Title: The Destitution of Citizenship: Crises of Democracy and the Radical Critique of the State
Abstract: Observers of the “mature” liberal democracies are struck by the downward spiral in many countries today whereby the arrival of rising numbers of migrants has been seized upon by populists and authoritarians to mobilize fearful voters. Rather than cause and effect, observers suggest that both phenomena result from deeper shifts within national and global structures that have undermined democratic politics. On this view, the desperate migrant and the fearful voter are twin results of a mutation of citizenship, and in particular of its reduction to a status, eagerly sought by one group and jealously guarded by the other.
In this presentation I focus on a perspective that has arisen in legal and political theory to diagnose and possibly also to respond to this process. This perspective revolves around the idea of “destitution”, understood as the inverse of the classically modern notion of the sovereign people as pouvoir constituant. I trace this idea from Foucault to more recent Italian political philosophy and German legal theory as well as in contemporary activist communities. I argue that today this perspective tends to assume two dominant forms, one positive, the other negative. Both versions grasp the contemporary crisis of citizenship as a crisis of sovereignty and community, but they go on to draw very different practical lessons. This theoretical alternative sheds light on an important divide within radical politics between anarchism and radical democracy, a politics of exodus and a possible reconstitution of citizenship.
Location: Loeb D492
Date: January 22, 2018
Time: 2:30 p.m.
