The political and the anti-political

In The Laws of the Markets, Michel Gallon refrains from any explicit discussion of politics. Yet, particularly in the final chapter of the book, it seems that a consider­ation of politics is at the centre of his concerns.

Let us begin with a very conventional definition of politics. We can take politics to refer to all those kinds of institutions, agencies and practices broadly associated with international, national and local government. In thinking about politics in this sense, the perspective adopted in The Laws of the Markets offers a good starting point. Callon argues that the discipline of economics tends to forget that the formation of markets is a technical matter, requiring extraordinary investments in the law, technology, architecture, accountancy and, sometimes, economics. Likewise, political scientists tend to forget the remarkable technicality of politics. Devices such as press conferences, parliamentary debates, public demonstrations, public opinion polls, political analyses, electoral registers and so on are not incidental to politics. They play a critical role in making it possible for politicians, trade unionists, activists, lobbyists and citizens to act as political agents. The political actor does not come isolated into the political arena any more than the consumer comes isolated into the market place.

Consider the question of the capacity of persons to act as voters. The design, distribution and counting of ballot papers requires constant and substantial invest­ments. The frame of representative democracy breaks down when these investments are not properly made, and the frame made secure; when questions can be raised

The anti-political economy 85 about the marks made on ballot papers, registration of voters, and the distribution of polling booths. In this context, we should push the analogy between voting and market transactions. Doubtless voters are thoroughly entangled in their social world. They receive advice from many directions: friends, television, politicians and so on. But, as in a market, in voting there is disentanglement. Representative democracy is just as different from a culture of permanent political activity, as a market economy is different from one based on the exchange of gifts. It makes no demands on the citizen once the election has ended. After the vote is cast, the mark of the vote itself does not bear (or should not bear) any visible trace of the complexity of the voter’s investments in the process or its outcome. Once the choice is made, the vote becomes detached from its entanglement in a particular place, time and personal experience. It is rare, as the case of American presidential election of 2000 demonstrates, that this framing is challenged and disintegrates as each technical component is scrutinised.²

Such a perspective - on the technology of politics - does indicate limitations to those accounts of politics that primarily view politics in terms of struggles and negotiations between classes, interests and movements (as is normal in political sociology). It is also suggestive of the weaknesses of those accounts of politics that focus on questions of identity and discourse at the expense of an analysis of the technical and institutional forms which politics takes.³ It points to the fact that politics, as conventionally understood, is actually a rather specialist activity, which is associated with particular techniques and practices.

Nonetheless, focusing on the technology of politics makes politics too much of a technical and instrumental matter. The Foucaultian analysis of technologies of government seems to fall into this trap.⁵ Politics, after all, is both about contestation, and the containment of contestation. It is about the possibility of governing, and about questioning and disrupting the conditions for government.⁶ It is about conflict, negotiation and the resolution of conflict. For government to be possible it is necessary to reach common decisions, however arbitrary, negotiated and provisional such decisions are. The fact that such common decisions have to be arrived at in the face of persisting disagreement and in the absence of ‘rational’ justification is one of the persisting circumstances of politics.Jeremy Waldron makes the point succinctly:

The prospect of persisting disagreement must be regarded, I think, as one of the elementary conditions of modern politics. Nothing we can say about politics makes much sense if we proceed without taking this condition into account. We may say... that disagreement among citizens as to what they should do, as a political body, is one of the circumstances of politics. It is not all there is to the circumstances of politics, of course: there is also the need to act together, even though we disagree about what we do. the circumstances of politics are a coupled pair: disagreement wouldn’t matter if people didn’t prefer a common decision; and the need for a common decision would not give rise to politics as we know it if there wasn’t at least the potential for disagreement about what the common decision would be.

(Waldron 1999: 153-4)⁷

In this context, it is useful to make a distinction between politics - as a set of technical practices, forms of knowledge and institutions - and the political as an index of the space of disagreement. An action is political, in this latter sense, to the extent that it opens up the possibility for disagreement. Political disagreements will, in general, take established forms and occur between clearly identifiable political actors and positions. Yet the conduct of specific actions may have political effects precisely in so far as they cannot be understood in the conventional terms of political discourse. Georgio Agamben, for example has discussed the way in which the events of Tiananmen Square had political consequences not because they were a reflection or articulation of a particular political interest or ideology but precisely in so far as they subverted the frame within which politics was conventionally understood in China (Agamben 1993: 84-6). In a different context, Vololona Rabeharisoa and Michel Callon have studied the new forms of association between patients’ groups and scientists which disrupt the boundaries which have conventionally existed between experts and publics (Rabeharisoa and Callon 1999; Callon 1999).

Seen in these terms, what is commonly termed politics is not necessarily - or generally - political in its consequences. Politics can often be profoundly anti­political in its effects; suppressing potential spaces of contestation; placing limits on the possibilities for debate and confrontation. Indeed, one might say that one of the core functions of politics has been, and should be, to place limits on the political. Politicians, officials and activists have developed a remarkable set of skills in containing and channelling the form and direction of political disagreement. Such skills, in using available institutional procedures, in holding public inquiries, in maintaining organisational or party discipline, in understanding how to draw up legislation, in using the possibilities for patronage and developing voting procedures, in creating arrangements where consensus can be reached, and in managing the press and public relations and so on, are often extraordinarily technical.

To recognise that a lot of politics (and much political theory and philosophy) has anti-political effects is not necessarily to denounce it. There are huge differences in the forms of anti-political action that exist; ranging from those which recognise the value of disagreement to those which, through the use of censorship, force or violence, suppress any form of opposition. A democratic society is one which places particular value on the right to dissent and to contest, but the defence of this

The anti-political economy 87 political norm should exist in conjunction with the protection and enhancement of other cultural, economic and political rights.⁹ In such a society, legislation is not grounded in reason, and rarely in a consensus, but may be justified in relation to the needs of the collective to reach agreement on matters of common interest, while recognising the necessary existence of continuing disagreement about what the collective is, what its needs are, and what is of common interest. Isabelle Stengers uses this as a starting point for a positive definition of political science:

The specialist in political science deals with a dimension of human societies that is not the material for an ‘objective’ definition, practiced in ‘the name of science’, because in itself this dimension corresponds to an invention of definitions. Who is a citizen? What are his or her rights and duties? Where does the private end? Where does the public begin?

(Stengers 2000: 59)

In politics the collective is not a given, but an entity in process.¹⁰ The fact that there is never likely to be a consensus about what the collective is and what individual rights and duties are does not prevent the emergence of a common view Conversely the need for a common view does not make the fact of disagreement evaporate.