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    148 POLITICS AND THE OTHER SCENE AMBIGUOUS UNIVERSALITYconcerned when colonization included all inhabited territories,when the world is actually divided into nation-states belonging tothe single United Nations Organization, or communication net-works can broadcast the same programmes everywhere. It is theintensive aspect which is concerned when every individuals wageand skill become dependent on competitors anywhere on the worldmarket, but also when educational curricula must include thelearning of international languages, or sanitary regulations mustcontrol the individuals food and sexual habits because of thespread of world epidemics (AIDS).

    Many readers will say: real universality in this sense is nothingreally new. It did not always exist, to be sure: there was a time whenthe world as an entity was not conceivable, except in physical orcosmological terms. But it has existed at least since the emergenceof the modern world; therefore it has been the permanent back-ground of what we call modernity. This is certainly true. I willtherefore make my point more clearly. There have been stages inthe extension and intensification of real universality, until in theend , a decisive threshold was crossed, which made it irreversib le (wemight also say: which makes it impossible to achieve any properdelinking,or to imagine any return to autarky within the worldsystem); and a moment has also come when utq+ian figures ofuniversality have become obsolete by their very nature. By utopianfigures I mean any intellectual plans of establishing universality byconnecting humankind with itself, creating a cosmopolis-whichwas always imagined at the same time as an implementation ofcertain moral values, precisely universalistic values. This impossi-bility did not arise because it proved impossible to connect theworld as a single space, but exactly for the opposite reason: becausethis connection of humankind with itself was already achieved,because it was behind us. The two aspects are therefore boundtogether, as a matte r of fact. But this fact is acknowledgedbelatedlyand reluctantly. Why? Perhaps because, though it does not markthe end of h istory, it nevertheless marks the practical end ofcosmopoliticalutopias, because it involves acknowledging hat realuniversality, or globalization, already achieves the goal which wasconceived as the unification of mankind, albeit certainly without

    implementing most of the moral (or humanistic) values wutopias represented as either a precondition or an immedconsequence of this unification.

    In other terms, we could say that it is no longer a questiocreating the (true) world, or the unity of the world, butransfonningit rom within. It is no accident if we are reminded hof a celebrated phrase from Mams Theses on F h a c h : The phophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the poito change it. A world which has to be transformed is an actuexisting world, a rea l universality. No-doubt Marx had an aperception that real universality was well on its way towards reation, which he associated with the establishment of a single ision of labour and a process of commodification of all sorelations. At the same time, however, he associated this idea wiradical simplification of social structures, a withering awaytraditional forms of domination which, he thought, wouldreduced to the pure exploitation of wage labour, leading tofinal antagonism of individuality and capitalism all over the woand hence towards a catastrophic overcoming of alientationcommunisim, or a reconciliation of man with himself. This,haps, is the paradoxical figure of Mam: the last utopian announcthe end of the very possibility of utopias.

    But real universality in todays world is by no means restr ictethe global expansion of economic structures. It has also becopolitical (with the progressive emergence of transnational strategof political subjects rreducible to local agencies, based on a sinterritory), and cultural and communicative (with dominant works and countercultural initiatives dialectically n teracting actraditional borders). As a consequence, the analytical schema seems best adapted to interpreting the expressions of this wopolitics is the Hobbesian on e of a war of all against all, rather ta Marxian-Hegelian schema of growing antagonism between smetrical forces. The Hobbesian schema, however, reaches its limwhen it is a question of getting to the next step: namely, possibility of controlling the conflictual elements by settling abthem some juridical and political single authority, be it throucoercion or general consent. A world Leviathan, or a worldsc

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    150 POLITICS AND THE OTHER SCENE MBIGUOUS UNIVERSALITY

    rationalcentral rule, seems incompatible with the complexity weare facing: new modes of regulation are needed if we are not to bedoomed to an eternal Behemoth.

    Let me now add some remarks about the figureof the complexworld system in this sense. The geographical and geopoliticalpattern of the world has been subjected to considerable modifica-tions. The very term globalizationstill reminds us of a process inwhich it was the centre (in fact made up of rival powers) whichwas incorporating successive peripheries and outer regions (Wall-ersteins external arenas ) within the limits of its domination. Thisprocess took the form of subjecting states and societies, importinggoods and men, exploiting manpower and natural resources,exporting languages, techniques, and institutions (ultimately thenation-state itself) . What we are now experiencing is the backlasheffect of this process. It is not the suppression of domination andeconomic inequalities (perhaps it could be said that the polariza-tion of wealth and misery, power and dependency, has reachedunprecedented levels) but the multiplication of centres, forming anetwork rather than a core area. And it is the reverse movementwhich projects elements of the former periphery into the centralsocieties.

    Above all, the phenomenon of transnational migrations acquiresa new quality. It is here, particularly, that a precise historical analysisis required in order to avoid simplistic Eurocentric or Westernprejudices. As the Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez Casanovaremarked at a recent conference in Paris, colonial and ThirdWorld countries have long experienced what we in the Northnow call multiculturalism. Far from being backward in this respect,they were showing the way. It becomes clear that this highlyconflictual and also evolutionary pattern was not a transitory one, aprovisional (albeit massive) exception on the road to moderniza-tion (mainly conceived as westernization): it is the general situ-ation in the era of real universality. Whether or not this will becompatible with the simple continuation of the political and cul-tural forms which had emerged with European (and North Ameri-can) hegemony, notably the (more or less completely sovereign)nation-state and (more or less unified) national culture, is exactly

    what is at stake in current debates on the New World Orderdominant and dominated languages, religious and literary sdards in education, and so on.

    I would like to emphasize the latent transformation whichnotion of minmty is undergoing in this situation. Minority complex notion which refers to either a juridical o r a sociopolirealm.

    Juridically speaking, minors are those human individualsgroups who are subjected to the more or less protectiveauthoof full citizens: the classic example being that of children wrespect to their parents. It is mainly in this sense that ImmaKant, in a famous text, defined the global process of emancipaof humankind which he called Auj kumngas mans emergence fhis self-incurred immaturity. Clearly, other groups have long bmaintained in a minority status: women, servants, colonized ples, and coloured people in racial states (not to mention slavand there is no doubt that, in spite of winning formal equalityafter the other, none of them has totally achieved complete equaor parity, in terms of rights and duties, access to responsibilsocial prestige, and so forth.

    The o the r meaning is more a question of administration statistics: it refers to the fact that religious and/o r ethnic groupsliving among a majoritarianpopulation -usually in the framewof some national or imperial state - where they are segregatedsubjected to some special legislation, or protected, but also whtheir collective identity is threatened with assimiliation to majoritarian - that is, dominant - identity. Here I would likeemphasize the following fact. By definition, minority n this sewhether or not it was associated with a status of juridical minowas considered an exceptionalphenomenon. More precisely, it wnormalized excqbtion. Nineteenthcentury nationalism and natbuilding politics had led to a double-edged situation. On the ohand, it was considered normal that a nation-state be ethnic(if not religiously) homogeneous, above all from the point of vof the official language (which had all sorts of cultural effects, siit was the language of law, politics, education, administration, eOn the other hand, it was precisely because political entities

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    15 2 POLITICS AND THE OTHER SCENE AMBIGUO US UNIVERSALITY generally conceived of as nation-states that minorities officiallyexisted - that is to say, populations were formally classified accord-ing to their national or ethnic (sometimes also religious) mem-bership, and individuals were identified with their commonmajoritarian or minoritarian status, in spite of all their otherdifferences and likenesses. The very existence of minorities,together with their more or less inferior status, was a state contruct, astrict correlate of the nation-form.

    Real universality produces a very ambivalent effect on this situ-ation. It generalizes minmty status, first of all in the sense that thereare now minoritieseverywhere, be they of ancient or recent orig in- not only of local descent, but from virtually all over the world.However, the distinction between min m.ties and majmties becornesblurred in a number of ways. First of all, it is blurred because agrowing number of individuals and groups are not easily inscribedin o ne single ethnic (or cultural, linguistic, even religious) identity.I emphasize this point, which is highly sensitive politically. Com-munitar ian discourse (including the extreme form claiming ethnicpurity), which can arise from both dominant and dominatedgroups , mainly emphasizes the fact that societies have become moreheterogeneous - that there are more and more others perma-nently settled among the national population: more Hispanicpeople who are not likely simply to adopt the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture in the US; more Islamic people who are not likelyto abandon or hide their languages and beliefs in Western Europe,and so on. But this is obviously only one side of the coin, the othe rside being that among these othe rs, and among the nationals aswell (notably through intermarr iage), more and more individuals arenot clussijiabb: marrying partners from different cultures andraces, living across the fictitious boundaries of communities,experiencing a divided or multiple self, experienc ing differentlanguages and memberships according to the private and publiccircumstances. These phenomena are anything but marginal. Wemight summarize them by saying that, as minorities proliferate,what minority means becomes rather obscure - unless it is force-fully imposed: at very high human cost (as we observe today,tragically, in ex-Yugoslavia)

    Another way of signalling this contradictory process refers toeffect of supra-national constructions, however precarious theybe. Take the case of Western Europe. In each nation-state youfind minorities with respect to the majorita rian populatioalthough their def inition is anything but standardized, becauseare either linguistic or religious (or vaguely attributed to straditional linguistic, religious, cultural differences) either seon some specific territory or scattered throughout the coueither of ancient descent or recent settlement ( immigrants) ening eithe r full citizenship or the status of foreigners; coming efrom neighbouring countries or from d h n t areas, and so on. Nif you consider the global pattern from a European point of viemay appear that the majorities themselves are minorities, orthe linguistic, religious, cultural attributes that characterize thave no absolute privilege on the global stage. Even those poptions which are represented politically by a strong state (EngFrench, German) are no longer absolute points of reference. Asame time, cultural characteristicswhich were minoritarian n enation-state - or example, the Muslim religious and cultura l bground - provide a common interest, and become potential between populations of different origin within the emerging pcal entity of Europe. It becomes difficult to give a ra tional jucation for the fact that, among the various intertwining culgroups which form the ethnic and social pattern of Europewhole, contributing to its economic and cultural life, or tofunctioning of its institutions, some enjoy a privileged status, wothers are d iscrimina ted against. Apartheid,which was hardly vion the national stage, becomes apparent on the supra-nationalbut these levels are becoming less and less distinct. Indeed, thissituation which leads significant parts of the majoritar iangroto feel threatened with reduction to a lower status, especially situation of economic crisis, where the national-social (so-cwelfare) state is partly dismantled. Openly or not, ideologieethnic cleansing, however arbitrary from the historical poinview, are likely to develop within national boundaries or continental level.

    With all its narrowness and peculiarities, this pattern could

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    154 POLITICS AND THE OTHER SCENE AMBIGUOUS UNIVERSALITYtaken as a model of what is emerging on a world scale: minmtieswithout stable ur unquestionable majorities.It also draws our attentionto the most explosive contradiction of real universality: the combi-nation of ethnic differences and social inequalities within a globalpattern of internal exclusion.As a combined result of colonialism, imperial rule and nationalclass struggles, a process of (at least partial) social integration,together with a dominant tendency towards cultural assimilation,had taken place within the boundaries of the more developednations of the core, while major status differences and acute socialpolarization were concentrated in the periphery.To a large extent,socialist and anti-imperialist regimes had been attempts at filling thisgap, fighting against external exclusion. Now the simple divisionbetween developed and underdeveloped areas inherited fromimperialism is blurred: economic polarization in the world system isless directly expressed in territorial structures; class diferences andethnic discriminationsare conjoined o r overdetermined in a similarway in both North and South; internal exclusion replaces externalseparations everywhere. Something like a world underclassemerges, whereas, at the other extreme, a new transnational class ofprivileged rulers acquire common interests and language. This isundoubtedly one of the main reasons for the new outbreak of racismthreatening to overwhelm humanistic values: always admitting- as Ihave argued elsewhere (Balibar and Wallerstein) -that racism is nota simple excess of identity feelings or xenophobia, but more specifi-cally linked with internal exclusion, that is hostility and discrimina-tion among populations which are not really separated, but belongto the same society and are culturally mixed with one another.

    The immediate prospects may appear rather grim - not tomention the long-term resolution of the contradiction, which wouldrequire basic transformations of the social and economic structures.From a theoretical point of view, however, things could be summa-rized as follows: real universality is a stage in history where, for thefirst time, humankind as a single web of interrelationships is nolonger an ideal or utopian notion but an actual condition for everyindividual; nevertheless, far from representing a situation of mutualrecognition, it actually coincides with a generalized pattern of

    conflicts, hierarchies and exclusions. It is not even a situatiowhich individuals communicate at least virtually with each obut much more one where global communication networks proevery individual with a dis torted image or a stereotype of alothers, either as kin or as aliens, hus raising gigantic obstto any dialogue. Identitiesare less isolated an d more incompaless univocal an d more antagonistic.

    UniversalityasFictionLet us now examine a quite different concept, which I call $universality. Of course there is some degree of arbitrariness interminology. Misunderstandings can be avoided only in the prosive elaboration of the argument. When I say that universshould also be considered fictive, I am not suggesting that it not exist, that it is a mere possibility, a ghost or an idea asoppto the world of facts. Ideul universaZi8 will come later. The kinfiction I want to deal with has to do with very effective proceabove all institutions and rqbresentutions: I take it, therefore, insense of constructed reality. On the other hand, I want to athe common idea that every identity, be it personal or colleccould be considered a construct in the same general sebecause this classical relativistic view- o it seems to me - eadslevelling of the historical processes which create and hierarcforms of identity and individuality, so that some of them becmore basic han others, and form a common background to becoming complementary or incompatible. Such distinctions sto me all the more necessary when the nonnative structureidentity and individuality, or the institutions which produccommon representation of what it means to be a person, tooneself,or to be a subject, nd the ins titutions which continuoenforce these representations upon human beings throughcation and social experience, are put into question: what is stimes referred to as a crisis of values. What is at stake is precthe non-natural but also non-arbitrary character of subjenorms and patterns of individuality.

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    156 POLITICS AND THE OTHER SCENE AMBIGUOUS UNIVERSALITYThere is indeed a long tradition in the social sciences dealing

    with fictive universality in this sense. For my present purpose,however, I find a philosophical reference more useful: Hegelsconstruction of an ethicalnotion of the individual (what he calledSi t t l i chht ) .This is probably because Hegel, dependent ashe was ona particular set of social values (those of the modern state or theRechtsstaat which found its rational shape in Western Europetowards the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of thenineteenth century, after the bourgeois revolutions), was acutelyaware of the conflict, and therefore the analogies and incompatibil-ities, between two conjlicting realizations of universality: the religiousand the national-political. n a sense it could be said that Hegelsdialectic of history had no other object than precisely explaininghow one great historical fiction, that of the universalistic church,could be substituted by another historical fiction, that of thesecular, rational institutions of the state (in practice, the nation-state), with equally universalistic aims.To be sure, Hegels view of this process was associated with theidea that historical development necessarily leads from religiousuniversality to political universality (in Hegelian terms, religiousuniversality is rational only an sich, or in alienated form, whereaspolitical universality is rationalfur sich, or consciously). In otherwords, he saw it as an irreversible progress. Therefore politicaluniversality, notwithstanding its fictive character, should appear as;In ahsnliite What we a re pvnpripnrina tnrlav i c rlparlw a r ~ l ~ t i x i i 7 . -

    reiigous rewval . 1 woula ratner say: we are finding that poliacaluniversality itself displays internal contradictions,while the contra-dictions of religion are still alive; or we are finding that the crisisof religious hegemonies remains open to new developments,whilethe crisisof the nation-form s already developing,with no predict-able end. But this critique of Hegels conception of linear progressdoes not negate the relevance of his analytical construction. In fact,on the contrary, what I have called fictive universality could alsobe labelled Hegelian universality.

    What makes the Hegelian construction* so very relevant is thefact that it transcends any formal opposition between holism and

    individualism. What Hegel is concerned with is the intrinrelationship between the construction of hegemony, or total ideoland autonomous individuality, or the person. Both universalistic reions and national state-building ely upon total deologies,encopassing a number of different identitiesand memberships. Thclaim to represent universality as such, but they are opposedtotalitarian world-views, where all individuals are supposed adopt one and the same system of beliefs, or follow compulsorules, for the sake of salvation and identification with some commessence. They are pluralisticby nature.YThis amounts to saying thtotal ideologies are intrinsically coniiected with the recogniti(and before that, the institution) of the individual as a realtivautonomous entity: not one which is absolutely free from particuidentities and memberships, but one which is never reduciblethem, which ideally and also practically (in the day-to-day workiof basic institutions, such as sacraments, marriage, courts, ecation, elections, etc.) transcends the limitations and qualificatiof particular identities and memberships. This is precisely wshould be understood as (fictive) universality:not the idea that tcommon nature of individuals is given or already there, but, raththe fact that it is produced inasmuch as particular identities arelativized, and become mediations for the realization of a superand more abstract goal.What I want to show, therefore, by very schematically outl ininkind of Hegelian dialectic of hepemonv. is both that this fimirel C dU L U 1w L l l J l J d l l U 111LCllldl LulldpsC U l lUC l U L l l r l I l ldLCl lal Cditions (notably economic ones) . It is very effective because indivuality itself is always an institution; it has to be represented aacknowledged; this can be achieved only if the individual s releasfrom a strict membership or a fusionwithin his or her Genxinschthus becoming able to adopt various social roles, to play on sevememberships, or to shift identity in order to perform differsocial functions, while remaining a member of a superior comunity, or a subject. It has its problematic prerequisites, howevbecause it is connected with the imposition of normality, a normor standard way of life and set of beliefs (a dominant practi

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    158 POLITICS A N D THE OTHER SCENE AMBIGUOUS UNIVERSALITYideology), which has to be m aintained for successive generations-at Least for th e overwhelming majority, or th e mainstream, acrossclass and other barriers.

    Universal religions achieved both results; this explains why theystill provide ideal types of hegemony. They did not suppressloyalties to the family, professional status, ethnic belongings andracial differences, social and political hierarchies, and so on. Onthe contrary - with th e exception of apocalyptic movements andcrises - they depicted absolute reciprocity among the faithful, orperfect love of ones neighbour, as a transcendent goal, whichcould be reached only after death (o r after the Last Judg emen t): amatter of hope, not of political strategy. But they urged individualsto live their particular lives internally (and, as much as possible,externally) according to the transcenden t goal of salvation, or- oput it better - according to rules which were supposed to fit thisideal. This set u p th e symbolic framework which allowed particularinstitutions to become Christian (o r Islamic) institutions, to belived an d represented as indirect means or mediations towards finalsalvation. Thus particular institutions, communities and reciproci-ties were re-established o r transformed, bu t always integrated withina totality. An individual could be recognized as a member of his orher various communities (family, profession, neighb ourh ood) heor she could act according to their obligations or enjoy theirprivileges or support their burdens - as a father or a mother, asoldier or a priest, a master o r a servant, a Frenchman or a German,an d so on - nasmuch as his or h er various practices were sacralizedor sanctified, and there were particular rites for all th e correspond-ing circumstances. But the reverse was also true: any of thesequalifications and practices, whether distributed among differentsocial groups or successively perform ed by the same individuals,could be experienced as intrinsic mediations of th e religious life.

    The same is true for na tional hegemony, wherever it was achievedin the form of building an independent state which succeeded innationalizing the main aspects of social life and culture: this is themost concrete meaning we can give to the notion of secularization.From a religious point of view, national hegemony is often seenaspure uniformization, if not as totalitarian; just as, from a secular

    national point of view, religious hegemony is seenas incompwith individual autonomy. In deed, b oth hegemonies have difviews of what is essential to human personality. They alsodif fere nt, symmetrical, points d honneurwhichare supposed to the supreme d u e which they try to create. In the case of unireligions, the point dhonneur is peace among nations, the rnition of a supra-national community by all political powers. case of the nation-state, it is, rather, peace or tolerance amonvarious religious dominations (an d more generally,on this mthe various ideologies), in the name of citizenship and legal In fact, both are pluralistic from theirm point of view, thwithin their own limits. Nation-states ado pt various means (acing to their particular h istory, which is generally conflict-riddebloody) to make peace among religions, regional identitethnic memberships, and class loyal tie^.^ Usually these meansnothing to d o with real or strict equality; they are permeatedrelations of force, but they are successful inasmuch as they particular communities an d networks not only to become integin the total community (national citizenship), but, much mowork as its mediations. Recognized differences, or otherness-withilimitsafcitizenship, become the essential mediation of namembership.

    Of course, you could wonder why I have called this mechuniversality. O r you could say: it is universal only because false consciousness, because a Church o r a State, as an institof power needs a legitimizing discourse in which itsown peculor one-sidedness is masked and transfigured through the reptation of ideological goals and values. This aspect undoubexists. It was emphasized by the Marxist critique, and it is rewhenever a rad ical discourse criticizes the state, the school sythe legal system, and so forth, viewing them as so many meadomination in th e service of a ruling class or group (be it the of capitalists, or imperialists, or white m en, or males, and soBut it can work, an d create a consensus or a hegemonybecause it is rooted in a more elementary structure, which isuniversalistic. I think that such a structure always exists whsecond-order community - or a Terminal Court of Appea

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    160 POLITICS AND THE OTHER SCENE AMBIGUOUS UNIVERSALITYErnest Gellner calls it - s raised above traditionalor natural orprimarymemberships, addressing their members qua individuals-that is, whenever immediate memberships are virtually decon-structed and reconstructed asorganic parts of the whole. Seen fromoutside (from the absolute standpoint of world history), totalityitself can certainly appear to be highlyparticularistic there are severaluniversal eligions, or rival interpretations of religious universality,just as there are several nation-states and nationalist ideologies, eachof them claiming to embody universal values (each claiming, oneway or another, to be the elect nation or to be des tined to leadhumankind on the road of progress, justice, etc.) Nothing is moreclearly particularistic in this sense than institutional claims ofuniversality.

    The true universalistic element, however, lies in the internalprocess of individualization: virtual deconstruction and reconstruc-tion of primary identities . And it is all the more effective when ithas been achieved through difficult and violent conflicts, whereoppression and revolt have threatened the hegemonic structurewith internal collapse. Individualized individuals do not exist bynature: they are crea ted through the conflictual (dis)integration ofprimary memberships- hat is to say, when individuals can view thewider community as a liberating agency, which frees them frombelonging to one single group, or possessing a single, undaeren-tiated, massive identity. It is universalistic because, in a typical shortcircuit, it is working both f iom above and f io m below with respect toparticulargroups and communities. Of course, the correspondingexperience is by nature ambivalent: it can also - t ha s to be - ivedas denaturization, coercionof affective ties and natural sentimentsin the name of Reason, of Shared Notions. This is indeed exactlywhat ideologies and standards of education are in the business ofexplaining and implementing.

    This process has been working since the very beginnings of statestructures. It is a decisive means of integration, or communitybuilding, because it produces or enhances individual subjectivi9 -that is, both a loyalty directed towards a more abstract, or symbolic,or (in Benedict Andersons terms) imagined community, and adistance between private life and social life, individual initiative and

    collective duties (a moral, rather than ritual, obedience: onwhich conviction and conscience are more important than cusand natural authority). In my view there is no doubt that Hewas right: private life and private conscience become automous precisely as a consequence of this subsumption and transmation of natural memberships or primary cultures under law of the state, and remain tied to it. Or - o put it better - prilife and conscience can become a matter of conflict between interests of particular communities and the public interests ofstate, but only because every subject has already been distantifrom his or her immediate membership (even before his indivibirth) through the existence of the state or public sphere.modern states, this constitution of subjectivity, which is a permantension between memberships and citizenship, takes the formindividual property, personal choice of profession and opinifree play of alternative loyalties offered by churches, family school, political parties and unions, or in more abstract termcomplex equality,which altogether form a civil society, supporand loosely controlled by the state but no t identified with its cenapparatus, as Locke, Hegel, Tocqueville, Gramsci, and MichWalzer have explained, each in his own way.

    Fictive or total universality is effective as a means of integratioit demonstrates its own universality, so to speak - because it ledominated groups to struggle against discriminationor inequalitthe very name of the superior values of the community: the legal ethical values of the state itself (notably: ustice). This is clearlycase when, in the name of equal opportunity for all human indiuals, feminist movements attack the discriminative patriarchaland customs which protect the authoritarian structure of the mdominated famly, while extending it to the whole professional cultural realm. It is also the case when dominated ethnic groupreligious denominations demand equality in the name of the pralistic or liberal values which the state officially incorporates inconstitution. And it was clearly demonstrated throughout the niteenth and twentieth centuries by the way class struggles forcednation-state to acknowledge specific rights of labour and incorpate them in to the constitutional order. The process wa s Mam

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    162 POLITICS AND THE OTHER SCENE AMBIGUOUS UNIVERSALITY but the result was Hegelian.By taking part in the organized classstruggle (and first of all by imposing their right to join forcesagainst exploitation), workers ceased to form a simple dominatedinternallyexcluded mass; they individualized themselves, and cre-ated new mediations for the state. To confront the hegemonicstructure by denouncing the gap or contradiction between itsofficial values and its actual practice -with greater or lesser success- s the most effective way of enforcing its universality.

    Now we should not forget the counterpar t of this form ofuniversality: it is indeed nmal i za t ion. This, of course, is wherethings become more ambiguous. Hegemony liberates the individualfrom immediate membersh ip, but which individual? It requires anddevelops subjectivity, but which subjectivity? One which is compati-ble with normality. Within the boundaries of fictive universality, afree individual (enjoying freedom of conscience and initiative, andalso, in a more material sense, such liberties as possession ofpersonal belonging, a right to privacy, and a right to speak on thepublic stage, to be educationally and professionally competitive,and so on) has to be normal n several senses. He o r she has to bementally healthy, that is, to conform to ways of reasoning andprivate behaviour which do not disturb the standard patterns ofcommunication. He o r she has to conform to the dominant sexualpatterns (or , if this is not the case, to hide his o r her sexual habits,therefore leading a schizophrenic existence; or, in the very bestcircumstances, to live them openly, albeit in the framework of somestigmatized sub cul t~r e) .~e or she has to be moral or conscien-tious and, of course, obey the legal rules against criminal behaviour.In saying all this, I a m not taking a moral stance pr o or contra theexistence of the normal subject, I a m simply reiterating that nor-mality is the standard price to be paid for the universalistic libera-tion of the individual from immediate subjection to primarycommunities. For normality is not the simple fact of adoptingcustoms and obeying rules or laws: it means internalizing represen-tations of the human type or the human subject (no t exactly anessence, but a norm and a s tandard way of behaving) in order to berecognized as a person in ones own right - o become presentable

    (fit to be seen) in order to be represented. To become respon(fit to be answered) in order to be respected.

    This allows us to understand why the key structures of hegem- the deep structures of hegemonic reason - are always famstructures, educational and judicial institutions: not so mbecause they inculcate dominant opinions or maintain authoriian traditions, but because they immediately display the symbpatterns of normality and responsibility n everyday life: the norsexual difference and complementarity of genders, the norhierarchy of intellectual capacities and models of rational discouthe normal distinction between honesty and criminality, or betwfair and illegal ways of acquiring power and wealth (in short, wthe moral tradition called natural law). This is not to say that normal society everybody is normal, or that there is no deviaor hypocrisy, but that anyone who is not normal has tosegregated or repressed or excluded,or to hide himselfor hersor to play a double game one way or another. This is the latcondition which allows otherness or difference to become igrated within a total ideology or hegemony. It also reveals wremains the internal obsession of every hegemony: neither simple fact of conflicts, not even radical social antagonisms, howthreatening they can be for the ruling classes; nor, on the othand, the existence of deviant groups , or radical movemedirected against moral and cultural norms, but, rather, the comnation of both which takes place whenever individuality canclaimed only on condition of challenging the social forms (or ruof normality. But this leads me to examine another concepuniversality, which I call ideal universality.

    Universality as a SymbolAgain, some misunderstandings should be avoided here. Insteasymbolic, perhaps I should say ideal or idealistic universabecause what is at stake is not ano ther degree of fiction. It is, ratthe fact that universality also exists us an ideal, in the form

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    164 POLITICS AND THE OTHER SCENE AMBIGUOUS UNIVERSALITYabsolute or infinite claims which are symbolically raised against thelimits of any institution.

    Perhaps it should be suggested that, in fact, fictive universalitycould never exist without a latent reference to ideal universalityor, as acques Derrida might put it, some spectre which can never bedeconstructed. Justice as an institution may not only require thatsubjectivity be formed when individuals internalize common oruniversal values. It may also require, at a deeper level, to be rootedin some open or latent insurrection, which gave subjectivity itsinfinite character o r (against every form of social status) equatedit with a quest for absolute iberty.

    In Marxist terms, this would be the problem of how dominantideologies are constitu ted with respect to the consciousness ofdominant and dominated people. Marxs original formulation (inT h German Ideology), aqserting that the dominant ideology is alwaysthe ideology of the dominant class, is hardly tenable: not only doesit make ideology a mere duplicate or ref lection of economic power(thus making it impossible to understand how ideological domi-nation can contribute to real domination, or add something to it) ,but precludes the possibility of explaining how any social consent orconsensus can be forced , except by trick, mystification, deception,and so on - hat is, catgories borrowed from a fantasmatic psychol-ogy. The alternative seems to be to reverse the pattern, and proposethe (only apparently) paradoxical idea that the necessary conditionfor an ideology to become dominant is that it should elaborate thevalues and claims of the social majority, become the discourse ofthe dominated (distorted o r inverted as it may appear). Society, orthe dominant forces in society, can speak to the masses in thelanguage of universalistic values (rights, justice, equality, welfare,progress. . ), because in this language a kernel remains whichcame from the masses themselves, and is returned to them.

    This formulation, however, certainly does not eliminate everymystery, if only because the authentic discourse of the dominated,prior to any hegemonic use, cannot be isolated as such. It appearsmainly as a forgotten origin, or is testified to not so much byactual words as by practical resistance, the irreducible being thereof the dominated., . The actual relationship between dominant

    and dominated in the field of ideology must remain ambivalenhistory, but there is undoubtedly a meaning of universality whicintrinsically inked with the notion of insurrection,in the broad se(insurgentsare those who collectively rebel against dominationthe name of freedom and equality). This meaning I call i&universality- not only because it supports all the idealistic philophies which view the course of history as a general processemancipation, a realization of the idea of man (or the humessence, or the classless society, etc.) , but because it introduces notion of the unconditionalinto the realm of politics.

    A crucial example - perhaps the only one, if we admit thacould be formulated several times in different places and epocand in different words - is the proposition concerning humrights which is expressed in the classical bourgeois eighteencentury Declarations or Bills. More precisely, it is the propositwhich reverses the traditional relationship between subjection acitizenship, and justifies the universal extension of political (cirights (or the general equivalence of citizen and man, n classterminology), by explaining that equality and liberty are inseparabin some sense identical - notions. I call this proposition equberty [kguZib&f, after an old Roman formula [aequa libertas] whhas never ceased to haunt political philospohy in modern timfrom Tocqueville to Rawls (see Balibar 1994).What is striking his that equaliberty is an all-or-nothing notion: it cannot be relaized, according to historical or cultural conditions, but it is thereit is not there, it is recognized or ignored (asa principle - or bettas a demand).

    Again, universality in this sense has both an extensive and intensive aspect. The extensive aspect lies in the fact that humrights cannot be limited or restricted in their application: therean inherent contradiction in the idea that not every human beienjoys rights which are constitutive of humanity. Hence the prolytic or expansive aspect of the ideal of equaliberty (which, adiscourse, can cover very different practices). Expansion caninterpreted in a geographical sense, but above all in a sociologone, meaning that no group is by nature outside the claim rights. Of course, this is all the more revealing when, in politic

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    168 POLITICS AND THE OTHER SCENE AMBIGUOUS UNIVERSALITY 1universalistic dimension per se: although at first it mobilizes mem-bers of the oppressed group, it can achieve its goals only if itbecomes a general movement, if it aims at changing the wholefabric of society. Inasmuch aswomen struggling for parity transformresistance into politics, they are not trying to win particular rightsfor a community, which would be the community of women.From the emancipatory standpoint, gender is not a community. Orperhaps I should say that the only gender which is a community isthe masculine, inasmuch asmales establish institutions and developpractices to protect old privileges (and I should add: by doing so,males virtually transform political society into an affective com-munity, where processes of identification can take place).gAs SusanWolf rightly argues, there is nothing like a womensculture in thissense in which anthropologists talk about the culture of a com-munity (be it ethnic or social/professional). On the other hand,however, every community is structured around a certain form ofrelationship between genders, specific forms of sexual, affective,and economic subjection. Hence it must be recognized that theposition of women (both the real position in the division ofactivities and distribution of powers, and the symbolic positionwhich is presented in discourse) is a structural element whichdetermines the character of every culture, be it the culture of aparticular group, a social movement, or a whole society with itsinherited civilization.

    Womens struggle for parity, therefore, being a complex strugglefor nondifferentition within non-discrimination, creates a solidanty(or achieves citizenship) without creating a community. In Jean-Claude Milners terms, women are typically a paradoxical class:neither united by the imaginary of resemblance, of natural kin-ship, nor called by some symbolic voice, which would allow them toview themselves as an elect group. Rather, this struggle virtuallytransforms the community. It is therefore immediatelyuniversalistic,and this allows us to imagine that it could transform the very notionof politics, including forms of authority and representation, whichsuddenly appear particularistic (not to speak of the forms ofnationhood, including their typical connection with warfare).

    I think that this kind of argument has a critical impact on

    discussions about minorities minority rights, and also - at leindirectly- multiculturalismand cultural conflicts. The ambivalstory of conjunctural unity and long-term divergences between temancipatory struggles of women and the movements of nationethnic o r cultural liberation (no t to speak of religious revival) hnever, to my knowledge, been written in a comprehensive mannThe contradictions are not less important here than they were (aare ) between working-class struggle and feminism, especially whethe former has become a defensive movement which aims protecting a working-class culture within the broader framewoof national hegemony.

    This, however, should not lead us to simplistic conclusions. Othe one hand, we should admit that the contradiction is not merempirical, or accidental. It is a contradiction in the principthemselves. As a consequence, we should not keep using sunotions as minority and difference in a manner which is itsundifferentiated. If women are a minority, this cannot be in tsame sense as cultural, religious and ethnic minorities. If they aconsidered to be the majority, or to represent the interests of tmajority in a given period, this cannot be in the same sense which, when I was discussing real universality, I said that netransnational cultures are becoming potentially majoritarian inworld of increasing migrations and mixtures.

    On the other hand, however, this recognition of the inntension between differences which lies at the root of many dispointing results of utopian discourses about the new citizenshcannot lead us to the proposition that cultural struggles, expreing a demand for autonomy, or recognition, or equality of comunities which have long been excluded from politirepresentation, and are still torn between opposing politics exclusion and assimilation (like communities of migrants), aparticularistic by their very nature. According to circumstances, thcan have a universalistic component, clearly, in all the three dirtions which I have been examining. From the point of view of runiversality, first, because they can play a direct role in challengithe internal exclusion on a world scale that continuously recrearacism. From the point of view of Jictive universality, second, becau

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    17 0 P O L I T I C S A N D T H E O T H E R S C E N E AMBIGUOUS UNIVERSALITYthey can constitute a struggle for broadening the spectrum ofpluralism, and therefore expanding sutyectivity, or challenging theways of life and thought which have raised above society the self-image of some historically privileged group, under the name ofreason. From the point of view of ideal universality,finally, becausediscrimination between cultures (not only class cultures, but alsoethnic cultures from West and East, North and South, etc.) isusually also (a nd perhaps first and foremost) a way of reproducingintellectual difference and hierarchies, or a de facto privileging ofthose men, women, and above all children, who are more con-genial to established standards of communication. This is some-thing which has always been conflictual in national societies (withtheir colonial and imperial dependencies), but it becomes trulyexplosive in a transnational environment. Once again we realizethat in politics there are realities, fictions and ideals, but there areno essences.

    The threefold meaning of universality which I have described isaporetic (at least, so it seems to me). There is no final answer. Buteach point can have some practical implications.I distinguished, in a somewhat Lacanian way, three instances ofuniversality: universality as eality, universality as$ction, and universaliqas a symbol (m a n deal).They are never isolated, independent of oneanother, but they remain irreducible, and make sense in differentrealms.

    Real universality is a process which creates a single world bymultiplying the interdependencies between the units - be theyeconomic, political or cultural - that form the network of socialactivities today. What is now called globalization s only the back-lash of an age-old process, constantly fostered by capitalist expan-sion, which started with the constitution of rival national units, atleast in the core of the worlduconomy. They are still with us today- very much so - but they can no longer provide models for theworld-scale institutions and community-building processes now onthe horizon. I suggested that this has not only political but alsophilosophical consequences, because it renders obsolete the classi-

    cal cosmopolitan utopias which relied upon the idea of a spirrealm beyond state institutions, since these intellectual construchave now been virtually overtaken by real universalization iAbove all, I insisted on two points. First, that globalization exbates minority status, but at the same time makes it more difffor a growing number of individuals or groups to become classwithin simpk denominations of identities. Second, that the immed- and probably lasting - effect of the blurring of borders betwnations, empires, and former blocs is a dramatic increasinterethnic or p seudoet hnic conflicts,-mainly expressed and sotyped in cultural terms. I could rephrase the whole thing by sathat in this context idatities are more than ever used as stratboth defensive and aggressive, and this means imposing such itities both upon others and upon oneself. The kind of strategieare confronted with could not be understood if we did not stantly remember that the play of difference is underpinned overdetermined by the general pattern of imqualities, both(notably those coming from colonialism and imperialism) andinequalities, arising from the at least partial disintegrationnational-social states. As a consequence, the politics of identitthe strategies of identitydefence are ultimately means of resiinequality, or universality as inequality. But the reverse is also we cannot imagine that the struggle against inequalities in a alized world will ever solve the problem of cultural diversity,therefore put an end to resistance to uniformization and homnization. How can we universalize resistance without reinforcinginsistence on exclusive identity and otherness which the syalready produces and instrumentalizes?

    The re is no given theoretical solution to this riddle. We very cautiously imagine that the practical solution arises progsively from the fact that not aU cultural diversities are ethnic. Thereindeed new, postethnic or post-national, cultural identities eming, just as there are o ld cultural identities reviving (e.g. religioWe may also derive hope from the fact that diversities othercultural are competing with them in the self-identificationof induals (above all, gender identities and sexual diversities: thereexcellent indications of this in Connolly)

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    172 POLITICS AND THE OTHER SCENE AMBIGUOUS UNIVERSALITYThe othe r two concepts of universality which I distinguished areficti ve universality and ideal universality.By fictive universality I mean

    the kind of universality which was involved in the constitution ofsocial h p n i a , and therefore always based upon the existence ofstate institutions, be they traditional and religious, or modern andsecular. The ambivalence of universality here takes the form of atypical combination (asHegel would say) between the liberation ofindividual subjectivity from narrow communitarian bonds, and theimposition of a normal- that is, normative and normalized-patternof individual behaviour. I stressed the fact that although - or,rather, because - this is constructed, there is a true element ofuniversality here: namely, the fact that a political hegemony, whichin the modern world has taken the secular form of nationalcitizenship, creates the possibility for individuals to escape theimpossible oscillation or contradiction between two impossibleextremes: an absolute reduction of personal identity to one role ormembership, and a permanent floating - we might call it postmod-ern -between multiple contingent identities offered by the culturalmarket. But the very high price to be paid for that (some believethey pay it easily; others become aware of the real cost) is not onlynormality, but also exclusion: in the form of both internal exclusion- suppression of ones own desires and potential - and externalexclusion - uppression of deviant behaviour and groups. There isno doubt in my mind that the kind of substantialcollective identitywhich is created by the functioning of hegemonic institutions (whatI have called Jictztive ethnic$ in the case of the nation-state, or animaginary community beyond private or particular membership[see Balibar and Wallerstein]) is a key structure of the whole systemof normalization and exclusion, precisely because it is ( or was once)a powerful instrument for opening a space for liberties, especiallyin the form of social struggles and democratic demands. Hence thepermanent tension of this historical form of citizenship. Now thecrucial problem emerges precisely when the process of globalizationmakes it progressively more impossible to organize hegemony(purely) within the national framework, or requires, if democracy isto be preserved or reconstructed, that it take post-national ortransnational forms. We should not underestimate the fact that this

    is the main reason why fictive universality in this ngnrstowards particularism, or national identity virtuallyh ts 6monic character - its (even limited) pluralist capacities -become another form of onedimensional den tity.

    Finally, I called ideal universality the subversive element which tphilosophers called negativity.It may have been necessary to gmany political hegemony historically on the experience of revolutiin the broad sense, or popular insurrection. But on the other hansuch a negativity goes beyond any institutional citizenship, by posithe infinite question of equality and liberty together, or the i mpsibility of actually achieving freedom without equality, or equawithout liberty. I insisted on the fact that such an ideal of univerity, which has emerged again and again throughout history (atherefore seems to be irrepressible), is transindividual nature. Ia question not of speaking the established language of politics,playing the game according to its well-known rules, but of colltively breaking through the limits of public communication means of a new language. The best examples in this sense are thoof the paradoxical classes which claim the rights of a particugroup not in the name of this very peculiarity, but because discrimination or exclusion appears to involve a negation of humuniversality as such: the classical proletariat, and women, engageda movement for parity or equality-indifference. I do not excluthe possibility that other social movements have a universal compnent in this sense - that is, aim at removing some univerdiscrimination by ,asserting the rights of (and to) some fundamendifference. But I want to emphasize that there is no preestablishharmony between such different ideals, although each of theundoubtedly embodies one aspect of universality. Possibly should admit that in a very deep sense (affecting the very notionhumankind), he iakal universal is multiple by nature - not in tsense of being relative, ess than unconditional, bound to compmise, but, rather, in the sense of being always-already beyond asimple or absolute unity, and therefore a permanent sourceconflict. This has obvious practical consequence, notably the noexistence of a n y spontaneous o r natural force of heterogeneominorities against the dominant universality, or the system

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    174 POLITICS AND THE OTHER SCENE AMBIGUOUS UNIVERSALITYsuch. This in turn does not mean that unity (or common goals)cannot be constructed in given circumstances. But here we comeback to the question of choice, and the risk orjinitude of choice,whichI mentioned when I wa s discussing the ambivalence of ideals. It isthe same problem. Philosophy can give a name to it, but philosophycannot solve it.

    NotesThis essay is an abridged and slightly revised.version of the paper presented on18 February 1994 at the Conference Cultural Diversities: On Democracy,Community and Citizenship, The Bohen Foundation, New York. An amendedand expanded version wa s published in Etienne Balibar, La Crainte des masses.Politiqzu et phih oph ie avant et up& Mum (Paris: Galilee, 1997).

    1. This was also part of the lesson taught by such anthropologists as RogerBastide a generation ago.2. As laid out in his hctures on the Phibsophy of H i s t q , and mainly hisPhilosophy of Rzght, 3rd Part (142-360).

    3. This is not to say that there are no movements in history which aim atmessianic identification of individual minds on a religious or national basis.But precisely these movements are excessive and partial; they are hardlycompatible with social normality and the building of institutions in the longrun - with the routinization of charisma, as Weber put it. On the notion ofpluralismas a national name for hegemony in American history, see Zunz.

    4. This last case is clearly decisive: class loyalties, especially working-classloyalty, becomes a decisive pillar of national hegemony as soon as it is trans-formed into a particular culture and a political opinion or set of opinionsUrithinthe political system, whose contribution to the national history or spirit isofficially recognized in the (national-) social state. The ideological process ofhegemonic integration transforms dzffmence - that is, class antagonism - intoparticularism, a simple class culture: this is indeed easier when that class cultureis also an ethnic or quasiethnic one. Hence the ambivalence of ethnicity inimmigration states: it is the background both of their collective resistance againstexploitation, and of their integration (sometimes their desire for integration,called recognition) into the national unit. See Noiriel.5. This is where a critical discussion of the opposite gfe cts of real universalityand fictive universality is very relevant: subcultures and deviant behaviourcan be valorized by the market, in given economic condit ions, whereas they arealways stigmatized by hegemonic state morals. For twenty years now, the USAhas been a fascinating arena for this contradiction.

    6. Of course, I choose these terms to show the opposition between this

    conception of universality- which, I think, is a constant in the interpretatidemocracy as insurrection, both from the English-American and the Fpoint of view - and the problem from which John Rawls deduces his retheory of justice in recent writings. He would certainly not deny the oppohimself. However, whether Kants philosophy stands completely on one sthe debate might be less easy to decide.7. This contradiction had its collective counterpart in revolts or concies, but also its subjective result in madness: see Roudinesco.8. For the combination of liberty and equality inasmuch as it concernrelationship between genders in society- hat is, has a political meaning -French feminists use the term parity.9. This in turn requires that they impose _disciplinary sexual roles notupon others, but also upon themselves: normality, the figure of political pis homosexual; the figure of family bond is heterosexual. Whether a posociety which is not a community can exist, and what form the play of awould take there, remains a very mysterious question.

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