Public space and the formation of the people

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At the confluence of the history of ideas and political theory, the volume published by Isabelle Koch and Norbert Lenoir, Democracy and public space: what power for the people ?from a conference held in Aix-en-Provence in October 2007, wonders in several of its contributions on the uses of public space in classical doctrines of the State and among theorists of contemporary democracy. Voluntarily little brought to constitutional and institutional reflections, this work seeks more to explore the State through practices and experiences made possible by the emergence of a public space, whose examination owes a lot to the work of Jürgen Habermas.

If it is not always easy to identify a common denominator or a common thread to all of these contributions, a theme short along the book, on which it is worth lingering. This problem is that of the passage, in politics, between the multitude and the whole, between the diversity of opinions and the formation of the will of the State or, expressed in an interrogative way: what makes it possible to ensure the formation of a people from atomized individuals ? In this regard, the work very usefully poses the question of the role played by public space in this passage between the multitude and the political totality. Role which is also very different according to the authors examined. He is sometimes placed at the heart of the political process, sometimes relegated to a very minimal place. In my opinion, it is the main interest of this work to have explored this theme.

Rightly so, Martine Pécharman summons Thomas Hobbes to think about the question of political unity or the passage between multitude and all. It immediately underlines the incompatibility which prevails, in the English philosopher, between the notions of public space and people. The people are “ The outdated multitude “, It follows from the social pact, from a process of inclusion of multiple wills in a single will. It is the pact which gives uniqueness to the “ Voices of the sovereign decision ». In this logic of multiplicity resorption, public space – as long as this expression has a meaning here – does not intervene as a desirable device.

Everything other is the prospect of Jürgen Habermas, for which public space is an essential intermediary in the formation of the will of the State. As Joëlle Zask notes, public space constitutes an area of ​​” tightness “, An intermediary between civil society and the government. It is constituted as an autonomous space of interests, both private and government. Public space thus manages to transcend particular flights and to form a will which is neither the government spokesperson nor that of civil society. According to Joëlle Zask, deliberation becomes a space “ educational “Where individuals demonstrate” of their ability to politicize their own political conditions ». Consequently, the public forms a unit not due to a community of opinions or a “ physical contiguity “, But because of the common substrate (an event for example) from which individuals form an opinion. In this perspective, the question is no longer: how to form general will, but more “ How, from situations concretely experienced by citizens, transform these conditions undergone into public and political problems ? ».

In continuity with the developments of Joëlle Zask, Pascal Taranto considers the exercise of deliberation as a possibility that the actors, stakeholders of “ public space », Give themselves to go beyond particular wishes. However, multiplicity is not politically threatening, it participates in the political process. It is not relegated, unlike Hobbes, in infra-political, it is the condition of the virtual of the political process. Pascal Taranto relies opportunely on liberal thinking and in particular that of John Stuart Mill, for whom the progress of the individual inserted in a community requires the most widely open public space.

Bruno Gnassounou and Norbert Lenoir feed in their own way reflection on the relationships between multiplicity and unity, by wondering about the possible aporia which can exist between democracy and individualism. Like Tocqueville, Bruno Gnassounou recalls that democracy requires conditions of equality, but also independence, the latter which can compromise the transition from the multiplicity of opinions to a form of unity. Relative to this question on the sources of political unity in democracy, Norbert Lenoir adds a relevant reflection which would have deserved to be developed, relating to the two constitutive faces of the people in democracy, those of the majority and the minority. If the first tends towards identity (or homogeneity), the second puts more emphasis on plurality, on the grounds that it does not recognize itself entirely in the will of the majority. This tension crosses the very identity of the people, to which the components of unity and multiplicity must be jointly associate.

It is therefore the interest of the work – Democracy and public space: what power for the people ? – than to have returned to this very delicate passage ranging from multiplicity to political unity in the Republic, by wondering about the place occupied by public space. This volume may have gained more visibly organized around a clearly drawn problem, so as to offer the reader a progression in questions and analyzes resulting. The difficulty of the passage between multiplicity and unity is, in a way, that of the volume itself which sometimes struggles to find its coherence. Several contributions, whose interest is not in question, maintain only implicit links, even if Norbert Lenoir, at the cost of a large introductory effort, tried to establish the wreath. In addition, the reader patient, sometimes in vain, to obtain an examination of the concept of public space, of which centrality is felt in this work, but without being attributed to him a theoretical attention. In addition to these few remarks, the volume published by Isabelle Koch and Norbert Lenoir, offers stimulating reflection and deserves attention, already in her attempt to meet the history of contemporary ideas and political theory.