Power and Paradox (Adam Katz)

Power and ParadoxAdam KatzThe liberal world order presents itself as a vast mapping of“rights.” No political or social question can be discussedwithout being framed in terms of “rights”—someone’s rightsbeing violated, or recognized, or clashing with some otherset of rights. Even when we speak of “balancing” rightsagainst some other imperative, like stability, prosperity ororder, we are still speaking about balancing one set of rightsagainst another, for terms like “stability,” “prosperity” and“order” merely represent the rights individuals have to beprotected from violence, or to have their pensions paid ontime and in full, to have a job, and so on. If, through someglobally imposed Oulipian constraint, we were forbidden touse the word “rights” in discussing public events, no onewould have the slightest idea of what to say.The saturation of our political discourse by “rights” has beennoted for generations—one of the better known dissectionswas Mary Ann Glendon’s 1991 Rights Talk. The concern ofthose critical of rights talk has usually been that itmarginalizes an older discourse of virtue, community andresponsibility that once prevailed in Western polities. This isno doubt true, but at least as important is the thoroughlyparadoxical nature of “rights.” If there are to be rights, they

must be enforced, by some agency large enough to enforcethem without hindrance. The state, naturally. The more rightswe discover, acknowledge, and demand enforcement of, themore powerful and unhindered the state must be. If we aretalking about “international human rights,” we must thereforebe speaking of a state, or states, capable of exercisingimperial control over other states: to compel other states toenforce the rights in question, and to remove theirgovernments if they can’t or won’t.In that case, when we are speaking about rights, we maybelieve we are looking to the uniqueness and dignity of eachindividual, in an ever more refined and sensitive way; whatwe are in fact doing is imagining enhanced forms ofsovereignty. We can put this very bluntly. If rights need to bedefended, they need to be defended against someone.When we posit a right, or advocate for one, then, we areimagining a state willing and ready to act against specificpeople assumed to be potential violators of that right. Eachnew right conjures a state with more and longer tentacles.When one advocates for homosexual rights, one imagines astate willing to act against those who will violate those rights—who will not hire homosexuals, who will not rent or sell tothem, who will assault them, who will murder them. If thestate is to be ready to act against some people, it must havesome idea who they are; at any rate, in the process ofenforcing the right certain profiles will emerge. The state,

and all those acting in conjunction with the state, can saywho they are on the watch for: “homophobes.” The entirevictimary bestiary of homophobes, racists, sexists,transphobes, xenophobes and so on are nothing more than“superstructural” or “ideological” projections of thesovereignty necessarily imagined by rights talk.I have not forgotten that the first calls for rights were forrights against the state. There is something paradoxical inthe first consistent articulation of rights that exist separatefrom and prior to the state, that of Hobbes: the most basicright, that of life, and therefore of self-defense, so that onehas the right to defend one’s life even against the state (so,the prisoner on death row being taken to execution has noobligation to go peacefully), leads to the first argument for astate to which nothing is forbidden, except perhapsdisregard for its own survival, which really just means theright to self-defense of the sovereign himself. If theindividual is to surrender all rights (except self-defense inthe last, hopeless, resort) in order to have his mostfundamental right defended more effectively by thesovereign, he must accept a sovereign that is capable ofdoing anything, anytime, to anyone.Hobbes was at least consistent enough to realize that youcannot have rights against the state. The “laborist” argumentfor rights introduced by Locke initiated the tradition of

positing rights against the state, limiting its powers. This isthe argument that has, of course, been institutionalized andvenerated in the United States, and we still see significantvestiges of this argument among American conservatives,and more than vestiges when it comes to the defense of gunrights. So, it might appear as if this original, “classical liberal”understanding of rights has been distorted by later victimaryrights claims: this distinction is what the argument over“equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcomes” and“negative vs. positive rights” comes down to. But it’s notreally the case that advocates of these rights stood outsideof any entanglements with the state, and just wanted to beleft alone to add their labor to various pieces of naturesurrounding them. They wanted the state (first of all aliberalizing monarchy) to be deployed against the Church,aristocracy and other privileged groups, such ascorporations chartered by the state, independent towns,banks, and guilds. It’s easy for us to overlook this, since themost formidable of those entities either no longer exist (orexist in a thoroughly neutered form), and few today couldmuster any historical sympathy for them. But that just meansthat we identify with the state that swept them into thedustbin of history, or broke and trained them. The history ofthe United States, meanwhile, the first modern society withneither a monarchy or aristocracy, has been the history ofdifferent groups trying to influence the state so as to defendtheir rights against some other, “privileged” group.

Meanwhile, defending rights of free speech and bearingarms generally involve trying to bring the state into yourquarrel with some local public authority, and whichevergroups support it. So, even the most “natural” of rightsinvolve using the state against one’s enemies.If I am right, I am pointing to an enormous discrepancybetween what we are saying and what we are doing in ourrights talk—between the constative and the performativeeffects of that talk. We can formulate the discrepancy asfollows: the more the distribution of goods and status iscentralized, the more vehemently we deny the existence ofany center. Are “rights,” then, real, and is advocacy for themeffective? Yes, they can be—the state can genuinely take theside of one group of citizens against another. Beyond thatpurely political consequence and the benefits that follow,though (it is surely good to have the state on your side),there is no correlation between an increase in rights and anincrease in other goods, like human dignity or humanflourishing. That is a very difficult claim to defend, of course—or to refute: we would need to have some shared languagethrough which we can evaluate “dignity” and “flourishing.”But we don’t have such a shared language, preciselybecause the effect of the direct relation between state andindividual created by the system of rights makes any suchshared language impossible: any assertion of shared valuesor virtues would inevitably privilege one group over others

and therefore be the ground for a claim that the former wereviolating the rights of the latter. So, if we can agree thatbeing bereft of a shared language for discussing humandignity and flourishing is itself detrimental to human dignityand flourishing, then to that extent at least, I have made thecase.I would also say that, on the face of it, the very discrepancy Iam pointing out subverts any claims that rights talk hasenhanced human existence. If rights talk has been sobeneficial, why must the obvious correlation between thegrowth of the centralizing state and individual rights be sooverlooked? Why are the actual power relations obscured,rather than celebrated? No group or individual has aninterest in an explicit statement of the facts: I do what I canto use the state against those who obstruct or irritate me insome way. Rights talk constitutes a virtually universallyshared, one might say “constitutive,” delusion that isrequired for the perpetuation of the system. But the relianceof a political order on hysterical and escalating delusions isan indictment of that order. So, it might be worth the effort toimagine a social order without “rights.”If the most telling defect of rights talk is the denial of thecenter behind vituperative claims that others wish topossess it, it may be that renewed attention to the centermight provide a way of replacing “rights.” The originary

hypothesis involves a group of proto-humans surrounding acentral object; the emission of the originary sign generates,out of that object, a sacred center that subsists even whenthe object itself has been divided and devoured. If thesignificant is ultimately the sacred, there can be nosignificance without a center. We can take the relation tosome center to be constitutive of human being. In The Endof Culture, Eric Gans’s reconstruction of the center-periphery relations subsequent to the originary scenefollows the succession of ostensive, imperative anddeclarative cultures. What he shows along the way is thatthe center as an agent is constructed prior to any agency onthe margins, with the latter form of agency being modeledon that originally attributed to the center. In his analysis ofimperative culture, Gans notes that the memory of thesacred object must conceive of that object asa sacred being that exists above and beyond the concretemanifestations it may take on. The “signified” of theword/gesture of designation has thus become partlyindependent of its referent. This independence is not merelyformal; the imperative is effective only insofar as it isaddressed to this “signified,” summoning it to be present.Thus the sacred being in imperative ritual possesses, in theeyes of the participants, an intentional ability to manifestitself or not.

The asymmetry of the imperative is a step in the direction ofestablishing symmetry between the sacred being and itsworshipers—in a word, of humanizing the sacred. The animalimages and masks that we may associate with theimperative level of culture are in fact signs of a growinganthropomorphism. This is the beginning of a developmentwith profound ethical consequences… The ethicalconception of the community depends no longer on themere ad hoc appearance of the sacred being but on the willof a being whose judgment whether or not to manifest itselfin the rite reflects the real cohesion of the community. (115)The sacred being at the center exists above and beyond anyof its concrete manifestations, it is addressed, it hasintentionality, it can choose to be present or not—before anyof these capacities are attributed to any of the members ofthe community. The sacred being is “humanized” before thehumans are, it is anthropomorphized before there arehumans on which to model the non-human—the humancommunity takes on the attributes by modeling itself on thesacred being it has modeled. The center precedes themargin in every sense, and if agency on the margins was firstconstructed by analogy with the agency attributed to thecenter, it’s hard to see when that would have ceased to bethe case. So, my argument above that the presumablyindividualizing insistence of rights is in fact a way ofimagining ever more comprehensive modes of sovereignty,

can, if anything, be formulated even more forcefully: anytime we designate an individual, event, or activity asprotected, in actuality or possibility, by the sovereign, we arein fact modeling the agency of that sovereign. And there isno individual, event or activity in a society governed by asovereign that could be intelligible other than as protected orproscribed by the sovereign.The agency of the center is constructed through theongoing interaction between center and margins. On theoriginary scene, the center repulses the grasping of themembers of the group, compelling them to stand down. Theimplication from the beginning is that once we havesignification, the center is irresistible: there is nothingwithout the center, and a particular center can only bereplaced by another center. Within imperative culture, thecenter-margin interaction proceeds through an exchange ofimperatives: the members of the community make requestsof the center, requests which must ultimately be reducible tothe request that the center make itself available; meanwhile,the center issues orders to the members, orders whichthemselves must be reducible to serving and preserving thecenter. Any exchanges among the members themselvesgenerate new centers that ultimately “orbit” the sacredcenter of the community: at the very least, if we are talkingabout something, we share the same language, and we canlook at some object together without falling out, and must

therefore share a relation to a prior center. Finally, declarativeculture takes form in narrating and commenting on activitiestaking place at the center, which involve the central figureproviding or failing to provide for the community, with anincreasingly complex system of discourse detailing all thedifferent ways the center and the periphery can serve,betray, and disappoint one another. These are tales of theresentment of those on the periphery toward the center. Andthe secular discourses that emerge from mythological ones,and that are able to place human, mortal figures at thecenter, are modeled on the agency of the center, whileincorporating resentment at being denied centralitythemselves.Gans has also argued that all resentment is ultimatelyresentment of the center (“The center as unique locus ofsignificance is by this fact the focus of resentment,” “TheCentre,” Chronicle 579). Gans identifies such resentment asbeing present on the originary scene itself, in the member’sresentment of the center for not presenting itself, for beingunavailable while subsisting after the consumption of theobject. That all resentment is ultimately a form of resentmenttowards the center is a difficult, but very illuminatingconcept. If a friend, for example, takes advantage of myfriendship to advance himself at my expense at work or insome community activity, isn’t it him, my friend, that I amresenting, rather than the center? My focus certainly seems

to be on my friend: I want to tell him what I think of him, Iwant to get back at him, I want others to know that I shouldreally be in his place. But all of those actions, whetherimagined or actually carried out, are actions that areprohibited under normal conditions, and part of the reason Ifantasize about doing or doing them is precisely becausethey are prohibited. You don’t say things to someone elsejust for the sake of hurting them; you don’t interfere with theoperations of some shared activity for the sake of slakingyour own desire for revenge; you don’t indulge your vanitywhen you are charged with public responsibility. The reasonyou don’t do those things is that the center forbids them: allmoral commands forbidding such “sins” come from thecenter. In that case, then, your resentment is, in fact,directed toward the center: the center has failed to ensurethat the rules have been followed, and so you consider liftingyour obligation to follow those rules yourself. Thisresentment might take the form of losing faith in God, orbecoming more cynical about civic institutions or leaders,which is to say, those obliged to represent and preserve thecenter.The Big Man’s usurpation of the sacred center, in Gans’shistorical account perhaps the most revolutionary act inhuman history, can be understood as evincing just such aresentment of the center. The sacred center within theegalitarian community could not provide due recognition of

the Big Man’s actual status. At the same time, the Big Man’susurpation resolves some crisis within the community—if theBig Man were just acting on his own desire for centrality, hewould have no idea what to do once he acquired it. It waseither him or another contender, or an increasinglydestructive struggle amongst various contenders. The BigMan knows, more or less consciously, that he must managethe very resentment that enabled his own elevation,resentment that will now be directed towards him.Resentment within the community is now modeled on thisnew mode of centrality—it is no longer directed towards theabsent center for not presenting itself, but towards theoccupant of the center precisely for occupying it andthereby denying my own centrality (which I model on his).We should note the paradoxical nature of this resentment,which depends upon its object for self-definition: the morethe Big Man preserves his own centrality, the more I ambeing denied my own. In archaic forms of sacred kingship,this takes the form of conferring ever more significance uponthe king, who mediates between the community and thecosmos; while at the same time making the king far morevulnerable, as he is now responsible for any misfortune thatbefalls the community, and can fairly easily be removed byprecisely the same kind of unanimous confrontation with thecenter through which humanity first emerged.We could hypothesize that this vulnerability led to the

establishment of more defensible forms of (still sacred)kingship, which we could call “imperial.” The imperial king isremoved from the ostensive grasp of his community; in fact,he rules over many communities, each with their own localcults. His sacrality is more abstract, and less bound up withthe ebb and flow of everyday life. The ancient empires lasteda very long time, in some cases millennia, and it’s worthconsidering why they nevertheless vanished, never to berecreated. They clearly weren’t viable past a certain point. Ifwe are to see the center as the final cause of socialdevelopments, and the management of resentment towardthe center as the main problem of government, we must lookthere to account for the limits of imperial sacral rule. Imperialsacral kingship introduced two major innovations. First, theconquest and subsequent mass enslavement andconscription of entire populations; second the introductionof money and trade, ultimately linked to the former (inparticular military necessities), but carried out by far moreelite layers of the population. We have, as part of the samesystem, increasingly sophisticated institutions and thereforeconceptions of justice (giving to each “his due”), that make itpossible to distinguish between various forms of intentionand responsibility; and the generation of massiveorganizations of human fodder, with sufficient excesspopulations for the institution of large scale human sacrifice.The incommensurability of these two interdependentsystems sets the stage for the cross-civilizational crisis

leading to what Karl Jaspers first called the “Axial Age.” (I amindebted to David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years[Melville House: 2014] for this analysis.)Resentment toward the sovereign center must come fromthe elites: it’s impossible to imagine something like a slave orpeasant revolt in the ancient empires (and there were a lot ofthem) without some form of elite sponsorship. Suchresentment would be located within the justice system, mostlikely the upper echelons of that system, and would involvesome figure being treated “unjustly” in a very visible way.Such injustice would be more visible if carried out against anexemplary figure, someone relatively independent butpreviously trusted by the sovereign, even a favorite, and afigure capable of articulately framing his mistreatment in theterms of abstract justice. All that would be necessary wouldbe to narrate such an event (which may, of course, havehappened many times, with a synthetic version ultimatelyemerging) modeled on the imposition of social death andhuman sacrifice upon the conquered population. Thisexemplary individual sets himself apart, is ready to facesocial death, to explain himself and to do so publicly. Theimperial sacral order would then become unviable, at least inthe long term, because there is now a new mode of self-sacrificial sacrality that can address the crises produced bysacral imperial rule. This new mode of sacrality can beembraced by elites and the broader populace alike, and

would therefore be a pole of attraction for the new merchant,priestly, and scribal classes (a more comprehensive accountwould have to connect these developments to theemergence of both money and literacy in the ancient world).Defeats and failures attributable to the sovereign wouldredound to the credit of the new, “Axial Age” sacralities,gradually discrediting the system of sacrifice and thedivinities sanctioning it. For quite a while, though, thiscounter-sacrality might serve to sharpen the tools ofimperial rule, as post-sacral, literate modes of thought canbe applied to the mechanisms of domination, publicmanipulation, and war. Any viable form of governance mustbe able to trace its origins back to some such dialectic.Gans focuses on the Axial Age acquisitions Judaism andChristianity, and sees their rejection of a sacrificial centerand creation of a universal morality as the basis for theultimate unfolding of liberal democratic market society. Eachindividual becomes a center with liberalism and the marketmodel. Gans’s analyses of Romanticism, in which individualspresent themselves as universally excluded from society inorder to create a style or mode of being that enables them tocirculate within society (see, for example, Originary Thinking164-171) lays the ground for his understanding of theomnicentrism of liberalism. Gans makes perhaps his mostunequivocal claim along these lines in the conclusion ofOriginary Thinking: “[t]he historical movement of

desacralization operates neither through the endlessdeconstruction of the originary center nor through itsdefinitive rejection, but through its omnicentricmultiplication. Even ‘decentralization’ is a dangerous term;what is required is rather the universal proliferation ofcenters—every human being a center” (219). But as Gansalso recognizes, someone will always present him/herselfcentrally first, so omnicentrism is as asymmetrical and themodern market Gans theorizes in his essay “On Firstness”:“market exchange maintains a permanent distinctionbetween production and consumption, creating a permanentasymmetry between the consumer and the producer” (45),creating new forms of resentment. The paradox of marketomnicentrism, then, is that it is the production system thatproduces the very forms in which new centers, denouncingthat production system, are projected.If this highly asymmetrical omnicentrism does not lead toviolence it must be because a powerful central state ensuresthat it doesn’t: indeed, consider how strong and centralizedthe state must be, and what a civilized political culture itmust have inculcated, for the romanticist and later modernistcultural entrepreneurs to have flouted social norms soblatantly not only with impunity but for fame and profit. Itshould be mentioned that Gans does not often feel obligedto refer to the state in conducting such discussions, and inthose cases rarely referring to its coercive and controlling

functions, relegating it to the role, essentially, ofredistribution, or addressing those resentments regardingmarket asymmetries that might threaten the system. Liberaldemocracy is a kind of replication of the market model:“[t]he liberal-democratic model is based on the regulation ofthe economic market by a political system that shares thequality of the market by bringing to bear collectivejudgments rather than granting absolute powers to a tyrantor self-perpetuating decision-making group. Freelycontested elections and political debate are essential toallowing the various members of society to propose andenact measures to assuage their resentments. (“LiberalDemocracy in Question,” Chronicle 562).But if the political system works in exactly the same way asthe economic system, by aggregating individual choices intoa collective result that no one really chooses, why should itnot simply aggravate the resentments generated within themarket system? The voter is doing exactly the same thing asthe consumer: “purchasing” a piece of power from aproducer (the political party and its donors and patrons) inorder to express her resentment at being ignored by thecenter. In the political sphere, it is even worse, because thevoters, far more openly than consumers, are choosingagainst others, in order to frustrate and humiliate their rivals.The system, as proposed here by Gans, can only work if the

“measures” proposed to “assuage” the resentments of thevarious individuals and groups in the social order actually doso. But why should we assume that those measures do, onbalance, “assuage”? They can only do so if they arereasonable measures, effectively implemented, and if thelegitimacy of decisions made by those implementing isaccepted sufficiently to prevent the emergence of violentfactions. Does the democratic system provide ground forassuming that any of this will be the case—that themeasures will be reasonable, that they will be monitoredbeyond the minimal necessity of showing that a responsehas been made to some highly publicized resentment, thatinstitutions and agencies are in place to implement themeasures effectively, that they will be accepted by those bywhom they must be accepted (rather than, for example,taken as a down payment for the next set of measures)? Ifthe measures are actually implemented in such a way as toassuage, it will be in spite of, not because of, democracy: itwill be because authority has been granted to institutionsthat is not revocable on a regular basis. But if reasonablemeasures can only be carried out by institutions placed, ifonly by convention, beyond direct public accountability, howis the functioning of those institutions improved by providingthem with the task of “assuaging” in the first place? In otherwords, to the extent that governing institutions are trusted itis insofar as much of their operation remains beyond thereach of liberal and democratic demands, but this is what

liberalism and democracy are unable to accept. Everythingmust eventually be politicized.The role of governance in originary thinking must be framedin terms of our understanding of resentment. There seems tome in Gans’s discussions of resentment and the variousmodes in which is gets “discharged” and “assuaged” inliberal democracies an assumption about resentment that isunwarranted by originary thinking itself. That assumption isthat the resentments we see in these societies are simplythe natural expression of unmediated resentments: it isnatural that blacks would resent whites, or “racism”; it isnatural that women would resent men, or “sexism” or“patriarchy”; it is natural that homosexuals would resent…and so on. The assumption is circular: because theseresentments have been given the most prominent andexplosive public expression, they are therefore the most“real” and “authentic” ones. It is just as easy to see theseresentments as ones that have been opportunistically seizedupon and inflamed within a system of “rights” that invitesand even depends upon the perpetual stoking ofresentment. If liberalism and democracy are to be taken as“natural” forms, including in the sense that they are “higher”social forms than the monarchies that preceded them, thenthese might very well be the most promising resentments forpolitical entrepreneurs to incite insofar as resentments willbe sorted out in accord with the order in which rights have

been allocated to various groups. But if allocating rights andusing them to deploy resentments against a social orderwhich was removed violently rather than “refuted” was infact the means by which liberalism and democracy wereinstalled in the first place, then this appearance ofnaturalness dissolves. If resentment is always resentment ofthe center, then the center must play a formidable, evenformative, role in shaping those resentments. Temporaryoccupants of the center in a liberal democratic order willpromote those resentments that enable them to prolongtheir stay at the center, while their opponents will promotethose that will enable them to take over the centerthemselves. If the occupant of the political center, thewielder of central power, has a far more permanent status,he will have no need to hype potential resentments, and ifhope of displacing him is non-existent, neither will anyoneelse. In other words, a central figure in a system withoutrights would have more of an incentive to govern and allowother institutions to perform their primary functions. Therewould still be resentments—certainly an acceptance of theoriginary hypothesis compels us to grant the constitutivenature of human resentment—and we could also concedethat they will be directed toward the political center, but thecontents of the resentments will be radically different, andfar less conducive to violence. In a well governed order, theform taken by resentments will be towards the failures ofinstitutions in fulfilling their primary function. Are managers

placing employees in the positions they are best suited for?Do teachers maximize the learning potential of students? Doproducers provide products worthy of selective consumers?Resentments along these lines, even when “irrational,” whichis to say driven by mimetic rivalry rather than an informedestimate of the actual situation, will not be implicitlyinsurrectional. They will be calls for more firmly andintelligently exercised authority.What generates power, and gives one person power overothers? Here as well we must think in terms of proximity tothe center. The first instance of human power was on theoriginary scene, where a group of newly formed humanscollectively deferred their desire and allowed a new reality toemerge at the center. This provides us with a model ofhuman power: creating realities by following the lead of theobject at the center of shared attention, rather than rivalrousdesires. Power is always differential because some membersof any group, in any situation, will exhibit greater powers ofdeferral: they will be able to stop and examine a situationwhile others are rushing in, and they will have the patience towait and see when the unfolding reality provides an openingfor action. To the extent that the group is successful, theywill follow those exhibiting a greater power of deferral, whichmeans those individuals will have the power, and, ultimatelya single individual will have the power because someonemust exhibit the greatest power of deferral. Power is an

interpretation of the demands of the center, and the centercan only demand one thing at a time: whoever bestarticulates that demand governs, regardless of how closeothers might have been to doing so. This need not excludeall kinds of consultation, and an awareness of the needs andresentments of others in the group will make the exercise ofpower more steady and secure but I am making a kind ofabsolute ontological claim here: whenever many acttogether, we can identify a single leader who makes everydecision that counts. If common action seems consensual,that just means that a strong sense of common goals and ashared ability to set aside rivalries masks the fact that,perhaps in a somewhat more subtle way, someone is takingthe lead at every point where a disagreement is possible; ifdifferent people decide at different times, that means thateither group is changing configuration while there is always asingle head, or that the head has implicitly or explicitlydelegated decision making power to others or, perhaps, thatthe group is in process of splitting up.Power is therefore also a relationship: as soon as power is insomeone’s hands, he is obliged to continue to exhibit andeven enhance his powers of deferral. He is now responsiblefor his fellows, and he must treat and respond to them as thecenter would have him do, setting aside his own resentmentsin the process. He must register and re-present theirresentments of him as occupant of the center: each will, at

times, believe that he or she could better play the centralrole, and sometimes some of them may be right. The holderof power has to convert these resentments into new forms ofcooperation, emulation and friendly competition. We are notused to thinking of power this way, as earned leadership,even if there’s no other way of explaining the earliest and stillmost basic forms of informal hierarchy: liberal anddemocratic attacks on the center encourage us to see poweras arbitrarily held until proven otherwise—and even the proofis always considered provisional. But it must also be said thatmost forms of power in the contemporary world don’t reallylook like this—the occupants of power often attain theirpositions through more or less subtle forms of violence,deception and manipulation. But these degenerate forms ofpower are only possible because social institutions oncefounded on the kind of deferral Philip Rieff called “charisma”have shaped the reality of the community so thoroughly thatonly under the most extreme circumstances will abuses ofthose institutions lead to their abandonment. Indeed, as Ihave pointed out, only the creation of a new, equally viablecenter could make such abandonment even thinkable. Suchis the necessity of the center, and such the power of thememory of the founding of (especially) political institutions,that there is indeed a great deal of ruin in a nation. And itmust also be said that even when the highest levels of socialinstitutions are held by those who exploit the credit of theinstitution for personal or factional benefit, or short term

ends, much of the rest of the institution might be in thehands of those still acting in accord with its primary purpose;in this way, institutions can be maintained even throughdisastrous leadership. For a while, at least.Power must be distributed and transferred, and this can bedone only by those who hold power. The distribution ofpower is also modeled on the originary event. Now, when wethink about a center, we think about a circle, and so weimagine the members of the originary community arrayedsymmetrically equidistant from the central object. The firstritual would most likely represent the event in this way, andthere would be extremely compelling reasons to maintainthis ritual form. But just as the order of deferral on theoriginary scene must have been unequal, so must have beenthe approach to the object in the sparagmos. Somemembers of the group would manifest their deferral earlierand more clearly; and some would eat more and take betterportions, just never so much as to re-ignite the mimetic crisisat the origin of the event. But in order to ensure that no onetakes too much more, some members of the group wouldhave to intervene where conflicts seem to be getting out ofcontrol. Those who get better portions might often be thosewho then have to “adjudicate” between other members ofthe group, since they are already assured of their part. Theadjudicators may very well have been those who deferredfirst and were therefore deferred to. Any distribution of

power will likewise be uneven, as it must be guided by theneeds of following the commands of the center.The transfer of power is the more difficult problem. Whoeverhas seized the center may eventually become less fit thanothers to wield that power, or at the very least musteventually die. Here we see the paradox of power in itsfullest form. My analysis so far has suggested that powermust ultimately be held by a single member of thecommunity, who is in turn responsible for its distribution.Needless to say, every new power holder does not revisitevery decision ever made on which person is to occupywhich position; rather, by allowing many, most, or all tocontinue in their positions, he now takes responsibility forthe decisions that put them there in the first place anddemonstrates his faith in the judgment of those whoexercised power before him. Every member of thecommunity knows, more or less explicitly, that there must besomeone occupying the center, but part of the way eachknows this is through his resentments directed toward thecenter. Those resentments will be at their most powerfulwhen there is uncertainty at the center, and therefore noclear “framing” of those resentments. The transfer of poweris therefore that moment where both the sanctity of thecenter and the power it confers is formalized and whereresentments toward the center are most “unbound.” Theformalization of power can quell those resentments by

referring back to previous framings and implicitly promisingtheir renewal, or it can make the attempted seizure of thecenter all the more attractive in the knowledge that anyoccupant can be sanctified by the same formalities.The election of those who are to occupy positions at thecenter is best seen as an attempt to resolve the paradox ofthe transfer of power. Election was a common way ofchoosing kings in primitive communities and was replacedby hereditary rule once the kingdom became, throughconquest, the property of the king, which could therefore betransferred like any other form of property. Sooner or laterthere will be a situation in which there is no clearly eligibleheir, in which case violence becomes a very likely way ofsettling the question of succession. The problems withelection run even deeper than that, though. Throughelections the power centers distributed throughout thecommunity become permanently antagonistic to each other,and if there is no permanent occupant of the center, then thestate just becomes an instrument in the hands of onefaction, or coalition of factions, or the other, with everyincentive to make as much use of it as possible until itpasses back into the hands of your opponents.That the temporary holder of power holds it on popularsufferance is seen by democracy advocates as a virtue, butin fact those without power can have no way of knowing how

those with power should use it. All anyone can knowauthoritatively is the sphere of activity in which heparticipates, along with the specific mode of power allocatedto him for that purpose. Elections formalize and make explicitthe dependence of the power holder on those he leads orgoverns, but they do so in the worst possible way, outside ofthe context of the responsibilities and powers of the subjectsthemselves. The dependence of power upon its base is farbetter formalized through modes of consultation throughwhich all members of the community act as eyes and ears ofthe sovereign and communicate to him through establishedchannels. Finally, elections inevitably raise the question ofrights, first of all the right to vote: who should be allowed tovote? What age is the cut-off? What about foreigners? Theintroduction of rights talk means that any attempt toestablish a responsible, qualified, invested electorate will beundermined and replaced by universal suffrage. Universalsuffrage seems to empower everyone maximally, but it justensures that no serious decisions can be left to be decidedby the electoral process, making it necessary to manage,limit, deceive and ignore in turn the expressed desires of themajority; indeed, the electorate gets turned into proxies ofthose who actually exercise power, as they fight their battleswith their rivals, and themselves ultimately becomeincapable of fulfilling the functions of an elite.That still leaves the problem of power transfer unsolved. This

problem can’t be solved by some formal mechanism ofselection, since any formal method will be open tointerpretation and manipulation and, like any rule, must haveits exceptions. The problem is that the transfer of powermust involve initiation into power, which means that theoccupant of central power must take on the responsibility forrecruiting and initiating candidates for succession; but indoing so will he not be raising potential rivals, of each otheras well as him, with no filial sympathy of obligation to thesovereign but having been told by that sovereign that hemight be a worthy successor? The solution is to gear theentire social order towards the resolution of the problem ofpower transfer. The meaning of social life, the telos of thesocial order, is to ensure the orderly transfer of power to theworthiest successor. Every institution has its purpose, whichconstitutes its center: to educate, to protect, to do research,to produce some good or service, to excel in some activity.In each case a power hierarchy is established in the way Ihave been describing through my discussion of power—thepower hierarchy serves the end of the institution, which iswhy it deserves the respect of the members. The purpose ofthe sovereign is to ensure that all institutions maintain theform of power proper to their respective purposes. In turn, allinstitutions report to the sovereign and contribute to theinitiation of prospective successors, chosen by a processoverseen by the sovereign and no doubt institutionallybased, on the model of military academies, officer schools

and other highly selective elite-promotion institutions.Obedience to the sovereign is sharply distinguished from thecontribution to the initiation of the candidates (the sovereignalways has a ranking recorded in case succession becomesimmediately necessary but is constantly revising the rankingas a result of his oversight of the initiation process). Anyobedience to an order of the candidate, much less onecontradicting orders given by the sovereign, would standout, would be alarming, and would be immediately reported,instantly disqualifying that candidate. The candidates don’tgive orders, in other words—a representative of thesovereign gives whatever orders are necessary on theirbehalf, as needed for the process of initiation. (Thosecandidates never chosen to be sovereign can, of course,play other highly valued roles as advisors to orrepresentatives of the sovereign.) Such a breach by acandidate (and possibly by those hoping to be his client)could take place in any institution, as all will participate in theinitiation process, and so all institutions must internalize thedistinction between obedience to the sovereign andpresentation of “work processes” to the candidates—in thisway, no breach will go undetected.Making this distinction between commands from andobligations to the sovereign, on the one hand, andparticipating in the process of initiation of potentialsovereigns, on the other hand, is, then, the most

fundamental tribute to the center paid in a “rightless”system. This distinction will run through all institutions,practices and discourses, in various ways, explicit andimplicit. But it then follows that all assessment and evenpolicing of social activities will involve detecting anddeferring breaches of the boundary between the presentsovereign and the future of sovereignty. The distinction inquestion presupposes that the only thing that stands outsideof sovereign power is the paradox of power itself, which is infact instantiated in the temporalizing of sovereignty.Degeneration in governance and disloyalty will be effects ofand contribute to the treating of potential sovereigns aspresent or imminent sovereigns. The social order willdevelop “specialists” in making the distinction, which is tosay specialists in the paradox of power.The Axial Age acquisitions have always involved the creationof congregations of those who meet to explore together theconsequences of the post-sacrificial revelation regarding theparadox of power they have received. Whatever thedifferences between Confucian thought, Platonism,Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and other productsof the Axial Age, they all rely upon the at least occasional,but usually institutionalized, commitment of “adepts” toclarifying and renewing the revelation in the face of itsobfuscations by poorly managed resentments toward thecenter. It is in the creation of such small groups, or

disciplines, that we can identify the retrieval of the originaryscene against the background of the crisis of resentment.Such groups call for some kind of ascension or heighteningof deferral, in this case deferral of the very resentments thathave brought the social order into crisis and made existingforms of sacrality ineffective. The disciplines guard theboundary between themselves and the norm of ordinaryattentional spaces, while at the same time movingthroughout the social order in various ways, inviting recruits,trying to modify especially egregious social practices,seeking the ear of the powerful, leaving records of thediscipline’s thinking and practices. This remains the caseeven when a particular discipline, like the Christiancommemoration of the crucifixion, itself becomes the socialnorm—that just means new disciplines need to be created topreserve the original revelation against its dilution.In identifying the paradoxical nature of power in a way thatthe sovereign can never completely grasp in the act ofexercising power, the disciplines potentially set themselvesagainst the sovereign. After all, they have pledgedthemselves to a center older and higher than the sovereigncenter, and must judge the sovereign center to be lacking incomparison. We can already see the implications of thisconstruct in the relations between the prophets and kings inthe Hebrew Bible, but the potential becomes full-blownreality in the European Christian Middle Ages. From a strictly

theoretical point of view, all of modern political thinking,most especially the “rights talk” I began this essay bydiscussing, emerges out of this ultimately unsolvableproblem: the sovereign is God’s regent on earth, whichmakes him subordinate to God’s will; but God’s will can onlybe interpreted by God’s representatives on earth, creatingfrom the very beginning the elements of dual sovereignty, orimperium in imperio. This division is what provides theopening to modern liberal and democratic politics, whichsimply replace “God’s will” with the “people,” or the“individual,” or the “nation,” or the “oppressed,” or the“workers,” or some other entity in positing a “real” sovereignto which the actual sovereign must defer. All of modernpolitics involves trying to subordinate the actual sovereign toone or another version of supposed “real” sovereignty. Theimplicit, real, sovereign is who has given one one’s “rights.”Behind the scenes are rival powers using these purportedlegitimations to pin the actual sovereign to their ownmapping of actual onto real sovereignty. The state iscentralized, power is accumulated, the state becomes abigger prize, power is more insecure, and the governmentdoes less and less governing.The Axial Age revelations regarding the paradox of powercan be integrated into a secure social order by situating thedisciplines within institutions, and charging them withmaintaining the distinction between present and future

sovereignty. In this way they provide feedback to thesovereign without claiming to answer to some higherauthority. Any command can be obeyed in different ways,and the more open-ended the command the more theservant is confronted with the distinction between its “letter”and “spirit.” The disciplines display their loyalty to thesovereign by presenting their obedience to the particularlyopen-ended charges they are given as in the “highest” spiritof the sovereign—in this way, they never place themselvesoutside of sovereign power while “reading” the sovereign’scommands back to him (declaratively) in a way that enableshim to sharpen his own understanding of the intent informingthem. This is the most basic form taken by the paradox ofpower: that the one commanding is himself constituted bythe ways his command will be taken up. As Gans shows inhis analysis of the imperative in The Origin of Language, forthe one commanding the command is essentially anostensive, a sign whose very issuance generates the reality itindicates; for the one receiving the command, meanwhile,the imperative represents a desire, which by its nature cannever be fulfilled in the exact form in which it was conceived.The disciplines stand in this gap between the ostensive anddesiring dimensions of the imperative. The disciplines alsorepresent, then, the solution to the other problem endemicto autocratic rule: how to remove the manifestly the unfitruler. The disciplines go as far as they can in making the rulerfitter, while in the last extremity they might work counter to

the usual process and transfer their loyalty to one of thepotential sovereigns. Of course there are dangers implicithere, but that is the case with any social order comprised ofdesiring and resentful beings, and we would have to relyupon the people produced within such an order having theintelligence, responsibility—in sum, the sovereign imaginary—to go through the established layers of trust (first of all thesovereign, but then those whom the sovereign himself hastrusted…) in such a way as to maintain the singularity of thecenter. The founding assumption that the occupant of thecenter must not be subject to any “higher” or “more real”form of sovereignty is preserved.I hope it is clear that the post-liberal, post-democratic formof social order I am proposing here does not involve a returnto some earlier, more primitive social form. In fact, the mostprominent form taken by the disciplines today is, of course,that of the scientific discipline, organized around thelaboratory and the experiment. The study of the paradox ofpower would be the social science, taking many forms andtreating all social institutions as its “laboratories.” Needlessto say, the kind of experimentation possible with thedisciplines of physics, chemistry and (with some limitations)biology are inapplicable to social relations. The “praxical”study of social order takes the form, rather, of making thenorms, rules, hierarchies, and, again, the sovereignimaginary followed tacitly by e

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