Rupture: On the Emergence of the Political

Introduction: The Theory of Rupture

INTRODUCTION The Theory of Rupture Political philosophy, from Plato onward, has occupied itself with the distribution of power. Different political philosophers allocate power in various ways according to their respective ideas about the proper arrangement of society. Plato places the philosopher-kings in charge; Aristotle prizes an aristocratic government; Hobbes insists on the foundational power of the sovereign; Rousseau theorizes the general will as the site of political power; and so on. Even Marx's materialist break with the history of philosophy is not a break with the fundamental question of political philosophy. Unlike earlier political philosophers, Marx envisions an equitable distribution of power achieved through political revolution. Political philosophers today continue to speculate about how power might be distributed in order to promote either the maximum justice or the maximum stability. From John Rawls's notion of justice as fairness to Claude Lefort's idea of democracy as a regime where the position of power is empty to Martha Nussbaum's association of politics with human dignity, the goal of political theory is to conceive political logics and languages designed to vest power in its proper location. To conceive the proper distribution or investiture of power-in this or that individual, institution , or revolutionary idea-is to propose, in the end, a path for power to oversee the creation of a reasonable, just, and stable social order. Our purpose here is to reconceive political philosophy by separating it from concerns about the distribution of power. This requires, in our view, orienting political thought around a different political idea-an idea that has the ability both to make sense of political events and to animate political acts. This idea is rupture. Rupture occurs at moments of revolutionary historical change, but it is not just revolution: it is also the interruption of the flow of social life whose force remains in the wake of revolutionary changes. The political impact of rupture does not disappear when its obvious manifestations cease to be prominently visible. 3 4 Introduction A rupture occurs when the coordinates that organize existence undergo a shift, such as when culture emerges out of the natural order. The emergence of culture out of nature is the fundamental and foundational rupture, but throughout history this same process happens through the introduction of a hitherto impossible idea whose emergence transforms the terrain of the possible. Instead of inhabiting a closed world with the earth at its center, for instance, we become part of an open universe that has no center at al1.1 Or instead of viewing hierarchical relations as stemming from the nature of things, we begin to conceive of an inherent equality among human beings. Or instead of viewing real numbers as the limit of mathematical inquiry, we calculate with imaginary ones. From the perspective prior to their onset, these events are impossible, and yet they transpire nonetheless. Rupture is the occurrence of the impossible, when the very ground under our feet shifts in order to transform the point from which we see. When political philosophy focuses on the distribution of power, it remains within the realm of the possible. Change in power relations can occur , but it always does so from within a set of possibilities. Even taking up the political position of opposing oneself to power-the tack of someone like Michel Foucault-fails to broach the possibility of the impossible, the fact that the impossible can occur. As a result, political philosophy has generally confined itself to a restricted conception of change, and this is what the theory of rupture aims to amend. Our claim is not that power doesn't exist but that it is a secondary phenomenon. Power is not necessarily opposed to rupture: it can even organize itself around and work to sustain rupture. But however a society organizes power relations, the status of rupture has primacy because rupture occurs prior to power relations and creates the values that underwrite them. Power in society exists on the basis of a rupture that gives the members of the society something to struggle for. Without an initial rupture that continues to reverberate, there would be no reason to take power. Of course, those in power most often attempt to repress rupture and the values that it entails. They stress continuity rather than interruption .2 But nothing necessitates that power take up this role. Rupture is not found only in revolt but can also manifest itself in the operations of power-which is to say that the...