The Left and the Right: Surveillance over Political Space

Abstract

The author first investigates into when, where, and how the Left/Right division appeared in the French revolution. He defines the Left by a division of the political space into two exclusive entities, or hostile camps. He exemplifies the invention of this kind of political division discussing the political and social imaginary of Robespierre and Saint-Just, Sieyés and Marx and En-gels. Finally, he offers an interpretation of the Left/Right division as an invention which made possible the surveillance over the political space. He argues the Left lacks autonomous identity, presuposes a fixed point of reference and implies an external observer. So it can structurally not exclude a loss of conscience - and its replacement by (class-) consciousness - and a separation of politics from morals.