CLAUDE LEFORTthat men are forbidden to appropriate had already been asserted in classical democracy,
but it need scarcely be pointed out that power still had a positive determination in that
the representation of the city and the definition of citizenship rested upon a discrimina-
tion based upon natural criteria or—and this comes to the same thing—supernatural
criteria.
The idea that power belongs to no one is not, therefore, to be confused with the idea
that it designates an empty place. The former idea may be formulated by political actors,
but not the latter. The first formulation, in fact, implies the actors’ self-representation, as
they deny one another the right to take power. The old Greek formula to the effect that
power isin the middle(and historians tell us that it was elaborated within the framework
of an aristocratic society before being bequeathed to democracy) still indicates the pres-
ence of a group that has an image of itself, of its space, and of its bounds. The reference
to an empty place, by contrast, eludes speech insofar as it does not presuppose the exis-
tence of a community whose members discover themselves to be subjects by the very fact
of their being members. The formula ‘‘power belongs to no one’’ can also be translated
into the formula ‘‘power belongs to none of us’’ (and in historical terms, this appears to
be the earlier of the two). The reference to an empty place, by contrast, implies reference
to a society without any positive determination, which cannot be represented by the figure
of a community. It is because the division of power does not, in a modern democracy,
refer to anoutsidethat can be assigned to the gods, the city, or holy ground; because it
does not refer to aninsidethat can be assigned to the substance of the community. Or,
to put it another way, it is because there is no materialization of theOther(which would
allow power to function as a mediator, no matter how it were defined) that there is no
materialization of theOne(which would allow power to function as an incarnation). Nor
can power be divorced from the work of division by which society is instituted; a society
can therefore relate to itself only through the experience of an internal division that proves
to be not a de facto division, but a division that generates its constitution.
It should also be added that, once it has lost its double reference to theOtherand to
theOne, power can no longer condense the principle of Law and the principle of Knowl-
edge within itself. It therefore appears to be limited. And it therefore opens up the possi-
bility of relations and actions that, in various realms, in particular in those of production
and exchange, can be ordered in terms of norms and in accordance with specific goals.
If we wished to pursue this argument, we would have to examine in detail the proc-
esses that regulate the establishment of democratic power, in other words, the controlled
challenge to the authority vested in its exercise. It is enough to recall that this requires an
institutionalization of conflict and a quasi-dissolution of social relations at the very mo-
ment of the manifestation of the will of the people. These two phenomena are both
indicative of the above-mentioned articulation between the idea that power is a purely
symbolic agency and the idea that society has no substantial unity. The institutionalization
of conflict is not within the remit of power; it is rather that power depends upon the
PAGE 160160.................16224$ $CH6 10-13-06 12:34:57 PS