File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2001/lyotard.0102, message 60


Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 08:00:03 -0600
From: Mary Murphy&Salstrand <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: democracy, again


D. Diane Davis:

I found your notes on democracy very provocative.  In the interest of
extending this discussion I would like to propose the following model.

Georges Bataille has made a distinction between the general and
restricted economy and, despite some limitations, I believe a similar
distinction might be made regarding government - what I would term a
general and restricted democracy.

The restricted democracy would be all that is usually meant by that term
- constitutions, the rule of law, elected officials and legitimized
modes of dissent.
This form of government is "exclusive" because of its contractual
basis.  It is also a regulation of violence.  The rulers give up a
certain amount of power in the form of rights and liberties in exchange
for obedience and acceptance.  In a crudely mechanistic way, democracy
acts as a kind of reduction valves for the constrained violence inherent
in any kind of subjugation.  It also represents the hegemony currently
being discussed here where domination becomes mere common sense.
 
The tension, however, arises not from the difference between democracy
and pluralism as much as it does from its restricted and general forms. 
The former democracy is restricted by the very nature of the rights it
grants, which are historical and bear the trace of previous struggles. 
There is always a lag between the demands of the moment and the rights
that are acquiesced.

Thus, in the postwar era of the United States, African-Americans had to
fight to obtain the basic rights that other citizens had and met with a
good deal of resistance.  The resolution of these conflicts won for them
voting rights, the Civil Rights Act, Affirmative Action and other
legislative victories.  Thus, it conferred upon them a place in the
restricted democracy although racism continued to persist in many ways
that were still unabated.  The same thing has been true of women's
struggles.

Today, the UN has passed various resolutions calling for the
establishment of certain basic rights for all global citizens such as
the right to adequate housing, food, safe environment and access to
health care.  All of these have been uniformly rejected by the United
States because they fall outside the scope of what our restricted
democracy will allow.

Whether or not such rights will be secured really depends on two
factors.  One is the success of formal political movements.  The other
is based on the continued agitation of various groups and the problems
this poses for the governing classes.  To speak crudely, we must vote
both in the ballot box and in the street in order to obtain a truer
democracy.

This is where the idea of a general democracy comes into place.  The gap
between the general and restricted democracy represents the work that is
yet to be accomplished.  When Derrida talks about the democracy-to-come,
one way of interpreting this is as the Kantian Idea of the
transcendental coincidence of these heterogeneous realms.  It is also
where Lyotard's concept of the differend is important.  It is the
attempt to articulate feelings that have not yet been recognized in the
parliamentary language of universal rights and liberties.  If restricted
democracy can be described as a well-formed game, then the general
democracy can be described as a game without rules where the rules must
yet be determined.  

This is also where Autonomist  Marxism can have relevance.  Here is what
Nick Dyer-Witheford writes, "Labor is for capital always a problematic
"other" that must constantly be controlled and subdued, and that, as
persistently, circumvents or challenges this command.  Rather than being
organized by capital, workers struggle against it.  It is this struggle
that constitutes the working class."

I would add it is also the way by which the general democracy transforms
the restricted democracy.


   

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