Democracy beyond the Political: Reconsidering the Social

Abstract

Claude Lefort is not known as a thinker of the social, but of the political, and notably of the democratic political. Still, when referring to the political, he must, almost of necessity, speak of the social, though not unambiguously. The problem concerns the use of the term before and after the democratic revolution. He uses the term as though it were present in all “societies” (and the very use of “societies” suggests how difficult it is to avoid the social or its cognates), but also suggests that the form and sense of the social change with democracy. This is hardly a surprise: the democratic revolution was, for Lefort, an epochal event that involved far more than a change in government or the institutions of governance. Ultimately, what is at issue when questioning the significance of the social is the relation of the political to what is not political. Part of the argument advanced here is that the social and its cognate terms are best reserved for modern democratic regimes. Indeed, it would be better to employ a different term when speaking of the social prior to democracy — but, then, Lefort is hardly alone in treating the social as a trans-historical term. But, before discussing the social in relation to democracy, we must begin by considering his understanding of the political relative to democracy.