Abstract
Rousseau's paradox of how a multitude wills itself into the status of a sovereign people, by deciding to join the contract before existing as a people, with a general will to make that decision, presupposes the absence of any ultimate social grounds and the contingency of identities and structures. These presuppositions make Rousseau an unacknowledged precursor of Laclau's post-structuralist politics, refuting the view that Rousseau's politics seeks a totally transparent and harmonious state beyond the questioning and ambiguity defining the political. The people's will grounds the social contract's legitimacy but that will lacks any pre-constituted form and clear guidelines for discerning it. It provides a groundless ground. Rousseau's legislator supplements that lack, representing the people in its absence, helping it frame suitable legislation. The people only requires the lawgiving representative because of its constitutive incompleteness: it thus resists full representation. If it already possessed a common will and identity, the lawgiver and the contract would become irrelevant. The undecidability of autonomy/heteronomy, representative/represented, fiction/reality highlighted by Rousseau's legislator affirms the impossibility of political closure as the condition of freedom and change. The people's incompleteness supports rather than jeopardises its sovereignty, allowing it to reconstitute itself in the open-ended quest for democracy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
All quotations for the Social Contract (SC) and the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality are taken from The Social Contract and Discourses, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated by G. Cole (London, Everyman, 1973), p. 190. Page numbers are given in parentheses after the quotations.
By a post-structuralist approach, I primarily refer to the work of Laclau and Mouffe (1985). For the premises of their approach, see Norval (2001). While recognising Rousseau's legacy for modern radical democrats, Norval advances that his theory denies the questioning and conflict of the political central to his successors’ work. She later offers a more affirmative interpretation of Rousseau's contribution to democratic theory (Norval, 2007).
Starobinski maintains that Rousseau dreams of ‘total transparency and unmediated communication’ and that this dream underlies his politics (1988, p. 153). Derrida's (1997) interpretation of Rousseau as a metaphysician of presence deconstructs Starobinski's reading. Following both Derrida and Starobinski, Sandel describes Rousseau's political community as ‘an undifferentiated whole … unable to abide disharmony’ (Sandel, 1996, p. 319). Hill (2006) also identifies transparency as the social contract's aim. Many Rousseauists now refute this idea: Strong (1994, pp. 145–149), Froese (2001), Lacoue-Labarthe (2002).
Rousseau's inquiry into the foundation of society in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality supports my assertion of his ontology of lack. It begins with the image of nature which Rousseau reaches by subtracting social content, ‘by setting aside the facts’. Nature, defined negatively vis-à-vis the social, loses any ontological certainty, emerging as a ‘state which no longer exists, perhaps never did exist and probably never will exist’ (Discourse, p. 44). Far from offering a positive social foundation, his state of nature actually defines that foundation as a lack. For a discussion of the negativity of nature as the social origin, see Inston (2006).
Connolly and Keenan espouse this view. Connolly believes that Rousseau confines the paradox to the instituting moment to convince his readers of ‘another time when it could be resolved’ (Connolly, 1995, p. 137). Keenan discerns in Rousseau's theory ‘resources for resisting attempts to naturalize, and thus, close off the identity of the people (including his own famous attempts at various points in the Social Contract and elsewhere)’ (Keenan, 2003, p. 40). While I welcome their analysis of Rousseau's paradox as central for democratic thinking, their suggestion that Rousseau intends to theorise a closed and self-regulating system counters their readings of his writings as complex and open-ended.
For Rousseau's anti-politics, see Schwartz (1995, pp. 34–69).
Lefort differentiates the political from conventional politics characterised by the practices of governments and political parties, defining it in the broad sense of society's very form and mode of institution (Lefort, 1988, pp. 11–12, 217–221). Laclau expresses this distinction in similar terms: the political is ‘the instituting moment of society’ and politics, ‘the acts of political institution’ (Laclau, 1997, p. 47). Mouffe reiterates that distinction in Heideggerian terms, defining politics as the ‘ontic’ level and the political the ‘ontological’ level’ (Mouffe, 2005, pp. 8–9). The political, as the ontological dimension, remains forever irreducible to the empirical realm of politics. We can retrospectively identify a notion of the political in Rousseau's theory: the question of society's institution is an ongoing one, raised rather resolved by the legislator.
Hanley describes Rousseau as an anti-foundationalist (Hanley, 2008, p. 231, n. 21).
For the difference between anti-foundationalism and post-foundationalism, see Marchart, Post-Foundational Political Thought (2007, pp. 1–10).
Derrida's notion of undecidability refers to a term which does not fit neatly into either pole of a binary opposition. For example, the people, in Rousseau, represents both an absence which the legislator supplements by standing in for them and also a presence which authorises the contract. I argue that the people never reach a state of full presence as the constant need to renew and revise the general will implies; they therefore represent an absent presence (Derrida, 1982, p. 43).
For the mutual implication of the particular and the general in Rousseau's thinking, see Inston (2009).
For the constitutive split between the particular and the universal of the hegemonic agent, see Laclau (1996, pp. 47–65).
De Man, among others, uses this term (De Man, 1979, p. 274).
Bennington discusses the dimension of deferred effect in the Social Contract, viewing it as opposed to Rousseau's supposed intention of create a society where the distinction between description and prescription has been dissolved. I reject this view: that dimension indicates the permanent non-closure of politics in Rousseau (Bennington, 1985, pp. 156–171).
For the difficulty of representing the temporality of political change, see Chambers (2003).
Levine (1976, 1993), Strong (1994), Affeldt (1999) and Froese (2001) among others also affirm the openness of Rousseau's understanding of the political field, conceiving the contract as an open-ended project sustained and renewed by the citizens’ ongoing commitment to their sovereign duty – their active participation in questioning and revising the laws.
Kelly (1987) offers support for our understanding of the legislator as a representative, linking the legislator's ‘art’ to Rousseau's understanding of theatrical representation.
I refer to Laclau's work on political representation which is informed by a Derridean conception of representation as a more general theoretical category: ‘there is only representation, because there is never such a thing as a pure and original presentation’ (Laclau, 2008, p. 3).
The most influential who represent Rousseau as ‘totalitarian’ were Talmon (1952) and Berlin (1969).
For Näsström, the very constitution of a people raises a claim to legitimacy. But, as a people can never be fully constituted, always being located in time and space, its claim to legitimacy needs constantly to be revised and renewed. This viewpoint, she believes, takes us beyond Rousseau. She reproaches Rousseau for presuming, along with many of his successors, that ‘first we have a people and then we have legitimacy. The former is the basis of the latter’, for failing to see how ‘people-making is what legitimacy is all about’ (Näsström, 2007, p. 641). I agree with her overall argument but disagree with her interpretation of Rousseau. The contractual process rejects any simple causality: the making of the people already implies a claim of legitimacy. The constant renewal of the general will represent a continual quest for legitimacy. The people is both the source and the object of legitimacy.
For the link between God's will and earlier notions of the general will, see Postigliola (1980).
Rousseau quotes here the Palatine of Posen, father of the king of Poland, Duke of Lorraine.
References
Affeldt, S.G. (1999) The force of freedom. Political Theory 27 (3): 299–333.
Baker, F. (1995) Eternal vigilance: Rousseau's death penalty. In: R. Wokler (ed.) Rousseau and Liberty. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, pp. 153–185.
Bennington, G. (1985) Sententiousness and the Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Berlin, I. (1969) Two Concepts of liberty’ in Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Chambers, S. (2003) Untimely Politics. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.
Connolly, W. (1995) The Ethos of Pluralisation. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press.
Derrida, J. (1982) Positions, translated by A. Bass. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, J. (1997) Of Grammatology, translated by G. Spivak. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.
Froese, K. (2001) Rousseau and Nietzsche: Toward an Aesthetic Morality. Oxford, UK: Lexington Books.
Glynos, J. and Howarth, D. (2007) Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory. London: Routledge.
Hanley, R. (2008) “The science of the legislator” in Adam Smith and Rousseau. American Journal of Political Science 52 (2): 219–232.
Hill, G. (2006) Rousseau's Theory of Human Association: Transparent and Opaque Communities. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.
Honig, B. (2003) Democracy and the Foreigner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Honig, B. (2007) Between decision and deliberation: Political paradox in democratic theory. American Political Science Review 101 (1): 1–17.
Inston, K. (2006) Jean-Jacques Rousseau's post-marxist critique of alienation: A re-reading through Lacan and Zizek. Philosophy Today 50 (3): 349–367.
Inston, K. (2009) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ernesto Laclau and the somewhat particular universal. Philosophy and Social Criticism 35 (5): 555–587.
Keenan, A. (2003) Democracy in Question. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Laclau, E. (1989) Politics and the limits of modernity. In: A. Ross (ed.) Universal Abandon? Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press, pp. 329–343.
Laclau, E. (1990) New Reflections on the Revolution of our Time. London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (1996) Emancipation(s). London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (1997) Deconstruction, pragmatism, hegemony. In: C. Mouffe (ed.) Deconstruction and Pragmatism. London: Verso, pp. 47–67.
Laclau, E. (2002) Democracy between autonomy and heteronomy. In: U.M. Bauer, M. Nash, O. Enwezor, O. Zaya (eds.) Democracy Unrealized: Documenta11_Platform1. Ostfielden-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz, pp. 377–386.
Laclau, E. (2005) On Populist Reason. London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (2008) Not a ground but a horizon: An interview with Ernesto Laclau’, Brian Price and Megan Sutherland. World Picture 2 (Autumn), 1–4.
Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.
Lacoue-Labarthe, P. (2002) La Poétique de l’histoire. Paris: Galilée.
Lefort, C. (1988) Democracy and Political Theory. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Levine, A. (1976) The Politics of Autonomy: A Kantian Reading of Rousseau's Social Contract. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
Levine, A. (1993) The General Will: Rousseau, Marx, Communism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
De Man, P. (1979) Allegories of Reading. London: Yale University Press.
Marchart, O. (2007) Post-Foundational Political Thought. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.
Mouffe, C. (2005) On the Political. London: Routledge.
Näsström, S. (2007) The legitimacy of the people. Political Theory 35 (5): 624–658.
Norval, A. (2001) Radical democracy. In J. Foweraker and B. Clarke (eds.) Dictionary of Democratic Thought. London: Routledge.
Norval, A. (2007) Aversive Democracy: Inheritance and Originality in the Democratic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Postigliola, A. (1980) De Malebranche à Rousseau: les apories de la volonté générale et la revanche du “raisonneur violent”. Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau 39: 123–138.
Sandel, M. (1996) Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press.
Schwartz, J. (1995) The Permanence of the Political: A Democratic Critique of the Radical Impulse to Transcend Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Starobinski, J. (1988) Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction, translated by A. Goldhammer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Strong, T. (1994) Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Politics of the Ordinary. London: Sage.
Talmon, J. (1952) The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. London: Sphere Books.
Žižek, S. (1991) For They Know not what They Do. London: Verso.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Inston, K. Representing the unrepresentable: Rousseau's legislator and the impossible object of the people. Contemp Polit Theory 9, 393–413 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2009.41
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2009.41