La démocratie entre conflit social et conflit identitaire

Abstract

This article draws a distinction between social struggles, which cannot be understood without reference to the opposition between capital and labour, and struggles about identity. Social conflicts or class struggles are rooted in the affirmation of the generic determinations (life, work, language). They involve a univeralist dimension which is inscribed in the questioning of the imperial universal characteristic of global capitalist domination. Identity conflicts are grounded on the acknowledgement of certain determinations relating to forms of belonging which have been denied or been dominated and are organised around the opposition between and. Their object is the recognition of what is deemed to be necessary within these identities. This tension requires reexamining, without its being construed as a version of the old structure/superstructure dualism. The pure logic of capitalism is always invested within and over-determined by the dialectic of anthropological differences, for which there is no ultimate resolution. These differences are always bound up with the affirmation of life, work, and speech. It therefore follows, in political terms, that we must avoid the autonomisation of either of these conflicts and that we must therefore take into account the unending movement from one to the other.