dominant culture, namely Tealy, is at the stme time the country where the State is weakest and the ommunists totally committed to the strategy of regional autonomy. ‘This State is the Fascist State in the case where the terrorists of the Red ‘Army Fraction focus their whole strategy on the aim of forcing che German State to admit its Fascist nature, Nothing indicates the tragic petsistence of that conception as much as the slow drift which has affected the tactical operations of the German terrorists, whereby the absence of reactions which would correspond to their analyses has ‘caused them to continually shife their target from the State to society itself, They begin with the army, then move to the judiciary, followed by industrial management with Schleyer, the passengers on a commercial airline. How ean one not detect in this trajectory the strange inversion from the initial analyses to the end result? Ra cleansing its own image, has emerged as the effective protector of united population, seizing upon terrorism itself to illustrate the social ature of its legitimacy. For terrorism it had f provoking a confession of guilt. But how can one fail in the end co object of its hate: Ger register its own admission as to che society itself rather than its State It is clear that these political discourses introduce a new element ough quite a different way of reckoning with power from that was previously accepted and which accorded power the status of 3 self= evident and natural fact and a purely instrumental nature. Ic is clear that these new political discourses take as their target power in itself, bbut ehey do so by making it into a scapegoat through a narrow defini tion and 2 total image, that of the functioning and expansion of an instance which is external to society, the State, paralysing society and destroy lity, Versions of power Now, if there has been anything new over ¢ past cwerty years scarts with theprior provisional for ec sense here of an 4 pre-existing, independes sense rather of a proiluctioe force eng. ements) that tend towards the inter explores another: that of power. Before Freud, sexuality was reduced to sex. The problem was how to contain it, to tame it, correct it, make and the ordered functioning of ty. Freud demonstrates the existence of sexuality as an entity ur and whose specific variations relating t0 the history of each individual subject can provide explane- tions for the different manifestations of the human psyche. This is thus a discovery which goes beyond all the operationalisations of paychoan the techniques of ts 10 utilise, in other words, every attemp! ity tO the category of sex. By considering power as specific phenomenon, ireeducible to a subject (the State), as 4 productive materiality, intelligible in the same way as any technology, Foucault would seem to a lar effect. And those who would see in this new level of analysis nothing more than the refined and ‘obliging demonstration of the tentacular exerescences of the State arc Performing the same hasty recycling operated by the interpreters of Freud, relocating a subversive discovery within the terrain of the already-said and of practices which are current and profitable, However, one cannot deny the uncertain status of this discovery. For how can it be put to effect? The avenues which are opened up by this ‘uncovering of power are obviously many. One might be tempted to use the concrete analyses which it makes possible as part of the further development of a general theory of history such as Marxism. One might ratify the ctitique which it implies of excessively vague eategories such 4s alienation or ideology, finding in it the material objectivisation of what they had only intuited, One would then applaud this more convin cing contribution to the demonstration of the mechanisins of domination, It is a fact that many Marxist readings of Discipline and Punish have effected this wke-over by appearing to safeguard and even to entich the Marxist thinking which founds everything on the dialectic of the forees and relations of production, An attempt like that of André Glucksmann is speci aimed at countering this procedure, His last two works might be taken to be answers to the following question: what is one to do to prevent what Marxism has always profited from obscuring, namely, the problem power and the specific nature of its exercise, from being digested by it a8 a secondary additional element of its own theories? How is one to bring to bear the discovery of power against all the effects of the 16 misunderstandings and terrorist practices which it has engendered? lucksmann’s answer (1) consists in placing power at the centre of istorical development, in secing in its unchecked expansion the drama of history. Bur how is one co explain this deployment of power? This is done by fitting i with a motor, that of philosophico-p. Which issue the promise or rather the injunction of liberation ehrouglh voluntary consent to new constraints, theories amongst which Marxism appears in the foremost place. But it is precisely this additional role ascribed to theory diverts Glucksmann’s endeavour trom the terrain of material analysis opened up by the question of power, in favour of a thought of history reduced to an error of thought. Thi leads him to produce, in his turn, a Manichean vision in which historical voluntarism is opposed to the resistance of the plebs. tical theories For those who are tempted neither by an enriched remake of Marxism, nor by an Aronian philosophy of the lesser evi, it becomes necessary to define more closely the contribution made by these analyses of power. This involves the recognition that their interest is not so much to add or {0 oppose one theory to another as to provide a level of minimum and irreducible materiality in the description of social arrangements (agencements). It is thus a way of avoiding descriptions which rest on a structural or dialectical logic. I is « mazerialisation of power which has nothing co do with the substantialisation which the new philosophico- political theories have made their fundamental axiom. The materialisa- tion of power allows one to grasp in the effectivity of a technolog what had previously been described as the effect of hidden and al powerful instances such as capital and the unconscious, Its substant sation consists in reinjecting into those technologies by a ‘philosophical treatment something of the omnipotence of these other instances, making them into the blind subject of history, the essence of its lunreason. But how is one to exorcise this substantialisation of power? How can one prevent the widespread development aver the past ten years of concrete analyses which take power as theit object from ending Up substituting power for capital as the scapegoat for all the ills of the world? Perhaps through abandoning this very teem power, the trouble with which, one ean clearly see, isto contain welded into it the idea of instrument and an agent. We would have then not a power and those who undergo it, but, as hows, technologies, that is to say always local and multiple, intertwining, coherent or contradictory forms of activitating and managing 2 population, and straregies, chat is to say formulae of government, “theory-programmes”, to use the ter proposed by Pasquale Pasquino. ‘The Panopticon, the apparatus of confession, systems of social insurance are technologies, producing diversity of effects and lending themselves to polyvalent tactical uses, Political economy, Marxism, Keynesianism are strategies, for government, theories whieh explain reality only to the extent tenable the implementation of a programme, the generation of actions; they provide through their coherence a ‘practical object’ (praticable) for corrective intervention and governmental programmes of redirection. Of course, there exists between those two registers an interdependence, na play of induction, promotion and disquilification which is very complex to describe but which allows of na concessions to a Manichean mode of representation. Thus the State would never be a subject of history as such but 2 support for technologies and a resultant effect of ‘governmental strategies, AAs regards the formulae of government, they ‘would never be seen as dealing with the raw materials of society primitive, natural state but wi ial materiality which is increasingly highly elaborated Genealogy and the programmatic field ally, politcal culeure is a kind of staging of analysis which has an ty precisely with the theatre, This is bec: ity. In what is globally given as the real, it separates cout reality and appearance. Reality is that which is more eeal than th real and which is obtained by subtracting from it the appearance, that lesser reality which masks it, Reality, for instance, is social clases of the State, Thus isolated, reality can be put on a stage, and made to play the role of the representative of the real; reality enacts the real in the shape of a fixed number of pure personages, endowed with clear and precise contents and granted the status of self-evidence. On the scene of this purified reality, a causality can now be introduced, that resulting from the confrontation between those characters or the introduction of a deus ex machina as in ancient theatee. There will be clas struga he development of the productive forces, or to power. The most paradoxical aspect of this procedure is that all these discourses which present themselves as bold expedients for extracting the real from the clutch of represcntat veil of the start a self-evident nature. It is perhaps because they are not interested discussing the real itself but its causes, that the real only them to the extent that it militates in favour the result which se of the status whi the start (in denouement (in the fate iL approach di theatre one could particularly that of the detective story. In the detective story te: has an enigmatic character, 1¢ is the a priari incomprehens surprising, comforting, serene representations, a crime of disappearance which throws a new which?) on a person, a house, a city. The procedure a search for a general causality but the identification of clues, Ch xy are the traces of a passag. lowing inks them one is able,to establish the line ot lines ads to the reality of the investigation’s point of deparcure. The efficacity of such an approach is not measured in terms of the integeal restitution of the past, the prediction of the future, or the theorisation of history, but in’ the rest 78 1s in all respects from with minor ion of the present. As Foucault says, it writes hi cy in the present tense ith regard to the dos of credibility of political culture, this cin perhaps suggest t0 us the possibility of something other than a hasty aggiornam terrorists rigid hardening, Insteac would have fo take this state of affairs in of our present. And we would discourses enjoyed their hour of glory, what was the situation in which they crystallised the relations of forces in such a way as to acquire the durable function of a pi reference? | of nineteenth century that one would probably have to situate the moment at which the great theories like classical p ‘Marxism and’ social economy constituted, in the most clear-cut mann ic configuration of y. That is to say, a gamut of, clearly defined and strictly opp. ons concerning the mode of want problem at the moment, namely, the loss On the one social forces and thus pe clashes, they highlight a put to the test the vs programmes, and augment or dim assemble, this strategie dist ne is that of the greater employment depending on the erprise, production by the State or the provision of work less charitable agencies. ‘The other is that of the which means here the contradic ntractual representation of the relations of production and its actual realisat ng 10 quasifeudal modalities, The latter become feudal all the more easily because employment is uncertain and can a favour with its obverse of humiliation and oppression, During this period, therefore, things and the relation between words "ngs are cleat. In principle, 1848 inaugurates 2 period which can 'e punctuated by unemployment and insurrection, oppression, and revolution, More than a century later one may wonder what we arc left with it the vietory of one camp or the other? It would be hard to say given that there has been neither revolution nor increased oppression, Hard also because these same discourses continue to exist with a few variations and above all a growing lack of conviction, Must we then think that history boils down to a series of advances and retreats, each of these camps, that the terrain of our societies is result of the face to face struggle between two intang But that would not account for precisely that lowering the predominance of the centee sion against that of extremes, One must alsoderivat jal struggles to find the struggle and der of exploitation Ie is not a question of denying a and political struggles but of k becween these social measures if what they contain whieh is what specific contribution they make to the field of social relations. isa techn This new el xy, form of social arrangement inherited from commercial practices and transposed to the area of the security problems of a w y: insurantial technology. It is in itself a very general tec and used in different ways in other term and that most theorists be jecting to it as an empty formula masking the fundamental nature ial mechanisms. But is not this very polyvalence the index of a reeds to he explored, is there not a coherence and an sualtion of its diverse senses? Even if it is only a superficial and perhaps see in it the moder y not examine the d the effects 80 ial” laws passed since the end of # employment, unempl age. It centres werty whi struggle, chari The insurantial technique brings « principle of practices and represi mathema involved in. compenss social partners way that the ci necessitating state re principle make these problems by spreading. the for every since in this way we move from a situal ined himself as worker confronting capital to a situation is an employee of society (whether he is working oF not) the one barn out of these insurance practice results on of in the dedramatisa ng responsibility for the c different ce ing the f redueing ‘one of yematies as its b S crowning aim! On a second level, one of what we are accustomed to ca century were defined in relation created, fed or failed to reduce. ial procedures, these activities ay the organisation of produc self the insufficient, fa security farantor of wages in those situations where they cial work fi sight structure of social security an where this structure is ins it to undertake marginality being thus increasing tutelage, In other words, the generat mechanisms for prof integration valid for the bulk of society. claims (trade unions), prom ‘This branch of the social is direct struggle for is survival but only ion sure (culture) does not are offered ‘means or otherin che proper fane these institutions function as exc! which have a right to vo sphere which has Does uc previously existing antago have erased previous so they contained? One can of course try to answer evolution of soci ng of the middle classes, bur that would cussions of the position of the p immigrant proletariat in th unchanged the previous debates and I made by a specific vec then is the refracted effect of the strategie c technology at the figuration inherited from the nineteenth century? The socialisation of polities Ie is, on the one hand, a reduction in the sensitive character of the two main sites of confrontation between the th nineteenth century unemployment ‘ practices, Unemployment ben: product of a global tax on social resources in ges guarantee of a wage and thus the security of individuals and but it also serves the economy since in principle it provides a base for the professional reorientation of society's emy ncerning the right ‘work have given way of full empl between management and workers are concerned, insurantial practice has slovly introduced here a direct transformation through the rein forcement of the role of the State, because of the problems of hygiene ial logic, and an indirect fact that ic is the insurance contract whi the collective contract of employment. The w the nineteen! y, instruments of the despotic way to the arbitration, ‘This is thus a form of socialisation of the relation of employment but one which paradoxically reinforces the liberal discourse of the contract and makes negotiation, contraet and contact the principal modes of management of relations of power. It is, on the other hand, the reformulation of political issues on the basis of the industria! calculation of the frequency of accident ment, easy to move on to establishing complex he elements of industrial production and of social secur sm of assimilable parameters. Political competence I then consist in an expertise in the mutual variations of unemploy- ment, emplo balance of payments, levels of interest rates, smigeation, levels of wages, of renovation and ial or human materials, ete, Decision-making thus ection of vatiables which tend either towards the (wages, allowances, equipments) or the om, investment incentives, ..). Even if jal strategies at governmental level d seen one or another of these directions, it be inforcement of the social takes 1e economic, and viee versa, Thus there is est circularity between these two concrete abstractions to such an extent se or another of them as far as the prineiple racerned has gradually become undecidable. ily in relation to this transformation of the rules relation to this slow subsuming of the political ymine the present situation of political discourses? To what do the system of parliamentary bipolarity, whereby each party marks a difference from the other only for the sake rules of the game, the formulae of historical inity or of ‘government of the centre’, cor pond rated detachment of the political class from the messianic discourse of the old closing of ranks ‘on the part of adversaries who are in principle irreconcilable ‘means to avoid the paying price for electoral demagogy in terms of governmental ineffectiveness? If the efficiency of government has more to do with an approach based an ability to rouse audien considered as aw! mass adherence to a p ing effective 's with the technicist nature of the latter,thus the union has grad stand onal rhecorie the increasingly tech A has. become tical class whic the ass appear at the a energy’ into a new form ‘demands to cnt (as far as the unions are summer associations (for the of course have no exprise save to of presenting, for the sake of here which ve forms, This is not to say that the extension of the techniques of pacification, of regulation and of the resolution of conflicts is proceeding in perfect harmony. At the -ach of the main mechanisms which produce the so ‘of ruptural prac tices, To tiation in the lel of consensus, of responsible ne} eral seeurity, there is the oppo workers’ strug as oor familial dew asses oF opment, ‘The st the spectacular resurgence 0 o the cultural and political management of society, Because forms of struggle which evoke through their double character of passive resistance they provide for the desperados who cam e tw great historical confrontations the illusion for the more eyni oppressor of soe! subversive chey can ting the State as the guarantor id acting-our, she of the the State designated as the js supposed to be by nature x engage in a struggle which has the main f processes of social were (0 grant some basis « draw from it at least the present reformulation of crrorists with their respective reactiv on of society what can only be the intens esses wheteby that society has warded off her is it acceptable to preter when one can only envisage the whol for the reasons for which the it, and does so all the more because it 2. The eagerness with which each of thes reactivate one or other of the fragments of an exploded political imagery is based in each case on the construction of a mythology of the State as an illrnatured object, a legitimace target, enemy of man and of society. The counter-effect of this is the disregard for that strange figure of s constituted under the shadow of these Western States. The social is an enigmatic and worrying figure of which no one wants to take stock e's way Lenin, But converging in che active oF in entity which has gradually come to bel this same complaces paradise, it is probably that of the refblackmail which condemns those who are never responsible for the society in which they live to either join its ranks or to destroy them: in pursuit ofits destruction Translated by Couze Venn 86