Where does politics take place?* Does it take place in the State, in the broad sense of some territorial locale presided over by some form of government? That is what we commonly take to be where politics happens—happens in the form of such things as elections, campaigns to get elected, and actions taken by those who have been elected.
However, is the place of politics really in such governed spaces, and does it really take place in such things as elections? Or does it take place elsewhere, very differently?
The answer is that politics, in the true, full, genuine sense of the word, does not occur within the State, nor is it accomplished by such means as pertain to the governing of States. Rather, real politics — the building of a true human city, as the very word suggests (polis is Greek for “city”) — finds its true place, and truly takes place, only outside the State. The true place of genuine politics is altogether elsewhere than the State, and it is pursued by altogether different means than those pertaining to governing.
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“Do you think a painter would be any less good a painter, if, after portraying a pattern of the ideally beautiful person and omitting nothing required to perfect the picture, the painter couldn’t prove that such a person could actually exist?” “No, by heaven,” he said. “Well, weren’t we, as it were, trying to create in words the ideal of a good city?” “Certainly.” “Do you think, then, that our words spoke any less truly if we find ourselves unable to prove it possible to govern a city in accordance with our words?” “Not at all,” he said.
— Plato, The Republic
It is something like what drunkards would do, if, in response to advice about how to get themselves into a sober state, they would reply that the advice is out of place in connection with their present alcoholic state.
— Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
If politics takes place elsewhere than where we are currently caught amidst States and governments, then how can we get from where we are now to that other place, where politics happens?
The truth is that we can’t get there from here.
In fact, insofar as real politics takes place elsewhere from wherever government takes place, viewed from any such governed place real politics appears to take place nowhere. Viewed from such a perspective, real politics only takes place in and as utopia — a word that literally means “no-place,” from ancient Greek ou, “not,” plus topos, “place.”
Why can’t we ever get from where we are now, where politics is no more than an affair of States and governments, to where real politics — politics in the original, originary sense of building the truly human city — takes place? Because real politics is really utopian, which is to say that where it takes place is nowhere at all, at least no place in relation to all the places where “politics as usual” takes place. Utopia cannot be found on any map of global territories. It is nowhere, in relation to all the places that can be mapped.
Put in terms of what passes for politics among us State-chained people today, to say we can’t get from where we are now to that no-place where genuine politics takes place amounts to denying that we can ever hope to achieve the goal of genuine life together in a true, fully human polis by any program of gradual reform of our current political institutions and conditions. It is utterly unrealistic to think that we can reach the utopia of such a polis by any possible ordinary political means. That road is blocked.
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Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.
— Zen proverb
Truth cannot be seen from every vantage point. Nor is it visible under every light. What one sees of a forest walking through it at night under the light of a quarter-moon in a partially beclouded sky is one thing. What one sees of the same typography when one looks down upon it from a height under the sudden illumination of a bolt of lightning is something else altogether. Similarly, if one’s already formed views are determining one’s understanding, one will have a very different vision of what is real than one would have if a sudden insight revealed the web of all those already formed views to be nothing but a veil of illusions thrown over reality. In such sudden moments of insight, nothing has changed, yet everything has changed.
As utopian as it may sound to say so, once we are freed from illusions and allowed to see reality clearly, what earlier appeared to be an impractical, imaginary sort of politics distant from reality shows itself to be, instead, the genuine politics of reality as such. Put differently, utopia itself is not somewhere we can get to from here, because it is where we always already are. We just need to be given the eyes to see it.
Just what politics shows itself to be when seen though such new eyes will need to be considered in a later post or posts. For now, in this post, suffice it to say that such utopian politics looks altogether different from what passes for politics in our current state in the State.
* That is a question I also raise and address in the introduction to The Irrelevance of Power, my new, soon-forthcoming book. Once published, it will be available through this blog-site.