Empire (19 page)

Thomasius to Puffendorf, the transcendental figures of sovereignty

were brought down to earth and grounded in the reality ofthe

institutional and administrative processes. Sovereignty was distrib-

uted by setting in motion a system ofmultiple contracts designed

to intervene on every node ofthe administrative structure ofpower.

This process was not oriented toward the apex ofthe state and the

mere title ofsovereignty; rather, the problem oflegitimation began

to be addressed in terms ofan
administrative machine
that functioned through the articulations ofthe exercise ofpower. The circle of

sovereignty and obedience closed in on itself, duplicating itself,

multiplying, and extending across social reality. Sovereignty came

to be studied less from the perspective of the antagonists involved

in the crisis ofmodernity and more as an administrative process

that articulates these antagonisms and aims toward a unity in the

dialectic ofpower, abstacting and reifying it through the historical

dynamics. An important segment ofthe natural right school thus

developed the idea ofdistributing and articulating the transcendent

sovereignty through the real forms of administration.11

The synthesis that was implicit in the natural right school,

however, became explicit in the context ofhistoricism. Certainly,

it would be incorrect to attribute to the historicism ofthe Enlighten-

ment the thesis that was really only developed later by the reactionary

schools in the period after the French Revolution—the thesis, that

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is, that unites the theory ofsovereignty with the theory ofthe

nation and grounds both ofthem in a common historical humus.

And yet there are already in this early period the seeds ofthat later

development. Whereas an important segment ofthe natural right

school developed the idea ofarticulating transcendent sovereignty

through the real forms of administration, the historicist thinkers of

the Enlightenment attempted to conceive
the subjectivity of the historical process
and thereby find an effective ground for the title and exercise ofsovereignty.12 In the work ofGiambattista Vico, for

example, that terrific meteor that shot across the age ofEnlighten-

ment, the determinations ofthe juridical conception ofsovereignty

were all grounded in the power ofhistorical development. The

transcendent figures ofsovereignty were translated into indexes of

a providential process, which was at once both human and divine.

This construction ofsovereignty (or really reification ofsovereignty)

in history was very powerful. On this historical terrain, which forces

every ideological construct to confront reality, the genetic crisis of

modernity was never closed—and there was no need for it to close,

because the crisis itselfproduced new figures that incessantly spurred

on historical and political development, all still under the rule of

the transcendent sovereign. What an ingenious inversion ofthe

problematic! And yet, at the same time, what a complete mystifica-

tion ofsovereignty! The elements ofthe crisis, a continuous and

unresolved crisis, were now considered active elements ofprogress.

In effect, we can already recognize in Vico the embryo of Hegel’s

apologia of ‘‘effectiveness,’’ making the present world arrangement

the telos ofhistory.13

What remained hints and suggestions in Vico, however,

emerged as an open and radical declaration in the late German

Enlightenment. In the Hannover school first, and then in the work

ofJ. G. Herder, the modern theory ofsovereignty was directed

exclusively toward the analysis ofwhat was conceived as a social

and cultural continuity: the real historical continuity ofthe territory,

the population, and the nation. Vico’s argument that ideal history

is located in the history ofall nations became more radical in Herder

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so that every human perfection is, in a certain respect, national.14

Identity is thus conceived not as the resolution ofsocial and historical

differences but as the product of a primordial unity. The nation is

a complete figure ofsovereignty
prior
to historical development; or better, there is no historical development that is not already prefigured in the origin. In other words, the nation sustains the concept

ofsovereignty by claiming to precede it.15 It is the material engine

that courses throughout history, the ‘‘genius’’ that works history.

The nation becomes finally the condition ofpossibility ofall human

action and social life itself.

TheNation’s People

Between the end ofthe eighteenth and the beginning ofthe nine-

teenth centuries, the concept ofnational sovereignty finally emerged

in European thought in its completed form. At the base of this

definitive figure ofthe concept were a trauma, the French Revolu-

tion, and the resolution ofthat trauma, the reactionary appropriation

and celebration ofthe concept ofnation. The fundamental elements

ofthis swift reconfiguration ofthe concept ofnation that made it

a real political weapon can be seen in summary form in the work

ofEmmanuel-Joseph Sieyès. In his wonderful and libelous tract

What Is the Third Estate?
he linked the concept ofnation to that

ofthe Third Estate, that is, the bourgeoisie. Sieyès tried to lead the

concept ofsovereignty back to its humanist origins and rediscover

its revolutionary possibilities. More important for our purposes,

Sieyès’s intense engagement with revolutionary activity allowed

him to interpret the concept ofnation as a
constructive political concept,
a constitutional mechanism. It gradually becomes clear, however,

particularly in Sieyès’s later work, the work ofhis followers, and

above all that ofhis detractors, that although the nation was formed

through politics, it was ultimately a
spiritual construction,
and the concept ofnation was thus stripped away f

rom the revolution,

consigned to all the Thermidors. The nation became explicitly the

concept that summarized the bourgeois hegemonic solution to the

problem ofsovereignty.16

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At those points when the concept ofnation has been presented

as popular and revolutionary, as indeed it was during the French

Revolution, one might assume that the nation has broken away

from the modern concept ofsovereignty and its apparatus ofsubju-

gation and domination, and is dedicated instead to a democratic

notion ofcommunity. The link between the concept ofnation and

the concept ofpeople was indeed a powerful innovation, and it

did constitute the center ofthe Jacobin sensibility as well as that

ofother revolutionary groups. What appears as revolutionary and

liberatory in this notion ofnational, popular sovereignty, however,

is really nothing more than another turn ofthe screw, a further

extension ofthe subjugation and domination that the modern con-

cept ofsovereignty has carried with it from the beginning. The

precarious power ofsovereignty as a solution to the crisis ofmoder-

nity was first referred for support to the nation, and then when the

nation too was revealed as a precarious solution, it was further

referred to the people. In other words, just as the concept of nation

completes the notion ofsovereignty by claiming to precede it, so

too the concept ofthe people completes that ofnation through

another feigned logical regression. Each logical step back functions

to solidify the power of sovereignty by mystifying its basis, that is,

by resting on the naturalness ofthe concept. The identity ofthe

nation and even more so the identity ofthe people must appear

natural and originary.

We, by contrast, must de-naturalize these concepts and ask

what is a nation and how is it made, but also, what is a people and

how is it made? Although ‘‘the people’’ is posed as the originary

basis ofthe nation,
the modern conception of the people is in fact a product
of the nation-state,
and survives only within its specific ideological context. Many contemporary analyses ofnations and nationalism

from a wide variety of perspectives go wrong precisely because

they rely unquestioningly on the naturalness ofthe concept and

identity ofthe people. We should note that the concept ofthe

people is very different from that of the multitude.17 Already in the

seventeenth century, Hobbes was very mindful of this difference

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103

and its importance for the construction of sovereign order: ‘‘It is a

great hindrance to civil government, especially monarchical, that

men distinguish not enough between a people and a multitude.

The people is somewhat that is one, having one will, and to whom

one action may be attributed; none ofthese can be properly said

ofthe multitude. The people rules in all governments. For even

in monarchies the people commands; for the people wills by the

will ofone man . . . (however it seem a paradox) the king is the

people.’’18 The multitude is a multiplicity, a plane ofsingularities,

an open set ofrelations, which is not homogeneous or identical

with itselfand bears an indistinct, inclusive relation to those outside

ofit. The people, in contrast, tends toward identity and homogene-

ity internally while posing its difference from and excluding what

remains outside ofit. Whereas the multitude is an inconclusive

constituent relation, the people is a constituted synthesis that is

prepared for sovereignty. The people provides a single will and

action that is independent ofand often in conflict with the various

wills and actions ofthe multitude. Every nation must make the

multitude into a people.

Two fundamental kinds of operations contribute to the con-

struction ofthe modern concept ofthe people in relation to that

ofthe nation in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The more important ofthese are the mechanisms ofcolonial racism

that construct the identity ofEuropean peoples in a dialectical play

ofoppositions with their native Others. The concepts ofnation,

people, and race are never very far apart.19 The construction ofan

absolute racial difference is the essential ground for the conception

ofa homogeneous national identity. Numerous excellent studies

are appearing today, when the pressures ofimmigration and multi-

culturalism are creating conflicts in Europe, to demonstrate that,

despite the persistent nostalgia ofsome, European societies and

peoples were never really pure and uniform.20 The identity ofthe

people was constructed on an imaginary plane that hid and/or

eliminated differences, and this corresponded on the practical plane

to racial subordination and social purification.

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The second fundamental operation in the construction of the

people, which is facilitated by the first, is the eclipse of internal

differences through the
representation
ofthe whole population by a hegemonic group, race, or class. The representative group is the

active agent that stands behind the effectiveness of the concept of

nation. In the course ofthe French Revolution itself

, between

Thermidor and the Napoleonic period, the concept ofnation re-

vealed its fundamental content and served as an antidote to the

concept and forces of revolution. Even in Sieyès’s early work we

can see clearly how the nation serves to placate the crisis and how

sovereignty will be reappropriated through the representation of

the bourgeoisie. Sieyès claims that a nation can have only
one
general interest: it would be impossible to establish order ifthe nation were

to admit several different interests. Social order necessarily supposes

the
unity
ofends and the concert ofmeans.21 The concept ofnation

in these early years ofthe French Revolution was the first hypothesis

ofthe construction ofpopular hegemony and the first conscious

manifesto ofa social class, but it was also the final declaration ofa

fully accomplished secular transformation, a coronation, a final seal.

Never was the concept ofnation so reactionary as when it presented

itselfas revolutionary.22 Paradoxically, this cannot but be a com-

pleted revolution, an end ofhistory. The passage from revolutionary

activity to the spiritual construction ofthe nation and the people

is inevitable and implicit in the concepts themselves.23

National sovereignty and popular sovereignty were thus prod-

ucts ofa spiritual construction, that is, a construction ofidentity.

When Edmund Burke opposed Sieyès, his position was much less

profoundly different than the torrid polemical climate of the age

would lead us to believe. Even for Burke, in fact, national sover-

eignty is the product ofa spiritual construction ofidentity. This

fact can be recognized even more clearly in the work of those who