Northeastern Political Science Association

Performing Politics: Foucault, Habermas, and Postmodern Participation Author(s): Jessica J. Kulynych Reviewed work(s): Source: Polity, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Winter, 1997), pp. 315-346 Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3235221 . Accessed: 11/01/2012 21:34
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Palgrave Macmillan Journals and Northeastern Political Science Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Polity.

http://www.jstor.org

PerformingPolitics: Foucault, Habermas, and PostmodernParticipation Jessica J. Kulynych

WinthropUniversity The contemporary worldpresentsa seriouschallengeto the traditional liberalunderstanding politicalparticipation.Whileboth Jurgen of Habermasand MichelFoucault haveprovidedstrongphilosophical impetusfor reconceptualizing participation,neitherprovides a fully solution to the difficultiesof understanding satisfying political action in this postmodernworld.HowevercombiningHabermas'svision of discursive politics withFoucault'sfocus on the micropoliticsof resistanceprovides the basisfor developinga more satisfyingconception that definespolitical participationas performanceand its purpose as resistance.Such a performativeunderstanding politicalparticipaof tion not only enrichesour understanding discourseand resistance; of it also makesbettersense of the varietyof political activitiesprevalent and efficacious today. Jessica J. Kulynychis an AssistantProfessor of Political Scienceat in WinthropUniversity Rock Hill, South Carolina.She is currently engagedin a book-lengthstudy applyingthe insightsof postmodern andfeminist theorizingto the problem of understanding contemporary political action. I. Habermas,Foucaultand the End of Traditional Participation Though political scientistshave often asked why people participatein politics, today it is more fitting to ask what participationmeans. This questionis particularly urgentif we recognizeand acceptthe emergence of a postmodern world.To say that the worldis now "postmodern" to is fundamentalchanges in both the condition of the contemhighlight poraryworld,and in our attitudetowardthis world.The uniquepolitical and economic configurationof advanced,welfare state capitalism,the solidificasubtletyand ubiquityof disciplinary power,the simultaneous 1997

Polity Polity

2 Volume XXX,Number Volume XXX, Number 2

Winter Winter 1997

316 Performing Politics tion and fractureof personaland collectiveidentity,and the advanceof combine with an increasingphilosophical technologyand bureaucracy towardtruthand subjectivity producea worldthat is often to skepticism of incompatiblewith our traditionalunderstandings democracy.These fundamentalchangesinevitablyalter the meaningof basic democratic conceptssuch as politicalparticipation. While numerouspoliticaland social theoristshave sought to portray and understand change, few have been moreinfluentialthan Jurgen this Habermasand Michel Foucault. Each provides valuable conceptual resourcesfor understanding contemporarysocieties and the kinds of dominations,repressions,oppressions,constructions,subjectifications, identities,and possibilitiesthat exist therein.They also providepromising, albeit incompletesuggestionsfor reconceptualizing political participation in ways appropriatefor postmodern societies. Habermas a basedon communicarecommends discursive conceptof participation a tive action in a deliberative public sphere, and Foucaultrecommends micro-politicsof resistance.Unfortunately,their insights have not yet of been integratedinto a postmodernunderstanding politicalparticipation. This failure of integration is a direct result of an excessively their polarizeddebatethat has elided their similaritiesand exaggerated on betweendisdifferences.'Ratherthan focus primarily the differences cursive participationand resistance,I maintainthat it is possible and In fruitful to combine these two strategies.2 the following discussionI utilize the contemporaryconcept of performativityto integrateboth of deliberationand resistanceinto a new understanding political paras performative resistance. ticipation
1. While the participants this debateare numerous,a good sampleof the various in of and David critiques both Habermas Foucaultcan be found in the followingcollections: CouzensHoy, ed., Foucault:A CriticalReader (New York: Blackwell,1986);Hubert and Dreyfusand Paul Rabinow,MichelFoucault:Beyond Structuralism Hermeneutics (Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press, 1982); Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermasand the Public Sphere(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992);MichaelKelly, ed., Critiqueand Power MIT Press, 1994). (Cambridge: 2. MichaelKellyalso endorsessuch a strategyin "Foucault,Habermas the Selfand of and Referentiality Critique,"in Critique Power,p. 391. Whilemanycriticshavefocused on the distinctions betweenHabermas Foucault,thereis a growingbody of literature and and the acknowledging extending parallelsbetweenthem, and betweencriticaltheoryand In postmodernism. addition to Kelly's contribution,some importantexamplesinclude and and BarrySmart,Foucault,Marxism Critique (London:Routledge KeganPaul, 1983); John O'Neil, "The Disciplinary Society:From Weberto Foucault,"BritishJournalof "TheCritique ImpureReason,"Politof Sociology,37 (1986):42-60;ThomasMcCarthy, ical Theory,18 (August1990):437-69;and NancyFraser,"FalseAntitheses,"and "Pragand matism,Feminism the Linguistic Turn," in FeministContentions (New York:Routledge, 1995),pp. 59-74.

Jessica Kulynych 317

II. Disciplining Habermas Political scientists have traditionally understood political participation as an activity that assures individual influence over the political system, protection of private interests, system legitimacy, and perhaps even selfdevelopment. Habermas and Foucault describe the impact of the conditions of postmodernity on the possibility for efficacious political action in remarkably similar ways. Habermas describes a world where the possibilities for efficacious political action are quite limited. The escalating interdependence of state and economy, the expansive increase in bureaucratization, the increasingly technical nature of political decisionmaking, and the subsequent colonization of a formerly sacred private sphere by a ubiquitous administrative state render traditional modes of political participation unable to provide influence, privacy, legitimacy, and self-development.3 As the state is forced to take an ever larger role in directing a complex global, capitalist, welfare state economy, the scope of administration inevitably grows. In order to fulfill its function as the manager of the economy, the administrative state must also manage the details of our lives formerly considered private. Yet, as the state's role in our "private" lives continues to grow, the public has become less and less interested in government, focusing instead on personal and social mores, leisure, and consumption. Ironically, we have become less interested in politics at precisely the same moment when our lives are becoming increasingly "politicized" and administered. This siege of private life and the complicity of this ideology of "civil privatism" in the functioning of the modern administrative state makes a mockery of the idea that there exist private interests that can be protected from state intervention.4 Correlatively, the technical and instrumental rationality of modem

3. For discussion explanation thesenew formsof domination and of plaguingcontemOne Man(Boston:BeaconPress, 1964); porarysocietiessee Herbert Marcuse, Dimensional and Horkheimer Adorno,Dialecticof Enlightenment (New York:Continuum,1990);and Action, vol. I, II (Boston:BeaconPress, JiirgenHabermas,Theoryof Communicative on 1987);JiirgenHabermas SocietyandPolitics (Boston:BeaconPress, 1989);andStructural Transformation the Public Sphere(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989).For additional of of see The secondary explications thesephenomena ThomasMcCarthy, CriticalTheoryof MIT Press, 1978);StephenWhite, The Recent Workof Jirgen Habermas(Cambridge: JiirgenHabermas(Cambridge: Press, 1988);NancyFraser,Unruly Cambridge University Practices:Power, Discourseand Genderin Contemporary Social Theory(Minneapolis: of to University MinnesotaPress, 1992);and David Held, Introduction CriticalTheory: Horkheimer Habermas(Berkeley: to of University CaliforniaPress, 1980). 4. McCarthy discussesthe role of "civilprivatism"in modernstate administration in TheCriticalTheoryof JiirgenHabermas,p. 369.

318 Performing Politics lessensthe possibilityfor publicinfluenceon policymaking significantly state policy.5 The difficulty of participationin Habermas'sworld is exacerbated the addedcomplexityof a politicalsystemstructured by by hierarchical gender and racial norms. Nancy Fraser uses Habermas's situationto demonstrate how the infusion analysisof the contemporary of these hierarchical and racialnormsinto the functioningof the gender state and economy ensures that political channels of communication betweencitizens and the state are unequallystructuredand therefore cannot function as mechanismsfor the equal protectionof interests.6 theoristsare muchless optimisticaboutthe possibilitiesfor Accordingly, citizensto acquireor developfeelingsof autonomyand efficacyfromthe intereststo a systemthat is essentiallyimperattemptto communicate vious to citizen interests, eschews discussionof long-termgoals, and requires exclusively technical and instrumental debate. Similarly, Foucault'scomplexgenealogicaldescriptions disciplinary of powernetworkschallengethe traditional that assumption politicalpoweris located primarilyin the formal apparatusof the state. The traditionalundertells us nothing about what types of standingof politicalparticipation in politicalaction are appropriate a world wherepower is typicallyand As predominantly disciplinary, productive,and normalizing. long as we define the purposeof participation only in terms of influence,privacy, we legitimacy,and self-development, will be unableto see how political action can be effective in the contemporary world. While separatelyboth Habermasand Foucault challengethe tradiof tional understanding participation,their combined insights further and irrevocably extend that challenge.Theoreticalfocus on the distincand tions betweenHabermas Foucaulthas all too often obscuredimportant parallelsbetweenthese two theorists. Specifically,the Habermasthe also Foucaultdebatehas underemphasized extentto whichHabermas techof describesa disciplinary society. In his descriptions bureaucracy, nocracy, and systemcolonization,Habermasis also describinga world where power is productiveand dispersedand where political action is constrainedand normalized.Habermas,like Foucault, describesa type in of powerthat cannot be adequatelycharacterized termsof the intentions of those who possess it. Colonizationis not the resultof conscious intention, but is ratherthe unintendedconsequenceof a multitudeof The smalladjustments. genderandracialsubtextsinfusingthe systemare
5. For discussionsee JiirgenHabermas,"Technologyand Scienceas Ideology,"in on JiirgenHabermas Societyand Politics, pp. 237-65. 6. NancyFraserdiscussesthisreverseformof colonization "What'sCriticalAbout in CriticalTheory?"in UnrulyPractices,pp. 113-43.

JessicaKulynych 319 not the resultsof consciousintention,but ratherof implicitgenderand racial norms and expectationsinfecting the economy and the state. Bureaucratic poweris not a powerthat is possessedby any individualor but existsin the exerciseof decisionmaking. IrisYoungpoints As agency, out, we must "analyzethe exerciseof power [in contemporary societies] as the effect of often liberaland humanepracticesof education,bureaucratic administration, productionand distributionof consumergoods, medicineand so on."' The very practicesthat Habermaschroniclesare of exemplary a powerthat has no definitivesubject.As Youngexplains, "the consciousactionsof manyindividuals to daily contribute maintaining and reproducing oppression,but those peopleare simplydoing their themselvesas agentsof jobs or living their lives, and do not understand
oppression."8

Colonizationandbureaucratization fit the patternof a powerthat also is not primarily but repressive productive.Disciplinary technologiesare, as Sawickidescribes, not... repressive mechanisms ... [that]operateprimarily through violence ... or seizure... but rather[theyoperate]by producing new objectsand subjectsof knowledge,by incitingand channeling and desires,generating focusingindividualand groupenergies,and establishingbodily norms and techniquesfor observing,monitoring and controllingbodily movements,processes,and capacities.9 The very practicesof administration, distribution,and decisionmaking on which Habermasfocuses his attentioncan and must be analyzedas can practices.Althoughthese practices clearlybe disciplinary productive repressive,their most insidious effects are productive. Rather than breaks up, categorizes, simply holding people back, bureaucratization and systemizesprojectsand people. It createsnew categoriesof knowland edge and expertise.Bureaucratization colonizationalso createnew subjectsas the objectsof bureaucratic expertise.The socialwelfareclient and the consumercitizen are the creation of bureaucratic power, not merely its target. The extension of lifeworld gender norms into the system creates the possibility for sexual harassment,job segregation, Createdas a parentalleave, and consensualcorporatedecisionmaking. part of these subjectivitiesare new gestures and norms of bodily

7. IrisYoung, Justiceand the Politics of Difference(Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1990),p. 41. 8. Young,Justiceand the Politics of Difference,p. 42. 9. Jana Sawicki,Disciplining Foucault(New York:Routledge,1991),p. 83.

320 Performing Politics behavior, such as the embarrassedshuffling of food stamps at the sexualreference the office copier. at grocerycheckoutand the demeaning Bodily movementsare monitoredand regularized means of political by protocols, flex-timework opinionpolls, welfarelists, sexualharassment schedules, and so forth. Modern disciplinarypower, as describedby Foucault and implied by Habermas,does not merelypreventus from developing, but creates us differentlyas the effect of its functioning. These disciplinary techniquesnot only control us, but also enableus to be more efficient and more productive,and often more powerful. Focusing on the disciplinaryelements of the Habermasiancritique of opens the door for exploringthe postmoder character Habermasian BecauseHabermasdoes describea disciplinary world, his prepolitics. for contemporary democracy(discursivepolitics) ought to be scription world. Foucault'ssensisensitiveto, and appropriate a disciplinary for, to the workingsof disciplinary is centralto the articulation tivity power of a plausible,postmodern versionof discursive politics. In the following discussionI will argue for a performative redefinitionof participation demanded Foucault,as well as the that will reinvigorate micro-politics by a more nuancedversionof the discursivepolitics demandedby provide Habermas. III. Habermasand DiscursiveParticipation a Habermas regards publicsphereof rationaldebateas the only possible foundation for democraticpolitics in the contemporaryworld. For Habermas,like Schumpeter,democracyis a method. Democraciesare systems that achieve the formation of public opinion and public will througha correctprocess of public communication,and then "translate" that communicative power via the propowerinto administrative and cedurally regulatedpublicspheresof parliaments the judiciary.The occursis the measureof a healthyconstiextentto whichthis translation tutional democracy.Thus, the "politicalpublic sphere"is the "fundamentalconceptof a theoryof democracy."10 takes In this discursive definitionof democracy,politicalparticipation on a new character.Participationequals discursiveparticipation;it is achievedargucommunicationgovernedby rational, communicatively ment and negotiation. Habermasdistinguishestwo types of discursive or deliberation,which participation: problem-solving decision-oriented takes place primarilyin formal democraticinstitutionssuch as parlia10. JiirgenHabermas,"Further Reflectionson the Public Sphere,"in Habermas and the Public Sphere,p. 446.

JessicaKulynych 321 or and mentsand is regulated governedby democratic procedures; informal opinion-formation,which is opinion-formation"uncoupledfrom decisions... [and]effectedin an open and inclusivenetworkof overlappublics having fluid temporal,social and substantive ping, subcultural " boundaries." is of In many ways this two-tiereddescription discursive participation of a radicallydifferent understanding political participation,and one better suited to the sort of societies we currentlyinhabit. Habermas moves the focus of participationaway from policymakingand toward redefininglegitimatedemocraticprocessesthat serve as the necessary for background subsequentpolicymaking.Whileonly a limitednumber of speciallytrainedindividuals reasonably can engagein decisionmaking in the entirepopulouscan and must participate the inforparticipation, mal deliberation that takes place outside of, or uncoupledfrom, formal decisionmakingstructures. This informal participation is primarily about generating"publicdiscoursesthat uncovertopics of relevanceto all of society, interpretvalues, contributeto the resolutionof problems, generategood reasons, and debunkbad ones."12 Informalparticipation has two main functions.First, it acts as a "warningsystemwith sensors that, though unspecialized,are sensitive throughout society."'3 This systemcommunicates problems"that must be processedby the political Habermaslabels this the "signal" function. Second, inforsystem."14 mal participationmust not only indicate when problems need to be of addressed,it must also providean "effectiveproblematization" those issues. As Habermasargues, from the perspective democratic of theory, the publicspheremust, in addition, amplify the pressureof problems, that is, not only detectand identifyproblemsbut also convincingly influentially and thematizethem, furnishthem with possiblesolutions, and dramatize them in such a way that they are taken up and dealt with by parliamentary complexes.'" Informalparticipationis crucialbecauseit is the source of both legitimacy and innovation in formal decisionmaking.As long as decisionmaking is open to the influence of informal opinion-formation,then
11. Habermas, Between Facts andNorms, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), p. 307. 12. Habermas, "Further Reflections on the Public Sphere," p. 452. 13. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 359. 14. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 359. 15. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 359.

322 Performing Politics state policiesare legitimatebecausethey are groundedin free and equal communicationthat meets the democraticrequirementof equal parr in originating the publicsphereis also ticipation.Informalparticipation the resourcefor innovativedescriptionsand presentationsof interests, and state decipreferences, issues. If they ignoreinformalparticipation, have no connectionto the centerof democracy: political sionmakers the public sphere. Habermas'sdescriptionof discursiveparticipation also novel and is act. effectivedue to its broadconstrualof the participatory Participation is definedverybroadlybecausethe conceptof the publicsphereremains quite abstract.The public sphereis a "linguisticallyconstitutedpublic space."'6It is neitheran institutionnor an organization.Rather,it is a information pointsof view [whichare] "networkfor communicating and .. .filtered and synthesized sucha way that they coalesceinto bundles in Public spheresare definednot of topicallyspecifiedpublicopinions."17 a "communicationstructure." by a physical presence but rather by According to Habermas, "the more they detach themselvesfrom the public'sphysicalpresenceand extendto the virtualpresenceof scattered readers,listeners,or viewerslinkedby publicmedia, the clearerbecomes the abstractionthat enters when the spatial structureof simple interIn actions is expandedinto a public sphere."18 other words, actually for beingpresentin a "concretelocale" is unnecessary the existenceof a for publicsphere,and henceunnecessary activeparticipation. Participation is not limitedto large, organizeddiscussionsin formal settings;it also includes "simpleand episodicencounters"in which actors "reciprocally [attribute] communicative freedom to each other."'9 This abstraction makes participation easier and extremely inclusive. As Habermas describes, "every encounter in which actors do not just observe each other but take a second-personattitude, reciprocally freedomto each other, unfolds in a linguisattributingcommunicative tically constitutedpublic space."20 Thus, the concernsthat politicalscientists have had about unequalresourcedistributionand its effect on one's capabilityto act are mitigatedin Habermas'sbroad definitionof discursiveparticipation.Even though limited resources may prevent and in active interventions decisionmaking policymakingprocesses,for

16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Habermas, Habermas, Habermas, Habermas, Habermas,

Between Facts and Norms, Between Facts and Norms, Between Facts and Norms, Between Facts and Norms, Between Facts and Norms,

p. p. p. p. p.

361. 360. 361. 361. 361.

JessicaKulynych 323 the structures the publicsphererelievethe of Habermas "communicative public of the burdenof decision-making."21 In a similarvein, Habermasdoes not limit participation a specific to set of activities,but definesit procedurally contextually.Participation or is not limited to traditionalactivitiessuch as voting, campaigning,or but letter-writing, is instead designatedby the discursivequality of the activity. In other words, it is not the intent to influence policy that defines participation,but ratherthe communication structurein which the activitytakesplace. That communication structure must be equitable and inclusive,socialproblemsmustbe openlyand rationallydeliberated, and they must be thematizedby people potentiallyaffected. However, Habermas'sdiscursiveformulationis inadequateprimarily because it does not explicitlyand rigorouslyattend to the disciplinary effects of contemporarysocieties explainedso creativelyby Foucault. Habermas has been routinely criticized for ignoring the productive nature of contemporarypower. His juxtapositionof system and lifeworldin The Theoryof Communicative Action relieson a separation of v. steeringmedia), and good power from bad (communicative power posits an ideal speech situation freed from the distortionsof power.22 Moreimportantly, Habermas's theorization discursive of is participation abstractand does not adequately attendto the waysin which exceedingly power informsdiscourse.A numberof theoristshave effectivelyargued that womenand men do not standin equalrelationship language.For to LindaZerilliarguesthat discursivespace is a "fraternalcomexample, Womenutilizelanguage munityof uniqueand symbolicdimensions."23 in this discursiveworld "whose 'common' and symboliclanguage . . . enablesone userto understand what anotheris saying;just as it compels each speakerto constrainhimselfwithinthe limitsof an existingpolitical In limited vocabulary."24 this case the contentof speechis systematically in directviolation of the requiredconditionsfor the ideal speech situation. The foundationsof communication not the idealequalrelationare that Habermasimagines,but are insteadan exclusive,learned,and ships gendered, symbolic heritage. As Carole Pateman points out, women enterinto publicdiscussionon a very tenuousplane. The symbolicheritage that defines the meaningof key communicative concepts such as consentsystematically excludeswomenfrom the categoryof individuals
21. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 362. 22. For discussion of these criticisms see Axel Honneth, The Critique of Power, trans. Kenneth Baynes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991). 23. Linda Zerilli, "Machiavelli's Sisters," Political Theory, 19 (May 1991): 253. 24. Zerilli, "Machiavelli's Sisters," p. 254.

324 Performing Politics capable of consenting.25 The mere existence of a debate over whether "no means no" with regard to consensual sexual relations and rape is a manifestation of this heritage. Women can hardly be seen as equal participants when they do not have the same opportunity to express their intent. Certainly, one might suggest that the above cases are really just failures of speech, and, therefore, not a critique of ideal speech as it is formulated by Habermas. Indeed Seyla Benhabib reformulates Habermas's speech act perspective to make it sensitive to the above critique. She argues that feminists concerned with the discourse model of democracy have often confused the historically biased practices of deliberative assemblies with the normative ideal of rational deliberation.26 She suggests that feminists concerned with inequities and imbalances in communication can actually benefit from the Habermasian requirement that all positions and issues be made " 'public' in the sense of making [them] accessible to debate, reflection, action and moral-political transformation."27 The "radical proceduralism" of the discourse model makes it ideally suited to identify inequities in communication because it precludes our accepting unexamined and unjustified positions.28 Even such a sophisticated and sensitive approach to ideal speech as Benhabib's cannot cleanse communicative action of its exclusivity. It is not only that acquiring language is a process of mastering a symbolic heritage that is systematically gendered, but the entire attempt to set conditions for "ideal speech" is inevitably exclusive. The model of an ideal speech situation establishes a norm of rational interaction that is defined by the very types of interaction it excludes. The norm of rational debate favors critical argument and reasoned debate over other forms of communication.29Defining ideal speech inevitably entails defining unacceptable speech. What has been defined as unacceptable in Habermas's formulation is any speech that is not intended to convey an idea. Speech evocative of identity, culture, or emotion has no necessary place in the ideal speech situation, and hence persons whose speech is richly colored
25. Carole Pateman engages in an extended discussion of the development of consent in The Sexual Contract (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988). 26. Seyla Benhabib, "Toward a Deliberative Model of Democratic Legitimacy," in Democracy and Difference, ed. Benhabib (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996),

p. 81.
27. Benhabib, "Models of Public Space," in Situating the Self (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 113. 28. Benhabib, "Models of Public Space," p. 113. 29. Iris Young makes this argument quite skillfully in "Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy," in Democracy and Difference, pp. 120-35.

JessicaKulynych 325 with rhetoric,gesture,humor, spirit, or affectationcould be defined as deviantor immaturecommunicators. Therefore,a definitionof citizenbased on participationin an ideal form of interactioncan easily ship becomea tool for the exclusionof deviantcommunicators from the catecreatescitizensas subjectsof of citizens.This sort of normalization gory rational debate. Correlatively,as Fraser explains, because the communicativeaction approachis proceduralit is particularly unsuitedto addressissues of speechcontent.30 it missesthe Therefore,by definition, and betweenprocedure contentthat is at the core of feminist relationship and deconstructivecritiquesof language. A proceduralapproachcan all requirethat we accommodate utterancesand that we not marginalize It cannot requirethat we take seriouslyor be conspeakingsubjects. vinced by the statementsof such interlocutors.In other words, a proceduralapproachdoes not addressthe culturalcontextthat makessome statementsconvincingand others not. I would suggestthat Habermas recognizesthis problem,but has yet to theorizeit. As I noted above, Habermas that informal requires explicitly discursive but also "convincingnot participation only identifyproblems ly and influentially thematize them." A thematizationis legitimate, Habermas processthat argues,only whenit stemsfroma communicative "develops out of communicationtaking place among those who are Thus, the extent to which a position is convincpotentiallyaffected."31 on ing seemsto relyprimarily whetherthe affectedpartieshavehad a say in its articulation procedural What Habermasdoes not (a requirement). thematized explicitlyrecognizeis that whethera problemis convincingly is not just a matterof utilizingcorrectprocedure. debatedemonHabermas'sown treatmentof the equality/difference disthe stratesthis confusion. He regards feministdebateover workplace thematized crimination an exampleof an inappropriately as problem.He treatmenthave had the arguesthat feministargumentsfor preferential unintended effect of increasing stigmatization and discrimination classifications"that "conbecausethey have reliedon "overgeneralized solidate existing stereotypesof gender identity," and have suppressed "the voices of those who alone could say what the currentlyrelevant reasonsare for equal or unequaltreatment."32 Thus, Habermasargues that "public discussionsmust first clarify the aspectsunderwhich difand ferencesbetweenthe experiences living situationsof (specificgroups
30. Nancy Fraser, "Pragmatism, Feminism and the Linguistic Turn," in Feminist Contentions, p. 161. 31. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 365. 32. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, pp. 420-22.

326 Performing Politics

of) women and men become relevant for an equal opportunity to take advantage of individual liberties."33 Therefore, "the affected parties themselves [must] conduct public discourses in which they articulate the standards of comparison and justify the relevant aspects."34 Habermas's diagnosis has a resounding similarity to Joan Scott's discussion of the equality/difference dilemma. Scott also argues, in discussing the Sears discrimination suit, that equality must be defined in terms of relevant differences. The 1974 Sears sex discrimination suit, in which the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) brought suit against Sears for a discrepancy in the number of women hired for fulltime commissioned sales positions, demonstrates the difficulty of invoking arguments about difference only when they are relevant for equal opportunity. Scott follows Michael Walzer in defining the aim of equality as "eliminating not all differences, but a particular set of differences, and a different set in different times and places."35 She suggests that the EEOC made a similar argument in the Sears case when it invoked the testimony of feminist historian Alice Kessler-Harris to argue that generalized notions of sex difference could not be used as a defense for discriminatory hiring practices. Equal rights in this formulation "presumes a social agreement to consider obviously different people as equivalent (not identical) for a stated purpose."36 Thus, "equality might well be defined as deliberate indifference to specified differences."37The defense attacked Kessler-Harris for contradicting her own previously published work, which challenged the generalized "worker" category and emphasized gender differences in the labor market. Scott argues, however, that Kessler-Harris was legitimately and intelligently employing "different emphases for different contexts."38 I understand both Habermas and Scott to be advocating the explicit specification of relevant and temporary differences. However, the problem for Habermas's procedural account of this specification (requiring the affected parties themselves to "conduct public discourses in which they articulate the standards of comparison and justify relevant aspects") is that there is no discussion of the difficulty of a convincing justification. A procedural account "brackets the content of discourse,"
33. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 425. 34. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 425. 35. Joan Scott, "Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: or, The Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism," in Theorizing Feminisms, ed. Anne Herrmann and Abigail Stewart (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), p. 366. 36. Scott, "Deconstructing," p. 366. 37. Scott, "Deconstructing," p. 366. 38. Scott, "Deconstructing," p. 364.

Jessica Kulynych 327

but the content will not remain bracketed.39As Scott points out in the Sears case, the plausibility and consistency of articulations of sameness and difference depend on their accordance with the very dichotomy they are trying to break down. In the Sears case, arguments about the existence of distinct gender preferences in employment (which were utilized as a defense, and which relied on an already familiar equality/difference opposition) were seen as more convincing than arguments that broke down that opposition and insisted on the "specificity (and historically variable) aspect of women's actions."40 Habermas recognizes that the "classification of gender roles and gender-related differences touches elementary layers of a society's cultural self-understanding" and thus we need to have "competing views about the identity of the sexes and their relation to each other ... open to public discussion."41 But to the extent that articulations do not take culturally accepted differences for granted, those articulations will appear unconvincing. The very thing that must be open to discussion is the cultural common sensical, the very background that makes intersubjective communication possible, but that cannot be rationally argued against. How to convincingly thematize an alternative to something that is taken for granted is the very problem postmodernists have so often taken up. Habermas also recognizes this problem, as is evident in some of the terminology he employs in describing the role of public discourses. Discourses must not only identify, they must also thematize and dramatize.42 They can be metaphorically described as "performances" and "presentations" that invoke not only "forums" but also "stages" and "arenas."43 These are images that imply more than the careful presentation of validity claims. Habermas's demand that public discourses be both "attention catching" and "innovative" as well as "convincing" and "justifiable" requires more than rational argumentation. It requires a kind of political action that can effectively disrupt the culturally common sensical and actually provide new and compelling alternatives to disciplinary constructions of such things as gender difference. It is here that Habermas would benefit from attending to the productive character of disciplinary power in creating distinctly and authentically gendered beings in the first place.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

Turn," p. 161. Fraser,"Pragmatism, Feminism,and the Linguistic Scott, "Deconstructing," 367. p. BetweenFacts and Norms, p. 425-26. Habermas, BetweenFacts andNorms, p. 359. Habermas, BetweenFacts and Norms, p. 361. Habermas,

328 Performing Politics

IV. Foucault and Resistance Foucault suggests that the concept of political action relevant under a disciplinary understanding of power and domination is resistancespecifically a micro-politics of resistance. Foucault insists that despite the pervasive, normalizing nature of contemporary power, there already exists a possibility for resistance wherever power is exercised. The effect of normalization is never quite complete, and thus, there are no relations of power without resistances; the latter are all the more real and effective because they are formed right at the point where relations of power are exercised; resistance to power does not have to come from elsewhere to be real, nor is it inexorably frustrated through being the compatriot of power. It exists all the more by being in the same place as power; hence, like power, resistance is multiple and can be integrated in global strategies.44 Thus even as we recognize the existence of productive and normalizing discourses of classification and measurement, we can also recognize, as Sawicki explains, that the "control [of these discourses] was not simply imposed from the top down."45 The predominance of one discourse is always an achievement that results from struggles over definition and authority. There can be no victory without these struggles, and hence no power without resistance. Yet Foucault's concept of resistance is maddeningly indistinct. We know that power implies resistance, and we know that resistance takes place on the micro-level. We can find resistance in struggles over the validity of experience and in struggles over definition, interpretation, and classification. He identifies resistance at work in the transgression and contestation of societal norms; in the disruption of metanarratives of humanism; in the frustration and disruption of power; in the "reappearance" of "local popular," "disqualified," and "subjugated knowledges"; and in the aesthetic of self-creation.46 But the character and content of this resistance is frustratingly indeterminate and under-

44. Foucault, "Powers and Strategies," in Power/Knowledge, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), p. 142. 45. Sawicki, Disciplining Foucault, p. 82. 46. Foucault, "Two Lectures," Power/Knowledge, p. 82. For an excellent discussion of the varieties of resistance Foucault describes and the historical changes in his concept of resistance see Brent Pickett, "Foucault and the Politics of Resistance," Polity, 28 (1996): 445-66.

JessicaKulynych 329 developed. Hence, the feasibilityof the resistancethat Foucault advoand cates is far from uncontroverted, even his most sympatheticcritics are concernedabout the practicalpolitical efficacy of such an indeterminateconcept. I believe, however, Foucault'scriticscan be answered, and that the very questionsthat are put to Foucaulthelp to distinguish his version of resistancefrom its liberalcounterpart. The critiquesof Foucault's concept of resistanceseem to take two forms. The first is articulatedby Thomas McCarthywhen he suggests that Foucault,by refusingto see the individualas anythingotherthanan "effect of power," disallowspolitical action altogetherbecause he reMcCarthy power.47 places agencywith "an anonymousand impersonal" this clearlyexpresses concernwhenhe askshow "we can gainan adequate of understanding most varietiesof social interactionby treatingagents and publicly sancsimply as acting in compliancewith preestablished calls tionedpatterns-as what Foucaultcalls 'docilebodies'or Garfinkel 'cultural dopes.',948 Without subjects who can make "differential responsesto situations,"politicalactivitycan be no more than involunA tarilybodily function.49 secondcritiqueof Foucault'sconceptof resistance dealswiththe contentof resistance.Fraser,for example,statesthis concernwhen she writes: Foucaultcalls in no uncertainterms for resistanceto domination. But why? Why is strugglepreferableto submission?Why ought of dominationto be resisted? Onlywiththe introduction normative notions of some kind could Foucault begin to answersuch questions. Only with the introductionof normativenotions could he begin to tell us what is wrongwith the modernpower/knowledge regimeand why we ought to oppose it.50 Both of these types of criticismpresumethat resistanceis an essentially or representative expressiveaction. In other words,the act of resistance tells us somethingessentialabout the actor that explainswhat is wrong with the currentsituation. For McCarthy,if agents can resistthen that fact must tell us somethingabout the kind of beingsthat they are, and conversely,if they are the kinds of beingsFoucaultdescribes,then they must not be able to resist. For Fraser,what or why we resist must constitutea sort of ethicalprinciplethat presumesthereis somethingwrong
47. Thomas McCarthy, "The Critique of Impure Reason," Political Theory, 18 (August 1990): 449. 48. McCarthy, "The Critique of Impure Reason," p. 449. 49. McCarthy, "The Critique of Impure Reason," p. 449. 50. Fraser, "Foucault on Modem Power," Unruly Practices, p. 29.

Politics 330 Performing with the currentsituation. I suggest, rather,that we think of resistance performatively.If we define resistanceas performativeaction rather than expressiveor representative action then we can answerboth the resisquestionsof agencyand normativity,and thus defineperformative tance as the core of contemporary politicalaction. V. Performative Action The notion of political action as performativeaction has emergedin a are numberof postmoderntexts. Two facets of performativity particurelevantfor understanding resistance.The first is the notion of perlarly formativity employed by Bonnie Honig in her reading of Hannah Arendt.s5 of action from Honig derivesher understanding performative J. L. Austin's distinctionbetweenperformativeand constativespeech acts.52In Honig's reading, a constative act is a referenceto the selfto an evident,to the "irresistible," "acquiescence compulsionand necesIt is a representative it is a referencein languageto that act; sity."53 whichalreadyexistsand cannotbe otherwise.A performative on the act, other hand, is one which brings into being that to which it ostensibly refers. Honig illustrates performativity action in Arendt'sdiscusthe of sion of the Declarationof Independence. Honig arguesthat the opening of the Declaration("We hold these truthsto be self evident")is a perThesewords formativespeechact; an "action that appearsin words."54 are "performativeutterances"because they bring into being that to which they ostensiblyrefer. Prior to the declaration,there is no "we"; the people "does not exist as such prior to the declaration."55 Judith Butleralso utilizesthis concept of performative action in her of readingof the performance drag. Butlerarguesthat sex and gender, whichare typicallyunderstoodas constatives,are actuallycreatedby an expressionsof gender bring into being the array of performativities: gendersthey purportto represent.Accordingly,

51. Bonnie Honig, "Toward an Agonistic Feminism: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Identity," inFeminists Theorize the Political, ed. Judith Butler and Joan Scott (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 215-35; and "Declarations of Independence, Arendt and Derrida on the Problem of Founding a Republic," in Rhetorical Republic, ed. Frederick Dolan and Thomas Dunn (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), pp. 201-25. 52. J. L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962). 53. Honig, "Toward an Agonistic Feminism," p. 217. 54. Honig, "Toward an Agonistic Feminism," p. 216. 55. Honig, "Declarations of Independence," p. 212.

JessicaKulynych 331 in acts, gestures,enactments, generallyconstrued,areperformative the sensethat the essenceor identitythat they otherwisepurportto and expressare fabricationsmanufactured sustainedthroughcormeans.That the genderedbody is porealsignsand other discursive performativesuggeststhat it has no ontologicalstatus apart from the variousacts which constituteits reality.56 Thus, performativeaction refers to an action that has no antecedent referent.The characterto which the action refers, as in the theatrical of portrayal a character,only comesinto beingthroughthe actionitself. This notion of performativity,appliedto Foucault'snotion of resiscritance, better explainsthe characterof such resistance.McCarthy's assumesthat if Foucaultis correctabout disciplinary that it tique power, is capillary,reachinginto the innermostcornersof our lives and combining to form complexesof subjectionthat are invasive, productive,and to impervious citizeninfluence,thenthereare no "acting" citizensavailable to resist, only "culturaldopes." However,if we understand resistanceperformatively, then we see the actingcitizenas broughtinto being by her resistance.As Butlerarguesin Bodies thatMatter,thereneednot exist a core identity from which action or resistanceemanatesin order for it to be real resistance.s'McCarthy'squestion reveals how fundaversionof agencyour undermentallyindebtedto the modernCartesian standingof political action is. Althoughdisciplinary regimesdo render many of our normativedistinctionsmeaningless,dissolvingfirm boundariesbetweensocializationand domination,they do not necessarily signify a wholesaledissolutionof agency. What has been destroyedis any of understanding agency that sees action as groundedin its representaAs tion of some essential and universalcore of humanness.58 Butler explains,we can still act, but our actionsare based only on a contingent identity that is simultaneouslycreatedby that very action. That resistance stems from an agent that is an "effect of power" guaranteesits politicalefficacy. Agencyis not proof of the existenceof an identity,but is insteadthe creationof an identitythrougha referential repetition,that "provisionallyinstitutesan identity and at the same time [opens] the The subjectcreated politicalcontest."59 categoryas a site of permanent in whatis beingresisted.Accordby resistance its nameis simultaneously
56. JudithButler,GenderTrouble(New York:Routledge,1990),p. 136. 57. JudithButler,Bodies ThatMatter(New York:Routledge,1993). 58. ToddMaymakesa similarargument in aboutthe end of a politicsof representation his discussionof anarchist directaction. See ThePoliticalPhilosophyof Poststructuralist Anarchism(University Park:Pennsylvania StateUniversity Press, 1994),p. 83. 59. Butler,Bodies ThatMatter,p. 222.

Politics 332 Performing is ing to Butler,"that the categorycan neverbe descriptive the verycondition of its political efficacy. . . . The claim to have achieved ... an

impartialconceptof descriptionshoresitself up by foreclosingthe very is McCarthy rightthat politicalfield that it claimsto haveexhausted."60 it is hardto identify "just whatit is that resists,"61 that that identifibut cation is contingentand provisionalin no way foreclosesthe possibility of agency. Performativeresistancebrings into being the citizen it purportsto represent.The thoroughly privatized, client-citizenis re-createdas a publicactor in the momentof resistance.Foucaulthimselfseemedto be actionin his focus on leaningtowardthis sort of notion of performative care for the self and on an aestheticof "self-creation."In these later for thoughts,Foucaultseemsclearlyto be searching a way to understand innovativeand experimental subjectivitiesthat are not a returnto the idea of a liberatedhumanessence.His focus on the activeconstitutionof the self is additionalevidenceof a move toward a more performative notion of resistance.As he stated in a 1984interview, I would say that if now I am interested,in fact, in the way the subject constituteshimselfin an activefashion, by the practicesof the not self, these practicesare nevertheless somethingthat the individual invents by himself. They are patternsthat he finds in his cultureand whichare proposed,suggestedand imposedon him by his culture,his society, and his social group.62 As long as we look at this type of resistance expressive the subject, as of then McCarthy right:the intent of the subject'sactionsare proposed, is suggested,and imposed, and hardlywhat we would label autonomous. then But, once we think of the activityof self-creationperformatively, the possibilityof a resistantcitizenemerges.It is indeedincongruousto ask what it is that resists, since the citizen as participant,the resistant citizen, is createdby the act of resistance. The above notion of performativity "world creating,"or identityas natureof modernpowerthat creatingis crucialgiven the subjectifying facet of so clearly recognizes.However, the world-creating McCarthy is not adequatefor answeringFraser'snormativequery. performativity

60. Butler, Bodies That Matter, p. 221. 61. McCarthy, "The Critique of Impure Reason," p. 449. 62. Michel Foucault in "The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom: An Interview with Michel Foucault," in The Final Foucault, ed. James Bernauer and David Rasmussen (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), p. 11.

JessicaKulynych 333 Fraser's concerns reflect a real normativeconfusion in Foucault. He the power at the same time he interrogates developmentof disciplinary He there is a foundationfor his own normativity.63 utilizes denies that to expose the malevolenceof liberal ideals, such as personal liberty, liberation,but combinesthemwitha critiquethat eschews enlightenment normative grounding. Again, an understandingof resistance as performativehelps explainthis apparentcontradiction. of WilliamChaloupkaprovidesa second understanding performativChaloupkaplays ity that helpsexplainFoucault's"cryptonormativism." to upon the dual meaningof demonstration highlightthe performative means "to point aspectsof protest. In the typicalusage, to demonstrate In out, to makeknown, to describeand explain."64 this sense, protesters utilizetheiractionsas a vehiclefor theirinterests.Theymaketheirpoint, as whichalreadyexists, throughthe use of the demonstration tactic. But has demonstration also an alternative meaning,a meaningderivedfrom and the Frenchdemontrer(to demonstrate), montrer(to show).65 Thus, is as Chaloupkasees it, a demonstration also "a show." The demonstrationin this sense is not an explanationbut an exposure,a defiance embodiedin action that flies in the face of acceptability. Accordingly, the protestor'susage moves towardthe contingentrealmof strategies and emotions. Here demonstrationdoes not establishobjectivity and logic, so much as it shows up the objectiveorder, assertively getting in the way.66 Thus the performativeaspect of demonstrationcannot be adequately with the lens of truthand justice. The protestoris not tryingto captured make a point, to prove that the systemis unjust. Rather,the protestor exposesthe contingencyof justice itself. Foucaultcomes close to sayingwhat Chaloupkaargueshere when he states, a critiqueis not a matterof sayingthat thingsare not rightas they are. It is a matterof pointingout on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsideredmodes of
63. Even more sympathetic critics such as Todd May and Richard Bernstein who challenge the normative criticisms of Foucault, agree that Foucault still does not tell us what to resist. See May, The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism, and Bernstein, "Critique as Philosophical Ethos," in Critique and Power, ed. Michael Kelly, pp. 211-41. 64. William Chaloupka, "Suppose Kuwait's Main Product was Broccoli," in Dolan and Dunn, Rhetorical Republic, p. 147. 65. Chaloupka, "Suppose," p. 147. 66. Chaloupka, "Suppose," p. 147.

334 Performing Politics

thought the practices we accept rest. . .. Criticism is a matter of

flushing out that thought and trying to change it: to show that things are not as self-evidentas one believes, to see that what is acceptedas self-evidentwill no longer be acceptedas such.67 If we interpret "to show" herenot as pointingout whatis wrongwith the disciplinary society (whichwouldleave Foucaultsubjectto Fraser'snormative criticism),but ratheras "showing," or "showingup," then we no longer need the introductionof normativenotions, we are merely doingdisciplinary societyone better.Makinga point is a functionof discourse, the abilityto align and arrangeargumentsthat supporta position. Yet, the performative protestordoes not argueagainstthe state, he mocksit. The protestorworksat the marginsof discourse,utilizingpuns and jokes and caricature "expose" the limits of what is being said. to Thus, performativeresistance,when consideredas critique, does not needto tell us whatis wrong, ratherit revealsthe existenceof subjection wherewe had not previously seenit. I am not suggesting that we can get a To normativeanchorout of the notion of performativity. the contrary,I am suggestingperformative makesno such normativedistincresistance or rather,that performativity not about normativedistinctions. is tions, We bringnormativity our performances ethicalprinciplesthat are to as themselvessubject to resistance.By unearthingthe contingencyof the resistanceenablespolitics. Thus, the ques"self-evident,"performative tion is not should we resist (since resistanceis always, alreadypresent), but ratherwhat and how we should resist. the This notion of performativity also importantfor understanding is possibilitiesfor innovationin Habermasiandeliberativeparticipation. Just as a protestorexposes the contingencyof concepts like justice, a dialogueexposesthe limits and contingencyof rationalargumentation. natureof speech,languageand Oncewe are sensitiveto the performative discourse,then we can see that deliberative politicscannotbe confinedto mustbe theatrical: the rationalstatementof validityclaims.Deliberation of it is in the performance deliberation that that whichcannotbe argued for finds expression.Indeed it is preciselythe non-rationalaspects of of deliberation that carrythe potentialfor innovation.In his description that it is the poignantreminders demonstration of Chaloupka recognizes at the marginsthat

67. Michel Foucault,Michel Foucault:Politics, Philosophyand Culture-Interviews and OtherWritings D. trans.AlanSheridan al. (New et ed. 1977-1984, Lawrence Kritzman, York:Routledge,1988),p. 154;emphasisadded.

Jessica Kulynych 335 the actual force of the demonstration resides, no matter what happens at the microphone. The oral histories of demonstrations (the next day over coffee) linger over the jokes and funny signs and slogans, the outrages and improprieties, more than the speeches and carefully coherent position papers.68 Any convincing account of the politics of deliberation must take account of the creative potential that resides in the performance of debate. The identity-creating facet of performativity is also intimately connected to the possibilities for innovative communication and deliberation. While Fraser has also suggested a combination of Habermasian and Foucauldian perspectives, she is less optimistic about the intersection of these perspectives. Fraser argues that while the performative approach of theorists like Butler is a good resource for thinking about how constructed subjects can still be agents capable of innovation, such an approach is entirely "intra-subjective" and incapable of helping us to theorize the "inter-subjective' relationships between thoroughly constructed subjects.69I am suggesting, to the contrary, that a performative reconceptualization of political action is relevant not only for resisting the way we are constructed as subjects but also for opening up new possibilities for inter-subjective communication. To the extent that the possibilities for communication and understanding (for convincing others of the validity of your claims) are limited by the imaginable universe of possible subjectivities, then the ability to communicate with "different" subjects depends on the disruption of that universe and the performative creation of new, previously unimaginable subjects. In other words, as in the Sears case, in an authentically gendered universe subject positions and possible arguments about those positions are structured by a gendered dichotomy. To the extent that performative action on an intrasubjective level helps to break down that dichotomy, it opens the door for alternative arguments. Performative resistance is thus important not only for understanding the potential for innovation in the micro-politics of identity, but also for understanding the potential for innovation in an inter-subjective politics of deliberation. VI. Participation as Performative Resistance The notion of performativity as both identity- or world-creating and as demonstration, is crucial for understanding contemporary political

68. Chaloupka,"Suppose,"p. 157. 69. Fraser,"Pragmatism, Feminism and the Linguistic Turn," p. 163.

336 Performing Politics action. Performativeresistancedoes not eliminatepower and it is not effectedin the nameof some subjugated agency,but ratherits purposeis disruptionthat ensuresan disruptionand re-creation.It is a reoccurring endless reconstitutionof power. Disciplinarytechnologies effect the of that internalization norms-a removalfrom view of the mechanisms create us as subjects, making our identities self-evident. Resistance bringsthose normsback into an arenaof contestation.By its very existence resistanceensuresresistibility,whichis the very thing internalized is normsare designedto suppress.In other words,resistance not undertaken as a protestagainstthe subjugationof a reifiedideal subject, but rather resistance, as the action of thoroughly constructed subjects, reveals the contingency of both subjectivity and subjection. While Chaloupkasuggeststhat the role of the protestoris "tellinglydifferent" from that of the citizen, I disagree.Often only the act of resistanceprovides any meaningful sense of "citizenship" in this privatized conworld. As Dana Villa points out, resistance"can be seen as a temporary successorconceptto Arendt'snotion of politicalaction:wherethe space for action is usurped,whereaction in the strictsenseis no longerpossiand agonistic ble, resistancebecomesthe primaryvehicleof spontaneity
subjectivity."70

resistancerecognizesdisciplinary Performative power, enablesaction enablesinnovationin deliberation,and thus in the face of that power, it allowsus to see the worldof politicalactiondifferently.Consequently, is possible, and more meaningful,to conceptualizecontemporary paraction. The ticipation as a performativerather than a representative as failureto reconceptualize politicalparticipation resistancefurthersan illusionof democraticcontrol that obscuresthe techniquesof disciplinof arypowerandtheirrole in globalstrategies domination,fundamentally missing the real, although much more humble opportunitiesfor citizensto "takepart"in theirown "governance."Acceptingthe idea of has that fundamentalas participation resistance two broadimplications of debate. First, it widensthe parameters ly transformthe participation to participation includea host of new actors, activities,and locationsfor political action. A performativeconcept redirectsour attention away from the normalapparatusof governmentand economy, and therefore allows us to see a much broaderrange of political actions. Second, it requiresthat we look anew at traditionalparticipatoryactivities and evaluatetheirperformative potential.

and the Public Sphere," in RhetoricalRepublic, 70. Dana Villa, "Postmodernism p. 242.

Jessica Kulynych 337 Broadening the Political Horizon Participation as resistance compels us to expand the category of political participation. Whereas traditional studies of participation delimit political participation from other "social" activities, once participation is defined as resistance this distinction is no longer tenable. Bonnie Honig suggests that performative action is an event, an agonistic disruption of the ordinary sequence of things, a site of resistance of the irresistible, a challenge to the normalizing rules that seek to constitute, govern, and control various behaviors. And, [thus,] we might be in a position to identify sites of political action in a much broader array of constations, ranging from the self-evident truths of God, nature, technology and capital to those of identity, of gender, race and ethnicity. We might then be in a position to act-in the private realm.71 A performative concept of participation as resistance explodes the distinction between public and private, between the political and the apolitical. As Foucault explains, what was formerly considered apolitical, or social rather than political, is revealed as the foundation of technologies of state control. Contests over identity and everyday social life are not merely additions to the realm of the political, but actually create the very character of those things traditionally considered political. The state itself is "superstructural in relation to a whole series of power networks that invest the body, sexuality, the family, kinship, knowledge, technology and so forth."72 Thus it is contestations at the micro-level, over the intricacies of everyday life, that provide the raw material for global domination, and the key to disrupting global strategies of domination. Therefore, the location of political participation extends way beyond the formal apparatus of government, or the formal organization of the workplace, to the intimacy of daily actions and iterations. A performative understanding of political participation demands recognition of a broader array of actors and actions as well. Performative participation is manifest in any activity that resists the technological and bureaucratic construction of privatized client-citizens, or reveals the contingency of contemporary identities. Political action, understood in this sense, does not have to be intentional, rational, and planned; it may be accidental, impulsive, and spontaneous. It is the disruptive potential, the surprising effect, rather than the intent of an action that determines
71. Bonnie Honig, "Toward an Agonistic Feminism," p. 224-25. 72. Foucault, "Truth and Power," in Power/Knowledge, p. 122.

338 Performing Politics its status as participation.Consequently,studiesof participation must concern themselvesnot just with those activitieswe intentionallytake but partin and easilyrecognizeas politicalparticipation, also with those and instancesof politicalparaccidental,unplanned, often unrecognized is ticipation.If resistance a matterof bringingback into viewthingsthat have become self-evident,then we must be preparedto recognizethat consciousnessof the contingencyof normsand identitiesis an achievement that happensthroughaction and not priorto action. Performative is participation manifestin any action, consciousor unconscious,spontaneousor organized,that resiststhe normalizing, and regularizing, subjectifyingconfines of contemporary disciplinary regimes. Such a conceptof politicalparticipation allows us to see action where it was previouslyinvisible. So where Gaventa,in his famous study of Appalachianminers, sees quiescence in "anger [that is] poignantly aboutthe loss of homeplace,the contamination streams,the of expressed drainof wealth, or the destruction from the stripminingall around... [but is only] individually expressedand showslittle apparenttranslation into organizedprotestor collectiveaction,"73 conceptof performative a resistance sees tactics and strategies that resist not only the global strategiesof economic domination, but also the constructionof apathetic, quiescentcitizens. When power is such that it can create quiescence, then the definition of political participationmust include those forms of politicalaction that disruptand counterquiescence.A concept of political participationthat recognizesparticipationin sporadically expressed grievances, and an "adherence to traditional values" by citizensfaced with the "penetration dominantsocialvalues," is capaof ble of seeing not only how power precludesaction but also how power are relationships "not altogethersuccessfulin shapinguniversal acquiescence."74

Consequently, a performative concept of political participation literatureover the changes debates within the traditionalparticipation inclusion of protest activities and community decisionmakingin the definitionof political participation. While these debateshave generally been conductedon familiarterrain,justifyingthe inclusionof suchactivity by delineatingits impact on the distributionof goods, services,or politicalpowerby the government,a performative conceptof participation breaksdownthis distinctionaltogether.75 Becauseperformative par73. John Gaventa,Power and Powerlessness (Chicago:Universityof Illinois Press, 1980),p. 205. 74. Gaventa,Power and Powerlessness, 256-57. pp. 75. For varying discussionsover such inclusionsin empiricalliterature,see Lester PoliticalParticipation Milbrath, Pressof America, 1977);Sidney (New York: University Verba,NormanNie, and Jae-onKim,Participation PoliticalEquality(Chicago:Uniand

JessicaKulynych 339 ticipationis defined by its relationto a set of normalizingdisciplinary rulesand its confrontationwith those rules,nothingcan be categorically excluded from the category of political participation.As Honig elois account;it quentlyputs it, "not everything politicalon this (amended) is simplythe case that nothingis ontologicallyprotectedfrom politicization, that nothing is necessarilyor naturallyor ontologicallynot politis ical."' Therefore,the definitionof politicalparticipation alwayscontext dependent;it dependsupon the character the power networkin of is whichit is taken. Politicalparticipation not categorically distinguished from protestor resistance,but ratherthe focus is on the disruptive potential of an action in a particular networkof power relations. To say that participation contextdependent is meansnot only that any action is potentiallyparticipation,but also that no particularaction is necessarilya participatoryact. Housecleaningis a good example. The character the powernetworkin whichone existsdefineshousecleaning of as a potential act of political participation.In her descriptionof the defensivestrategies Blackwomenhouseholdworkers,BonnieThorton of Dill arguesthat the refusalto mop the floor on handsand knees, or the refusal to serve an extra dinner, constitutesan effective act of resisIt tance.77 is not the act itself that is politicallydefinitive,but ratherthe context. Blackdomesticlaborers,who in this contextare constructed as availdesperate,willingto do any type of work, and alwaysimmediately able for service, resist that constructionby acting as if they have other choices. Thus it is the context of the domestic labor relationshipthat defines the repertoire politicalactions. of Similarly,JonathanKozoldescribes poor welfaremotherslivingin the conditionsof the South Bronxwhose homes "no matterhow degrading besieged, are nonethelesskept spotless and sometimeseven look cheerful."78 For women who are constructed as thoroughly dependent, unfit, and unclean,cleaningthe house takeson the characirresponsible, ter of resistance;it becomes a political act. Housecleaningitself is not
versityof Chicago Press, 1978);SamuelHuntingtonand Joan Nelson, No Easy Choice Harvard Press, 1976);StevenRosenstone JohnMarkHansen, and (Cambridge: University Mobilization,Participationand Democracyin America(New York: Macmillian,1993); Samuel Barnesand Max Kasse, Political Action (BeverlyHills, CA: Sage, 1979);and MitchellSeligsonand John Booth, Political Participation LatinAmerica(New York: in Holmesand MeierPublishers,1978). 76. Honig, "Towardan AgonisticFeminism,"p. 225. 77. BonnieThortonDill, "MakingYourJob Good Yourself,"in Women thePoliand ticsof Empowerment, Sandra ed. and Morgan AnneBookman(Philadelphia: TempleUniversityPress, 1988),pp. 33-52. 78. JonathonKozol,AmazingGrace(New York:CrownPublishers,1995),p. 73.

340 Performing Politics necessarily political, rather, the disciplinary context of a gendered social welfare state gives political import to seemingly banal, everyday activities. Carina Perelli demonstrates how the ordinary can take on a radically political character in her discussion of women's participation in Uruguay. She describes the resistance of women during twelve years of military dictatorship as ant-like resistance, made of patience, words, gestures and especially marked by an absence of silence. Women talked, women criticized, women protested, as they had always done, as they still do. Invoking rights long dead, they claimed better teachers for their children, better school buildings and better textbooks. They were harsh and outspoken in their criticisms ... and they were not afraid to recall the past .... At a time when silence was ordered, they spoke. 79 This was political action that consisted of doing what one does everyday. It was not radical, extraordinary action, but ordinary activities that constituted political resistance. The political character of their activities resided not in the activities themselves but in the surrounding climate. As Perelli suggests, they are traditional women in traditional roles, seeking their traditional share of traditional happiness on earth. What has changed are the political circumstances. Their discourse is ineffective and anodyne in a regime based on freedom of association and speech. ... But in an authoritarian regime, the impact of women's discourse takes the form of dissent.80 While Perelli's analysis remains focused on the impact of such resistance on a political regime, her description of the contextual character of participation is insightful. Ordinary activities become extraordinary in a different context. The context, the particular configuration or economy of power, defines resistance. Understanding political participation as context-dependent has significant implications for empirical studies of participation. Political scientists must rigorously justify the designation of particular activities as political participation, not simply in terms of general theoretical prin-

79. Carina Perelli, "Putting Conservatism to Good Use: Women and Unorthodox Politics in Uruguay, From Breakdown to Transition," in The Women's Movement in Latin America, ed. Jane Jaquette (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 104-05. 80. Perelli, "Putting Conservatism to Good Use," p. 109.

Jessica Kulynych 341

ciples but also in terms of the specific context in which those actions occur. Cross-national studies of voter turnout may be rhetorically interesting, but without a meticulous delineation of the significance of voting and its relationship to power and domination in different countries we can lear little about comparative levels of participation. For example, the development of democratic governments in the former communist states has prompted a desire among comparative political scientists to develop a uniform concept of political participation that can be used to make more effective cross-national comparisons.81Yet, when considered contextually, formerly communist countries carry with them the remains of an entirely different array of norms, cultural expectations, prohibitions, and disciplinary productions surrounding the institution of voting. A performative concept of participation would compel political scientists to be rigorous in incorporating an understanding of the disruptive or legitimating effect of voting on particular disciplinary regimes. Similarly, a concept of political participation that recognizes action in strategies of "evasion of defense" expands the realm of political actors. Gaventa's miners become more than objects of domination; they become performative political actors. In a similar vein Fraser describes how young, black female clients of the mental health system "devised a varied repertoire of strategies for resisting expert, therapeutic constructions of their life stories and capacities for agency."82 Often they "resisted indirectly by humor, quasi-deliberately misunderstanding the social worker's vague, nondirective, yet 'personal' questions."83 They effectively "blocked," "refused," "ignored," and "sidestepped" the construction of their identities in the face of a productive, normalizing bureaucracy.84Without an expansive and performative understanding of political participation, these activities would remain unrecognized and these women would appear only as unsuspecting clients. Reconsidering Traditional Participation Understanding participation as performative resistance also provides a theoretical grounding for rethinking conventional participatory activities. The breakdown of the distinction between participation and resistance means that conventional political activities may also take on the
81. An exampleof one such advocateis Jeffrey Hahn, Soviet Grassroots (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1988). CriticalTheoryof 82. Fraser, "StruggleOver Needs: Outlineof a Socialist-Feminist LateCapitalistPoliticalCulture,"in UnrulyPractices,p. 180. 83. Fraser,"StruggleOverNeeds," p. 179. 84. Fraser,"StruggleOverNeeds," p. 180.

Politics 342 Performing characterof resistance.For example, a performativeconcept of participationmay shed new light on phenomenasuch as the "Perot vote," wherecitizensadmittedlycast theirvote with little expectationof influencingthe outcome. In other words,the vote is not merelya conduitfor the expressionof particularcitizen interestsor preferences;rather,its purpose depends upon the surroundingenvironment. Lacking clear choices and substantivediscussionof long-termgoals, voting or nonparticipation voting itself may become a form of protest. Performative and capturesthe sense of destabilization disruptionthat more and more activitiessuch characterizes today's electorate.Likewise,unconventional as protest marchesmay in turn appear to communicatecitizen preferencesand sustain system legitimacyin systemswherethose activities becomeinstitutionalized. marches,for example,may YearlyWashington actuallydiffuse discontentby providinga legitimateoutlet for protest;at the same time they verify systemlegitimacyby focusing protesttoward must the formal legal structuresof government.Political participation also account for the performativepotential of traditionalacts of participationin modernsocietieswherethese acts no longer fill traditional the protestin bolstering purposes,as well as the complicityof formalized status quo. Overall, both Habermasand Foucault direct attention away from activitiesdirectedat the formal apparatusof traditionalparticipatory activitiesback to Yet they also connectthese participatory government. moreglobalized,andmoreinstitutionalized powerregimes.While larger, Foucault concentrateson contests at the micro-level,he contends that those contestsprovidethe raw materialfor global domination.Similarly Habermas moved from a relatively has pessimisticand defensiveview of the politicalprocess (wheredemocracywas limitedto a communicative but protectedpublicspherewhose legitimateopinionsmade few inroads into political administration),to a more promisingtheorizationof a "democratizedadministration"in a constitutionalstate that "translates" legitimate influence into political and administrativepower. as conceptof participation Althoughmy theorizationof a performative resistanceis designedto reiteratethe importanceof focusing on more instancesof participation,this expansionand redefinitionof surprising instituof does not precludethe continuance representative participation their purpose tions and formalizedparticipation.Ratherit rearranges as and priority.An expandednotion of politicalparticipation performaof tive resistanceallows for a more effective thematization social probresistanceis not above or how performative lems, and it demonstrates below traditionalparticipation,but necessarilywithin it. Performative resistanceis evidentin intimateand personalrelationships,in the delibinstitutionsof the erationsof civil society, and in the problem-solving

Jessica Kulynych 343 constitutional state. While Habermas insists on a separation between the problem-solving that takes place in parliaments and the world-disclosing that is the function of the public sphere, a performative conception of participation effectively undermines any firm separation between problem solving and world disclosure. Proposals for group representation in legislative institutions by theorists such as Young and Guinier make more sense from a performative perspective because they encourage the performative reconstitution of identity not only in private life, but also at the level of public decisionmaking.85 VII. The Politics of Deliberation in a Performative Perspective A performative perspective on participation enriches our understanding of deliberative democracy. This enlarged understanding can be demonstrated by considering the examination of citizen politics in Germany presented in Carol Hager's Technological Democracy: Bureaucracy and Citizenry in the West German Energy Debate. 86 Her work skillfully maps the precarious position of citizen groups as they enter into problemsolving in contemporary democracies. After detailing the German citizen foray into technical debate and the subsequent creation of energy commissions to deliberate on the long-term goals of energy policy, she concludes that a dual standard of interpretation and evaluation is required for full understanding of the prospects for citizen participation. Where traditional understandings of participation focus on the policy dimension and concern themselves with the citizens' success or failure to attain policy preferences, she advocates focusing as well on the discursive, legitimation dimension of citizen action. Hager follows Habermas in reconstituting participation discursively and asserts that the legitimation dimension offers an alternative reason for optimism about the efficacy of citizen action. In the discursive understanding of participation, success is not defined in terms of getting, but rather in terms of solving through consensus. Deliberation is thus an end in itself, and citizens have succeeded whenever they are able to secure a realm of deliberative politics where the aim is forging consensus among participants, rather than achieving victory by some over others. Through the creation of numerous networks of communication and the generation of publicity, citizen action furthers democracy by assuming a substantive role in governing and by forcing participants in the
85. See Iris Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, and Lani Guinier, The Tyranny the Majority(New York:The FreePress, 1994). of 86. CarolHager,Technological of Democracy(Ann Arbor:University Michigan Press, 1995).

344 Performing Politics policy process to legitimate their positions politically rather than technically. Hager maintains that a sense of political efficacy is enhanced by this politically interactive role even though citizens were only minimally successful in influencing or controlling the outcome of the policy debate, and experienced a real lack of autonomy as they were coerced into adopting the terms of the technical debate. She agrees with Alberto Melucci that the impact of [these] movements cannot ... be judged by normal criteria of efficacy and success. ... These groups offer a different way of perceiving and naming the world. They demonstrate that alternatives are possible, and they expand the communicative as opposed to the bureaucratic or market realms of societal activity.87 Yet her analysis is incomplete. Like Habermas, Hager relies too heavily on a discursive reconstitution of political action. Though she recognized many of the limitations of Habermas's theory discussed above, she insists on the innovative and creative potential of citizen initiatives. She insists that deliberative politics can resist the tendency toward authoritarianism common to even a communicative, deliberative search for objective truth, and that legitimation debates can avoid the tendency to devolve into the technical search for the better argument. She bases her optimism on the non-hierarchical, sometimes even chaotic and incoherent, forms of decisionmaking practiced by citizen initiatives, and on the diversity and spontaneity of citizen groups. Unfortunately, it is precisely these elements of citizen action that cannot be explained by a theory of communicative action. It is here that a performative conception of political action implicitly informs Hager's discussion. From a performative perspective, the goal of action is not only to secure a realm for deliberative politics, but to disrupt and resist the norms and identities that structure such a realm and its participants. While Habermas theorizes that political solutions will emerge from dialogue, a performative understanding of participation highlights the limits of dialogue and the creative and often uncontrollable effect of unpremeditated action on the very foundations of communication. When we look at the success of citizen initiatives from a performative perspective, we look precisely at those moments of defiance and disruption that bring the invisible and unimaginable into view. Although citizens were minimally successful in influencing or controlling the out-

87. CarolHager, "CitizenMovements Technological and PolicyMakingin Germany,"

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 528 (July 1993): 55.

JessicaKulynych 345 a lack of autoncome of the policy debateand experienced considerable debate omy in their coercioninto the technicaldebate,the goal-oriented withinthe energycommissionscouldbe seenas a defiantmomentof performativepolitics. The existenceof a goal-oriented debatewithina technically dominated arena defied the normalizing separation between expert policymakers and consuming citizens. Citizens momentarily in recreated themselvesas policymakers a systemthat definedcitizensout of the policy process, thereby refusing their constructionas passive clients.The disruptivepotentialof the energycommissionscontinuesto even while their decisionsare non-binding. defy technicalbureaucracy of Where traditional understandings political participationsee the the commissions'failureto recapture decisionmaking processas energy an expressionof the power of the bureaucracy,and discursiveunderstandingssee the tendencytoward devolutioninto technicaldebateand proceduralimperative,the performative perspectiveexplainsand highthe moments of defiant creativityand disruptivediversitythat lights inevitablyaccompanycitizenexpeditionsinto unexploredterritory.This attitude of defiance, manifest in the very chaos and spontaneitythat Hager points toward as a counterto Habermas'sstrictlydialogic and procedural approach,simplycannot be explainedby an exclusivelydiscursivetheory. It is the performative that aspectsof participation cannot be captured constrained or withinthe confinesof rationaldiscourse,that gesture toward meaningsthat are inexpressibleand identitiesthat are within the currentculturalimagery.These performances unimaginable providethe resourcefor diversityand spontaneity. Consider,for example,a publichearing.Whenseen from a discursive, legitimationperspective,deliberationand debateare about the sincere, controlledattemptto discernthe best, most rational,least biasedargumentsthat most preciselyexpressan interlocutor's ideasand interests.In practice, however, deliberationis a much less deliberativeand much moreperformative activity.The literary aspectsof debate-irony, satire, sarcasm,and wit-work preciselyon the slippagebetweenwhat is said and what is meant, or what can be said and what can be conceived. Strategiessuch as humorare not merelyrational,but visceraland often uncontrollable,as is the laughterthat is evoked from such strategies. Performative actionsare not alternative ratherthey waysof deliberating; are agonistic expressionsof what cannot be capturedby deliberative rationality.As such, they resistthe confines of that rationalityand gesturetowardplaceswherewords, arguments,and claimsare not enough. Without an understandingof the performativeaspect of political action, Hagercannotexplainhow citizensareableto introducegenuinely new and different "ways of perceivingand namingthe world" into a

346 Performing Politics are It realmwheresuchepistemicstandards unimaginable. is in the process of actingas citizensin a technicalbureaucratic setting,wherecitizen that alternative, of actionis by definitionprecluded, epistemicstandards evaluationbecomepossible.Onlywhen scholarsrecognize performathe tive will they be able to grasp the intricaciesof contemporary political action and the possibilities for an actually diverse and participatory democracy.