The Disembodiment of Politics and the Formation of Political Space: Questioning Lefort’s Concept of Democracy

Abstract

The author examines Lefort’s notion of democracy from a historical perspective. After noting that Lefort has not discussed the relationship between the invention of the state and the invention of democracy, the author argues that the state concept actually corresponds with the nature of democratic power as specified by Lefort. Lefort has focused on the demise of the king’s body as the necessary condition for the disembodiment of power and for the advent of democratic society as a bodyless society. But, the author argues, of no lesser importance for the disembodiment of power was the crisis of the republican ideas of politics - a factor that does not appear in Lefort’s interpretation where democracy is defined as republican. The author then discusses the issue of political parties and its neglect by Lefort. The author argues that the emergence of political parties effected the dissolution of the body politic and the formation of political space. The idea of political space, largely absent from Lefort’s writing, is a necessary condition for speaking of a place of power and, consequently, of the democratic representation of power as an empty place.