Theory
Turning noise into politics -Ranciére`s political and the No-jukusha (japanese homless).
The book La mésentente (1995) written by Jacques Ranciére presents a definition and understanding of the political, which is strongly connectable to the struggle of the Japanese squatters and homeless and their current political action. Firstly, I want to explain the concept of the political that Ranciére proposes and then I want to demonstrate how the social struggle of the No-jukusha expresses this idea of the political. Finally, I will try to show how this new politics could lead to a new, necessary political form in Japan. Jacques Ranciére, the professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Paris VIII, works on the crossing of politics and aesthetics and appeals for a new, radical understanding of politics that criticizes and opposes the left-liberal concept of politics as presented by thinkers such as Habermas or Rawls. Rancière turns back to the antique Greek and finds a forgotten historic form of politics. The political came into being when the members of the demos, (which means the uncounted and uncountable, unnamed subjects, that never had a defined and established position within the hierarchical society) raised their voice as the generality of the demos and demanded a new distribution of wealth, social positions and spaces within the society. The unusual act of this demand and uncountable claim was that it was expressed from those subjects which were normally excluded from the established, professional politics of the wealthy and well-known Athenian families and in a form that performatively created an absent generality and a universality of the demos. Somehow, the estimated voiceless began to dislocate themselves from their usual position and speak their own language, which sounded like a new representation of the entire society. How could this happen? Normally, the oppressed and excluded accept and internalize their situation and position, whether this happens through ideology or through force. Ranciére gives the example of slaves,who, were assumed to participate in language in terms of understanding(Aisthesis) language, but not in the form of possessing ( Hexis) language. Rancière refers to an uprising of skoten slaves (skythen), in which the slaves realized that they were equal to their masters. Their equality consisted in the ability to understand orders (which the masters gave) and the response or actions that the slaves had to execute. But the process of understanding language (orders) and of answering to it, demonstrated the principal access to the logos, which all human beings share. The universality of logos builds the ground for the demand for equality. The logos, and language, which follows it, become the source and base for the political. This new perspective on politics leads Ranciére to a renaming of what from the perspective of sovereignty was called the political. From this perspective, all affairs should be called police, which form the unification and agreement of the community, organizes power, the distribution of positions, functions and spaces and the system of legitimation. Ranciére sees in the police a force that organizes bodies, establishes forms of acting and speaking, defines places, named subjects and tasks, and structures the visible and pronounceable. Politics is then, in opposition to that, dissent, i.e. the opening and criticizing of the police,the established order and distribution. The unnamed and excluded, which hold no shares, demand and question the distribution of the police, using their access to the logos and the empty freedom that forms their only possession. Their key concepts are equality and freedom, combined with the sharing of logos , that allows them to raise their voice and speak the dissent. This theoretical background gives us a foundation to examine the No-jukusha and their social struggle as I experienced it in Osaka 2005. The political action of the No-jukusha consists in dislocating themselves from their position as can collectors or starving unnamed subjects in the Nishinari slum, to people in dissent. Their occupied parks and appearance in the remaining little public spaces, spread over Osaka, transformed these places into visible moments of critique and politics. Every starving homeless person in a shopping street, as well as in a favela-like tent village in the business district, is a sign of dissent and can be transformed into a claim for a different distribution and an equal society. With public demonstrations and signature collections against the eviction of Utsubo and Osaka-jo parks, the No-jukusha appeared in the public and engaged in politics that confronted them with the police. Not to mention day to day repression that these uncounted squatters and precarious day-laborers face from the police (attacking them as riot-police, smashing down their tents, as park-police, construction-police, health-police...). This social struggle allows the No-jukusha to realize that they are equal to the people that deny them social and political rights, like many members of the city hall that treat them like inhumans and in Rancière´s words, “animals with a voice”. The arrogance of power under which the No-jukusha suffer, collapses when these city hall officials were confronted with the handing over of collected signatures against the eviction. In this rare and direct contact, both sides realized their equal language and shared logos, that the structure of the police tries to hide. Some No-Jukusha, whom I remember being shy and shameful when they talked about their situation, self image and the Japanese society, became critical, making demands in dissent (for example, saying publicly that the city hall is responsible for the deaths of their friends on the street, their miserable life conditions and repressions), while the mayor was receiving the notes of protest and the collected signatures. This represents an act of politics as Ranciére sees it, the city hall the place of the police is transformed into a space for dissent, where the unnamed and excluded start speaking. Their voices, which sounds to the officials as ignorable noise most of the time, became a speech. The protest was politics against police. The demand for equality breaks down the order of the police and opens a dispute over the distribution of wealth, normalization of life-forms , exclusion and public space. I hope that I could give a comprehensive introduction into the thinking of police/politics by Jacques Ranciére and a small adaptation of that thinking in the current social struggle that is fought by the active No-jukusha of Japan. Political dispute is needed in Japan and for the No-jukusha to give rise to their new life-forms and ways of living which imply a political subjectivity that can blast the logic of the police and their order of distribution in Japan. In other words, the struggle of the squatters and homeless in Japan, as it is expressed for example in the mobilization and protests done e.g. by the Kamagasaki-patrol against the eviction of the autonomous tent villages, shows the returning or upcoming of politics in Japan in the sense of Ranciére.
by Adrian Mengay