Postmodernismand Democracy: Learningfrom Lyotard and Lefort

PatrickF. McKinlay
Morningside College
Jean-Francois Lyotard's postmodernapproachhas stumbledagainst the criticism that it fails to generate concrete proposals for political action or analysis. Focusing on his articulationof a politics of of Kant'sCritiqueof Judgment,I argue that Lyotard's identhe sublime and his unique interpretation tification of the differend opens new avenues of questioning the experimental and heterogeneous potential of democraticpractice. Claude Lefort rephrasesthe significance of the political and challenges the mainstreamdemarcationof political science. A postmodernanalysis of democracyreveals a provocativeand compelling interpretation of its meaning that testifies to its uncertainand indeterminate character.An analysis informed by Lyotard and Lefort advocates alternative forms of democraticpracticeand suggests the need for additionalresearchon instances of marginaldemocratic action often neglected in researchon democratization.

In the last 15 to 20 years beginning perhapswith Salazar'scollapse and the transitionto democracy on the IberianPeninsula we have witnessed an extraAt the same time, ordinaryglobal shift towarddemocracyand democratization. both the communist and socialist Left has experienceda gradualbut sometimes dramaticerosion of political power, best exemplified by the fall of the Soviet Union and the transition to liberal democracy in Eastern Europe. One might the undoing of the argue that we have watched the passing of a metanarrative, Marxist-Leninistorthodoxy.In this context, I want to consider what a postmodern perspectiveoffers to the analysis of contemporary political questions. In spite of the apparent"victory"of a liberal-capitalist-Western world order, there still is an opportunityfor articulatingan alternativeto neoconservativismin political life andneoliberalismin publicpolicy.While therearea varietyof important voices in the Americandialogue on democratictheory, insufficientattention those in Francerephas been given to a numberof Europeanscholars,particularly resentative of noncommunist and postmodern approaches. While the French the conpolitical and intellectualLeft has experiencedtremendousfragmentation, text of internal dissent has also produced an impressive mix of perspectives.
I want to thankMarionDoro and CharlotteDaniels for commentingon earlierdraftsof this essay. An earlierdraftof this essay was presentedat the annualmeeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy at Seattle, WA, in October 1994.
THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, Vol. 60, No. 2, May 1998, Pp. 481-502 ? 1998 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819

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In this essay, I focus on two of these thinkers.Claude Lefort and Jean-Francois Lyotardhave advocated a noncommunist agenda in France for more than 40 years.1 Lefort, in particular,concentrates on the characterof democracy as a "form of society" that enables critical reflection and activism, which I demonstrateoffers a directionfor a post-Marxistprogressivedemocraticpolitics. At the same time, I believe Lefort'swork shares a conception of the political with that articulated by Jean-FrancoisLyotard in philosophical and aesthetic terms. I work on heterogeneityandjudgmentto bear on poarguethat bringingLyotard's our understanding litical action presents in microcosm the task of reinvigorating of democraticpolitics. While the two may not share the same specific project, Lefort and Lyotardadvocate a critical reflectionabout the political, which challenges standardconceptions of politics and suggests new avenues of inquiry about democracy.The political must be distinguishedfrom politics because the latterremainsconstrainedby the parametersof social scientific inquiry,whereas of a realm of action and appearance the former invites a broaderinterpretation of civil society. Postmodernism,while recognized as a "legitimate"approachto art, architecture, and literary theory, has stumbled against the criticism that it fails to generateconcreteproposalsfor political action or analysis. In this paper,I do not claim to presenta general reconstructionof postmodernism.Postmodernismhas been appropriatedby so many different thinkers and disciplines it would be futile and against its deconstructive"principle"to identify one definitive postmodem politics. As I have already suggested, I have a more modest goal: a possible interpretationof Lyotard'swork that suggests certain parallels with Lefort. In its formulation,I will begin to articulatean "application" of postmodernism or something akin to a political phenomenologyof democraticpractice. The paper will have the following structure.Although Jean-FrancoisLyotard has written extensively on many concrete political issues, my first focus will be on his conception of postmodernismand his articulationof a politics of the sublime that is the centerpieceof his interpretation of Kant'sCritiqueof Judgment.2 Second, instead of conductinga systematic analysis of Lefort'swork, I will concentrate on his conception of democracy. I believe a postmodern analysis of democracy reveals a provocativeand compelling interpretation of its meaning. More specifically,if we begin to appreciatethe uncertainand indeterminate character of democracy,then it becomes possible to articulatealternativeconceptions
'Both Claude Lefort and Jean-Francois Lyotardwere active members of a working group, Socialism au Barberie (roughly translatedas Socialism either/orBarbarism),that broke with the French CommunistParty in the late 1940s and contributedto the articulationof a Marxist analysis and activism that resisted the Party's proclivities toward Stalinism and worked against all forms of in contemporarysociety. For more on Socialism au Barberie,see Lyotard(1993), bureaucratization Castoriadis(1988), and Howard(1988). 2For examples of Lyotard's explicit political views, see Lyotard(1993), a volume that covers much of Lyotard'scareer and includes articles on the student movements in 1968, his reflections on the Holocaust, the Algerian war, the Gulf War,and a variety of other issues.

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of democraticpractice and acknowledge otherwise invisible expressions of democratic action. Building on the work of Lyotardand Lefort, I demonstratethe salience of postmodernapproachesto the task of acknowledging,understanding, and evaluatingnew experimentsin democratictheory and practice. Heterogeneity and a Politics of Judgment British and Americanreadersof Jean-Francois Lyotardhave been fortunatein the last few years to have gained access to a number of his most recent books and articles (1992, 1993, 1994). Although many political topics are treated in these works, I am concerned only with how Lyotard'sconception of postmodernism challenges our categories for reflectionon and definitionof the political. For instance, what can we learn from Lyotard's ideas on the status of politics as a science? How does Lyotard'swork on Kant and aesthetics open new avenues for reflection on politics, difference, and democracy?How is what he terms the differenda fruitfulconcept for thinking about democracy?Finally,in what ways does Lyotard's work fail to provide sufficientresourcesfor a theory of democratic politics? The heart of Lyotard's explanationof the postmoderncondition is the linkage between politics and difference. In the face of the totalization of a Hegelian speculativemetanarrative, Lyotardadvocatesa presentationof the unpresentable, a sustainedattentionto difference and heterogeneity. This approachis consistent with Lyotard'sNietzschean appeal to an agonistics that resists the desire to reduce all language games to one standard of evaluation, performativity (see Lyotardand Thebaud 1985; Lyotard1989). The postmoderndraws our attention to the instability of our criteria for judgment. This instability does not remove our ability to judge; ratherthe postmodernemphasizes the faculty of imagination, the effort to experimentand create again new criteriafor judgment.Lyotard calls this form of experimentation "paralogy."His paralogical approach is summed up in a response to JiirgenHabermas'effort to generatea consensus on the possible moves in our language games:
Consensus has become an outmoded and suspect value. But justice as a value is neither outmoded nor suspect. We must thus arriveat an idea and practice of justice that is not linked to that of consensus. (1984, 66)

Lyotardrejects the modernist pretensions of Habermas'model of universal pragmatics. Universal pragmatics assumes the counterfactualexistence of an ideal speech situationwherein truthclaims can be tested by groups of individuals unhindered by power relations resulting from systematically distorted communication.3 deconstructsthe linchpinof Habermas' Lyotard project,the goal of consensus. He argues that justice cannot be assured by a scientific analysis
3For a more detaileddiscussion of the ideal speech situation,see Habermas(1979, 1990, 1993, and

1994).

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of language games because prescriptiveand descriptivediscourses have heterogeneous and incommensurablerules. In The Postmodern Condition Lyotard to modern science a drive towardunivoexplores the implicationsof attributing cal, prescriptiverules for research. Borrowing Wittgenstein'sidea of language games, Lyotarddifferentiatesbetween denotative games (knowledge) and prescriptivegames (action). Lyotardcriticizes both Niklas Luhmannand Habermas for attemptingto circumscribethe task of legitimationwith the principleof conthis approachrests on two assumptions:first, that sensus. According to Lyotard, a it is possible to determine universalrule for a set of language games; second, that the goal of dialogue is consensus. In reference to the first point, language games are subject to heterogeneous and incommensurablesets of pragmatic rules. Second, Lyotardis interestedin the search for dissensus, not consensus.4 The paralogicalgoal of social science, for Lyotard,is to continue pressing the of society.As a counterpointto Habermas' claims of an alternativeinterpretation vision of peaceful deliberationabout validity claims, Lyotardrecognizes the always contested terrainof justice. One may criticize his descriptionof justice as "games"because this approachseems to "trivialize"the very "serious"implications of injustice. However,I believe both Habermasand John Rawls minimize aboutjustice can just how dangerous,violent, and uncooperativeargumentation become. For example, Lyotarddefines terroras a political economy that eliminates, or threatens to eliminate a player from a language game. A univocal epistemology implies that some approaches fail to meet the objective criteria and, therefore, make prescriptiveclaims that distinguish, exclude, and silence In Just Gaming (1985), Lyotardargues that science competing "paradigms."5 must be aimed towardparalogy,towardfinding new moves or alternativeinterpretations.Postmodernismdoes not seek final iterationbut maintainsa creative focus on the denotativedescriptionof the world. While Lyotardseems to be emphasizing only language games, his turn toward a politics of phrases in The Differend indicates a general concern with all forms of regulation, determina4Lyotardfocuses on dissensus ratherthan consensus because he is interested in breakingup the hegemony of one language game over another.Indeed,the search for dissensus is his response to the differend. Lyotardargues that a search for consensus risks placing one standardor rule over and above any new phrase, that is, forcefully legitimating the exclusion of alternative voices. In Habermas'defense, the goal of undistortedcommunicationis precisely aimed at defending the right of all interlocutorsto continue participationin the discourse. What Habermasassumes but Lyotard discounts is that agreement on the conditions for free communicationare in principle identifiable. Lyotard,following Adomo's pessimism "afterAuschwitz," doubts the real possibility for rational consensus and expects the prospect for incommensurability between phrases. See Lyotard(1989). 5David Carroll(1987) offers a very helpful insight into the differencebetween forms of combination of languagegames. Some combinationslead to the silencing of one languagegame to the benefit that conof another.Others,especially throughthe art of literature,allow a form of experimentation tinues to attest to the heterogeneity of language games. Indeed, argues Carroll (1987), "Lyotard's ultimatecritical projectis, itself, concernedwith the impossibletheorizingof the untheorizable,with linking and combining elements, games, faculties, etc. that are fundamentally(that is, categorically) incommensurable without destroyingtheir incommensurability" (163-64).

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tion, and linkage of phrases. I agree with David Carrollthat this shift of terminology from language games to phrases moves the discussion away from distinctionbetween games to the problemof the linkages of phrases/gameswith one another(Carroll 1987, 164-65). Lyotard'sattentionto linkages exposes the problem of the relation between phrases (any particularvoice) that may be silenced by that relationship. What is the rule that governs that interaction? Lyotardassesses the problem of linkages through his distinction between the modern and the postmodern. The postmodernis distinct from the modern because it acknowledges its own lack of criteria.The constanttask for the postmodernis to "decide what is just," what is obligatory.The obligatory enunciates a prescriptive.For example, according to Lyotard, political science (since Hobbes) is modern, because it primarilyseeks denotative or descriptive knowledge and attempts to justify a particular conception of justice on the basis of its descriptionof what is. Lyotard returns again and again to modernity's logic of justice. Modernity has been or stories that claim univercharacterized by a set of competing metanarratives sal status and that grant all other stories their true meaning. A metanarrative, lacking a groundfor its own legitimation for example, the progressiveemancipation of freedom and reason, the progressive emancipation of labor, or the enrichmentof humanitythroughthe progressof capitalisttechnoscience looks for its legitimationin a futurethat has to be accomplished,an Idea of humanity, or Habermas'project of modernity(Lyotard1992, 17-18). A metanarrative seeks its own legitimationor justificationof criteriain the reduction and subjection of anothernarrative.All of these cases assume that one for the purpose of supplying a discourse or language game can be appropriated justification for anotherdiscourse. Lyotardcalls this situationthe differend.Bill Readings gives a ratherhelpful gloss on the differend:
A point of difference where the sides speak radically different or heterogeneous languages, where the dispute cannot be phrasedin either language without, by its very phrasing,prejudgtwo ing the issue for that side, being unjust.Between two languagegames, two little narratives, phrases,there is always a differendwhich must be encountered.(1991). xxx

An importantcase of the differendinvolves the statusof judgmentbetween the recent reand the faculty of reason. Much of Lyotard's faculty of understanding searchhas concentratedon the problematicin Kant'scriticalphilosophybetween understanding (knowing) and reason (willing) and the abyss that separatesthem (see Lyotard1989, 1994). For Kant, the only means of traversingthis divide is throughreferenceto the faculty of judgment. However,both former faculties require that judgment supply a demonstration,a presentationthat refers to the criteria each respective faculty utilizes for its own justification. The faculty of the locus of Kant'spolitics. Judgmentis reflecjudgmentis, accordingto Lyotard, tive and indeterminate, because it does not rest on principles or on a method of In the case of the faculties of understanding demonstration. and reason, one may

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attemptto link phrasesfrom the faculty of knowledge (description)with phrases from the faculty of will (prescription) providingthe mechanismby which the criteria for judgment are sedimentedinto a specific and determinateconception of describeshow the demandthatthe vicreality.In one case of the dijferend, Lyotard tims of Auschwitz "prove"their suffering in clear, demonstrableterms denies them the possibility of provingtheir claim (see Lyotard1989). Lyotard'sgoal then is to testify to the differend,to continually announce its presence.This is the task or obligationof philosophy.Philosophyor judgmentrequiresno rules; rather,it sets itself againstthe dominanceof any metanarrative's "pretension to dominance"over other language games (Readings 1991, 123). At this point it becomes clear what the political implicationsof judgment, the differend, and paralogy might be. Lyotardpresents an alternativeconception of science that does not merely seek regularityor maintenanceof dominantparadigms; on the contrary,he advocates an experimentalattitudetowardscience. It is guided by the ever present obligationto announcethe limitationsof representative thought.This constantobligation is always watchful for instances where a a discipline, or a traditionseeks to incorporateand discursively metanarrative, silence another.6 Giving attentionto the differend,whereverit occurs, places philosophy in the center of the search for justice. Lyotarddoes not assume there is a status quo of justice; rather,he understandsthat in the modern world full with rules, procedures,and legitimationsof the social order there is a constant need for watchfulnessto what is ruled "out"by that order.The differendalways announces a political question: what are the implications of being together, of linkages, of relationsbetween addressor,addressee,and referent? However,it would seem difficult for Lyotardto advocate any particular"politics" because that would simply repeatthe problemof the differend.Politics may be understoodas the "struggle between genres" (discourses, games, faculties, phrases). But, what is more, Lyotardinstructsus in the ambiguity of the differend. It testifies to the potential for one phraseto "disarm"anotherby forcing it to adapt to its own rules of discourse. Strippedof its own capacity for expression, the weaker phrase is left with no voice to articulateinjustices. What kind of struggle is this contest of phrases?Lyotard, among others from the New Left, has sought to disavow the idea that "everythingis political."At the same time, the differendatteststo the political. AnticipatingLefort somewhat,Lyotard's differend indicates a space of presentationfor that which cannot be presented for lack of independentcriteria.The proof requiredof a cognitive phrase cannot be applied to all phrases without the real chance of damage (tort) to the other phrase. Lyotardtreats the differendas a nonspatialreference to that place, site, event of an interactionwhere somethingis excluded,obscured,silenced in the at6Forexample, Kant'saesthetics draw attentionto the heterogeneityand multiplicity of discourses and language games, as it acknowledgesthe "incommensurability" of the faculties of understanding and reason.

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temptto subsumeit undersome otherrubric.This political site, which is not necessarily a place, is an interactionthat often characterizes the task of what Lyotard calls "being together." For Lyotard,the political exists where no determinantgrounds exist to judge between two incommensurable phrases.How is judgment and action possible in this context, that is, where the standards of judgmentare missing? To what extent does a forum exist for an open contestationof phrases? It is my argumentthat Lyotard'sapproachimplies both a radical commitmentto heterogeneityand an idea of democracythattestifies to the differend. Lyotardis still criticalof instances where the "people"become the law, that is, cases proclaiminglegitimacy for any injusticeto the individualwho resists the general will (see Readings 1991, 110). In this context, one central task for political thought is the constant search for instances where democracy inhibits, facilitates, embodies the contestation of phrases, genres, discourses. At the same time, the journal editor or the policymaker may ask: "Do you have any concrete suggestions to make based on this esoteric conception of democracy?"If the postmodern political theorist says "Yes," then to what extenthas she or he assumedthe existence of determinatecriteria for judgment? Or, if she or he says "No," then to what extent will postmodernsdefer choice and action? It is in the context of this line of questioning that I wish to begin my parallelconsiderationof the work of ClaudeLefort, a politicaltheoristwho, I believe, risksthese questions,as well as some alternatives. Lefort and the Political Lyotard'spolitics of the differendare not dissimilar from Claude Lefort's efforts to redefine the political as part of a revival of political philosophy.Lefort believes it is necessary to redefinethe political in light of certain "momentous" events and changes in our era, especially the emergence of totalitarianismand of the social realm. Lefort's work contributesto a philothe bureaucratization sophical reassertionof the political (la politique) in contrastto the concentration on "politics"(le politique) by political science. Lefort argues that contemporary on behaviorand strictlyobpolitical science neglects the political. Concentration jective facts-narrowly defined as political conceals and/or restricts the potential to grasp the meaning of events in the political realm. The distinction between the political and politics clarifies the truncationof meaning inherentin contemporaryanalysis. This problematicwithin political science exemplifies the question of legitimationof a language game. That is, politics as science faces the postmoderncondition;it must attendto the dissolution of its criteriafor assessing political norms and practices. Lyotard's attention to heterogeneity and paralogycomplementsLefort'sanalysis and suggests new avenues for a reinvigoratedtheorizationand practice of the political and democracy. Lefort attacks both political science and many Marxist theorists for failing to confront seriously the political. For example, Left intellectuals banished

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"freedom" fromthe discourseof science to the realmof merepublic opinion.They failed to realize the importanceof the momentousevents of this century such as fascism and Stalinism.Thinkingaboutthese events requiresa certainfreedomfor theoriststhemselves.Thus, reflectionaboutthese events demandsreflectionon the freedomto do so. Lefort criticizes those "scientists"who forfeit their opportunity to think aboutthese events by failing to engage in political philosophy.Following HannahArendtand RaymondAron, Lefortbelieves thatwe are obligatedto reflect Political philosophy has always been on the political in light of totalitarianism.7 committedto reflectingon the differencebetween freedomand despotism.While despotismmay referto a specific regime, in the case of modernpolitical science, political philosophy has the task of escaping the "servitudeof collective beliefs and to win the freedomto think about freedomin society" (Lefort 1988, 9-15). is outdated,it is crucial Against the claim that Lefort'swork on totalitarianism to appreciatethat Lefort's analysis of "forms of society" requiresa general examinationof the political realm in all institutionalstructuresand practices.With the end of the Cold War and the opposition between communist East and capitalist West, it remains necessary to critically reflect on the limitations of the While both Lyotardand contemporarypolitical, economic, and social "order." Lefort found significantflaws in the New Left, it at least initiatedan analysis of politics, institutions,and power relations that supersededthe functionalismand value-neutralbehaviorism that characterizedsocial science in the 1960s and '70s. After the Cold War,scholars in the postindustrial democraciesof the North and/orWest face the challenge of criticallyreflectingon the political without the benefit of a totalitarian"other."8 Marxist thought was cut off from political philosophy because of its eternal Marxists failed search for the "correcttheory."Since democracyis "bourgeois," to "discernfreedom in democracy"and, argues Lefort, they could not acknowledge servitude in totalitarianism. Freedom is a precondition for thinking, discerning, judging the difference between totalitarianism and democracy. Political science characterizes democraticsocieties in terms of institutions(functionally defined), distinguishing "politics" from economic and juridical activities. Political science refuses to justify the basic presuppositionson which such distinctions are based and thereby ignores the "form of society" in which this division of spheres appears and is legitimated. That is, political scientists often treattheir subjectmatteras simply given, without sufficientattentionto the social and historicalmilieu. In order to study the political meaning of the way politics itself is circumscribed, Lefort concentrates on the question of the constitution of the social
7Thisactivity of reflectionis not unlikeArendt'sdiscussion of judgmentwhere she arguedthat one can borrowfrom Kant'spolitical writings a path, not towardthe assessmentbased on epistemic truth, but on a level of political reflectionthat exceeds mere opinion (see Arendt 1982). 8Lyotard and Lefort would both agree that we need to move beyond oppositionalthinking.Indeed, Lefort would argue that the totalitarianform of society was not an absolute "other"so much as an alternativemutationin the political and/or symbolic realm.

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space or "the form of society."In contrastwith "political activity,"the political is revealed

in the double movementwherebythe mode of institutionof society appearsand is obscured.It [the political] appears in the sense that the process whereby society is ordered and unified across divisions becomes visible. It is obscuredin the sense that the locus of politics (the locus in which parties compete and in which a general agency of power takes shape and is reproduced) becomes defined as particular, while the principle which generates the overall configurationis concealed. (Lefort 1988, 11)

Lefort argues that political science obscures the foundation of society by breakingit down into separatespheres and systems that distort its overall character.In contrast,political philosophy considers the question,What is the nature of the differencebetween forms of society? Lefortpoints out that this has always been the task of political reflection, at least since Plato's eloquent reflection on the politeia. As we learn from Plato, not all actions in the political space carry their full meaning in their open expression;rather,he calls upon Socrates'interlocutors to consider the implications of their design of the just city. Just as Plato'spoliteia was constructedfor the purpose of examiningthe just individual, it is pertinentto consider the importanceof justice and rights in Lefort's and Lyotard's respective reflections on the political. Political science conceals this question by means of its predeterminedcategories and distinctions. According to Lefort, political science cannot make determinatejudgments about politics before a society is given a form: "Giving them [dimensions of social space] form implies both giving them a meaning [mise en sens] and staging them [mise en scene]" (1988, 11). Lefort'sphenomenological analysis focuses on what appears and how our mode of inquiry is intertwinedwith the object of study.Meaning is attributed to a social space, "as a space of intelligibility articulatedin accordancewith a specific mode of distinguishing between the real and the imaginary;true and false; just and unjust;the permissible and the forbidden; the normal and the pathological." Categories within political science are staged in that they contain "the quasi-representation of [this space] as being aristocratic,monarchic, despotic, democratic,or totalitarian"(Lefort 1988, 12). A society has form to the extent that it carries with it a historicallyconstitutedself-understanding that determinesthe criteriafor judgThis criterion is itself ments, or what Lefort calls "the markers of certainty." dependentupon its embodiment in the constitution of authority,such as in the king, the people, the party,or even the constitution.9 This approachto the form of society rejects the concept of the neutralsubject (or the value-neutralobserver).Any position of observationis bound up with the
9Lefort'sfascination with the discussion of "forms of society" is reminiscentof HannahArendt's analysis of the Greeks (see Arendt 1958). Clearly, he borrows from Arendt the Aristotelian private/public distinction. Lefort is critical of political science for becoming too dependent on the methodologies of the natural sciences and for implementing a functionalist mode of inquiry that bracketsa hermeneuticsensitivity to the interrelatedness of institutions,social practices, and norms. For more on Lefort'srelationto Arendt, see Lefort (1988, 45-55).

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form of society that produces it and presupposesits own self-understanding. To attribute to neutralobserversthe possibility of sheddingtheir relationto the form of their society would be to rob them of the faculty of judgment:
Let me say simply that if we ignore distinctionsthat are basic to the exercise of the intellect on the grounds that we cannot supply their criteria,and if we claim to be able to reduce knowledge to the limits of objective science, we breakwith the philosophicaltradition.If we refuse to risk making judgments, we lose all sense of the difference between forms of society. We beneaththe cloak of a hierarchyin the then fall back on value judgments,eitherhypocritically, in the crude statementof preferdeterminantsof what we take to be the real, or arbitrarily, ences. (Lefort 1988, 12)

Lefort'sview supportsmy thesis that political science has forfeited its concern with judgment. In relying upon a neutralsubject and the criteriaof objective science, political science removes itself from the questions of freedom, democracy, and differentforms of society. It cannot ask the question, How shall we live together? Lefort, not unlike Lyotard, is concerned about the forgetfulness of modernity.In Lyotard's terms, attentionto the political requiresa constantsensitivity to the differend. That is, the denotative (objective) phrase does not acknowledge the prescriptive(normative)phrase, claiming only to review the facts of "politics."In their own respective ways, Lyotardand Lefort demandthe activity of judgment in the political,judgmentthat cannot claim certainty,but always announcesthe differend. Learning from Different Forms of Society Political philosophy investigates totalitarianismbecause it makes possible a deeper examinationof democracy.Totalitarianism results from a mutationin the symbolic order,specifically in the change of statusof power.In this form of society, the spheres of power, law, and knowledge collapse.10Power,embodied in a person or group, claims univocal authorityover the knowledge of the ultimate aims of society andthe normsregulatingsocial practices.This groupor partyis the sole interpreter of the "real"world for society. In this situation,the state merges with civil society. All social division is denied and the regime presents a selfrepresentation of the society as a completely homogenous and transparent one what Lefort calls the "People-as-One." As such, all differencesof opinion, belief, or norms arecondemnedand obliterated.Society is regulatedas if there is nothing outside the social and it has the authorityto penetrateany level of activity or thought.More thandespotism,totalitarianism is modernin character since it combines a radicallyartificialistidea with a radicallyorganicistone. The social "body" mergeswith a cyberneticand fully transparent "machine" and remainscaughtin a 11 process of "permanent mobilization"for the productionof a "newman."
0?While both Lyotardand Lefort are concernedwith the diffenend in every context, the most complete form of the differendoccurs in totalitarianism where all discourses and phrases are leveled by the univocal criteriaof the metanarrative institutedby the regime. 1 'For a more elaboratediscussion of Lefort'sanalysis of totalitarianism, see Lefort (1986, 13-14).

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It is quite feasible thatthe moderncharacterof totalitarianism may be repeated in contemporarydemocratic-capitalist regimes. The difference is that the economic sphere has apparentlyusurpedboth the social and political spheres. All political questions are phrasedand manipulatedwith respect to macroeconomic imperativesof optimum economic productivityand profitability-what Lyotard calls the metanarrative of "performativity." Lefort finds a deeper meaning of democracythrougha contrastwith totalitarianism. Democracy is not reduced to a system of institutions,but is understood as a unique form of society. Lefort believes we can learn much from Alexis de Tocqueville,who understoodhow moderndemocracyemergedfrom the background of aristocraticsociety. Tocqueville'sattentionto the difference between the ancien re'gime in France and the new American form of civil society contributes a historical perspective to Lefort's analysis. Lefort highlights a very interestingelement of Tocqueville'sstyle of inquiry:
His explorationslead him to detect the ambiguitiesof the democraticrevolutionin every domain, to make, as it were, an exploratoryincision into theflesh of the social. At every moment of his analysis, he looks at things from both sides, moves from one side of the phenomenonto the other,and reveals the undersideof both the positive-new signs of freedom-and the negative-new signs of servitude. (Lefort 1988, 14; see also Lefort 1986, 183-209)

Lefort focuses on the visible, and invisible or what reveals itself and what remains hidden, in some particular phenomena. Throughout his discussion of Tocquevilleand democracy,Lefort shows how democracyis typified by ambiguity, a lack of fixity, a possibility for reversibility.Emphasizingthis exploratory theme, Lefort and Lyotardwould agree that democracy is postmodern;it constantly opens itself to new forms and practices of experimentation.12 Lefort says this much in attributing to Tocquevillethe insight into "a society faced with the thatarises when the social orderno longerhas a basis."This generalcontradiction contradictionunfolds in how the individualmay now, in a democracy,be free to act without old constraints,and yet may also be alone, poor,and faced with dissolution of her or his identity.The reins of power no longer belong to an arbitrary authority. Instead,in a democracy,power belongs to no one. There is no determiof authority, form of society. nate representation no foundationto any particular It is in this space of contradictions and ambiguity that Lefort pushes Tocqueville's analysis further claiming that there exist counterinfluences in democracy against the petrificationof social life. These effects are seen where each new expression responds to anonymity, in the struggle for rights not
'2Lefort and Lyotardboth choose to articulate their concerns in explicitly phenomenological terms. More research remains to be conducted regarding Lyotard'sand Lefort's mutual debt to MauriceMerleau-Ponty. While Lefort often mentions the influence of Merleau-Pontyon his thought, Readings (1991) argues that Lyotard'spostmodernproject and his defense of heterogeneity can be tracedto his connectionwith the phenomenologist:"[T]hereis a crucial shift from opposition to heterogeneity as characteristicof the sign. A heterogeneity,a difference that cannot be reduced to a matter of opposition within a structureor system, is what marks Lyotard'saccount of figurality as or deconstructive" post-structuralist (12-13).

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that emerge from the capturedin formal law; by the diversity of interpretations customs and and the of dissolution hegemonic traditions; by greaterheterogeneity of-social life against the increasing dominance of the state over individuals. Examples of these countermovementsto homogenization of the democratic community are legion. The social movements of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s demanded greater attention for civil rights, women's rights, and a redefinition of state objectives with respect to the environment.Lefort presents a view of democracyaccentuatingits ambiguityand its capacityto preserveindeterminacy and totalizing thinking.Totaliagainst the monolithic identity of totalitarianism tarianismattempts to make everything determinate;it collapses all spheres of knowledge, law, and power and conceives itself as a "society without history" (Lefort 1988, 16). Against this fusion of perspectivesand voices, democracy is the "historical society par excellence," constantly affirming the legitimacy of and actions. conflicting and contrastinginterpretations Democracy,like totalitarianism,signals a mutationin the symbolic orderand a change in the status of power. In the monarchicalform of society, a theological-politicalmatrixgave the prince sovereignpower over territoryand made him of God. Powerwas embodiedin the perboth secularagency and a representative son of the prince and by means of his dual status he mediated between mortals and gods. While embodying the laws and yet standing above them, the prince also representedthe orderof the kingdom.As a substantialunity, differentiation within the kingdom rested on an unconditionalbasis. The power embodiedin the prince gave the society itself a body and a clear criterionof meaning for the soof the substantive cial order (Lefort 1988, 17).3 Lefort's mythic interpretation foundationsfor monarchicalauthorityis subject to questions regardingits historical adequacy, especially in light of the political and theological upheavals dating at least from the Reformation,if not the Magna Carta.However,his approach identifies the significance of locating the source of all legitimacy: political, theological, and epistemic. In democracy,arguesLefort,the locus of powerbecomes an empty place. This is the revolutionaryfeatureof democracy;that is, it limits the power of government to appropriate power for its own ends and permanentlyto occupy and/or embody the locus of power.The exercise of power is subjectto the proceduresof or elections. Not merely a system of institutions,it repreperiodic redistribution sents a controlledconflict with permanentrules.14 Democracy establishesthatno person (or some abstractnotion of "the people") can be consubstantialwith the

'3From Lyotard's perspective,Lefort concentrateson the breakbetween the monarchicalprinciple and the emergence of the republicanprinciple in the Revolution.This break constitutes a differend between their respective phrases for the foundationof authority.For a more detailed discussion of Lefort's interpretationof the break between religious and political authority, see Lefort (1988, 213-55). 14See Lefort's(1986) discussion of humanrights.

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locus of power. It disentangles the sphere of law and the sphere of knowledge; No one phrase/ that is, democracyinstitutesa permanentattentionto the differend. regime/party/ideology may occupy or appropriate the political realm and eliminate otherparticipantsfrom that space. Indeed,in the spiritof Lyotard's practices of agonistic play and paralogy, Lefort understandsdemocracy as the institutionalizationof conflict, or what Adam Przeworskicalls the "institutionalization of uncertainty" (1986). Withthe disincorporation of the powerof the monarchicprinciple,the spheres of law and knowledge become independentof transcendent principles of reason andjustice. The autonomyof law is guaranteedby the impossibility of establishing its essence in either knowledge or power. Justice and right develop unhindered by illegitimateconstraintsand rest on the constantdebateabouttheir foundations.The sphere of knowledge maintainsits autonomythrougha continual process of "reshaping the process of acquiring knowledge and with an investigationinto the foundationsof truth"(Lefort 1988, 18). That is, scientific and culturalreflectionmust remaindistinct from the state. Another implication of the disentanglementof these spheres is that political conflict is now legitimate on its own grounds. Free of the determinateidentity of the prince or aristocracy,a new set of political actors enter the political stage without requiringsubstantiveidentities. Lefort emphasizes the emergence of an independentcitizenry, generally led by the liberal bourgeoisie. Lefort describes this possibility as the paradox of democracy,because while universal suffrage allows the people to express their will, it also abstractsthe citizen from all social networksto become a statistic. While Lefort seems to privilege multiparty democratic competition, the emphasis is on contestation,not parties. Power is subordinatedto the conflict of collective wills. Lefort admits that democratic institutionshave been used to mask citizens' access to power, knowledge, and rights, and to legitimize the accumulationof state (or organizational'ala Robert Michels) power often in the form of bureaucraticpower. Nonetheless, democracy makes a virtue of its indeterminacy.Unlike the pluralists, he recognizes how it always holds the potential for a totalitarianmutationthat seeks to reoccupy the political space and embody a transcendentsource of legitimacy for power, law, and knowledge. Pluralistsand pragmatistsalike do not fully appreciate the precariousbalance that democracy strikes. Democracy is the society without a body that erects a stage of the political where competition can take place. For Lefort:
Democracy is institutedand sustainedby the dissolution of the markersof certainty.It inaugurates a history in which people experience a fundamentalindeterminacyas to the basis of power, law, and knowledge, and as to the basis of relations between self and other, at every level of social life. . .. It is this which leads me to take the view that, without actors being awareof it, a process of questioningis implicit in social practice,that no one has the answersto the questionsthat arise, and that the work of ideology, which is always dedicatedto the task of restoringcertainty,cannot put an end to this process. (1988, 19)

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Democracy requiresthe conditions that will constantlyprotect the possibility for disputeand contestation.Criticaldiscourse is the matterof democraticaction some political questionmust be exposed and any attemptsto judge determinately to rigorous analysis. "[M]oderndemocracyinvites us to replace the notion of a regime governedby law, of a legitimatepower,by the notion of a regime founded upon the legitimacy of a debate as to what is legitimate and what is illegitiand without any end" mate-a debatewhich is necessarilywithout any guarantor (Lefort 1988, 39). Debate and contestationmust always remainopen and unhindered. Lefort is resolute that no one serves as a final judge or arbiter,even the democraticmajority.
The negative is effective: it does away with the judge, but it also relates justice to the existence of a public space-a space which is so constitutedthat everyone is encouragedto speak and to listen without being subject to the authorityof another,that everyone is urged to will the power he has been given. This space, which is always indeterminate, has the virtue of belonging to no one, of being large enough to accommodate only those who recognize one anotherwithin it and who give it meaning, and of allowing the questioningof right to spread. As a result, no artifice can prevent a majority from emerging in the here and now or from giving an answer which can stand in for the truth.And the fact that every single individual has the right to denounce that answeras hollow or wrong is the one thing which confirmsthe validity of the articulationof tight and opinion, of the irreducibilityof conscience to the right to have an opinion; in the event, the majority may prove to be wrong, but not the public space. (1988, 41)

The existence of a public space where the individualhas the right to call the majoritywrong implies the necessity for a robust conception of human rights. With respect to the public space, no final criteria for judgment can be enunciated, even by the majority. Lefort borrows Arendt's conception of the public space as a place for a political agonistics. While Arendt's analysis did not clearly assess the very exclusive conditions of the Greek polis, Lefort's treatment places universal human rights squarely at the heart of his description of democracy. In anothertext where he criticizes Marx'sfailure in On the Jewish Questionto appreciatethat rights may not simply be an extension of bourgeois individualism, Lefort arguesthathumanrights "expressthe refusal to allow civil society to be absorbed by the state and they provide a basis for opposition to the established order" (Lefort 1986, 22, 244, 250). Lefort presents an excellent illustrationof the differendwhen describing the way totalitarianregimes have dealt with dissidents demandinghuman rights. The dissidents arguedthey were not interestedin "politics"-in presentingsome new programof government,of startingan opposition party,etc.; rather,they were looking merely for the guarantees found in democraticnations (e.g., freedom of speech, assembly,religion). What is remarkableis that the regimes did not persecute them for having the wrong opinions, but for attemptingto establish some space that is not restricted to the pole of the state (Lefort 1986, 241-42). A totalitarianstate cannottolerate an expression of any idea that is not linked to the publicly sanctioneddefinition

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15 Concernfor humanrights contributesto democracya constantwatchof truth. fulness against the state (or other actors) from seizing the -public space and restrictingpolitical debate. Lefort calls human rights the "generativeprinciple" of democracy because they animate its institutions and engender laws. Rights cannot be dissociated from an awarenessof rights and this is more likely if they are declared,when power guaranteesthem in law (Lefort 1986, 260). Rights do not remain defined by this institutionalization;rather, Lefort points out how awarenessof rights always spursnew reflectionon rights and to new movements towardnew concerns.New social movementshave often been associatedwith attempts to change political society (Lefort 1986, 262). While I am not concentratingon the topic of social movements, Lefort makes some provocative suggestions regardingthe appropriatestrategy for social movements to follow. Successful ones do not aim at complete power but ratherat specific goals. What is paradoxicalis that across the spectrumof these movements,Lefort arguesthat there is a very significantmarriagebetween the idea of legitimacy and the representation of particularity.I believe that Lefort opens the possibility for understanding how a politics of difference and identity can contributequite constructivelyto a broaderand much more inclusive form of democracy,which is built on cooperationand coalition building, but which still attests to the heterogeneity of the community(s) (Lefort 1986, 264).16 Continuing his elaborationof the generative relation between human rights and democracy,Lefort forcefully demandsthat even the liberalwelfare state cannot be held responsible for the defense of human rights and for granting civil society full autonomy(1988, 23). Lefort presents the foundationfor a rigorous conception of citizenship that attributesresponsibility for the protection of the public space to its participants.This connection between human rights and democracyprovides a more formal articulationof Lyotard's concern with justice and the differend.While both thinkersreject all totalizing projects that seek to establish the criteria for establishing the "best" society, they work to articulate how a democraticform of society, which lacks permanentmarkersof certainty, can remain committed to a constant awarenessof human rights and the occurrence of the differend. Lefort reassertsthe connection between philosophy and politics, "betweenthe demandfor thought,which would take responsibilityfor an inquiryinto the very essence of thinking, and the demand for intervention in public life through speech and action (Lefort 1983, 93-94)." Lefort demands that thought be open to the dynamic of democracy and the experience that it establishes of "ultimate indeterminacyin the basis of social organizationand of an interminabledebate upon Law" (Lefort 1983, 93-94). Philosophy must respondto the indeterminate
'5For a specific empirical analysis of the failure of official discourses in Eastern Europe, see Bermeo (1992). '6Formore discussion of a post-Marxistapproachto social movements, see Laclau and Mouffe (1985).

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space of creationthat comes into existence in a democraticform of society. If the markersof certaintyhave been dissolved, then political philosophy has the task of exploring and defending that space of uncertainty. Lyotard & Lefort:Judging Democracy There is a kindred spirit in Lyotard'sconceptions of paralogy and discursive agonistics and Lefort's conception of democracy.Both thinkersadvocatethe essential roles experimentation and indeterminacy play in the politics of legitimation and the legitimation of the political. Neither Lyotardor Lefort believes that injustices will never occur, that no one will try to assert a specific definitionof the space of the political. As in the conduct of "normalscience,"alternative voices and experimental attitudes meet with continuous opposition. What is unique is that Lyotardand Lefort describe the way in which the political, as it becomes expressed in various fields of inquiry,is always threatenedby discursive practices aimed at limiting and abolishing conflict. Any effort to express a program of appropriationor "revolution"only repeats the totalizing 17 project of stemming regional or disciplinaryresistance. Lefort and Lyotardposit the possibility of a democracybased on heterogeneity and difference. Because it creates a locus of power that is empty, democracy does not privilege the developmentof any set of standards.Instead,accordingto Lefort, "the indivisibility of the social is yielded throughthe test of alterity.In other terms, the world presents itself thus from the vantagepoint of each unique locus. Impossibleto encompass, it neverthelessrequiresdebate about what is legitimate and what is not, as well as, in each individual, a ceaseless effort at judgment"(Lefort 1990, 10). The parallels with Lyotard'sconception of "judgment without criteria"are significantbecause they suggest a substantialshift in democraticthought.Lefort remindsus that democracyshould not be ashamedof its ambiguities,but ratherthat it is possible to denounce relativismwithout givstrove to destroy.How is this possible? ing up the relativismthat totalitarianism How can we judge without criteria?How can we denouncerelativismand defend it at the same time? At this juncture, the critics of postmodernism seem certain of victory. The portraitof democracyjust presentedseems to rob the theoristof any opportunity for describing any specific practices or institutionsfor democraticpolitics. Furthermore,the emphasis on relativism and the maintenanceof alterity suggests that there is no room for compromise,and probablyno impetus for action. How
'7Readings (1991) strongly endorses such a reading of Lyotard:"The importance of Lyotard's work is not that it gives post-structuralisma decidable political dimension that it had otherwise lacked. Rather,Lyotard's refusal to think the political as a determiningor determinatemetalanguage, as the sphere in which the true meaning of false metalanguages(such as 'aesthetic'value) is revealed as 'political effects', pushes him toward the deconstruction of the representationalspace of the political" (87).

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do Lyotard and Lefort add anything different than a pragmatic approach to democracy? One of the standard criticisms leveled againstpostmoderntheory is that it fails to address concrete concerns and propose specific possibilities for action. The linkage to literary criticism tends to indicate that postmodernismis "reactive" and even, in Habermas'(1991) terms, "conservative." With respect to the political, however,this criticism misses the mark because neither Lyotardnor Lefort recommends an aesthetic approachto the differend.The differendin politics circumstances of unfreedom where the space of the political has been occupied testifies to the obligation of the critic to announcethe offense. Both thinkers advance recommendationsfor alternativeforms of expression that exceed the dominantmetanarrative, whetherit be an ideology, a normal science, or a limiting genre of discourse. Lyotardprivileges the potential for the faculty of imaginationto achieve the level of judgment, especially through art and literature. Adorno had similar hopes for certain forms of musical composition and abstract art. Lefort describes the space of the political, not unlike Arendt or in terms that emphasize the exploratoryand experimentalpotenMerleau-Ponty, tial that political actions may demonstrate. In his descriptionof Tocqueville'simpressionsof Americandemocracy,Lefort seems to assume that republicanrepresentativepractices exemplify the hidden potential for American political action. In view of his work, I would argue that representativeor republicandemocracy is only one "form of society" and that Lefort gives insufficient consideration of the nature of direct or participatory democratic practice. More than republican forms, participatory democracy demonstratesthe overall commitmentto expandingand experimentingwith different forms of democraticpractice. Tocqueville'sassessment of democracy in America acknowledgesthe many differentforms of participationand describes a democraticculture.This approachfits with Lefort'sphenomenologicaltreatment of the political in a democraticform of society; it refrainsfrom imposing strict disciplinaryor functional categories onto various phenomenaand realms of political action. The next step is to identify events or new incisions into the flesh of the political where a differendcan be announcedand where the indeterminacyof criteriademandjudgment. Lefort'sfailure to elaboratea more participatorydemocracymay be the result of the combination of his bias with respect to formal democratic practice in France and his dependence on Arendt's distinction between the public and the privatesphere. Lefort-triesto combine a tauntingcritique of functionalismwith his own conception of the separationbetween the spheres of knowledge, power, and law. Lefort does not concede the movement towardmore openly normative research in political science that marks the tensions between objective analysis and prescription. This awarenessis most obvious in researchon democratization, where studentsof democracyare more forthcomingwith their ideological biases and predilections.Futureresearchneeds to continue this trend.

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Refusing to focus on politics, a postmodernapproachto democracydraws attention to instances of localized experimentation. It maintains an open considerationof new contexts of political activity.Postmodernismdoes not simply make everything"political,"such that it is empty of meaning. It does so by calling attention to the difficulties these marginalizedgroups encounter in attempting to voice their claims because the system of representationdoes not "understand," see, or hear their concerns as such. Rather,in searching for new sites of political action, postmodernismempowerslocalized and often marginalized groups within a public forum for expression. This connectionwith local pockets of resistancedemonstratesanotherparallel between Lyotardand Lefort. Lyotard'sconception of the differendresponds to the voicelessness of phrases that are constrainedby a dominantlanguage game or metanarrative. Indeed, one can recognize the differendin nondiscursivecontexts wherever one confronts situations of domination. Lyotard has found a profound way of identifying the same events that Foucault described in terms of disciplinary practices or normalizing discourses. Both Lyotard and Lefort describe a political question: To what extent is democracy compatible with indeterminacy? Democracy as an empty locus of power is only temporarily inhabited by groups under the auspices of institutionalmechanisms that periodicallyprovide for renewal and removal. Lyotardand Lefort, respectively,have described how attendingto differendswithin the political requiresa simultaneouscommitment to institutions-such as regularand free elections, human rights, and localized political participation and to practices that are indeterminatelydefined, which always contest the normalizationof political discourse, the select status of privileged groups, and the subordinationof right to power. In Lyotard'sterms, democracyconstantlyrespondsto the differend,always providinga space for an articulationof the phraseor genre that does not conform to the particularlimitations of a metanarrative or a dominantlanguage game. It is importantto stress that Lyotard'sattentionto the differend is not restrictedto linguistic practices. Indeed, both Carroll (1987) and Readings (1991) point out that Lyotardresists definition of the currency of the differend only in terms of language games. His own early work, Discours, figure, (1971) works against a dialectical logic based on a structuralistconception of language. Rather,Lyotardlooks for opportunities for phrasing torts, damages, and resistances that may not be representedin the language games of the dominantmetanarrative or even the medium of speaking taken up by the dominantphrase. Instead,Lyotardhopes to expose opportunitiesfor representation of what cannot be representedin the discursiveterms of the dominatinglanguage. Lyotardencouragesus to look for what is "not said,"what is left out of our descriptionsof the state of affairs. His is a constant attentionto the unrepresented, the unrepresentable, precisely because it exceeds the conditions of proof and presentation demanded by the dominantparadigmor language game.

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The impositionof a master-narrative perpetuatesinjusticebecause it constitutesa denial of the imagination, a denial of the right to respond,to invent, to deviate from the norm-in other words, the right to little narrativesthat are rooted in difference ratherthan in the identity establishedby the grandnarrative.(Lyotard1977)

For Lyotard,justice is defined as the absence of the threat of being able to make a "move"in a language game, that is, that the game or relations between speakers not only always maintains a reactive tolerance, but defends the very possibility of difference and experimentation. As Lefort'sdescriptionof the primacy of human rights demonstrates, democracy defends the potential of speaking and acting in the public sphere, so long as it does not restrictthe same activity of anothercitizen. Announcing the Differend: Toward a More Inclusive Civil Society Lyotard'sand Lefort's respective work on the differend,the political, and the constantquestion of political judgment contributestwo avenues for reflectionon the condition of contemporarydemocracy.First, given the indeterminacyof criteria forjudgment, democratictheory and practiceneed to grantgreaterattention to the occurrence of the differend.This question is of particularimportancein the United States today given the intensity of rancorousdebate over issues of familyvalues,personalresponsibility, virtue,andpoliticalcorrectness,all of which can be identifiedas battles in the "culturewars."While it is not in the scope of this paper to present a detailed analysis of the implications of the culture wars for the political or for democracy,I think thatwe can identify the differendin the way that various groups, on both the so-called political Right and Left attack each other and a variety of individuals,groups, and classes with the goal of undermining the addressee's capacity to iterate a response and a "legitimate" defense. Most debate on these issues refer either to the veracity of the empirical claims made by these groups or, to the quasi-empiricalquality of public opinion research to generate statistical evidence to buttress each respective discourse's claim to majoritarian status.A Lyotardian response will demand an analysis of how that "data"is manipulated to justify changes in social policy. How do claims of empiricalproof legitimateaction in the political sphere?Do our representative institutionscede the task of decision to procedures,mechanisms, operativesthat are unable to digest and acknowledge opinions, feelings, arguments, signs, phrasesthat cannot be articulatedin terms legitimized by those institutions? Second, while we might emphasize the problemsbesetting certain "marginaltask ized" groups within the communitywho often confrontthe insurmountable of contesting in the political realm, the differend also calls attention to those institutions. events that are void of any mode of expression in our representative Lefort's defense of the generativequality of rights shows how continuous attention to the defense of rights leads to the possibility for new awareness of differends. In contrast to a pluralist concentration on the competition for

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interestsin the public sphere,Lefort believes the distinguishingfeaturesof these new movements do not represent interests but rights. These movements are uniquebecause they are not seeking to seize power and transformthe existing relations of power, but are working to establish some relative relations of autonomy in civil society, against the increasing clutches of state- and marketdriven culturalpower. The ideas that both Lefort and Lyotardadvocate not only present a radical reconceptualizationof democraticpractice, but have been implementedin certain polities and political forums. First, we have substantialevidence of new forms of political activity both domestically and internationallythat represent the heterogeneityand difference encouragedby Lyotardand Lefort. The peace and antinuclearsocial movementsof the early 1980s demandeda role in the political conversation connected to defense policy and spending. In parts of WesternEurope, the Green Party achieved certain levels of success at both the federal and the provinciallevel. The Greens'political activity widened the scope of discourse regardingenvironmental policy. Much of the literatureon Europeansocial movements stresses the failure of both the movements and the organized political Left to formulate a working coalition. What these arguments did not consider is the special problem the Marxist or labor narrativecreated for these groups, who found that their concerns could not be articulatedin the language of class struggle and traditional class conflict issues. We have learned that this coalition will not develop out of a vacuum but requiresa new broaderpolitical vision from respective advocates. In many cases, classic grand coalitions will work against the adequateexpression of these alternativeperspectiveson postindustrialsociety. In contrast,more real space for political activism can be excavatedfrom the debrisof conventional politics. A positive example is in evidence all over the United States where the religious Right is seizing the agenda of local political races. The scope of their political activism has turned from broad national strategiesto limited and often highly specialized contests. If we look simply at the formal institutions of democraticpolitics, there are at least 80,000 elected offices in the United States alone. This does not even begin to consider the extensive possibilities for activism within local debates regardingzoning, environmentalpolicy, and school administration.It would no doubt surprise contemporary critics of modern American democracythat much of what Tocqueville observed still holds true. There seems to be a protractedproblematicinvolved in the negotiation between new social movements, new trends in identity politics, and the old bulwark of Left activism, labor. A postmodern democratic theory approaches these issues without the pretension of a conception of a grand coalition. Instead, it concentrateson the acknowledgmentof identities and difference that attest to the diversity and heterogeneityof the political realm. It looks first toward the creation and maintenance of a spirit of inclusion whereby a contestationof opinions can occur. It will be within the context of this agonis-

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tics of experimentationand diversity that new coalitions may form for limited and localized initiatives.The terrainof the political, especially within advanced capitalism, is a complex textured space which is highly charged with the prejudices of capital, both local and international. At the same time, no one body, party, or interest has managed to occupy fully the space of representation.A postmoderndemocraticpractice will move to exploit the remaining opportunities for new experiments that redefine the role of political action and it will support a politics of difference that responds to the differend and opens new spaces for identity and cooperation. Manuscriptsubmitted6 November1995 Final manuscriptreceived 18 May 1997 References
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Lyotard,Jean-Francois. 1992. The PostrnodernExplained. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lyotard,Jean-Francois.1993. Political Writings,trans. Bill Readings and.Kevin Paul Geiman. Minneapolis: Universityof MinnesotaPress. Lyotard,Jean-Francois.1994. Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg. Stanford:StanfordUniversity Press. Lyotard,Jean-Francois,and Jean-LoupThebaud. 1985. Just Gaming, trans. Wlad Godzich. Minneapolis: MinnesotaUniversityPress. Przeworski, Adam. 1986. Transitionsfrom Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives, ed. GuillermoO'Donnell, Phillipe C. Schmitter,and LaurenceWhitehead.Baltimore:Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1986. Art and Politics. New York:Routledge. Readings, Bill. 1991. IntroducingLyotard:

Patrick F McKinlay is assistant professor of political science, Morningside College, Sioux City, IA 51106.