Beyond the democratic state: anti-authoritarian interventions in democratic theory

ibid
.
 
29-30). The language of tangibility, bodies, and the 
reconfiguration of space suggests, at least, an emphasis on a kind of materiality that is often 
omitted from communicative approaches to democracy. On the other hand, in Ranciere, there is 
a great emphasis on the discursive elements of political action and even, according to May 
(2008, 58) a “privileging of speech.” Much of his analysis is framed in terms of the capacity for 
speech (which he begins with on the first page of 
Disagreement)
and the shared capacity for 
speech is used as his simple justification for the basic condition of equality, discussed above.
Further, he contends that “political activity is always a mode of expression” that “makes visible 
what had no business being seen, and makes heard a discourse where once there was only place 
for noise” (
ibid.
30). In fleshing out the nature of “politics,” Ranciere returns to a “dialogue” 
between a judge and revolutionary regarding whether the accused revolutionary could identify 

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133 
his profession as “proletariat” (
ibid
. 38-39). Without getting into the specifics of the exchange, it 
is noteworthy that Ranciere uses a dialogical
 
event to characterize “politics.” Moreover, he 
argues that the naming of a class that is not recognized as class – the making plain of a 
“miscount” by an appearance of a subject that had been rendered invisible by the “partition of the 
sensible” – is the exemplary political act. This all suggests some ambivalence in Ranciere’s 
thought regarding the extent to which “politics” is essentially communicative. 
What is clear is that, for Ranciere, politics is not communicative in the typical sense. As 
May (2008, 49) reads Ranciere, “a democratic politics is the appearance of that which has been 
excluded. This is an intervention not a discussion…Democratic politics manifests a people…it 
creates a political subject. It is not a conversation among subjects.” In this sense, democratic 
action is a mode of creating subjects, in particular the self-creation of subjectivity among the part 
that has no part. “This is precisely why politics cannot be identified with the [Habermasian] 
model of communicative action since this model presupposes the partners in communicative 
exchange to be pre-constituted” (Ranciere 2001, par. 24). While Ranciere distances himself 
from deliberative democrats and communicative theories, he does not, as I do, reorient his 
perspective to power, but rather toward subjectification. 
Ranciere, I believe, sees “subjectification” and “power” as two very different things. His 
first thesis on politics, for example, states that: “Politics is not the exercise of power. Politics 
ought to be defined on its own terms, as a mode of acting put into practice by a specific kind of 
subject…It is a political relationship that allows one to think the possibility of a political 
subject(ivity), not the other way around” (Ranciere 2001, par.1). It seems clear then, that on his 
account, politics is properly understood as involving subjectification, not power. I propose that it 
is impossible (or, at least, unhelpful) to understand the former, without appealing to the later. In 

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other words, power and subjectification are intertwined. While Ranciere (1999, 42) says that 
“politics is not made up of power relationships,” I don’t believe this is an intelligible claim, even 
from the perspective of his own theory. We cannot fully understand the actions that Ranciere 
himself discusses without the language of power. Consider the case of striking workers (an 
example to which Ranciere himself frequently alludes). Certainly, Ranciere is right that is a case 
in which “a part that has no part” reveals itself as a political subject and through its actions 
exposes the underlying equality on which the social order is based. But is the strike not also an 
enactment of power? More to the point, is it not precisely this exercise of power – the shutting 
down of production, in this case – that makes vivid the presence of a proletariat, where there 
were once just workers? Ranciere shows that a conversation between capitalist and proletariat is 
impossible because the capitalist does not recognize the existence of the proletariat. As such, an 
interruption or intervention (what I have been calling disruption) is necessary to demonstrate the 
reality of a subject. Ranciere fails, though, to see the disruption for what it is: an enactment of 
power. In this case, striking workers “expressed their equality in the way they could: by utilizing 
their