The Crisis in Democratic Schooling

Balan continuedfrom previous page on a hopeful note, stressing that democracy in the strict sense is fundamentally concerned with the redistribution of social power traditionally based on conceptions ofmerit. Rancière is especially critical of intellectual discourse—from the technocratic Right or the progressive Left—targeting the excess of democracy itself as either anachronistic, untenable, or an obstacle to wider consensus and the subsequent institutionalization of politics. Echoing Rancière, Zizek acknowledges the role of contemporary capitalism as well as the indeterminate will of the merit-less "'surnumerary"' or the social '"part of no-part,'" which becomes determinate precisely when it manifests as a mass refusal to stand as an inert object of rule and begins to dictate events by articulating a universal, general will. Yet, Zizek is most resonant when he is at his most didactic. His explicit warning—and the basic fact to be accepted—is that there can be no guarantees when one undertakes a "divine" decision to act—divine not because it is supernatural but because it is a decisively sovereign act. A movement possessing any fidelity to the intrusion that is democratic politics can never be undertaken with guarantees. It is always risky, always tiedto theportentofpotentialoutcomes that cannot be predicted. It must become a kind of unknown quantity. And to those wondering ifZizek is seriously inciting bloody revolt and terror, he would likely defer but would waste no time in pointing out the commencement ofapologies for inaction and the a priori domestication of politics itself. Notably, both essays intersect with trajectories regarding the concept of bare life, biopolitics, and the state ofexception as articulated most recently by Giorgio Agamben in Homo Sacer (1998) and State of Exception (2005). Yet, instead of aligning and concurring with Agamben, both books assume the form ofAgamben's analysis but suggest the inverse ofhis assessment: democratic politics, as a practice, is itself a state of exception. It is indistinguishable because it has no basis or foundation beyond its own event. In fact, Rancière posits democracy as a method "to 'indistinguish' things," to wilfully problematize the straight lines and to render illegitimate all forms ofnaturalized—hence, social and cultural—power. Further, Zizek and Rancière together acknowledge the "democratic paradox": if democracy is in fact an exceptional and "paradoxical condition of politics" (Rancière) undermining the legitimacy to govern, what follows is the unavoidable problem of incorporating and integrating the excessive contents of democratic acts and social insurrection, of translating the "democratic explosion" and remaking society through the "brutal imposition of a new order" (Zizek). The paradox, then, is produced by the anxious recourse to explicitly antidemocratic politics: the threat ofdepoliticization, ofharmonizing, and of "things returning to normal." Thus, democracy itself takes on a particular and problematic temporal character . It tends to become a kind of syntactic element ofpolitical grammar, one momentintegratedinto the well-intended new regime (Georges Jacques Danton: "Let us be terrible so that the people will not have to be") or the malignant remnants, lurking, of the old State. Hinting towards Michel Foucault's analysis, Zizek and Rancière remind us of the basis of the injunction, "Society must be defended." In this context, and pointing toward current anti-political discourses in North America and Europe , Zizek makes direct reference to Robespierre's famous speech, "On the War," where Robespierre argues against his political colleagues regarding the persecution offoreign wars orchestrated in the name ofthe revolution. Robespierre's concern is the shift of focus and attention from the process of insurrection and revolution inside the State—redirecting efforts to an external place only takes the edge off of the democratic movement, obscures social issues, and suppresses politics itself. The connection here to societies structured on cycles of externally oriented primitive accumulation and a permanent and perpetual war footing are obvious. These are ominous suggestions: complacent citizens in State-managed societies who have neither the capacity to diagnose either local or global inequities, nor possess the political literacy or lexicon required to adequately challenge militarism and foreign wars conducted in the name oftheir own democracy. As we continue to cultivate rich discourse and revel in elegantly worded solutions, to where are we directing our political capacities, energies? Detailfrom...