The Borders of Justice

Editors’ Introduction

TEMPLE UNiVERSiTy PRESS Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 www.temple.edu/tempress Copyright © 2012 by Temple University All rights reserved Published 2012 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The borders of justice / edited by Étienne Balibar, Sandro Mezzadra, Ranabir Samaddar. p. cm. — (Politics, history, and social change) includes bibliographical references and index. iSBN 978-1-4399-0685-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — iSBN 978-1-4399-0686-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — iSBN 978-1-4399-0687-3 (e-book) 1. Justice. 2. Social justice. 3. Equality. i. Balibar, Étienne, 1942– ii. Mezzadra, Sandro. iii. Samaddar, Ranabir. JC578.B63 2012 320.01′1—dc23 2011028556 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSi Z39.48-1992 Printed in the United States of America 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 Contents Editors’ introduction 1 1. Justice and Equality: A Political Dilemma? Pascal, Plato, Marx Étienne Balibar 9 2. Global Justice and Politics: On the Transition from the Normative to the Political Level Francisco Naishtat 33 3. Traversing the Borders of Liberalism: Can There Be a Liberal Multiculturalism? Juha Rudanko 53 4. The Long March from the Margins: Subaltern Politics, Justice, and Nature in Postcolonial India Subir Sinha 79 5. Struggles of Justice: Political Discourses, Experiences, and Claims Emmanuel Renault 99 6. Aestheticizing Law into Justice: The Fetus in a Divided Planet Anirban Das 123 7. The Justice-Seeking Subject Ranabir Samaddar 145 8. Law’s internationalization and Justice for the Citizens and Noncitizens in France Jean-Louis Halpérin 167 9. Borderscapes of Differential inclusion: Subjectivity and Struggles on the Threshold of Justice’s Excess Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson 181 Contributors 205 index 209 The Borders of Justice Editors’ introduction Étienne Balibar, Sandro Mezzadra, and Ranabir Samaddar Although the theme of justice has occupied a high ground in philosophical discussions since the beginning of political philosophy , in terms of democracy and popular politics, its exact meaning and implications have been nebulous, in part because justice, in reality, is a meeting ground of many ideas, situations, concepts, expectations , mechanisms, and practices. Many things intersect to form the context of social justice: ethical ideas of the people, laws, the evolving nature of claims, the pattern of collective claim-making politics, institutional issues relating to the delivery mechanisms of justice, ideas about rights and entitlements, ideas among the citizens about the responsibility of the rulers, and many situations generating countless conditions of justice. All these contribute to the social context, form, and site of justice. This book aims to explore some of the complexities of justice that emerge from its “social embeddedness.” Three years ago, as part of a collective research program on social justice undertaken by the Calcutta Research Group, we had planned to deliberate on what we had conceptualized as the “other spheres of justice.” As we began our discussions around a set of presentations, some of which later found their places in this volume, we realized that what we were terming “other spheres” were actually the borders of various conceptions , ideas, and forms of justice. “Others” anticipate the “this,” “the existing ,” “the main,” and so on, whose others are then anticipated in turn. in this sense, justice is always conceptualized as achieving the just on the borders, 2 Editors’ introduction and thus, justice is achieved when the situation at the margin, anticipating the other, has been addressed. Justice and marginalities or marginal situations remain integrally connected, and precisely this connection shows how central and strategic situations constructed as marginal and borderline are in the field of contentious politics. Power, force, institution, rule, law, right, virtue, or ethics cannot alone appear as a complete requirement of justice, though each of these may be a necessary element. in each of these sites justice appears as a borderline existence. The essays of this volume are dialogic—they speak to each other—and they convey a sense of fleeting glimpses, as if only when these essays have conversed among themselves can they give us a clear idea of what we wanted to address: other spheres of justice. Justice is addressed only by addressing the other—that is, by addressing its multiple borders. And in this perspective, justice also allows, and at...