Theoria

The editors of Theoria feel especially privileged to present, as the opening contribution to this issue, a remarkable essay by the late great sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Not long before his untimely death earlier this year, Bourdieu entrusted the journal with the publication of this reflection on, and spirited re-affirmation of, the role of the intellectual and the nature of intellectual engagement. This essay is especially resonant in that it speaks so eloquently to, and by implication endorses, the underlying nature and purpose of Theoria as an editorial project. Thus, as we mourn the passing of this remarkable scholar, we take pleasure in communicating through this essay the passion, compassion, wit and commitment – as well as the vast and singular erudition so lightly worn – that were the hallmarks of his large and impressive oeuvre. We have departed from Theoria’s convention in this instance, and have elected not to provide a preliminary sketch of Bourdieu’s argument. Instead, we invite readers to engage directly, without our intermediation, with his evocation of the “utopia of the collective intellectual”; it is to the realization of this “utopia” that we would like to believe this journal makes a modest contribution. We would thus like to believe Pierre Bourdieu would have taken pleasure in engaging, critically, with the contributions to this issue – contributions which provocatively address, among other things, the globally pressing issues of justice and democracy as well as the need to revisit the prospects of market socialism in the context of developing societies.

In my book, The Rules of Art,2 I demonstrated that the intellectual world is an autonomous world within the social world, a microcosm which constituted itself progressively through a series of struggles. In the history of the West, the first to acquire their autonomy with regard to power were the jurists, who in twelfth century Bologna succeeded in asserting their collective independence in relation to the Prince, and, simultaneously, their rivalry amongst themselves. As soon as a field is constituted and asserts its existence, it asserts itself into the internal struggle. It is one of the properties of “fields” that the question of belongingness to this universe is at stake in the very midst of these universes. Suppose that, like a French historian by the name of Viala, one makes a study of the French writers of the seventeenth century: one uncovers lists of writers, one compiles these lists and one undertakes to describe the social characteristics of the writers. In terms of a good positivist method, it is beyond reproach; in fact, I believe that it is a serious error.

In his famous poem “Mending Wall” Robert Frost’s narrator builds, alongside his neighbour, a stone wall that divides their respective lands (Frost 1947: 47-8). The narrator can see this joint activity as no more than a “kind of out-door game” for, “There where it is we do not need the wall” and he wonders, “What I was walling in or walling out, / And to whom I was like to give offence”. His taciturn neighbour can only repeat his own father’s thought that “Good fences make good neighbours”.

Winston Churchill is quoted as saying that “democracy is the worst possible form of government except – all the others that have been tried”. This thought may stimulate efforts to overcome the defects of democracy through the exploration of as yet untried alternatives superior to democracy. In our time, however, an effort to overcome these defects through the exploration of as yet untried superior forms of democracy seems far more promising. Despite their multi-dimensional diversity, existing democratic regimes are scattered over a minuscule sector of the space of possible democratic structures. It cannot be said that experience and reflection have produced convergence upon this sector. Most of the other possibilities have never been tried or discussed. Indeed, many could not have been tried or discussed because they are becoming feasible only now, in the dawning information age. It is not, then, good reasons that keep practice and reflection within the narrow sector, but habit and entrenchment. We are deeply accustomed to the conventional forms of democracy. And politicians successful under prevailing rules tend to be hostile to any significant reforms. But this should not stop the rest of us from at least thinking about alternatives.

My aim in this presentation is to offer some reflections concerning the kind of public sphere that a vibrant democratic society requires. I want to scrutinize the dominant discourse which announces the “end of the adversarial model of politics” and the need to go beyond left and right towards a consensual politics of the centre. The thesis that I want to put forward is that, contrary to what its defenders argue, this type of discourse has very negative consequences for democratic politics. Indeed it has contributed to the weakening of the “democratic political public sphere”, and it has led to the increasing dominance of juridical and moral discourse, dominance which I take to be inimical to democracy. I submit that the increasing moralization and juridification of politics, far from being seen as progress, a further step in the development of democracy, should be envisaged as a threat for its future.

Within European debates on the left about the future of the socialist project, particularly within the United Kingdom, market socialism has been enjoying a certain vogue over the last decade. It represents one of a number of approaches that have been canvassed in pursuit of a Third Way that would steer a course between the old authoritarian, state-controlled socialism of Soviet and Eastern European practice and the untrammelled excesses of a free market capitalist approach. It has claimed some influential supporters, as well as vehement critics who aver that in surrendering to the market and the law of value market socialism vitiates its socialist credentials. But the issues raised in the European context have specific contextual characteristics. European economies and social structures are what we term developed or advanced. While large disparities of wealth exist between social strata and social classes, there is an absence of the fundamental development problems and crushing poverty that are the all too familiar features of the world of Africa. It may be suggestive therefore to consider the application of market socialism within an African setting, acknowledging that there will be a shift of emphasis. While the concerns for social justice and equality that are central to the evaluation of market socialism in a European setting naturally remain relevant in the case of Africa, there is also the question of development itself. Can market socialism be considered as a prescription for the disease of underdevelopment that continues to undermine the economies, the politics and the very life of African societies? We will begin with a review of the history and nature of market socialism before returning to this central question. In general I subscribe to the view that we should avoid dealing with “Africa” in a general way, since it ignores the need to recognize country by country differences and specifics. However, on occasion, a broad brush is useful. I believe it has utility here in a comparison and contrast between European and African experiences of socialism.

The thesis I consider in this essay takes the form of a chiasmus. Just as Heidegger’s Nazism requires us to re-evaluate his 1943 interpretation of Nietzsche as an instance of what Michel Foucault, in a 1978 interview, called a “regime of truth” (Foucault 1980: 133), so too does Foucault’s 1983 claim that a Heideggerian reading of Nietzsche determined his philosophical development (Foucault 1996: 430) call for us to inquire into the “unthought” of Foucault’s philosophical project. To re-read Heidegger by way of Foucault, I submit, is also to re-read Foucault by way of Heidegger. At stake in this thesis is how to understand Foucault’s concept of “power”. Or, more to the point, at stake is how to understand the twist with which Foucault closes that same 1978 interview: “The political question, to sum up, is not error, illusion, alienated consciousness or ideology; it is truth itself. Hence the importance of Nietzsche” (Foucault 1980: 133).

Ethics in Context: The Art of Dealing with Serious Questions, by Gernot Böhme (transl. by Edmund Jephcott). Cambridge: Polity, 2001. Reviewed by Deane-Peter Baker

9-11, by Noam Chomsky. Johannesburg: M&G Books, 2001. Reviewed by Derek Hook

The Politics of Lying: Implications for Democracy, by Lionel Cliffe, Maureen Ramsay and David Bartlett. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000. Reviewed by Ralph Lawrence

Feminism and Emotion: Readings in Moral and Political Philosophy, by Susan Mendus. London: Macmillan, 2000. Reviewed by Pamela Anderson

Stupidity, by Avital Ronell. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Reviewed by Patrick Lenta

Norbert Elias and Modern Social Theory, by Dennis Smith. London: Sage, 2001. Reviewed by Volker Wedekind

The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?, by Slavoj Zizek. Verso Press, 2000. Reviewed by Clayton Crockett

Notes on the Contributors