Is Claude Lefort Constipating: part 2

Lefort's constipation lies precisely in his solution: his advocacy for democracy. In sum, Lefort argues that the advocacy of totalitarian thought closes the “empty place of power” by filling it with a single element (the Leader, the Party, etc.) and suppressing the natural vibrancy and contradictions. His solution, then, is democracy, where it effectively leaves an emptiness of power, recognizing that society is not the alabaster-like image that totalitarian ideologies try to portray (such as Hitler’s fascism claiming society would be perfect if there was a dominant Aryan caste, or Stalin’s communism promising an ideal socialism without oppression). Instead, democracy allows those tensions and forces to play out and resolve themselves.

One of the first things many might ask is: what will the recognition of such forces and tensions do for society? His answer would be contestation, where the forces and tensions—the voices of the people—will play out and eventually resolve. Yet, one could further question: what then? Will things magically resolve, or must there be some institutions to hold them in place? These would be naïve questions, however, as they do not strike at the core of Lefort here—the problem of a faulty synthesis. It is easy to imagine Lefort’s critique of totalitarianism fitting into the classic dialectic movement of Hegel: the natural chaotic forces and tensions of society serve as the “antithesis” of our society—it is the conflict that must be resolved. The next step would be the “synthesis,” where our innate conflict in society must be resolved. To this end, Lefort advocated for institutionalized democracy, seeing it as the sublation of the conflict. Yet, the problem precisely lies in how abstract this sublation is.

The mere recognition of the forces and tensions is by no means enough; it is just the first step in even recognizing such forces and tensions fully. In Part 1, we discussed the possibility that an institutionalized democracy represses the very thing it holds dear—how that “democracy” could end up being one of the symbols or figures that foreclose the “empty place of power.” This demonstrates what Lefort fails to encapsulate: the “forces and tensions” entail the very obverse of democracy itself, that these forces could corrupt democracy, flipping it upside down. To put it in more detail, Lefort fails to see that democracy, the symbolization of the Real society, is the subject of change and torment—that it could entail oppression. Just because there is a stage, a mediated space for all tensions and forces to manifest, it doesn’t mean such tensions and forces are “put to rest” or resolved. They will keep perverting throughout society, eventually decaying Lefort’s democracy into its obverse. We see this precisely in real life; the inequality within the states is a perfect testament to it. In other words, the dialectic process did not end with Lefort’s conception of democracy—Lefort’s recognition of democracy as that which leaves out an “empty place of power” is quite the obverse; it instead reinforces it by viewing it as a “terminal end” to the dialectic of society.

In other words, Lefort has a faulty synthesis: he engorged the elements (forces and tensions of society) inside a vacuous vision of a “formal democracy.” This is precisely what Zizek would call a “constipated view of Hegel,” where the sublation is properly carried out—it is envisioned to “swallow” the elements of the world as a whole. Lefort did not recognize the tensions and forces properly; he simply set them within the field of democracy, envisioning that such forces and tensions are properly dealt with and that their power is contained within such a field, effectively “swallowing” the forces in a gluttonous synthesis. This resulted in the degenerated democracies we see everywhere. Is not Trump a product of the democratic government’s constant negligence of the so-called “red-necks”?

Yet, this critique is not the most interesting thing I find about Lefort’s political philosophy. In his description of his methodology and project, Lefort demonstrated a disdain for abstract philosophy extending into more solid fields such as political science. He was especially vocal regarding figures like Merleau-Ponty and Derrida for their extension of abstract philosophies (phenomenology, a study of consciousness, and deconstruction, a study of language) into politics. He believed that those attempts were too abstract, to the extent that they became botched in their accounts of politics, as there was no solid connection between those philosophies and the world. Yet, we can see this is what Lefort is struggling with in his politics—being disjointed from reality. It seems here Lefort exhibits what Derrida calls a “conflict within the text,” where his text walks to the opposite side of his intention. This raises an interesting question: even the precise and “down-to-earth” text of Lefort exhibits conflict within itself, and if Deleuze is to be believed, this is also the problem of many other “down-to-earth” texts/sciences. Then what of Truth? Where, and more importantly how, does it exist?