Abstract

In his political philosophy Lefort endeavours to revive the thinking of „the political”. Owing to the influence of Marxism and the positive political sciences, this reality has fallen into oblivion. Indeed, the political sciences consider politics as a relatively autonomous region within the social whole, forgetting that this relative autonomy is itself the consequence of a political, i.e. democratic, mode of instituting society. Thinking „the political” is for Lefort thinking again the mode of institution of societies. This study shows then that according to Lefort a particular mode of instituting society is at the same time the institution of a particular experience of the social reality. Social reality is always represented social reality. According to Lefort now the representation of power plays a central role in this symbolic instituting of society. It is indeed in and by the symbolic representation of power — which it gives to itself— that society constitutes its selfrepresentation and thus its reality. The concrete determination-figuration of power is constitutive of the concrete determination-figuration of the social world. In the second part of this study Lefort's interpretation of the „democratic revolution” and the democratic „mise en forme” of society is then exposed. He sees this revolution as a symbolic mutation of the absolutistic image of power. In democracy, power is represented as social power, and the place of power as an empty place. The first representation broke with the absolutistic view of power as mediation of the divine power, whereas the second put an end to the equally absolutistic image of power as incarnated in the king's body. The consequences of the latter change must especially be stressed. Indeed, through it the absolutistic society became „incorporated” i.e. its unity and identity became represented as that of a body. When this self-representation of society disappears in democracy society can accept diversity and opposition as normal parts of social life. Totalitarianism in its turn, maintains the image of power as social power but restores the representation of an incarnated power. By its force the image of power again „incorporates” society