ABSTRACT
Equality is central to Rancière’s ‘politics’. It is the axle that brings ‘politics’ into existence.2 Yet this equality is not a ‘value’with already proscribed content. It is not ‘a goal; it is a starting point, an opinion or a presupposition which opens the field of possible verification’.3 It is formally empty but in every instance in which it is employed it is filled in with content that is context-specific but always invokes equality with the rest. In a struggle against racial segregation it may be filled in as the equality of black citizens; in a struggle for land rights it may become the equality of landless peasants; in a dispute over working conditions it may involve the equality of workers; in a struggle for women’s rights it may be the equality of women. All of these instances will effect transformation by demonstrating that the party in question is equal to everybody else. Hence Rancière tells us that ‘equality exists … to the extent that it is enacted’.4 It is an enactment – a staging – that proves the capacity of those previously thought to be incapable, in whichever way is relevant in the given context. As noted in the Introduction, the enactment of equality is only possible due
to the capacity of humans to communicate with one another. For human beings to exist together they need to be able to communicate. Even when the terms of their existence are profoundly unequal the very existence of this inequality depends on a prior equality in terms of their capacity to communicate even if this is only in order for masters to give orders and slaves to carry them out. This ‘Achilles heel’ underlies all order and holds out possibility to those suffering any form of domination since it demonstrates that in some sense, human beings share intelligence – they are equal in their capacity to communicate about whatever order they exist in together. This leads Rancière to identify a second principle:
intelligence is not divided, it is one. It is not the intelligence of the master or the intelligence of the student, the intelligence of the legislator or the intelligence of the artisan, etc. Instead it is the intelligence that does not fit any specific position in a social order but belongs to anybody as the intelligence of anybody.5
