Andrew Schaap

Enacting the right to have rights: Jacques Rancière’s critique of Hannah Arendt

In her influential discussion of the plight of stateless people, Hannah Arendt invokes the ‘right to have rights’ as the one true human right. In doing so she establishes an aporia. If statelessness corresponds not only to a situation of rightlessness but also to a life deprived of public appearance, how could those excluded from politics possibly claim the right to have rights? In this article I examine Jacques Rancière’s response to Arendt’s aporetic account of human rights, situating this in relation to his wider criticism of Arendt’s conception of the political. According to Rancière, Arendt depoliticizes human rights in identifying the human with mere life (zoë) and the citizen with the good life (bios politikos). For, in doing so, she takes the distinction between zoë and the bios politikos to be ontologically given whereas politics is typically about contesting how that distinction is drawn. For Rancière ‘the human’ in human rights does not refer to a life deprived of politics. Rather, the human is a litigious name that politicizes the distinction between those who are qualified to participate in politics and those who are not. In contrast to Arendt, Rancière’s approach enables us to recognize contests over human rights, such as that of the sans papiers, as part and parcel of social struggles that are the core of political life.

Aboriginal Sovereignty and the Politics of Reconciliation: The Constituent Power of the Aboriginal Embassy in Australia

As a reoccupation of land immediately in front of Parliament House for six months in 1972, the Aboriginal Embassy was an inspiring demonstration of Aboriginal self-determination and land rights. Since 1972 demonstrators have maintained an Embassy on the site as part of the continuing Aboriginal struggle. Significantly, on its twentieth anniversary in 1992 Embassy protestors declared Aboriginal sovereignty just as the state-initiated formal reconciliation process was getting underway in Australia. Within mainstream public discourse in Australia, reconciliation is understood as aligned with a progressive politics. In this paper we examine the reactionary politics of reconciliation vis-à-vis the struggle for land rights and sovereignty that the Embassy embodies. To this end we examine a debate within legal theory about the relation between ‘constituted power’ (state sovereignty) and ‘constituent power’ (democratic praxis). Following Antonio Negri, the Embassy can be understood as one manifestation of the constituent power of Aboriginal people (and their non-Aboriginal supporters) that the Australian state appropriates to shore up its own defective claim to sovereignty. We illustrate this by comparing the symbolism of the Aboriginal Embassy with that of Reconciliation Place in Canberra. We complicate this analysis by discussing how the Embassy strategically exploits the ambiguous status of Aboriginal people as citizens within and without the community presupposed by the Australian state. In doing so the Embassy makes present the possibility of a break with the colonial past that is often invoked in the politics of reconciliation but which the Australian state has failed to enact.

The constitutional politics of the Aboriginal Embassy

Preface Larissa Behrendt Introduction Gary Foley, Andrew Schaap & Edwina Howell SECTION 1: THE ORIGINS OF THE EMBASSY 1. The Aboriginal Embassy: An account of the protest of 1972 Scott Robinson 2. A Reflection on the first thirty days of the Embassy Gary Foley 3. The Origins of Aboriginal political consciousness and the Aboriginal Embassy, 1907-1972 Gordon Briscoe 4. Aboriginal Protest Leith Duncan 5. Black Power - by any means necessary Edwina Howell 6. Tracking Back: Parallels between the 1920s Aboriginal Political Movements Parallels and 1972 Tent Embassy John Maynard 7. The Freedom Ride Ann Curthoys SECTION 2 THE EVENT OF THE EMBASSY 8. The Beginnings of the Embassy (January 1972) 9. Camping Indefinitely at the Embassy (February-June 1972) 10. Confrontation at the Embassy (July 1972) 11. The Continuing Presence of the Embassy since 1992 SECTION 3 THE LEGACY OF THE EMBASSY 12. Anniversary Reflections 13. The Constitutional Politics of the Aboriginal Embassy Paul Muldoon & Andrew Schaap 14. Stating Genocide in Law Jennifer Balint 15. The spatial politics of Aboriginal protest in the Parliamentary Triangle Kurt Iveson 16. War by Other Means: The Australian War Memorial and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in National Space and Time Fiona Nicoll 17. What do we want? Not native title, thats for bloody sure Nicole Watson

Review Symposium on 'The Force of the Example'

Ferrara, A. (2008) The Force of the Example: Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment. New York: Columbia University Press.