Bouvard on Sovereignty, Center, and Structural Meaning

Thanks. Could you direct me more precisely to MacIntyre and de Jouvenel? It seems to me that if we say that everyone wants secure power, but understands that in terms of their own position in relation to power (so that the "stripping down" would be the goal in the sense that certain positions can only imagine secure power in those terms) we can avoid the tendency to see mindless and endless struggles for their own sake. We might also want to close the gap between means and ends--what you actually do is what you are trying to do (unless you fail, but that's a different issue). But, again, if you have particular texts in mind here I'd like to hear it.

Thanks. I will do some reading.

It's not that I saw you as seeing "mindless struggles"; it's that that seemed to me the logic of the position you were opposing.

My understanding of structure: there has to be a center. There is no meaning or intelligibility without a center, i.e., that which is desired and repels appropriation, and is therefore represented. So there is always a center/margin structure. Once a human occupies the center (the Big Man, then sacral kingship), we have the problem of scapegoating: the man at the center is responsible for everything, so his sacrifice can resolve anything. The basic modification in this structure is the king removing himself from appropriation by the people, i.e., interposing layers of "elites" between himself and the majority. Sacrifice is thereby deflected away from the king towards other relatively central figures--the more successful the elites, meanwhile, the more centrality can be conferred on "fringe," powerless figures, who can be presented as the source of some kind of contamination. This structure persists (and the deflection of scapegoating to the powerless is the most successful political structure up until this point) until the "axial age" modes of thought and sacrament discredit sacrifice. Then there is a new problem, the one we still have today: the mode of thought/sacrament that discredits sacrifice (that enables us to defer the compulsion to scapegoat) is incorporated into government, providing rulers with a broader range of rational strategies for dealing with conflicts. At the same time, the "axial age" praxis sits in judgment on the state--the government is legitimate insofar as it refrains from violating the sanctity of that mode of praxis. Hence, imperium in imperio--any secondary power can raise the banner of defending the sanctity of some praxis that has putatively been violated by the sovereign (or someone protected by him). The way to solve this problem is to institute a fully "post-axial" mode of government that oversees institutions so as to disallow conflicts deriving from sacrificial crisis, which have been disguised and transmuted but never abolished precisely because they provide causes for divisiveness--the more effectively an "absolute" government does this, the more it will eliminate the imperium in imperio problem before it gets started. If we look at it this way, it's really nobody's "fault"--everyone wants to secure the center, but the means of accomplishing this very difficult task (a leap forward for human beings) have not been completely assembled. So, we could speak about this as "unsecure" power, insofar as long as we don't have a center that abolishes sacrificial crises and imperium in imperio crisis, we will continue to undergo that pathological interplay.

I'm not sure whether my claim that there is always a central figure coincides with Jouvenel's understanding of power, as you present it here. I'll have to think about it--I'd like to hear how it seems to you.

I'm also not clear about why seeing Power as its own entity leads to the rejection (or qualification?) of HLvM--if power exists regardless of who occupies it, there would still (all the more, even) be struggles over who will occupy it. That struggle would be carried out by the elites, against one another. Each would try to subvert the other. How? Two ways, I think: weaken the other's relation to the current occupant of the center/power; weaken the others' relation to their subordinates. Using the terms of GA I've set up here, that means creating sacrificial crises, masked as attempts to recover the "official" or "genuine" axial praxis, aimed at the other. Meanwhile, the sovereign, insofar as his occupancy of the center is unsettled, acts the same way towards the elites--in the end, he either manages to sacrifice (in a more or less modified and mediated form) the elites who threaten him to their subordinates and/or rivals, or is demoted to just being another elite himself, and may be removed by someone better at playing the sovereign.

Now, my understanding of your objection to RF's absolutism (I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm misreading you) is that he doesn't distinguish the kind of struggles the constitute an "unsecure" system from the kind of action that would be required to secure it; while, in fact the latter activity would be qualitatively different, ethically, politically and otherwise. What "they" have been doing all along is what "we" can now do them (especially now that we see so clearly what they are doing). Also, there is a kind of modern problem here, one we see in Marxism and Foucault, among other places--once we say that a particular mode of knowledge has been produced by "power struggles," does it discredit it as knowledge. Is being produced by power=being false? This assumption always seems to be dialectically linked with its seeming opposite: we can use power to prove our knowledge is true. There must be something other than power in terms of which we can assess power.

I am identifying the sovereign with the center, and I think that everyone subject to the same sovereign recognizes it. Almost everything we do is a more or less explicit gesture towards the same center--getting a driver's license, using money, etc.

Yes, I spoke too reductively about the development of elites--they cultivate disciplinary spaces that are part of the disciplinary space of ruling of the king. It may be more important to note that conquest is almost certainly involved in this transition--possessing larger territories, with more wealth, generates more space for elites (probably first of all for military, governing, bureaucratic purposes--then trade and agriculture extend from that). The interest in conquest would include the interest in creating distance from the people.

Its this process of civilization that creates new center-margin structures. Obviously this can vary a lot, but it does seem like intermediate loyalties and responsibilities are generally involved. But it's civilization that creates the ways of thinking that make a return to sacral kingship impossible. Even when the king rules directly and marginalizes the nobles, no one will believe that he can control the weather, the crops, etc.--and he wouldn't want anyone to believe it. Christianity is the obvious example in the West, but I assume systems of thought like Confucianism played a similar role in China, of discrediting sacrifice/scapegoating. It'a certainly very interesting that Christianity and Greek philosophy share a similar structure of origin, with the individual proposing a higher level of deferral (Jesus, Socrates) being executed, and then afterward recognized as a kind of "founder." I don't know if Confucianism or Buddhism have something similar, but they both in their own ways call for a kind of social withdrawal, a refusal to participate in "contagious" activities. It's impossible to go back to sacral kingship after this; and it's also hard to form a government that fully incorporates the knowledge gained in these disciplines. It hans't yet been accomplished.

It's not a question of abolishing resentment, etc., although I can see how I made it seem that way. It's a question of containing them. One peasant can resent another, one lord can try to displace another and get closer to the king, and feel that the king is treating him unfairly, and, of course, kings themselves (and their advisors) can aspire towards empire, etc--but something else has to happen for all the peasants to resent the lords as a class, or for the lords to organize themselves collectively against the king--resentments have to be "weaponized" in the ways I described (sacrifice disguised via imperium in imperio). The post-axial modes of praxis (Christianity, philosophy and the others) propagate the understanding that resentments are "internal," and cannot simply be blamed on their objects. This mitigates resentment, both by changing the way people understand themselves and each other, but also by suggesting institutional forms of justice, mediation and mitigation (which in turn is how people change their understanding of themselves).

Regarding de Jouvenel, I'm not sure I see how Power can be a thing in itself that just wants to grow. What could one do, in that case? Counter power with something other than Power? What would that be? Counter one Power with another? The countering Power would itself want to grow. I'll have to think about this, and go back to de Jouvenel with it in mind. The desire for a "symmetrical" center-margin relation seems to me more coherent, anthropologically.

The US is deliberately vague about sovereignty, but I think that the best approach is to treat the President as sovereign, because the President alone acts. The rest of the government are built in limitations of sovereignty, which the president can sometimes use to enhance it. The very fact that the President must be elected, and is now limited to two terms (and could not, anyway, choose his successor) are all severe limitations on his sovereignty. We could see the growth of executive power from the Civil War on as very confused and ambivalent attempts to place the president more securely at the center. A lot of other power centers have an interest in this, because then there'd be a single point to push. But there would always be other power centers who may want this too, but not now, not in this way, etc.

The problem is to civilize the state so the state can reside over the civilizing process. The state incorporates post-axial thinkers because the residues of sacral kingship lose credibility. This is problematic, because those thinkers can weaken the state's authority, even without intending to. It would be good for the state to become, say, more "Christian," but it's a problem to suggest that it isn't "Christian enough." All thinkers, at least all those with any public, are part of the state--at universities, or think tanks, or elsewhere in the media. That's the state thinking, in a sense, often against itself.

My question for you, then, is what do you think those engaged in political struggle to be aiming at? I would basically agree with your formulation of my view, but would just modify it to allow for political movements--perhaps Nazism was one--that genuinely try to destroy post-axial modes of thought/government. Maybe we could see Communism this way as well, which would make for a significant "exception." But if establishing "post-axiality" is so unprecedented, we should expect "relapses." Anyway, you see something else going on here. Why the "stripping down"? Who or what is doing that, and why?

By "symmetrical" center-margin relation I mean that everyone is aligned in relation to the center in a way that supports everyone else's alignment. In the most primitive society, everyone wants to get the ritual right--the right object, the right place, the right actions. In a shared practice, everyone wants to know who's in charge, who to appeal to, who speaks for the authority when he's not there. In a complex society, everyone wants to know what the rules are, how they will be applied, what accounts of oneself may be requested, and so on. I am saying that this is really what everyone wants, even those who are are destroying these very things--the ones trying to destroy them believe that the rules are unintelligible, unevenly applied, what is demanded from one is unconnected with what one is capable of--only a completely different system can set this right. One way or another, everyone is trying to restore a "sustainable" relation to the center.

Anyway, I certainly don't object to some more dwelling with de Jouvenel and MacIntyre.

How could I not recognize HRC or Obama as sovereign? My dissent (I would even want a better word) from their actions would involve seeking to clarify their imperatives, which would be imprecise and contradictory since they would be marked by limited and divided power. This would be a critique in some ways similar to, but more coherent and less hypocritical than, the kind of critique I discuss in that passage you quote--rather than looking for hidden rulers, you try to treat the actual ruler as a real ruler. Even if I proclaimed myself part of the "resistance" to them, I'd still obey the police they ordered, I'd still use the money they are responsible for introducing into the system, etc. What would my declared resistance amount to? All the posts I wrote on inquiring into imperatives and requesting assistance in properly obeying them were attempts to address this issue.

Yes, the post-axial route is an attempt to maintain power and also to use it properly. I think Power did take this route for quite awhile, say from 800-1400 in Europe maybe more elsewhere. Even since then the record is very mixed, with de-civilizing and civilizing processes competing with each other. I'm not sure which histories to rely on here, but I do think that everyday life got steadily less violent over the centuries. I've never had a physical altercation since I was 12 years old, and I never really had to go out of my way to avoid them. That must count for something--Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process provides some support here. Of course there have been massive, if sporadic and at times localized, increases in other forms of violence. But I don't think we've experienced a steady, unqualified descent into barbarism. I don't know how many histories look carefully at this specific issue.

Well, what have empires been aiming at? Certainly not at having their arms turned against them. How about those turning the arms against the empire--what do they want? Sheer domination in the first case, revenge in the latter? Assuming so is also a kind of a gamble. In modern times, maybe it has something to do with the weakness of those Third World states--there are a lot of differences, but the Chinese and Indian states were clearly severely weakened by the 18th an 19th centuries, as was the Ottoman Empire, and Africa hardly had states at all. I don't know enough about all the histories involved here, but overwhelming asymmetries between states might lead the stronger states to introduce their own structures, or structures more conducive to their own power, in the weaker states. That might also be an attempt to sustain a relation to the center.

You're still being a bit cryptic, but as best as I can tell your own preference is for a kind of polycentric feudalism. Is that where you see de Jouvenel and MacIntyre heading? Are you arguing against absolutism, or for a different version of it?

Yes, I had plenty of resentments toward Obama and was very happy to see Trump elected. That didn't make Obama any less the president, the head of government, the sovereign. The problem is to think through a conceptual frame within which one's resentment makes sense, so it's something more than "I hate tis guy!", "He's a traitor!", etc.

Instead of post-axial, let's speak in terms of the replacement of the honor system by "civility." If someone rapes your daughter, you don't go out and kill him (or his sister, or whoever). You restrain yourself, you accept that vengeance is not yours, and you call the cops. Someone with enough power can probably command everyone to let the police, or secret police, deal with violence--maybe there was very little street crime in Saddam's Iraq. But if the government just makes you afraid of carry out vengeance, without ensuring that something ("justice") will replace it, it will make you afraid of lots of other things as well--afraid of things that a functioning, certainly a flourishing society needs--honesty, a willingness to come forward to the authorities, initiative, etc. So, it's better if you have a reliable system of justice rather than a system of terror--better for the ruler as well, since most rulers would rather not have to worry that everyone in their inner circle would kill them if they had half the chance. If you have a religion like Christianity, which teaches you to turn the other cheek, to beware of throwing the first stone, to ask yourself whether you have sinned before accusing another, it is easier, I think, to replace the honor system with a justice system. So, in a sense I do think Americans are waiting around for a leader to establish justice, stop the rise of vendetta and violent politics, lessen corruption and destructive forms of self-interest and parasitism. And all that would, in a sense, be "Christian"; or in China "Confucian."

Now, the articulation of Christianity with a justice system is an advance over tribal politics but it's very imperfect. Arguments over Christianity become arguments over government. People come to rely on the justice system and lose all capacity for self-defense. They try to drag the justice system into their own vendettas. Christianity is a highly de-ritualized religion, and is even borderline atheistic. The secular bet was that Christian ethics without Christianity was enough--maybe that was wrong. Maybe Christianity helped civilize the West for as long as it could, but then hit its ceiling. It would be silly to say, now, that we need more Christianity, or this kind of Christianity, or this simulacrum of Christianity. It's better to be minimal: sovereign power, without division, blocks, procedural limits; and deflection of resentments away from mimetic/sacrificial crises. Using our best judgment, we can support actions and actors that seem to go in that direction (and oppose those who push in the opposite direction), while at the same time thinking bigger about possibilities.

At this point I'm not sure about imperialism, past, present and future. Sometimes taking power over another country seems unavoidable (like if they force you into a war and you defeat them), and the consequences of doing so are never completely foreseeable. Maybe you see responsible imperialism as a transparently self-serving oxymoron, but it may be that a bit of that went into the building of every state. Something went very wrong with Anglo and then American imperialism, and it obviously has a lot to do with liberalism. A good sovereign would, I think, work on lessening our "commitments" overseas, steadily but gradually (it should' look like a rout), and shift those commitments to support for sovereigns trying to rule their own countries coherently like we should start doing. No more support for "reform movements," "democratic rebels," etc. I think most Americans would see such an approach as a piece with overseeing justice and the "disciplines" at home.