Filozofski vestnik Letnik/Volume XXI • Številka/Number2 • 2000 • 51-82 
DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
On Claude Lefort's Post-foundational Political Philosophy 
OLIVER MARCHART 
»My purpose here is to encourage and to contribute to a revival of political 
philosophy«. These words stand at the beginning of one of Claude Lefort's 
most prominent articles (Lefort 1988: 9). And indeed, there can be no doubt 
as to the significance of Lefort's work for contemporary political philosophy 
and, in particular, democracy theory. What Lefort - sometimes in collabora-
tion with Marcel G a u c h e t - has elaborated is one of the most powerful theo-
rizations of the political, democracy and totalitarianism. Unfortunately it has 
fallen victim to what seems to be the fate of all successful theories: sloganization. 
There are two Lefortian phrases or topoi which can be encountered in nu-
merous articles and books: The first portrays our current condition as being 
governed by the 'the dissolution of the markers of certainty'. The second 
announces that in democracy 'the place of power is empty'. Most accounts of 
Lefort stop here. No further details are given; no theoretical context or back-
ground is established. These 'slogans' - and isn't this what defines a slogan? -
are supposed to speak for themselves. Well, they don't. 
It is possible to give an utterly banal reading to these two claims - and I 
suspect that it is not clear to many of those who quote them that they fulfill a 
more profound role in Lefort's theory which is to point towards the dimen-
sion of the social which I will call its ontological dimension. If this is over-
looked, as is often the case, these claims will be taken as statements about 
ontic facts of life - that is, facts within society. Thus, the claim as to the 'disso-
lution of the markers of certainty' would be reduced to the trivial insight that 
many a thing is uncertain in our modern times (a banality which has been 
elevated to the level of 'science' by so-called risk-theorists). In a similar fash-
ion, 'the emptiness of the place of power' in democracy could simply be 
reduced to the claim that in democracy there is no arbitrary power exercised 
anymore. Put into the context of Lefort's theory, however, something about 
society's ontological condition is said: In the case of the empty place of power, 
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O L I V E R MARCIIART 
it is obvious that power does not disappear - it remains there as something 
which is emptied: as a dimension, that is, whose factual (or ontic) content 
may disappear while the dimension as such stays operative. In the case of ' the 
dissolution of the markers of certainty' this is not only a particular phenom-
enon but defines the universal, that is ontological horizon of our condition. 
Understood in the strong sense - as claims about the ontological condi-
tion of society - these claims tell us something important about Lefort's theory. 
First, he is what one could call a contingency theorist. I contend that our very 
certainty about the dissolution of certainty already indicates that the roots of 
the latter phenomenon lie on a deeper ontological level then a common-
sensical reading would expect. Therefore, we should not confuse a weak no-
tion of uncertainty with the ontologically strong notion of contingency apper-
taining to every social identity. And in a second and not unrelated sense, 
Lefort is a post-foundationalist. Both contingency and the emptiness of the 
place of power indicate that society is not built on a stable ground: they des-
ignate the absence of social or historical necessity, the absence of a positive 
foundation of society. What they also designate, though, is that the dimension of 
ground does not simply disappear since it remains present as absent. This is 
the point where democracy enters the stage. Our interpretation of Lefort's 
work will substantiate the following claim: Democracy must be understood as 
the ontic recognition of society's ontological condition. By this we understand 
the institutional recognition and discursive actualization of the absence of a posi-
tive ground of society. By actualizing the absent ground within the particular 
institutional, cultural and discursive dispositive of democracy, a place, or rather: 
a 'non-place' is symbolically allocated to it. It is obvious, we must add imme-
diately, that this can only be a paradoxical enterprise. Hence, democracy 
itself is founded upon an irresolvable paradox which we will define at the end 
of this paper. 
The first axis of division: self-externalization 
Before returning to the question of democratic society, let us start by 
asking what lies at the origin of any society. Lefort's answer is: division. His 
concept of originary division is explicitly directed against Marxist determinism 
and economism. In particular, the argument runs against the Marxist idea 
that social division - class struggle - can be traced back to economic reasons 
alone. Division cannot be deduced from the empirical or factual positions of 
social agents. This is what makes division originary. In our terms: the onto-
logical conditions of society cannot be deduced from the ontic. But then we 
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DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
have to draw radical consequences: Both Lefort and Gauchet deny that an-
tagonism - which they also describe as the division in society between ruler 
and ruled, exploiter and exploited — can be causally derived from any ground 
other than antagonism itself. As Gauchet formulates it: A radical interpreta-
tive leap - ' [u]n saut interprétatif radical' - is required. This 'interpretative 
leap' is radical in its wholehearted acceptance of the impossibility of founding 
antagonism and its renunciation of any other foundation: »If faut prendre 
acte de l'impossiblité de déduire l'antagonisme politique central et retourner 
complètement les termes dont nous partions avec Marx : la division n'est ni 
derivable ni réductible« (Gauchet 1976: 17). Social division is originary because 
it cannot be related to any foundation prior to itself. Rather, society is 'founded' 
by way of an originary division which is the division between society and itself 
as its other. 
»II y a division originaire de la société en ceci qu'on ne peut rapporter à 
aucun fondement préalablement constitué dans la société l'antagonisme 
de la société avec elle-même, et qu'à l'invers, c'est l'antagonisme de la 
société avec elle-même qui la fonde en tant que société, qui lui permet 
d'exister, qui la fait tenir ensemble. La société est par essence contre 
elle-même, elle ne se pose qu'en se posent contre elle-même, qu'en se 
faisant l'Autre d'elle-même. Division originaire : parce que l'existence 
de la société est inconcevable sans la division politique. La possibilité 
d'une société est suspendue au fait de sa division. La division est l'origine 
de la société.« (18) 
At the origin of society there is division.1 Lefort and Gauchet's claim that 
the very possibility of society is conditioned by its division, amounts to a tran-
1 Gauchet subverts the foundationalist paradigm by positioning the Freudian model 
against the Marxian model. While in the latter conflict is supposed to disappear after a 
classless society has been erected, that is to say, after an ultimate ground has been both 
found and founded, in the former model the 'unresolvability' of (psychic) conflict is 
accepted. Thus, Gauchet proclaims: 'Freud against Marx'.The whole passage reads as 
follows: »Freud met au jour, sinon la nature contradictoire de l'être psychique1? Qu' est-ce d'autre 
ainsi qu'il s'emploie à fonder au travers du dualisme toujours plus affirmé des pulsion, 
jusqu'au partage que l'on sait entre pulsion de vie et pulsion de mort? Si Marx montre 
que la société s'organise au plus profond dans un conflit, Freud révèle, lui, que le conflit 
est au centre de l'organisation subjective. Cela dit, si pour Marx le conflit social fait 
évidemment signe vers une société au-delà du conflit, pour Freud le conflit psychique, 
organisateur ultime de l'âme, est tout aussi évidemment irréductible. Par ce trait, la 
pensée de Freud est peut-être une pensée à pertée politique éminente, en tant que pensée 
de l'irréductible du conflit constituant la psyché humaine. La pratique analytique se 
proposera pour fin de permettre au sujet d'accéder à la vérité de sa contradiction; elle ne 
saurait se donner pour but d'éliminer l'antagonisme intérieur, forme indépassable du 
rapport du sujet à lui-même. L'individu qui réconcilierait en lui pulsions de vie et pulsions 
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O L I V E R MARCIIART 
scendental argument: Division is the condition of possibility of society.2 But 
why is this a post-foundational argument? What makes their account of soci-
ety's grounding post-foundational is the fact that it is not a positive principle 
which founds society and lies at the origin of everything social but an 
irresolvable negativity with respect to society's self-identity. This negativity -
antagonism - is prior to any identity and cannot be deduced from empirical, 
'positive' facts. Thus, social identity cannot be grounded in anything other than 
the separation of that identity from itself: its self-externalization. Only through 
division and by turning itself into its Other can society establish some identity. 
This argument is an abstract and general one with implications for any form of 
identity. While in Lefort it is formulated from within the radius of Merleau-
Ponty's thinking-with its emphasis on the irresolvable chiasm or intertwining 
between inside and outside-, in deconstruction it would be termed the 'consti-
tutive outside' of any identity as Staten interpreted Derrida. Identity can only 
be constituted on the basis of that which it is not: »X is constituted by non-X« 
(1984:17), where X describes the identity, and 'non-X', by limiting the identity 
and by prohibiting its full constitution as absolute, points at the condition of 
possibility of X - its constitutive outside.3 Lefort and Gauchet's argument bears 
clear resemblance to the deconstructive argument even as it stems from a dif-
ferent tradition and applies Merleau-Ponty's idea of chiasm to the field of po-
litical thought. In both cases (and we could add the third case of Lacanianism), 
it is assumed that there can be no identity without being differentiated from its 
very outside: and yet, the latter does not have an independent life of its own but 
- as condition of possibility of the former - is present on the inside ('contami-
nating' the inside, as Derrida would have it) thereby again hybridizing the 
de mort n'est ni en vue ni au programme. Si le rapprochement entre Marx et Freud paraît 
pleinement justifié, par conséquent, c'est à la condition de l'entendre: Freud contre 
Marx.« (Gauchet 1976: 6-7) We will return to the question of Lefort s relation to psychoa-
nalysis later in this paper. 
2 This implies, by the way, that a quasi-transcendental condition of society as such - by 
which only the very commonality of a common space is constituted - does not determine 
the particular form of society. The possibility for future differentiation into particular 
institutional systems is opened in the first place but no particular form of society is predes-
tined. 
•H It is important to realize that the constitutive outside, even as its limiting function is 
precisely to destroy any essentialism, is itself essential for identity. So Staten insists on the 
post-metaphysical »necessity or essential character« of the constitutive outside which 
contaminates the metaphysical 'essence' of the identity. We have to see that identities are 
»impure always and in principle« and so we have to »pursue the implications of this 
essential law of purity« (1984: 19). On the terrain of essentialism this argument runs 
parallel to what I have described as the post-foundational logic - also to be found in 
Lefort - which keeps the empty function of the foundation as a necessary condition for any 
identity while at the same time emptying it from any positive or natural content. 
5 4 
DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
border between inside and outside. Every identity, hence, is precarious to some 
degree for it relies on something which necessarily escapes it. 
Now we see that the originary division - which, as it will become clear 
soon, operates as much at the 'outer border' of society as it runs through the 
inner 'flesh' of society - is a necessary condition for society to acquire some 
shape and self-understanding. In order to be socially effective, though, the 
outside has to be incorporated. And the name given by Lefort to the incorpo-
rated outside is poiuer. In taking up this concept he radically reformulates 
what he sees as the traditional sociological theory of power. For sociology, 
power is characterized by a set of functions: its control over force and vio-
lence, its administration of matters of common interest, its definition of so-
cial goals and development through legislation. Power regulates, unifies and 
universalises social diversity for it is, literally, 'in a position' to do so: it occu-
pies the centre of society. Lefort seeks to invert now the sociological approach, 
which sees in power the centre of society: The centrality of power, he argues, 
has to be replaced by the exteriority (extériorité) of power. This means, to be 
precise, that power is not identical with society's outside but stands in opposi-
tion to society byway of the symbolic representation of the latter's outside: it 
constitutes the symbolic pole of representation with reference to which the 
social constitutes itself. These two aspects of externality and representation 
have been systematically ignored by sociology: first, power opposes itself to 
society in relying on the division between inside and outside; and second, 
through representing this opposition (i.e. externality) power operates as the 
symbolically instituting instance of society. The first aspect again underlines the 
difference between sociology and political science on the one hand and po-
litical philosophy on the other. While sociology is concerned 'to circumscribe 
an order of particular facts within the social', the task of the latter is to 'con-
ceptualize the principle of the institution of the social', as Lefort stresses. Yet 
any political philosophy and any political science worthy of that name must 
reflect on power - since it is the shaping-function of the latter that 'designates 
the political'. Instead of dealing with specifics one must start with 'a primal 
division which is constitutive' of social space, with what Lefort calls the 'enigma' 
of the relation between inside and outside: 
»And the fact is that this space is organized as owedespite (or because of) 
its multiple divisions and that it is organized as the same in all its multiple 
dimensions implies a reference to a place from which it can be seen, read 
and named. Even before we examine it in its empirical determinations, 
this symbolic pole proves to be power; it manifests society's self-externality, 
and ensures that society can achieve a quasi-representation of itself. We 
must of course be careful not to project this externality on to the real; if we 
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O L I V E R MARCIIART 
did so it would no longer have any meaning for society. It would be more 
accurate to say that power makes a gesture towards something outside, and 
that it defines itself in terms of this outside. Whatever its form, it always 
refers to the same enigma: that of an internal-external articulation, of a 
division which institutes a common space, of a break which establishes 
relations, of a movement of externalization of the social which goes hand 
in hand with its internalization.« (1988: 225) 
The 'enigma' of the chiasm between inside and outside is shown in the 
symbolic gestures power makes towards the outside. So the role of power is to 
institute society by signifying social identity — and only by relating to this repre-
sentation/signification of identity can people relate to the space in which they 
live as a coherent ensemble (which implies that, in turn, a social space entirely 
devoid of power would not allow for any orientation - it would not even be a 
space). Power works within the symbolic order. In a sense, this has always been 
a well-known fact: Isn't power permanently exhibiting itself? Doesn't it inces-
santly demonstrate its own importance through costumes and uniforms, cer-
emonies and festivities, pomp and circumstance? Yet traditionally this has been 
seen as a distortion of its real functioning, as the 'weak point' of power which 
has to rely on appearance in order to secure its own survival. Lefort and Gauchet, 
while accepting the importance of representation, do not follow the second 
step in that scenario. The representational symbolic function of power - its 
appearance - is in no way hiding a true essence. The opposite is the case. It is 
appearance which is the essence of power. Or, put differently, power is what it 
appears; the actual function of power is not hidden in secret networks, con-
spiracies, or 'real' (yet 'distorted') interests, it lies precisely in its appearance. 
For if the institution/foundation of society is occurring on the symbolic level 
alone, then it necessarily has to be staged: this is what Lefort calls mise-en-scene. 
It might be staged in different ways: the »fabrication of Louis XIV« (Burke 
1992), for instance, differs from the ways in which power is staged in democ-
racy as that place which cannot be institutionally occupied once and for all. In 
the latter case, one might venture to say, an open-ended play is enacted on an 
empty stage - and yet the theatre of power is not abandoned. As much as there 
cannot be a society without power there cannot be power without representa-
tion - ergo: no society without the staging of a 'quasi-representation of itself'. 
The second axis: society's internal division 
Before returning to this aspect of the staging and institutionalization of 
the democratic dispositive (and of other dispositives), we have to discuss a 
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DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
second dimension of division. Lefort argues drat the main feature of the demo-
cratic dispositive consists in the acceptance of social division. But it is not only 
the division between society and its outside which has to be accepted, more 
than that it is the inner divisions of society, the inner conflicts between differ-
ent interests and classes, between ruler and ruled, oppressors and oppressed, 
exploiters and exploited - and eventually between political competitors. Thus, 
Lefort and Gauchet discern a further axis on which social negativity and con-
flict operate, so that the social is finally constituted on tivo axes of the politi-
cal. The first axis has just been described as society's self-alienation: In estab-
lishing its self-identity society divides itself and erects an outside vis-à-vis itself 
which will be incarnated by the instance of power. An antagonism emerges 
between society and its outside. Now we learn that a second separation or 
division takes place on the inside of society: Here it is the irresolvable tension 
and opposition between its members which constitutes the antagonism. To-
gether these two axes, these two primordial dimensions, make up the very 
kernel of the political being of society: »Division au-dedans de la collectivité, 
division de la communauté d'avec un dehors: en l'articulation de ces deux 
dimensions premières se ramasse le noyau d'être politique de la société" 
(Gauchet 1976: 18). 
After having examined the first axis of the originary institution - the self-
externalization of society - we now turn to second axis: the internal division 
of society. This aspect illustrates the extent to which Lefort and Gauchet's 
theory is, indeed, a conflict theory. Class antagonism (this is Lefort and 
Gauchet's main point against Marx) is nothing which could be resolved in the 
future when the means of production will be socialized and when the state 
will wither away. Yet this conflict is not only irresolvable it also is necessary for 
society to institute itself. It is one of the main sources of social cohesion. This 
might sound counter-intuitive and paradoxical. How can conflict - the 
irresolvable struggle between men - be one of the main sources of social 
cohesion? The answer can be found in the fact that it is through conflict that 
individuals and groups posit themselves within a common world: »Si la lutte 
des classes sépare, elle installe aussi un même entre les parties antagonistes« 
(25). Through their antagonism - in which the organisation, the raison d'etre 
and the goals of society are under debate - the antagonists affirm themselves 
as members of the same community. Conflict establishes a common bond. To 
paraphrase that point within the language of traditional political philosophy: 
It is not through a pregiven substantial common good nor through submis-
sion under a consensually or otherwise derived common good that a bond 
between the members of a given community is established, but it is the very 
struggle over the common good which, in actual fact, is that bond. Society can 
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O L I V E R MARCIIART 
be instituted only as far as there exists a founding antagonism internal to it 
which cannot be resolved completely. 
Far from destroying society as a whole, division in fact implicates a di-
mension of totality. And totality is implicated precisely by the figure of ab-
sence - 'une figure de l'absence' - that is revealed at the heart of social division: 
»Dire qu'il y a division dans la société, c'est dire qu'il y a dimension de 
totalité introduite par une absence« (25). That absence emerges from the 
incapacity of any social actor to master the meaning of society as a whole 
since the indefinite play of social division will always prevent single actors 
from monopolizing it once and for all. So through antagonism a dimension 
of totality does emerge - even as it is not, as some might think, the outcome of 
the positive presence of a social ground. Rather, the dimension of totality 
emerges from the absence of any such ground. For if the dimension of radical 
antagonism guarantees that nobody can incarnate the meaning of the whole, 
that any such pretension can and will be debated, this leads to the conclusion 
that the truth of the social totality cannot but lie in the debate as such. The 
dimension of totality is in no way discarded; rather, it is invoked as an effect 
of a never-ending debate which makes it impossible for any group to master 
the meaning of the social whole.4 Society as a totality is the effect of an ab-
sence or negativity residing exactly in the irresolvable antagonism between 
competing attempts at mastering the meaning of the social. The meaning of 
the social whole, thus, emerges in between the debating parties (the 'inter-
locutors' as Gauchet and Lefort sometimes call the antagonists in a more 
phenomenological terminology)/' 
4 It must be added that, for Gauchet, the functioning of this mutual implication of 
conflict and social bond does not depend on its conscious realization or knowledge. The 
bond is created through signification and at the level of the social unconscious-. »Les agents 
engagés dans la remise en cause de leur société ne se rendent assurément pas compte de 
ce que leur antagonisme conspire à la création d'un même espace entre eux. Ils sont 
même rigoureusement persuadés du contraire. La production symbolique d'un univers 
commun n'a rien à voir à l'évidence ici avec un contenu de conscience. Pas davantage 
n'a-t-elle à voir avec la constitution d'une attache effective et manifeste entre les individus. 
Elle est production d'un lien dans l'élément de la signification et au niveau de l'inconscient.« 
(Gauchet 1976: 25) 
r'Yet one has to stress the implications of that argument, and this is how an 'antagonism-
theorist' like Ernesto Laclau (1990) will put it: Not only is a dimension of totality intro-
duced by such absence at the heart of social division but totality - in turn - becomes an 
absence. Laclau claims that in situations of dislocation - in moments of heightened con-
flict and division - political signifiers like 'order' point at an absent totality which, how-
ever, remains present as a horizon. Since dislocation is an ontological condition of any 
system or society there will always be a dimension of totality, full presence, or plenitude as 
absent. We can conclude that a totality introduced by absence - the irresolvability of social 
conflict - can always only be an absent totality which nonetheless remains operative (or 
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DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
It is necessary, if we want to understand where Lefort's positive evalua-
tion of conflict stems from, to turn to his earlier studies on Machiavelli - for 
it was his thought which allowed Lefort to break with the Marxian 'postulate 
of the secondary nature' of conflict.1' 
Machiavelli against Marx 
Between 1956 and 1972 Lefort works on his thèse d'état which should be-
come an 800 page strong book entitled Le travail de l'œuvre Machiavel (1986b). 
He devotes the first half to a discussion of previous interpretations - among 
them those of Gramsci and Leo Strauss - while denying the possibility of a 
definite interpretation. This does not, however, keep Lefort from pursuing 
his own 'interrogation' of the Machiavellian œuvre. For Lefort, and this is not 
yet an original claim, Machiavelli is the inventor of political thought proper. 
But Lefort builds his interpretation around a more radical claim. Machiavelli's 
discovery - which allowed him to found modern political thought - is the 
discovery that an irreducible conflict exists at the centre of every polity. In the 
ninth chapter of the Prince he declares that the nobles on one side and the 
people on the other are engaged in an irresolvable struggle due to their 
opposing umori. While the 'humour' or desire of the nobles is to command 
and to oppress, the desire of the people, on the other hand, is not to be 
commanded and not to be oppressed. Lefort comments: 
»C'est bien d'une opposition constitutive du politique qu'il faut parler, 
et irréductible à première vue, non d'une distinction de fait, car ce qui 
fait que les Grands sont les Grands et que le peuple est le peuple ce n'est 
pas qu'ils aient par leur fortune, par leurs mœurs, ou leur fonction un 
statut distinct associé à des intérêts spécifiques et divergents ; c'est, 
Machiavel le dit sans ambages, que les uns désirent commander et 
opprimer et les autres ne l'être pas. Leur existence ne se détermine que 
dans cette relation essentielle, dans le heurt de deux « appétits », par 
principe également « insatiable ». Ainsi, à l'origine du pouvoir princier, 
et sous^acent à celui-ci une fois qu'il s'est établi se trouve le conflit de 
classe.« (1986b: 382) 
present) in form of an always receding horizon. We encounter exactly the same logic here 
as previously in Lefort and Gauchet's account of the origin of society which oscillates 
between presence and absence. 
'' The opposition already set up between 'Freud against Marx' can now be supple-
mented and reintroduced to the political field as the opposition: Machiavelli against 
Marx. It should be mentioned, however, that Lefort's approach is not anti-Marxist but 
consists in interrogating Marx's works. In this sense, Lefort thinks with Marx against Marx. 
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That constitutive and irreducible opposition between the people and the 
nobles precedes the particular social circumstances or traditions in which they 
are situated. The phrase 'Machiavelli against Marx' by which one could char-
acterize this aspect of Lefort's enterprise therefore means: Class conflict -
which in its essence is a political and not an economic conflict - is prior to the 
positioning of the social actors in the relations of production. We might say 
that conflict, as negative ground of society, precedes any factual reasons for 
conflicts in the plural. And if conflict is to fulfill its role as negative founda-
tion of society then it follows for us that the difference between conflict as 
ground and factual conflicts in the plural must be radical by nature: conflict 
as ground cannot be just one more of many factual conflicts. It must be lo-
cated on a radically different level. If we allow ourselves to take up philo-
sophical terminology, the matter can be stated once more in terms of the 
ontological difference: The 'ontological' condition of antagonism is prior to 
the 'ontical' circumstances under which it is expressed. Wherever there is 
society - no matter how it is ontically structured - there is internal antago-
nism on the ontological level. We are employing Heidegger's quasi-concept 
of ontological difference not only for heuristic reasons. His influence can 
indeed be traced within Lefort's own texts - even as he only occasionally 
mentions Heidegger's name. Hence it should not be a surprise that parallels 
between Lefort and Heidegger on this account have also been perceived by 
the foremost Lefort-scholar Hugues Poltier7: 
»[N]otons brièvement que la démarche de Lefort présente une 
homologie frappante avec celle suivie par Heidegger dans son 
7 In slight contrast to the following quote by Poltier, for us, the way in which the ontologi-
cal difference is reformulated and radicalized towards Ereignis and difference-as-difference 
by the later Heidegger is more relevant than the Heidegger of Sein und Zeit. We would side in 
this respect with Bernard Flynn, for whom Lefort's text on 'The Permanence of the 
Theologico-Political?' in particular evokes the later writings of Heidegger. When Lefort, for 
instance, asks »whether the religious might not be grafted onto a more profound experi-
ence« (Lefort 1988: 233), Flynn suspects that what could be meant is »the experience of 
difference - the Advent« (Flynn 1996: 182). The fact that Lefort does not cite Heidegger is 
explained by Flynn as sign of a certain suspicion on Lefort's part concerning Heidegger's 
»systematic dénégation of the emergence of the political as such« (183). One should also 
note that Lefort, when once comparing Heidegger to Merleau-Ponty, was tentatively con-
ceding a certain similarity with respect to their intention: »celle de dévoiler la difference de 
l'Être et de l'étant« (Lefort 1978: 110). However he insists that Merleau-Ponty's concept of 
flesh {la chair) does not have an equivalent in Heidegger, and - even as, for both of them, it 
is only possible to indirectly approach Being via beings - Merleau-Ponty's interests does not 
so much lie in naming the difference than in thinking the plane of the flesh (as it appertains 
to the visible, to the world and to history) which does not have, according to Merleau-Ponty, 
any counterpart in traditional philosophical discourse. 
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DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
questionnement vers l'être. Dans les deux cas, on part de ce qui se montre 
- respectivement des objets de notre monde quotidien, des événemets 
politiques dont nous faisons couramment l'expérience. Dans les deux 
cas également, le monde phénoménal paraît ne pas pouvoir être expliqué 
à partir de lui-même. Sans doute, il est possible d'en donner une 
description et une explication assez satisfaintes, ainsi que le montre 
l'existence de sciences. Leur travail est loin d'être dépourvu de toute 
valeur. Pourtant, leur point de vue leur interdit d'interroger l'être de 
l'étant, respectivement l'être du social. Leur limitation provient de ce 
qu'elles bornent leur examen à »l'étant-là-devant«. L'être n'est en effet 
pas un »ob-jet«. Pour le découvrir, il faut interroger le sens qui sous-tend 
la donation de l'objet ou le rapport politique. En retrait, ne se montrant 
pas, ce sens est l'être de la chose, respectivement l'être du social. Il en 
constitue, dit encore Heidegger, »le sens et le fond«. A la lumière de ce 
parallèle que nous venons d'établir, on perçoit mieux tout ce que la 
démarche herméneutique de Lefort emprunte à la fameuse différence 
ontologique de l'auteur de Sein und. Zeit.« (1998:147) 
By insisting - against the viewpoint of science - on the ontological level of 
the 'being' of the social, one must not forget about the ontic dimension. The 
latter is absolutely indispensable since pure ('ontological') originary conflict 
- which is the ultimate core of the 'being' of the social — has to find a symbolic 
outlet if it is not to destroy society. Here, power enters the stage once more. 
Also on the second axis of antagonization, the internal one, power results 
from antagonism as that which regulates it. Within the quasi-model of the 
ontological difference one can say that power, as a dimension, is an ontologi-
cal category, while the specific manifestations of power which determine the 
particular symbolic dispositive of given society are ontical by nature: On the 
one hand, the dimension of power belongs to every society - without any sym-
bolic mediation conflict would escalate into meaningless violence. At the most 
extreme point, a society of pure antagonism, a society without the symbolically 
regulating dimension of power in the Lefortian sense, would amount to a Hob-
besian state of nature and, hence, could not be called society at all. If Lefort 
constantly stresses that the 'evacuation' of the place of power does not elimi-
nate power as such then he does so because of the absolutely necessary sym-
bolic role played by the dimension of power (not by its specific content). On the 
other hand, the specific ways in which antagonism is symbolically regulated by 
particular 'power-arrangements' are clearly ontical. It is at this ontic level that 
we have to 'come to terms' with our ontological conditions. 
On the basis of similar assumptions it has been proposed by theorists like 
Bobbio, Connolly, and Mouffe to differentiate between the two levels of an-
6 1 
O L I V E R M A R C I IART 
tagonism and agonism, between enemy and adversary. While, for Chantal 
Mouffe, in the case of antagonism the opponent is conceived as enemy to be 
annihilated, in the case of agonism s/he is understood as an adversary within 
a shared political language-game.8 For Mouffe, agonism (and 'politics' in 
general) becomes our democratic way of 'coming to terms' with the 
irresolvable, that is to say, ontological condition of antagonism (what she 
calls 'the political'). 
It is obvious that those theories are located within the 'Machiavellian 
moment'. For Machiavelli it is the symbolic dispositive of the republic - as the 
regime of freedom built on the sovereign rule of law - which allows for recog-
nition of conflict as well as for regulation of the opposition between people and 
nobles, which makes it impossible for any party to entirely dominate/oppress 
the other. This makes Machiavelli not only the first 'antagonism theorist', insist-
ing on an irresolvable conflict as the core of every possible society, but also the 
first to develop a theory of 'agonism' as the symbolically regulated form of 
antagonism (regulated, for instance, through the arrangement of a mixed con-
stitution). It is important, however, to stress once again that 'regulation' does 
in no way entail the 'sublation' of the opposition between nobles and the peo-
ple into a harmonious or even homogenous community. Radical antagonism 
never disappears. It has to be accepted as the condition of possibility of society; 
and this acceptance, for reasons that will be elaborated later, is provided by the 
democratic dispositive. Yet, deconstructively speaking, this condition of possi-
bility (like the constitutive outside referred to above) simultaneously acts for 
society as its condition of impossibility. From the viewpoint of conceptual his-
tory this has been perceived by Gisela Bock in her essay on 'civil discord' in 
Machiavelli: »[I] t is only in the republican order that the discords among the 
various human umori can and must be expressed; on the other hand, it is these 
very discords that continually threaten it. They are both the life and the death 
of the republic« (1990: 201). 
The umori and the subject of lack 
Given the prominent role the umori play in Machiavelli, some further 
investigations as to their nature are imperative. For it cordd seem that 
Machiavelli relied on anthropological assumptions concerning so-called hu-
8 »Agonistic pluralism«, as Mouffe puts it, »is based on a distinction between 'enemy' 
and 'adversary'. It requires that, within the context of the political community, the oppo-
nent should be considered not as an enemy to be destroyed, but as an adversary whose 
existence is legitimate and must be tolerated« (1993: 4). 
6 2 
DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
man nature. Most readers of Machiavelli understood his theory in precisely 
that way: For them, his dark view of human nature constitutes the basis of his 
pessimism with regard to the possibility of ever reaching a society without 
conflict. Yet if these interpretations were correct we would be left with a posi-
tive ground - certain assumptions about factual human nature - prior to 
originary conflict. A positive ground, though, is exactly what has been ruled 
out by Lefort and Gauchet in the first place and which cannot be tolerated 
within a post-foundational framework. Therefore, Lefort's interpretation de-
parts from the doxa and propounds a highly original and convincing read-
ing. For Machiavelli, we recount, the irresolvable conflict in society is based 
on two umori - the desire to oppress and the desire not to obey - located 
within the two classes of the nobles and the people respectively. In that model, 
the umori acquire the status of existentials. 
Lefort now denies that Machiavelli's theory relies on fundamental as-
sumptions concerning human nature. Even if he did rely on those assump-
tions, their positive 'content' would not affect his argument about the originary 
division since the latter is construed in merely 'negative' fashion: Lefort ob-
serves that the nature of the two humours, and, as a consequence, of the two 
classes is entirely relational: »elles n'existent que dans leur affrontement autour 
de cet enjeu que constitue pour les uns l'oppression, pour les autres le refus 
de l'oppression« (1986b: 385). Their very existence - their identity - is based 
on their confrontation. Resolve this originary confrontation and together with 
society the identity of the two classes will disappear since they exist only by 
virtue of their mutual confrontation. If we look at the matter from this angle, 
their relation does not appear to necessitate any positive substance behind 
their identity: their identity is the effect of their confrontation only. But does 
not the desire to oppress constitute such a positive substance while, on the 
other hand, it is only the desire not to be oppressed which is purely negative? 
Isn't there a positive desire - something like a will to oppression - at the 
bottom of the whole confrontation? And isn't, as a consequence, the relation 
between the negative desire of the people and the positive desire of the nobles 
asymmetric? At first sight it seems asymmetric indeed: While only the desire of 
the people seems to be constructed as purely negative the nobles appear to 
be driven by the positive desire to oppress and command others. Yet a closer 
look will reveal that the identity of the nobles is as much marked by a void as 
the identity of the people. And it is with respect to this void that there is no 
asymmetry. We can substantiate this claim by supplementing Lefort's account 
with a more Laclauian or even Foucauldian argument: If the nobles are in 
need to oppress, then because they are not in full control, not in total com-
mand themselves. There would be no need for domination without resist-
6 3 
O L I V E R M A R C I IART 
ance and vice versa. Or, to put it in Lacanian terms: Their very need to op-
press attests to their own lack: the nobles, no less than the people, are subject 
to the experience of a void. 
So it is safe to conclude that the purely negative relation of the umori 
points to a lack that precedes their positive content. In this sense Lefort can claim 
that 'une classe n'existe que par le manque qui la constitue en face de l'autre'. 
And on the axis of internal division there is a relation of mutual implication 
between the void instantiated by conflict and the emergence of the social 
bond. Thus, Lefort assumes: »La recherche nécessaire d'une attache passe 
par l'expérience du vide qu'aucune politique ne comblera jamais" (1986b: 
382). Any social bond must pass through the experience of this void, through 
the experience of a constitutive absence at the very heart of society. From a 
Lacanian viewpoint it is tempting to see in this void the place of the subject. 
This would be, for instance, the reading Slavoj Žižek gave to Laclau and 
Mouffe's political theory: it is not enough to stop at the notion of 'factual' 
subject positions, that is to say: identities, for in order to explain both the 
radical antagonism of society and the need for identification in the first place 
one has to introduce the Lacanian concept of the subject as lack: »the Lacanian 
notion of the subject aims precisely at the experience of »pure« antagonism 
as self-hindering, self-blockage, this internal limit preventing the symbolic 
field from realizing its full identity.« (1990: 253). A critique later accepted 
and further developed in Laclau (1990) and Laclau/Zack (1994). 
A similar quasi-Lacanian interpretation can be given to Lefort. The as-
sumption that the ,manque' at the heart of the relation between the two classes 
can be identified with the place of the subject is in fact supported by Poltier. 
His argument hinges on the category of 'desire'. Rather than being inde-
pendent, the two umori constitute 'two poles' of a single desire. And since the 
two poles cannot be unified (since they are originary) it follows that the 'sub-
ject ' of that desire is internally divided between these two poles; it can never 
attain full identity. Such is the way in which Poltier interprets Lefort's 
'Machiavellianism ' : 
»En clair: il n'y a qu'un seul désir se scindant en deux pôles. Etant opposes, 
il est impossible au sujet de se situer dans l'un et l'autre en même temps. 
(...) Dit autrement, le désir du sujet humain se brise dans deux pôles 
incompatibles. Si l'un d'eux est concrétisé dans le sujet, l'autre ne peut 
être ni rélaisé ni éliminé totalement.« 
So Poltier arrives at the conclusion: 
»L'incomplétude du sujet est insurmontable. L'opposition des désirs 
respectifs du peuple et des Grands trouve ainsi sa source dans la brisure 
6 4 
DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
du sujet. Le fondement de la division social et, partant, le fondement du 
pouvoir, résident dans la division du désir. Telle est, en défintive, la thèse 
soutenue par Lefort dans son Machiavel.« (1998: 146) 
The introduction of such a Lacanian theory of the divided subject allows 
us to redefine 'human nature' in a non-essentialist way and to retrace the 
void behind all positive anthropological assumptions.'1 The subject is marked 
by a void as much as society - and, for that matter, as every identity. 
The real as disturbance and absent ground 
But does a Lacanian reading do violence to Lefort's theory? A superficial 
reading would not find too many traces of psychoanalysis in his work. Joan 
Copjec remembers the following anecdote which appears to be symptomatic: 
After Lefort had delivered his essay 'The Image of the Body and Totalitarian-
ism' (published in Lefort 1986) at a conference hosted by the Center for the 
Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture at the University of Buffalo, a member of 
the audience stood up and complained that he had come to hear a psycho-
analytic presentation and now was puzzled not to encounter any talk about 
the ego, the id, repression, etc. He simply missed the psychoanalysis in Lefort's 
presentation. And indeed, Lefort's language is not analytic in the strict sense. 
Yet that audience member made the common mistake, as Copjec remarks, to 
confuse concepts with vocabulary: »for although Lefort never spoke the words 
this man was waiting to hear, it is clear that the concepts of psychoanalysis 
have defined the very field which Lefort's work inhabits«. Lefort does actu-
ally concede the influence psychoanalysis had on himself at the end of his 
paper1", yet he also insists that psychoanalysis could only evolve within the 
" I leave aside the question whether the subject of lack should actually be described - as 
Poltier does - as the 'foundation' of social division given that social division has been 
defined as originary. This question, however, whether the subject of lack is the 'founda-
tion' of social division or whether it is merely complementary to social division (which 
seems to be implied in Zizek's model) is of entirely secondary nature if we realize that even 
as a foundation it is entirely negative. So even in that case we would not reach a positive 
foundation behind social division but rather would look into one more abyss which is the 
subject. 
"' The whole quote reads: »Such, then, are a few thoughts which indicate the direction 
for a questioning of the political. Some readers Some readers will no doubt suspect that 
my reflections are nourished by psychoanalysis. That is indeed the case. But this connec-
tion is meaningful only if one asks oneself at which hearth Freud's thought was lit. For it is 
not true that in order to sustain the ordeal of the division of the subject, in order to 
dislodge the reference points of the se//and the other, to depose the position of the posses-
sor of power and knowledge, one must assume responsibility for an experience instituted 
6 5 
O L I V E R M A R C I IART 
democratic dispositive. As Copjec paraphrases: »In other words, Lefort is 
saying, if his theorization of democracy seems to be nourished by psychoa-
nalysis, this is only proper, since psychoanalysis was originally nourished by 
the experience of democracy« (Copjec 1992, n.p.). One has to conclude that 
the relation between the 'object matter' of Lefort's thought - the political -
and psychoanalysis is reversible. On the one hand, his theory of democracy as 
the dispositive which disincorporates the 'body politic' relies, to some extent, 
on the conceptual apparatus of psychoanalysis. On the other hand, psychoa-
nalysis became only possible within a 'disincorporated' dispositive, that is to 
say, after the democratic invention. And the same can be said about the rela-
tion between psychoanalysis (which discovered the 'originary division' of the 
subject) and Lefort's thinking of 'the political' - as the abstract concept for 
the 'regime' or form of society as well as for the originary division of society. 
Psychoanalysis, then, if it wants to understand its own conditions of emer-
gence, must be premissed as much on a thinking of the political as the latter 
is premissed on a set of psychoanalytic insights. 
One of the psychoanalytic insights - in Lefort's work and, more exten-
sively elaborated, in the work of Laclau and Žižek - is, as we have seen, the 
'disincorporation' or division of the subject in its relation to the disincorpo-
ration and division of society. Yet to what extent do other analytic concepts 
play a role in Lefort? The most obvious candidate is, of course, the concept 
of the 'symbolic'. It is clear for Lefort that there can be no society without the 
symbolic dimension. In the journal Psychanalystes he develops his idea of the 
symbolic through a critique of naturalist and realist assumptions, insisting 
that such an idea has a much longer history than psychoanalysis and can be 
found in Plato already and, of course, in Machiavelli (where, for instance, 
Machiavelli observes that the prince must build his authority on the Name of 
the Prince, quoted in Flynn 1992: 184 pp.) - Moreover, as Bernard Flynn ob-
serves, Lacan 's notion is given by Lefort a 'Merleau-Pontyan' turn: »For Lefort, 
the Symbolic Order is that which deploys the 'within and without'; it is what 
operates this distinction - the symbolic structure of society is neither within 
nor without« (185). One could say that for Lefort the symbolic defines the 
very way in which the chiasmatic, instituting dimension of society — its self-
externalization - is operationalized and institutionalized. In its most basic 
form, as 'symbolic system' of society, this dimension is specifiable as »a con-
figuration of the signifiers of law, power and knowledge« (Lefort 1986: 186). 
While in the 'monarchic' dispositive these signifiers are unified or incorpo-
rated in the single signifier of the body of the king, in the symbolic dispositive 
by democracy, the indétermination that was born from the loss of the substance of the 
body politic?« (Lefort 1986: 306) 
6 6 
DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
of democracy they are disjointed. The relation we establish with or towards 
the dimension of the originary division can only be symbolic. 
In like manner, this could suggest thinking about the originary division 
in terms of 'antagonism as real' (Žižek) although from a Lacanian viewpoint 
Lefort's usage of terms like 'the real' and 'reality' is not always consistent, 
and sometimes he employs them interchangeably.11 However, in some pas-
sages he comes quite close to a Lacanian understanding of the real as that 
which disturbs the process of every symbolization; or, from the viewpoint of 
political thought: as name for antagonism, as absent foundation and as name 
for radical contingency. Simultaneously, a further category is required to name 
the complementary process of denial and concealment of the original divi-
sion. For if society can only be established through a process of self-division -
which both enables and disables a certain degree of social coherence - then 
society can never reach a state of full reconciliation with itself. There will 
always be attempts at 'covering up' the fact that at the place of society's ground 
the only thing we discover is an abyss. These 'cover-ups' (a »folding over of 
social discourse on to itself«, 1986: 202) Lefort calls processes of concealment 
which operate through the dimension of the 'imaginary'.12 
Such concealment which indicates a profound inability to accept the in-
stituting distance of society to itself, must always fail in the final instance - due 
to the ontologically necessary character of the disturbing cause of the real. 
Any attempt at the occultation of division, Lefort claims, remains subject to 
the effects of social division - effects which are revealed, as it were, »through 
the failures of occultation«. These 'failures' of and 'discordances' within the 
process of occultation allow »what we can now justly call the real to appear«. 
Lefort, in a manner not entirely dissimilar to Lacan and those who have been 
11 At any rate, for Lefort, reality (what he also calls 'facts') is discursive by nature since 
»there is no institution which is not organized within a linguistic activity«. Thus, 'facts' are 
defined by Lefort as first order language, while the symbolic and imaginary mise-en-forrne is 
defined as second order language (1986: 210). 
Dick Howard characterizes Lefort's notion of the imaginary- I'imaginaire- as follows: 
»the Freudian term which, in the work of Jacques Lacan, conceptualises the representa-
tional dimension of psychic functioning, the image of itself which the human needs in 
order to function as a social being. This self-image is articulated by Lacan in terms of the 
Oedipal drama where the Father represents the Law, indicating to the male child what is 
socially forbidden, and therewith teaching the child his place in the society. Analogously, 
the social imaginaire would represent the Law of society's structuring, telling it what is and 
is not legitimate, what can and cannot be changed, and ultimately defining and limiting its 
self-identity. The imaginaire, symbolically articulated, structures the scientific, religious 
and aesthetic discourse through which a society comes to know itself. Its function is to 
neutralise the conflictual origins of the social, to create the illusion of permanence and 
necessity which characterised the 'society without history'« (Howard 1988: 216). 
6 7 
O L I V E R M A R C I IART 
influenced by Lacanian thought such as Laclau, thus defines the real in purely 
empty or negative fashion as »that which marks the impossibility of achieving 
concealment« (197). From the above said we must conclude that the dimen-
sion of the originary division shows itself through the failures in the processes 
of imaginary concealment. The real appears by disturbing all efforts to con-
ceal the originary division. Thus, the real and the imaginary, as Lefort presents 
them, are locked in a (negative) 'dialectic': On the one hand, what the work 
of the imaginary aims at is the occultation and concealment of the founding 
nature of social division and historicity (of contingency within history, as we 
would put it). On the other hand, though, it will never achieve this task given 
the disturbances in the imaginary which 'mark' the impossibility of final con-
cealment. Yet these marks of failure and disturbance do have a symbolic func-
tion even as they do not point at any positive referent. Lefort even describes 
them as iigroswhen he emphasizes that occultation consists in »suppressing all 
the signs which could destroy the sense of certainty concerning the nature of 
the social«. These signs suppressed by imaginary occultation are, if one wanted 
to invert his famous dictum on the »dissolution of the markers of certainty«, 
the markers of un-certainty, or, rather, of contingency. These markers are »signs 
of historical creativity, of that which has no name, of what is hidden from the 
action of power, of what breaks apart through the dispersed effects of 
socialization — signs of what makes a society, or humanity as such, alien to 
itself« (203). Their minimal or 'negative' symbolic function is given to them 
by the democratic dispositive. Within the latter they do not count as mere 
disturbances but - being disturbances of the process of imaginary concealment 
- they are understood as pointing at a dimension beyond the symbolic: the 
absent ground of society. 
Ideology as imaginary concealment of division 
To concentrate for a moment on the imaginary dimension will allow us 
to approach our main problem of the originary and instituting division of 
society once more - but this time from its 'reverse side', the side of its con-
cealment or occultation. For this side Lefort retains the traditional term ide-
ology. A closer look at the way in which he uses the term will show that ideol-
ogy can justifiably be defined as discursive actualization of the imaginary di-
mension. This actualization might take place in different ways (Lefort theo-
rizes at least three of them: totalitarianism, bourgeois and invisible ideol-
ogy) , yet the main problem of every ideology is to come to grips not only with 
the 'logical' impossibility of closure but also with the irreversible historical 
6 8 
DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
event of the democratic revolution. Neither can the event of the democratic 
revolution be reversed nor can the paradoxes that were instantiated by it be 
resolved — even as ideology aims at precisely such a de-paradoxization, to use a 
term by Niklas Luhmann. 
Totalitarianism, now, the most radical form of ideological concealment, 
is marked by the democratic revolution in particular since totalitarianism is 
nothing else than the mutation and prolongation of its features: totalitarian-
ism both inverts and at the same time radicalizes the features of the demo-
cratic revolution and therefore must not be confused with pre-democratic 
forms of government like tyranny or despotism as Lefort, like Arendt, repeat-
edly insists.13 Rather, it is one of the two major directions in which the demo-
cratic revolution can evolve: democracy and totalitarianism; and, since totali-
tarianism is rooted in the democratic revolution, it cannot be clearly and 
definitely separated from democracy. The reason is the following: With the 
democratic revolution society lost its access to a transcendent source of legiti-
mation. From now on society must accept that it has to institute itself, draw its 
own boundaries and find its immanent sources of legitimation. And since 
society is thrown back on itself in the moment of its institution (or 'inven-
tion') it necessarily resorts to the fantasies of total domination of the social 
space, of omnipotent knowledge and all-knowing power: »A condensation 
takes place between the sphere of power, the sphere of law and the sphere of 
knowledge. Knowledge of the ultimate goals of society and of the norms which 
regulate social practices becomes the property of power, and at the same 
time power claims to be the organ of a discourse which articulates the real as 
such« (1988: 13). 
As with all forms of imaginary concealment, the defining characteristic of 
totalitarianism must be seen in its occultation of the original division and the 
empty place of power. By merging society and power it closes and homog-
enizes social space. Power will be re-incarnated and its place occupied first by 
a party »claiming to be by its very nature different from traditional parties, to 
represent the aspirations of the whole people«. The latter will be identified 
with the proletariat which will be identified with the party, then with the 
politbureau and ultimately with what Lefort, taking up an expression of 
Solzhenitsyn's, calls the 'Egocrat'. What is the difference between the Egocrat 
and the monarch? It amounts to a difference between a precarious form of 
1:1 This implies that it is not enough simply to denounce totalitarianism as some Cold-
War-ideologists as well as the French 'new philosophers' did of which Lefort distances 
himself (1986: 293). It is important to stress that Lefort started to develop his critique of 
totalitarianism at a time - already in the late 1940ies - in which this was not at all fashion-
able on the Left. 
6 9 
O L I V E R M A RCI IART 
transcendence, where the body of the monarch is split between its transcend-
ent and its earthly body, and a form of full immanence. While the monarch 
was not identical with itself, the Egocrat, who seeks to fully incarnate the 
place of power within society, is in possession of a single body only: corpus 
mysticum and corpus naturelle-¿xe indistinguishable. The Egocrat coincides with 
himself as much as totalitarian society coincides with itself. Of course, the 
monarch too was unifying in his body the principles of power, law and knowl-
edge, but still he had to obey a 'higher power'. He was both above the law 
and subject to the law; he was, as Lefort stresses with recourse to a medieval 
formula, major et minor se ipso, both above and below himself (1986: 306). 
The main feature of totalitarianism - with respect to the founding con-
flict - is that any form of antagonism will be concealed, and a homogenized 
and self-transparent society will be postulated: »social division, in all its modes, 
is denied, and at the same time all signs of differences of opinion, belief or 
mores are condemned« (1988: 13). This means that, on the internal axis, the 
originary division is erased, or rather displaced. It is erased in the sense that 
what the Egocrat incarnates is the 'People-as-One', that is to say, society with-
out internal division and antagonism. But since, as an ontological dimension, 
it can never be completely erased and will continue to surface in form of 
disturbances of the imaginary concealment it has to be displaced. And in or-
der for the 'People-as-One' to be presented as a totality, as full identity, a 
relation to some sort of outside is inevitable. What acts as the new outside is 
a series of internal substitutes representing the 'enemy within'. The identity 
of the people is established vis-à-vis the enemy of the people (the kulaks, the 
bourgeoisie, the jews, spies, and saboteurs). The metaphor of the body starts 
tainting political discourse: the identity of the body of the people and society 
depends on the elimination of its parasites. And yet, totalitarianism is entan-
gled in a paradox. Its goal is to get rid of internal division but in order to 
achieve that goal an enemy has to be produced: »division is denied ( . . . ) and, 
at the same time as this denial, a division is being affirmed, on the level of 
phantasy, between the People-as-One and the Other.« (1986: 298) Totalitari-
anism needs the enemy as a reference point and, thus, relies on division in 
the very moment in which it decries it.14 
The same contradiction operates on the external axis, the division be-
tween society and its outside. In totalitarianism, power, as Lefort remarks, 
»makes no reference to anything beyond the social; it rules as though noth-
ing existed outside the social, as though it had no limits'. This implies that 'it 
14 According to Lefort (1979), this contradiction runs through the Egocrat as well: On 
the one hand, he fuses with the people and the party which he is supposed to incarnate. 
On the other hand, he confronts them from the position of the master. 
7 0 
DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
relates to a society beyond which there is nothing« (1988: 13). It is a society of 
total immanence where any dimension of transcendence (including an 'empty' 
or negative transcendence) is lost: the chiasm between inside and outside is 
disentangled in favour of the inside. The principle of immanence is symbol-
ized by the Egocrat in whose body the social totality is condensed. However, 
since some reference point is required in order to constitute a totality, again, 
internal or immanent outsides (enemies) have to be found or invented. The 
idea of organization, upon which the totalitarian ideology is erected, needs 
to create the idea of disorganization as its own opposite, the imaginary threat 
of chaos (sabotage, subversion, etc.). Society's necessary self-externalization 
and division, internal and external conflict, is identified with the danger of 
disorganization. While this is exactly what characterizes totalitarianism it si-
multaneously implies that the latter carries within itself the seeds of its own 
failure: it means that the totalitarian idea of organization presupposes and 
builds upon the idea of ¿/«-organisation: totalitarianism comes into being 
only by virtue of an irresolvable contradiction. Hence, it is doomed to failure 
- something Lefort predicted in the 1960ies already. 
After totalitarianism: the 'invisibilization' of division 
To summarize the Lefortian thesis on the relation between democracy 
and totalitarianism, one could rephrase it in the following fashion: Since 
both have its roots in the democratic invention, the distinction between de-
mocracy and totalitarianism is a distinction within democracy. Being a muta-
tion within the democratic dispositive, totalitarianism cannot overcome the 
contradictions inherent in a society which, having lost any 'natural' reference 
point and foundation, can only establish an identity by dividing itself - both 
internally and externally. But we also have to see the implications of this 
claim: As a consequence of Lefort's thesis, democracy is not the opposite of 
totalitarianism but contains totalitarianism as an internal tendency (1979) -
hence, no reason for complacency. Democratic complacency (whose locus 
classicus is Fukuyama) - which understands democracy as already fully real-
ized and overlooks its common roots with totalitarianism - is itself a form of 
ideology. It is called by Lefort the 'invisible ideology'. From this currently 
hegemonic form of ideology he discerns another historical variant, the 'bour-
geois ideology'. They all are defined as ideologies because of their diverse 
strategies to conceal the absence of any legitimatory foundation and the con-
stitutive chiasm between inside and outside. 
Bourgeois ideology, which can oscillate between conservatism and anar-
7 1 
O L I V E R M A R C I IART 
chy, experienced its peak in the second half of the nineteenth century. Its 
discourse is constructed around the idea of positive knowledge and denies 
the existence of any transcendent beyond or outside from where religious or 
mystical knowledge could be guaranteed. And yet bourgeois ideology does 
not search for new, contingent foundations internal to society. Rather, its dis-
course is founded upon the separation of ideas from the supposed real and 
by ascribing to the former a transcendent status: What is typical for bourgeois 
discourse, as a discourse of the universal, is that it relies on those transcend-
ent ideas written in capital letters: Humanity, Progress, Nature, Life, Science, 
Art, the Republic, Property, Family, Society, Nation, and Order (Lefort 1986: 
205). These ideas secure their identity by entering into a vertical dichotomy: 
The orderly realm of ideas - civilized society - rises above a chaotic and 
irrational sphere of subordinated elements threatening society: the proletar-
ian threatens the bourgeois, the savage threatens the civilized, the madman 
threatens the 'mentally sane'. The constitutive outside of society mutates into 
a 'downside', the beyond into a below of society, or of mankind even. Order (or 
identity) is not established anymore vis-a-vis a irans-social sphere of the sa-
cred but vis-a-vis a ¿«¿»-social sphere of chaos. But again, as Lefort writes in 
nearly deconstructive terminology: »the conditions which ensure the efficacy 
of bourgeois ideology also contain the possibility of its failure« (208). On the 
one hand, the strength of bourgeois ideology rests on its ability to proliferate 
its ideas throughout an increasing number of discourses until even the most 
revolutionary and subversive politics has to be formulated on its terms (just 
think of 'progress') thereby further strengthening bourgeois ideology. The 
instituting division is dissolved by the 'pluralism' of ideas and of differenti-
ated spheres of action (economy, technology, art, politics, etc.). On the other 
hand, the same fact constitutes the main weakness of bourgeois ideology: the 
ideas cannot fulfill their promise of transcendence since the latter collides 
with the assumption of a differentiated social objectivity; and they cannot 
fulfill their promise of universality either since they are plural and often times 
incompatible. On this basis it becomes possible for the totalitarian ideology 
to liquidate its bourgeois counterpart.ir' 
After the age of communism, what has become the prevalent answer to 
the irritation of society's groundlessness is the 'invisible ideology'.10 Here, the 
15 In particular by obliterating the boundaries between the differentiated social systems 
and fusing the bourgeois oppositions (in particular the one between civil society and 
state), thus nourishing »a passion for tautology« (Lefort 1986: 215). 
"' Recently Lefort speaks about a 'society of individuals': the neoliberal version of the 
invisible ideology. The myth of the society of individuals presents the state as a nothing 
more than the administrator of a national enterprise or incorporation. This could have 
desymbolizingeffects on social relations: »Wenn man der Vorstellung einer Gesellschaft von 
7 2 
DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
imaginary dimension is actualized by the ideology of supposedly anonymous 
information and the ceremony of communication: social division is occulted 
by the bond of media communication. With the help of the overarching and 
endlessly multiplied transmissions of radio and television, ideology produces 
the illusion of a homogenized social space. Communication provides a com-
mon background in front of which all differentiated spheres of action as well 
as scientific, economic, cultural and political contents become interchange-
able. This permanent background of the ceremony of communication is the 
new 'foundation, this accompaniment is the lining continuously spun from 
the intolerable fact of social division' (228). A social bond, a between-us (entre-
nous) is created; however, this bond is not predicated on a constitutive ab-
sence. Rather, conflict is pasted over by the incantation of familiarity: 
»it installs within mass society the limits of a »little world« where everything 
happens as if each person were already turned towards the other. It 
provokes a hallucination of nearness which abolishes ásense of distance, 
strangeness, imperceptibility, the signs of the outside, of adversity, of 
otherness« (228). 
This omnipresent ritual of communication assumes its general political 
significance by obliterating the gap between society and its outside and be-
tween society and politics: the political is occulted, power turns into a place 
like any other. Its effectiveness »lies in the fact that it is only partially mani-
fested as political discourse - and it is precisely because of this that it acquires 
a general political significance« (227). Political 'round table' discussions on 
TV are a case in point. All relations of domination seem to disappear insofar 
as the invisible ideology incorporates all opposition by simulating within it-
self a place for the contradictor while, at the same time, equivalence is simu-
lated between rulers and ruled - an equivalence which does not correspond 
to the factual antagonisms outside the studio. A »phantasmagoria of reciproc-
ity« is established, »according to which everything is in principle sayable, 
visible, intelligible, for such is indeed the ultimate effect of the occultation of 
division: the image of an unlimited discourse in which everything would be-
come transparent« (229). There is an illusion of transparency because the 
Individuen verfällt, ist man Opfer eines Mythos. Und man sieht nur zu gut, wie dieser 
Mythos partikulare, durch den Markt beförderte Interessen zufriedenstellt. Noch einmal 
ist es wichtig, die Verflechtung der politischen, wirtschaftlichen, gesellschaftlichen und 
moralischen Tatsachen zu begreifen. Wenn sich die Träger der politischen Autorität im 
Namen der ökonomischen Notwendigkeit mit einem gesellschaften Bruch abfinden und 
der Staat nur noch als Verwalter des nationalen Unternehmens - mehrfach habe ich den 
Ausdruck 'Unternehmen Frankreich' gehör t - darstellen, dann sind sie die Hauptverant-
wortlichen für den Verlust des Symbolischen.« (1998: 13) 
7 3 
O L I V E R M A R C I IART 
precarious, chiasmatic relation between the visible and the invisible is re-
solved within the visible. And in the moment in which everything becomes 
visible, what is effectively 'invisibilized' is the dimension of society's institu-
tion via conflict and division.17 
To recapitulate: Every modern form of ideology (and every ideology is 
modern in the sense that it is a response to the democratic revolution) con-
sists in the denial of both the instituting role of division and the emptiness of 
the place of power. Yet, with the democratic revolution it has become impos-
sible to permanently occupy that place of power which has effectively been 
disincorporated. While in the past, this external place has been occupied by 
the gods, or, in a supplementary way, by the transcendent body of the mon-
arch, such a transcendent or foundational outside - an actually existing out-
side with a positive content independent of society's identity - is unthinkable 
within the democratic dispositive: Nothing and nobody can anymore legiti-
mately claim being a natural inhabitant of the outside and incarnating an 
external point of reference: The outside has long been abandoned by the 
gods, and power - the representational form of that outside — has been 'emp-
tied'. Such a stance is also unthinkable, philosophically speaking, after the 
decline of foundationalism. Nobody can justifiably claim having unhindered 
epistemic access to a transcendent sphere of knowledge: Such epistemic 
foundationalism is simply the scientific form of ideology. A paradigmatic ex-
ample for a foundationalist theory in the social sciences is orthodox Marx-
ism: Here it is the economic 'base' which supplies a substantive point of refer-
ence for everything in the 'superstructure'. Yet positivism, or what Lefort calls 
bourgeois science (the complement to bourgeois ideology), with its belief in 
a factually pre-given objectivity is no less foundationalist. Ideology, thus, can 
emerge in both politics and science. Ideology is a foundationalist enterprise: 
the »enterprise of phantasy which tends to produce and to fix the ultimate 
foundations of knowledge in every sphere« (299). 
Democracy as 'ontic institutionalization' of division 
After having discussed the phenomenon of original division from its re-
verse side - imaginary concealment-, let us recapitulate where precisely the 
difference between the democratic dispositive and forms of ideology is situ-
ated. In both the democratic and the non-democratic dispositive it is a fact 
that only with recourse to the instance of power, which represents its outside, 
17 As well as the ideological operation itself: the 'operation which defuses the effects of 
the institution of the social' (Lefort 1986: 234). 
7 4 
DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
can society imagine itself as one. In both cases power offers to society a 'point 
of reference' which has to be external to the social (i.e., has to be repre-
sented as being external) in order to function as reference for the social 
whole, for, as it has been demonstrated, we can only establish the totality of 
something by referring to a point or place which is not itself part of that 
totality but is external to the latter. Every society - democratic or not - achieves 
its identity through such division (even when ideology denies division it si-
multaneously constructs it in the form of enemies). So if this logic applies to 
every society, where does the difference lie between a democratic and a non-
democratic dispositive? 
Here, it is important to emphasize that the post-foundational answer to 
this question must not be confused with the ««¿¿-foundationalist answer. The 
'dissolution of the markers of certainty' does not lead to a dissolution of all 
markers, to the dissolution of the symbolic dimension as such. The latter as-
sumption would, of course, characterize the standard foundationalist critique 
of anti-foundationalism: According to its foundationalist critiques, anti-
foundationalism assumes that if we did not have any stable ground, any guid-
ing principle (of ultimate values, rational truth, etc.), any certainty regarding 
our social affairs, then everything would be allowed. According to this stand-
ard critique, we would be in total confusion, without any orientation and 
deprived of any symbolic framework within which we could position our-
selves. For Lefort, and that is what makes his theory /;as£-foundational rather 
than anti-foundationalist, this does not constitute a stringent conclusion. It is 
true that what functions as the Other of society is not a positive, transcendent 
principle or ground but, on the other hand, the dimension of the outside -
the instituting 'ground' - cannot completely disappear either if society is still 
to have an identity; and who would deny that it is in need of some sort of 
identity. Lefort makes it very clear that a point of reference is still required 
though democratically it has to be established in a different, a purely non-
substantive way. What characterizes the democratic dispositive then is that it 
keeps the place of power empty and refrains from positing any ground other 
than its self-division. Yet the different forms of ideology have taught us that 
the groundlessness of the social and the emptiness of power can be denied 
and occulted. Hence, something more is required for democratic dispositive 
to be realized: The emptiness of the place of power has to be institutionally 
recognized (as much as the groundlessness of society is theoretically accepted 
by post-foundational political thought) and discursively actualized. What has to 
occur is the institutional recognition that the place of power has always been 
- and will always be — empty. The democratic dispositive, hence, provides an 
7 5 
O L I V E R M A RCI IART 
institutional framework which guarantees for the acceptance of the groundless-
ness of the social. 
How is this paradoxical goal of the institutionalization of groundlessness 
achieved within the democratic dispositive? The following set of 'arrange-
ments' - which should not be understood as mere mechanical applications 
even as they have to be operationalized on the 'ontic' level - requires our 
particular attention. The first has been mentioned already: The disincorpo-
ration of the place of power is accompanied by 'the disentangling of the 
sphere of power, the sphere of law and the sphere of knowledge'. Power is in 
constant search for its own base of legitimation because the principles of 
justice and of knowledge are not anymore incorporated in the person of the 
ruler: 
»Once power ceases to manifest the principle which generates and 
organizes a social body, once it ceases to condense within it the virtues 
deriving from transcendent reason and justice, law and knowledge assert 
themselves as separate from and irreducible to power. And just as the 
figure of power in its materiality and its substantiality disappears, just as 
the exercise of power proves to be bound up with the temporality of its 
reproduction and to be subordinated to the conflict of collective wills, so 
the autonomy of law is bound up with the impossibility of establishing its 
essence. The dimension of the development of right unfolds in its entirety, 
and it is always dependent upon a debate as to its foundations, and as to 
the legitimacy of what has been established and of what ought to be 
established. Similarly, recognition of the autonomy of knowledge goes 
hand in hand with a continual reshaping of the processes of acquiring 
knowledge and with an investigation into the foundations of truth. As 
power, law and knowledge become disentangled, a new relation to the 
real is established; to be more accurate, this relation is guaranteed within 
the limits of socialization and of specific domains of activity.« (1988: 17-
18) 
Within the democratic dispositive, therefore, the boundaries between 
these spheres of activity have to be recognized. What we witness is the respec-
tive autonomization of the spheres of law, knowledge and power - they all 
develop and define their own norms and principles of legitimacy, and it is 
totalitarianism which seeks to tear down the walls between these spheres and 
re-center society around a single legitimatory ground.18 
18 Therefore, 'separation' of those spheres, as Lefort stresses, »does not mean a com-
plete break; or, of the term is suitable, it is only on condition that it does not efface the 
mode of articulation which is instituted by the break itself« (1986: 255). 
7 6 
DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
The fact that such a single ground disappears, though, does not imply 
the disappearance of the questions of social institution. Since they cannot rely 
on any external source of 'founding' they turn into questions of autonomous 
¿^institution of society. And it is within society where all questions of autono-
mous self-institution are negotiated. This is made possible by the separation 
of civil society from the state. Furthermore, a public space™ is carved out of 
civil society in which no monarch, no majority and no supreme judge can 
decide which particular debate is legitimate and which one is not. Democracy 
is »founded upon the legitimacy of a debate as to what is legitimate and what is 
illegitimate — a debate which is necessarily without any guarantor and without 
any end« (1988: 39). 
That never-ending debate — which forms public space - was secured by 
the declaration of human rights (Gauchet 1989). The notion of human rights 
points to a territory which — as a consequence of the disentanglement of 
power, law and knowledge - is located beyond the reach of power. Human 
rights are declared within and by civil society itself and are part of the auto-
institution of the latter. It goes without saying that nothing could be more 
alien to Lefort than grounding human rights within the nature of man. This 
would again posit a further positive ground behind society's absent ground. 
Lefort prefers (like Arendt before and Derrida after him) inquiring into the 
paradoxes of the declaration of rights which resemble the paradoxes involved 
in the act of declaring a constitution.20 Once declared, however, human rights 
produce an ultimate frame wherein positive law can be questioned: »From 
the moment when the rights if man are posited as the ultimate reference, 
established right is open to question« (Lefort 1986: 258). Human rights do 
not constitute a new positive ground, they do not consist of a certain set of 
10 In more concrete terms defined by Lefort in an Arendtian way as »a space which is so 
constituted that everyone is encouraged to speak and to listen without being subject to 
the authority of another, that everyone is urged to willxhe. 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 another within it and who give it 
a meaning, and of allowing the questioning of right to spread« (Lefort 1988: 41). 
20 Lefort remarks for instance that »the rights of man are declared, and they are de-
clared as rights that belong to man; but, at the same time, man appears through his 
representatives as the being whose essence it is to declare his rights. It is impossible to 
detach the statement from the utterance as soon as nobody is able to occupy the place, at 
a distance from all others, from which he would have authority to grant or ratify rights. 
Thus rights are not simply the object of a declaration, it is their essence to be declared« 
(1986: 256-7). The similarity to the declaration of a constitution does not only lie in the 
performative character of the speech act of 'declaring'; it is the same impossible place from 
which the declaration has to proceed: a place which necessarily has to presuppose what it 
claims to be founding. 
7 7 
O L I V E R M A R C I IART 
pre-established eternal principles: they are characteristically open with re-
spect to their content. Although human rights, in principle, expose all particu-
lar established rights to questioning, they guarantee however that one right 
cannot be questioned: the right to have rights, as Lefort formulates with refer-
ence to Hannah Arendt. Once acknowledged human rights enable more and 
more social groups to claim their right to have rights. Lefort's point is that 
the extension of human rights to more and more groups — and, since they 
have to openly struggle for their inclusion, the extension of public space — is 
not an arbitrary addition to the democratic dispositive but is absolutely neces-
sary for democracy to exist. The constant call for inclusion of more and more 
groups (today, for instance, for the rights of homosexuals, jobless people, or 
immigrants) - the call for their inclusion in the category of those who have 
the right to have rights - is what generates democracy again and again. This 
is the meaning of the notion of generative principle ascribed to human rights 
by Lefort.21 
This generative process of fighting for further inclusions into the ever-
enlarging space once opened up by the declaration of human rights is, of 
course, conflictual in nature and thus accompanied by the institutionalization 
of conflict m democracy (Lefort/Gauchet 1971). Universal suffrage therefore 
belongs to the most important elements of the democratic dispositive. This 
might sound trivial but the ultimate meaning of universal suffrage, according 
to Lefort, is not to elect representatives of the people what, eventually, will 
permit the constitution of a government. This, in a sense, is a 'side effect' of 
elections. Its real meaning is, firstly, to give rules to political competition 
which guarantee for the periodic evacuation of the place of power thereby 
reminding of the latter's ontologically 'empty' status; and, secondly, to move 
social conflict (conflicts of interests and class conflict) onto the symbolic stage 
of politics. We witness the 'sublimation' or symbolic institutionalization of, 
again, both the external axis and the internal axis of society's originary insti-
tution: its self-externalization vis-à-vis an (empty) place of power and its self-
identification through internal struggle. Conflict or, as we could say: antago-
nism as real, is not denied and disavowed in democracy: it is recognized and 
21 It should be mentioned that, for Lefort, the 'institutionalization' of rights is an 
ambiguous enterprise since it is both a necessary condition for an awareness of rights to 
evolve and constant threat to rights in as far as it tends towards bureaucratization and 
concealment: »On the one hand, the institutionalization involves, with the development 
of a body of law and a caste of specialists, the possibility of concealment of the mecha-
nisms indisipensable to the effective exercise of rights by the interested parties; on the 
other hand, it provides the necessary support for an awareness of rights« (1986: 260). This 
shows that Lefort is conscious of the paradoxical nature of any ontic instutionalization of 
ontological conditions. 
7 8 
DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
simultaneously displaced into the Symbolic. This mechanism rests on a proc-
ess of disincorporation in the moment of elections. What occurs is that in the 
moment of elections, citizens which are entangled within different social con-
texts experience what Lefort calls the »disincorporation of the individual« 
(1986: 303). They are abstracted and transformed, or better: converted into 
numbers. The historic precondition for such abstraction is, of course, a proc-
ess of secularization. Only after the disincorporation of the body social it 
became imaginable to disincorporate the individual, to break the unity of 
society apart into numbers in the moment of election, thus exploding social 
substance into fragments: »the idea of number as such is opposed to the idea 
of the substance of society« {ibid.). Or, most poignant: »Number replaces 
substance« (1988: 19). 
The universality of the body social formerly incorporated by the mon-
arch is now replaced by universal suffrage, whereby the general will can never 
manifest itself without mediation as it divides itself and has to be 'counted 
out'. What is actually symbolically represented in the moment of election, 
then, is not the will of the people in its unmediated emanation: quite on the 
contrary, it is the fragmentation, division and conflictuality of society which is 
staged. It follows that the will of the people is nothing unitary because the fact 
that it has to be counted out attests to its fragmentation. This is why 'the 
people' does not exist. And, in addition to that, it also disproves the critique 
of democracy as 'merely formal'. Such a critique usually insists that demo-
cratic elections mask and mystify the 'real' economic power relations since 
elections are nor about distributing 'real' or factual power. What is over-
looked is that elections are not, in the first place, about the distribution of 
'real' power anyhow since their function is to stage and symbolize conflict 
and power as real: Their paradoxical role is to serve as institutional markers of 
un-certainty. It is in the symbolic drama of election that society returns to the 
dimension of its own foundation and origin: to the ultimately conflictual char-
acter of the social and to the impossibility of permanently occupying the place 
of power. What symbolic conflicts on the stage of politics legitimate, thus, is 
not so much social conflicts in all their varying forms, but, rather, the instance 
of conflict as originary: society's founding antagonism. 
Conclusion 
All those aspects of the democratic dispositive contribute to the institu-
tionalization of society's originary dimension: division. What makes division 
originary is the impossibility of a positive ground. It is because society's iden-
7 9 
O L I V E R M A R C I IART 
tity cannot be forged in relation to a positive ground that society has to find 
its ground in itself by way of self-division. Such a quasi-transcendental claim 
about the general condition of identity formation makes sense only if it is 
valid with regard to every form of society. The difference between democracy 
and totalitarianism is not that the latter has access to a positive ground while 
the former hasn't. What distinguishes democracy from totalitarianism and 
other forms of ideology is that in democracy the general condition of every 
possible society - the absence of a positive ground - is not occulted but insti-
tutionally recognized and discursively actualized. 
This, however, can only be a paradoxical enterprise because it is impos-
sible to fully institutionalize something purely negative and absent into a pres-
ence. If this institutionalization completely succeeded we would be left with 
full presence and the dimension of absence would be lost entirely. Absence as 
such cannot be institutionalized. Therefore, institutionalization or discursive 
actualization has to aim at something slightly different: the recognition of ab-
sence as absence, that is, the recognition of the impossibility of founding 
society once and for all. Symbolic frameworks are provided which allow for 
the acceptance of interrogation, debate, questioning, and conflict as thatwhat 
generates democracy. Symbolic modes of 'reflexivity' are produced with re-
gard to the logic of identity formation as such. There is nothing 'cognitive' to 
these modes: their institutionalization merely implies that groundlessness is 
openly staged in democracy and that the constitutive role of division is cultur-
ally accepted (that it enters the 'flesh of the social').22 So we can summarize 
by saying that what characterizes democracy is not so much the logic of ground-
lessness and self-division but the recognition of that logic as constitutive. By 
accepting it as constitutive, the dimension of ground does not disappear obvi-
ously. Rather, it is emptied of any positive content and retained as something 
which is absent. This is what makes democracy - and Lefort's theory of de-
mocracy - post-foundational. For, unlike any other form of society, democ-
racy is founded upon the recognition of the very absence of any definite 
foundation. 
22 With the latter point Lefort touches at something which a Gramscian might call the 
necessity for democracy to assume 'cultural hegemony': »11 faut que le sentiment de la 
division sociale, de l'hétérogénéité, de la diversité irréductible des modes de vie et des 
croyances, vienne à s'imprimer dans une culture et devienne familier, que cette culture 
soit comme une seconde nature pour les hommes, pour que la démocratie devienne 
autre chose qu'un système d'institutions à défendre, qu'elle ne se résume plus au 
pluripartisme et au parlamentarisme, mais qu'elle soit comme \'élément dans lequel chacun 
se rapporte aux autres.« (1988b: 196) 
8 0 
DIVISION AND DEMOCRACY 
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