Week 1: Introduction (part 1 of 2)

In Politics and the Other Scene, Etienne Balibar looks at the universalims that structure ideas of the nation and the rights that are greanted under citizenship. In the first chapter, “Three Concepts of Politics,” Balibar  discusses the “autonomy of politics” in that it exists “only to the extent that subjects are the source and ultimate reference of emancipation for each other” (Politics and the Other Scene, 4).

Tracing the thought that Balibar refers to as “the autonomy of politics” is that first, individuals are given Natural Right. However, as Balibar immediately points out, the Natural Rights that are allotted to people (or more specifically citizens), although Natural, become a set of rights that must be “won” or “gained”. Put differently, the maintenance of one’s own rights falls upon the individual and is their own responsibility. In addition, since these rights are not merely God-given or unconditional, but must be “won”, the Individual Rights of Man are only possible through a collective struggle or if won collectively. This line of thought, Balibar continues provides the framework for the nation and its constructions of citizenship.  The Natural Rights given to individuals become the same right that must be collectively won or gain, so that both the “natural” and the “earned” rights are both one and the same. The natural rights given to Man or Humanity are also the same rights that must be earned or won as a collective of citizens.  Balibar writes, “In this way, we move from the self-determination of the people to the autonomy of politics itself” (4). 

Put differently, “it is always-already time to demand emancipation for oneself and for others,” yet at the same time, it must always be something that, through systems and institutions that guarantee these rights to its citizens, it must also be protected and gained for every human equally. Being a citizen is equal to being human. Balibar writes, “To be a citizen, it is sufficient simply to be a human being, ohne Eigenschaften” (4). The space in-between the “natural” and “earned” rights that the construction of the nation seem to provide individuals with is precisely the area that Balibar confronts. The “other scene” of politics, then, becomes a space that lies outside of the scene of politics that is most apparent or that are structured by the discourse surrounding the construction of these universalisms, but the “other scene” also seems to function as the scene of the other.

What is the status for those who reside outside of citizenship? More important for my own interest, what is at stake in the in-between space of human and citizen? What is at stake in construction of identity of those who live in such spaces? This text is important for my research in that it poses similar questions. This idea that rights need to be won or gained, if carried out further, expand to an evolutionary or Darwinian idea of the struggle for existence as a universal truth. The implications of such universalisms on individual rights become particularly important if carried out to this degree. What is at stake in speaking of such a universal where life, basic life, is always already a universal struggle for existence?