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DOI: 10.1177/030981680608800115
2006 30: 153 Capital & Class
Politics and the Other Scene

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153 Book Reviews
ment process is equated with a specific
set of conditions to be found post-1(.
This turns a concrete historical
experience into an abstract and ahisto-
rical theory of development, creating a
thread of methodological unity between
the post-Washington consensus and
some of its critics in this edition.
The anthologys rationale is a critique
of the terms, and at times implicitly the
authority, of international financial
institutions such as the World Bank in
defining the development agenda.
However, within the edition there is
a tension that remains unresolved
between those who aim to inuence the
World Bank in order to improve its
analysis, and those who would question
the basis of the World Banks right to
intervene in a developing nations aairs.
While this works well on a theoretical
level, as it presents the readers with a
complex and nuanced critique of the
postWashington consen-sus, it is less
motivating and more ambiguous on a
political level. Nevertheless, the
complexity and diversity of analysis, the
authors ability to link theory with
empirical analysis, and the methodolo-
gical unity of the pieces make this book
an essential read for those concerned
with international financial institutions
such as the World Bank and their role in
the theory and practice of development.
tienne Balibar
Politics and the Other Scene
Verso, zooz, 16o pp.
isnN 1-8-8(z6;-( (pbk) 1
isnN 1-8-8(;z-o (hbk) (o
Reviewed by Jonathan Joseph
This book is a collection of Balibars
recent essays. Although they range
across a number of issues, they are
united by a focus on the themes of
universalism and dierence, politics and
identity. Some of the ideas are expressed
through issues like European identity,
nationalism and ethnicity. However, I
will concentrate mainly on Balibars
preface and on the first essay Three
concepts of politics, which set out some
of the theoretical parameters.
The other scene of politics could
mean what post-structuralists refer to
when they talk of the scene of the other.
But Balibar is also keen to stress the
more Marxist view that urges us to turn
away from the apparent scene of
politics, structured by discourses and
ideas/ideals and unveil the real scene
of economic processes, the develop-
ment of capitalism and class struggle
(p. xiii). It is this concern that guides his
discussion of European developments
in the other essays collected here, and it
is this concern that keeps the discussion
of post-structuralist themes within the
Marxist camp.
However, Balibar is still keen to
question Marxism, inverting the pattern
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Capital & Class # 154
of real and ideal not to show that ideas
drive histor y, but to show that
material processes are themselves
(over-) and (under-) determined by the
processes of the imaginary which have
their own very eective materiality and
need to be unveiled (p. xiii). The
imaginary is described as the
infrastructure of the infrastructure. All
forces that interact at the economico-
political are groupings that conse-
quently possess an imaginary identity.
The moment when politics becomes
manifest is not rational, but it is not
irrational either. In attempting to
maintain a Marxist position, Balibar
argues that recognition of the other
scene is theoretically associated with the
rejection, not of class antagonisms and
the structure of capitalism, but of an
absolute last instance, and with the
adoption of a broad (hence hetero-
geneous) concept of materiality (p.
xiii).
The other scene is where the eects
of the autonomy and heteronomy of
politics are engineered. Balibar is
concerned with the relation between
emancipation, transformation and the
politics that cannot be reduced to either
emancipation or transformation, which
he calls the ethical horizon of civility.
He raises the question of a politics of
equal liberty and the unfolding of the
self-determination of people. Citizen-
ship is inconceivable without the
autonomy of its subject. Autonomy
becomes a politics when a part of society
is excluded from the universal right to
politics. This part then becomes a party,
the party of the universalwhich is to
say, for the abolition of particularities
and classes. This is a more general way
of understanding the argument of Marx
and Engels when they write that the
proletariat becomes the universal class.
One of the interesting aspects of this
work is the way Balibar brings together
Marx and Foucault. For Marx, history
always takes place under determinate
conditions. Social relations have a
history explained by the process of
production. However, this need not lead
to a deterministic position. It is more a
case of politics being explained from the
inside, through the role of productive
forces and social consciousness. Again,
we see how Balibar is trying to weave
together the material and the ideal.
Ideas are expressed through social
consciousness. Consequently, every
concept of politics implies a subject. This
goes against the latest post-structura-
lism, not to mention a certain theoretical
collaborator of Balibars: Nothing,
then, is more absurd than to believe
such a politics to be subjectless (it is
history which is without a subject) (p.
1z). It is not entirely clear whether the
bracketed section is intended to rescue
Althusser or condemn him.
Politics, then, is a journey of
subjectivation binding together
dierent modalities of practice and the
eects of dierent structural conditions.
If Marx gives us the big picture of
production, then Foucault brings in
conditions like the microphysics of
power, governmentality, and the
disciplinary society. The problem, for
Balibar, is that in Foucault, the
dierence between these conditions of
power and the process of trans-forma-
tion is reduced to a minimum, and they
become contemporaneous in an
ontological, ethical and political present.
This makes the issue of autonomy
problematic. When Foucault argues that
practices of liberty are not so much the
precondition for liberation as a
necessary emerging after the event, we
are led in the direction of technologies
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155 Book Reviews
of the self. This raises further questions
about how individuals relationships to
themselves develop.
In the essay Is there such a thing as
European racism? Balibar argues that
current problems go back deep into our
historythat racism in Europe today is
the result of insoluble contradictions at
a deeper level.
We need a long march towards a
public space of European citizenship
something that can only be achieved if
dierent communities march together.
European citizenship entails a new
notion of citizenship itself, more
democratic than the old national-social
form. Unless it includes all communities
living in Europe, it will necessarily be
against the universalist principles that
European states claim to promote. The
problem today, as is raised in the essay
What is a border? is that the Schengen
Convention is moving Europe in the
direction not of citizenship, but of anti-
citizenship.
A theme in a number of essays is that
all identity is fundamentally ambiguous,
and that no identity is self-identical. In
fact, there is no given identity, only
identificationan uneven process and
a precarious construction. Balibar
argues that no identity can be given or
acquired for once and for all. It is the
product of an uneven, unfinished, hazar-
dous construction. Identity is overdeter-
mined, fulfilling several functions at
once, in transit between several symbo-
lic references (p. z8). Identification
comes from others and operates within
historical institutions that reduce the
multiplicity and complexity of identifi-
cations. Because of this, identity is linked
to a hierarchy of communal references
and belonging.
If identity is ambiguous, then so too
is universality. For Balibar, there are
three instances of universality: as reality,
fiction, and as symbol or ideal. Real
universality can be seen as global econo-
mic expansion (the age-old process of
capitalist expansion) and political
expansion of transnational strategies.
Fictive universality involves the
construction of social hegemonies based
on state institutions or fictive ethnicity.
Ideal universality is the subversive
element of negativity posing the infinite
question of equality and liberty together.
This raises the impossibility of
achieving freedom without equality, or
equality without liberty. This is the
radical thread running through the
book. The engagement with Foucault
and post-structuralism is made
worthwhile because it refuses to
abandon Marxist concerns. No concept
of politics is ever complete. There can
be no emancipation without transfor-
mation or civility, and no civility without
transformation or emancipation.
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