Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Legitimacy (Legitimacy, Sovereignty and the Public Sphere)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2019-03-01 al 2020-02-29
In addressing the questions of participation in and the inclusivity of the public sphere, the research inquired into the possibility that these problems are rooted, at least partially, in the inadequate conceptual separation of state and society. The hypothesis of the research was that even if Immanuel Kant (if not Jean-Jacques Rousseau) initiated the conceptual separation between the two, necessitating thereby their mediation, state and society, nevertheless, remained latently linked by something that was left theoretically unaccounted for and that constantly undermines the need for the mediation (the public sphere). The central claim of the research project was that the idea of legitimacy must be addressed, if this conceptual separation is to be brought to its conclusion. This requires a concept of legitimacy that, on the one hand, establishes a relation between state and society, but on the other hand, also maintains the separation. Developing such a concept of legitimacy and outlining its effects on various other theoretical concepts, like the public sphere, democracy, and sovereignty, was the task of this research project.
The second question of the research concerning the issue of participation in the public sphere was first taken up in engagement with Jacques Derrida’s writings on law and signature. The analysis revealed that, on the one hand, Derrida situates legitimacy under the same category of terms as laws, rules, prescriptions, and so forth, that are deconstructible, but on the other hand, he shows that the structure of the ‘legitimating’ signature (e.g. under the declaration that founds the state) is problematic and undecidable. The research aimed at showing that legitimacy, rather than being deconstructible, deconstructs itself (and) any self-founding of law and power. By re-reading Derrida’s ‘Declarations of Independence’ through the lenses of his later texts on sovereignty and (counter)signature, I demonstrated a need for a critique of the evaluative concept of legitimacy, which, in turn, clears the path to the understanding of legitimacy as resigning.
In the final phase, the research project brought together the deconstructed concept of legitimacy and the idea of the public sphere. The concept of the public sphere becomes theoretically necessary with the conceptual separation between state and the people. The research project followed the hypothesis that the (value of) participation in the public sphere is structurally undermined by the incomplete conceptual separation of state and society. The research concluded that the traditional concept of legitimacy functions as an untheorized link between state and society, which creates a hierarchical relationship between the two by giving priority to the state over against society, or the people. The research proposed the deconstructed concept of legitimacy as a way to conceive legitimacy that relates the two sides, i.e. state and the people, without the reduction of their conceptual differentiation. It was further argued that such legitimacy is the very condition of possibility for a more inclusive and participatory public sphere.