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Yugoslavia as State of Exception: Đilas and Đinđić

i. The following exposition is a part of ourmore comprehensive research on “Yugoslavia as abiopolitical experiment”. To be more precise, it isits second part, where we will discuss two textsthat, we think, explicate in a very special way thesocio-philosophical questions associated with thedestiny of the formation formerly called“Yugoslavia”. Those are “New Class” by MilovanĐilas - indisputably former Yugoslavia’s mostprominent dissident text, written half way throughthe 50-ties, and a collection of essays by ZoranĐinđić “Yugoslavia as an Unfinished State”,published end of 80-ties, not long before thedisintegration of Yugoslav state formation started.

As much as these texts may mark the crucialbreaks in particular personal destinies of theauthors (Đilas, who from the position of the thirdman in the ranks of state power turns into themain, at least ideologically, opponent of theregime, and Đinđić, who is soon to become one ofthe leaders of the Democratic Party in Serbia,leaving de facto the scientific work behind), theydon’t interest us as testimonies to what Yugoslavia“was” or “might have become”. This time they willrather serve us in our effort to answer some of thephilosophical questions posed by the new globalorder.

Hence, what in fact is “Yugoslavia” as a(socio-) philosophical question from a globalizedperspective, and not as a subject to research bycultural studies, sociology, economy, ethnology,etc? As much as the latter types of research arenecessary, valuable and needed, we cannot ridourselves of the impression that they are notgetting at what is at stake in “Yugoslavia” as asocial experiment, one that maybe (and this “maybe”

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we take here in all its fragility and possibilitythat may no longer be possible), maybe has left usas its legacy a distinct emancipatory potential.

In this essay we strictly confine ourselves tothe texts by Đilas and Đinđić, while for now weleave aside the reflection on self-understandingand praxis of Yugoslav political elites (meaning,primarily the question of “self-management” inEdvard Kardelj’s writing) as well as theinterpretation of “Yugoslavia” in the work of themost prominent Yugoslav philosophers (Gajo Petrovićand Vanja Sutlić), as those are topics that willconstitute future segments of our research..

However, the Yugoslav self-management from aglobalized perspective will be of subject of ourinterest insofar as it a point where domains of adifferent legality and a different socialepistemology crystallize (accordingly, we plan toread the self-management in the light of JewgenyiPashukanis’s theory of law and Alfred Sohn-Rethel’sepistemological sketches). On the other hand, butwith the same intent, Gajo Petrović and VanjaSutlić’s reflection will be subject of our debate,insofar as we maintain that their thinking -despite the clearly evident amalgamation of Marxand Heidegger that most of the interpreters take asa starting point, but unfortunately also as an endpoint of their analysis -, that their thinking, inthe very possibility of re-philosophizing the issueof “social revolution”, unfolds the emacipatorypotential of “Yugoslavian” project that we spoke awhile ago.

Here, on the contrary, Đilas and Đinđić serveus as an index of two types of question, bothextremely relevant, that the authors detected withan incredible intuition.

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But before we state which exact question do wemean, we should posit the horizon of our enquiry inthe context of the subject we’ve been dealing within this place last couple of years, namely thesubject of “biopolitics and normativity”.

While in our first presentation we tried todisclose a deep structure of the messianiccharacter of biopolitical theory and the relatingfragile normativity of that theory, in the secondwe used the dichotomy of “political state ofexception” and “social revolution” to try toarticulate more clearly the normative potential ofthat kind of theoretization.

This time around, we will base themethodological premise, following Negri and Hardt,on the dichotomy of “war” and “(absolute)democracy”. In this context and with the subject ofnormativity posed in those terms, Đilas’s “NewClass” puts on the agenda the question ofperversion of the political being unfolded in thename of social revolution that wishes to overcomethe realm of the political in its entirety. On theother hand, Đinđić reflects on a situation wherethe state form and the sovereignty are divorced, asituation where the state form and the sovereigntyare continuously seeking, missing and putting eachother into question.

But, before we pass on to Đilas and Đinđić, wewill try to describe the territory of normativitythat is opening up if we take as a methodologicalpremise the dichotomy of “war” and “democracy”,leading us directly to the subject of “state ofexception”.

ii. The state of exception is not, the state ofexception is valid. It is in this distinction thatcan be found no less than the entire enigma of

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contemporary politics or at least what we in the20th century used to call politics. However, theproblem is more complex, insofar as the enigma ofpolitics consists in that very unquestioned,enigmatic character of the state of exception, orto quote Agamben: “even nowadays, after all, thepublic law has no knowledge of the theory of stateof exception, and jurists see this problem more asa question facti, rather than a true juridicalproblem.”

Es gibt den Ausnahmezustand nicht, derAusnahmezustand gilt, could be a paraphrase of anorder where something has validity, without havinga meaning or signification.

Facticity of a state that doesn’t exist, yet isvalid is - as the biopolitical theory thinks - afacticity on the scale beyond every possible oractualized phenomenology of the political. Hence,the phenomenologies of a Hegelian, Husserlian,Heideggerian or, for that matter, Derridian kindbecome inadequate to analyze the politics of stateof exception.

The state of exception is not subject to eitherknowledge or consciousness (and thus the science ofexperience of consciousness of the state ofexception) is not possible). The state of exceptionis also not subsumable under the Heideggerian meta-economics of Being, of an event of giving andreceiving. And as much as the paradoxical, genuineconstitutive logics of the state of exception mightbe similar to the logics of event, the state ofexception is not an event. In the state ofexception there is no appropriation of thepolitical (ereignen in the Ereignis), nor does thestate of exception exist in the domain ofperception (eräugen in Ereignis).

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Trans-phenomenological distinction betweenbeing and validity is the essence of the politicsof the state of exception and the state ofexception of the politics. And this is then theplace where, in their mutual implication, politicsand exception, politics and exceptionality meet.And that place is - the place of sovereignty.

So sovereignty is not, it is valid. It isvalid, without meaning or signifying anything.

For Schmitt, as is well known, the sovereign isone who decides on the state of exception.

The sovereign decision is, thus, a decisionthat decides on that exception from the rule, whichdeclares the state of exception, and isconsequently, in its facticity, outside of the law.

The state of exception as a temporarysuspension of the legal domain is the state wherefacticity and normativity, life and law overlap.Overlapping of life and law from the standpoint ofthe ordered domain of law is an illegal exception,indeed a true, i.e. sovereign state of exception ofthe law. However, although the exceptionality ofthe state of exception proves everything, and anordered normative system nothing, the sovereigndecision as a supreme act of the political cannotbe a lasting one, because the permanency ofdecision, declaration and validity of the state ofexception would, by the same token, entail acomplete doing away with the political sphere - andthis is in this case paradoxical - in the very actof total delimitation of the political.

The sovereign decision in its own singularityas an exceptional act and a supreme exception fromthe juridically ordered domain of politics bringsabout the apocalypse of the political.

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Schmitt, in order to avoid such a doing awaywith the political, has built into the logics ofsovereignty and sovereign decision a dialectics ofconstitutive and constituted power. This dialecticsshould make the act of sovereign political decisiontemporally limited and - and if it is possible -foreseeable and accountable for the juridico-political system itself. The pouvoir constituant iswith Schmitt another name for the politics on theborder: i.e. for the political action that - awareof its sovereignty - realizes all the potentials ofthe political, yet at the same time stops at aborder, limit of the political and doesn’t pursuethe apocalypse of the political in the totaloverlapping of factitious and normative, life andlegality.

But, what if the state of exception is a rule,and not any longer an exception? What if theapocalypse of the political, in the totalidentification of life and law, has already takenplace?

It is to Walter Benjamin and his theses on theconcept of history that we owe first indicationsand directions for answering the posed questions.But it was not before the seventies that theFoucault provided a minute description of what itmeans to live in a - now already permanent - stateof exception.

Life that has become its own law, its ownmeasure and purpose is the subject of politics ofthe state of exception. However, and this is herecrucial, the “law” of life in an existing andpermanent state of exception is no longer a law inthe sense of juridico-political system, it israther an act that has the power of law. Thus, inthe state of exception a political act parexcellence of regulating life becomes a decree, actthat has the power of law, yet itself is not a law.

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The logics of sovereignty, which in itsradicalization has led to the overlapping offactitious and normative and to the concomitantdoing away with the political in a condition of thestate of exception becomes, according to Foucault,a logics of governmentality, i.e. the logics of nolonger political governing over and decision makingon the boarders of commonality. Politics is herenothing else than police, in the strictest sense ofthat term.

If, as we’ve said, the policed life in thestate of exception governed by decrees representsthe apocalypse of the political, its impossible andutopian realization, then a conclusion can be madethat the politics and reflection on the politicalas we know it have reached their end and goal.

The forgetting, disappearance or death ofpolitics is thus not only, or it is in the least, adestructive end to all things, because thepolitical mode of deciding has been replaced byanother, more efficient and “democratic” mode ofdeciding, that of policing.

Life that has through and through become lawmeans also life that is its own absolutelegitimation. To the life that seeks its own utopiathe deficit of legitimation is no problem, butrather the surplus thereof.

On the other hand, the supreme definition ofthe political with Schmitt is doubled in twodecisions. One is the decision on the state ofexception, the other one is the decision on theenemy, i.e. declaration of war.

The state of exception and the state of war aretwo faces of the political just the moment beforethe dissolution of the politics, and therefore the

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state of exception characterizes the internal andthat of war the external constitution of community.But when politics becomes police, such adistinction becomes no longer possible, and inconsequence the state of exception becomes thestate of war. The state of exception becomes alimitless, meaning planetary war. As this is a warthat knows no limits and, therefore, knows nothingthat could be left outside, thus as everything isincluded into that war and everything is beingcounted on - it is a global civil war.

Philosophers following Foucault have tried todeduce this essential conflictuality of the globalstate of exception from the classical dichotomy ofrelations of production and productive forces. Inthe very moment when life itself - absolutelylegitimized - becomes a singular subject ofpolicing and production, the war zone becomesubiquitous, both on the psychophysical-biologicallevel and in terms of territoriality.

War front are now countless, limitless,globalized bodies and populations that live a lifedetermined by decrees and norms of the state ofexception, living in a permanent state oftransformation, state of permanent loss and gain.

The enemy, from this perspective, is no longerothers (as the state of exception, in accordancewith the Schmittian intuition, at the same means anexisting identity of the ruling and the ruled) - itis rather an anonymous police machine that produceslives and life conditions that are insufficient forthe attained level of productive forces, so that amultitude of producers is struggling in order tochange those relations.

And as much as that struggle might belegitimate, hasn’t it, by recognizing its ownlegitimacy, already become a part of the state of

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exception machine, “democratic” policing machine ofabsolute legitimacy? Isn’t the distinction betweenthe relations of production and productive forcesinsufficient to conceive of the category of friendand enemy within the post-apocalyptic community ofthe state of exception?

The possibility of absolute enmity thatwouldn’t be exhausted in the dichotomy and thinkingof the relations of production and productiveforces, the possibility of enmity and refusal ofthe existing state of affaires is, stricto sensu,no longer a possibility that might be provided bythe reflection of the political or the policeconcept of the state of exception.

That is the possibility which, similar to thestate exception, escapes all phenomenologicaldetermination, and which is, for that reason,governed by a different mode of thinking aspractice and of practice as thinking.

The possibility of not accepting the state ofexception might be thought by starting out from theproblem that we said characterizes life in thestate of exception: and that is a surplus oflegitimacy.

By using Franz Rosenzweig’s distinction, onecould say: that which makes possible not to acceptand to refuse, that which makes possible an enmitywithin and towards the state of exception as suchis not an issue of legitimacy or lack thereof, butis rather the absolute deficit of truth of thestate of exception.

Thus we have circumscribed the domain of thenormative that results from the dichotomy of “war”and “democracy” and that reflects the deficit oftruth of the state of exception: that is the domainof intellectuality, and no longer of the narrowly

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conceived epistemical. However, when we say“intellectuality”, we don’t think there that the“state of exception” as such would be a certainkind of idealization, where the normativity andfacticity would continue to compete for thehistoric or structural primacy. Because, as we havealready said, the state of exception already is asolution, and a real existing one, to thedistinction of normative and factitious, so thatthe “intellectuality” in this context denotessomething completely different from all possibleidealistic schemes.

But let us sum up: the urgency andexceptionality of the state of exception areprimarily a thing of the structure ofintellectuality, structure of thinking. Thinking isthus not only a marginal epiphenomenon of a “realexisting” (political, economical or any other)state of exception, but is rather the motor of thatexceptionality. This seems to be the tradition ofthinking the state of exception, but also thetradition of thinking as a state of exception,inaugurated by Benjamin and Adorno. That is asingular reduction of the intellectuality to theaphoristic or sentential. However, this reductionhere doesn’t have to be necessarily understood inthe binary opposition of fragmentarity andsystematicity (which is of course a traditionaltopos of political romanticism), but rather in theopening up of the intellectual for its inherentnormativity - one which is contained in itself, butsubstantially questions the exceptionality of (itsown) state of exception. To quote a recentreflection on Adorno’s “Minima Moralia”: “Aphorism,as a form of the permanently declared state ofexception of the philosophy, which questions thesovereignty of philosophizing, is a gaze, enabledby a “fragment” in the eye, a “So it is” that isnot the final consequence of a sequence ofconclusions, and that therefore should not be

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confused with epistemic judgments. Aphorism makes‘us’ be in the truth, and not ‘posses’ it.”

There, the crucial question: what would, if inthe first place there could, be a possiblenormativity of such an aphoristic thinking, a “Soit is”, that doesn’t exhaust itself in thetaxonomic description of social phenomena? Whatkind of “So it is” it would be if it is not abanal, final result of a reflection that onlyaffirms what is already presumed or known anyhow?

If there is any sense in speaking of such anormativity of the intellectual, one which wouldwith its stripped down sententiality suspend thegeneral suspension itself (which is just anothername for the state of exception), theintellectuality should be understood in the senseAdorno ascribes to it - namely, as something thatwe “are” in, as a social environment of ourexistences. This assumption relates the Adornianmeditation back to the biopolitical theory, insofaras the biopolitical theory truly understand theintellectuality as a general framework of thesociality - under the name of “anthropogenesis”.

Intellectuality as anthropogenesis, it is notonly the question of singularity or genesis ofhuman kind (no matter whether we do or do not fix amoment of “becoming of human”), it is not event thequestion of the destiny of “humanity”, but it israther a genetic index of human kind, insofar asthe intellectuality manifests a collective andcooperative potential of sociality.

But we have said that it is the intellectualitythat is the motor of exceptionality of the state ofexception, and this taking into consideration theanthropogenic character of the intellectualitymeans that - strictly speaking - the anthropogeniccomplex (or, to put it another word, the question

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of “becoming human”) is not just an idealistic orideological supplement for the totalitarian orrepressive political systems, but rather that itemerges as a constellation of the state ofexception, and concomitantly as a possibility toleave it behind - in the name of democracy, andagainst the war.

It’s maybe now, with the constellation ofquestions and problems posited in this way, thatthe entire “monstrosity” of the biopolitical theoryand its normative claims after Foucault comes tolight. How to think the social with regard to theexceptional state of exception that emanates fromthe very core of the social, i.e. intellectualityas the potential to communicate and cooperate? Andno longer the intellectuality understood as anideological-idealistic supplement for the materialrelations, but rater the intellectuality that is anindex of the problematic character ofanthropogenesis itself.

So, what are the biopolitical productivity andnormativity, beyond all eugenic projects of themodernity?

iii. Milovan Đilas’s “New Class” opens with apoignant author’s confession that the text thatfollows is a hybrid genre, that it is a text thatmixes and combines “the history on a contemporaryrevolution, […] exposition of a thinking, and,finally, […] a confession of a revolutionary.” Itis a literary mix of historiography, meditationsand memoirs - an attempt “to use different methodsin a same piece of writing in order encompass asthoroughly and as succinctly the image ofcontemporary communism.”

But the final aim of thus articulated intentionwas not to provide “a social or any other

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philosophy”, not even there where the author usesabstractions in order to simply “display the imageof the communist world.”

It is rather a “so it is”, an exposition ofthought that suspends the philosophical reflectionin the confession of the unconditional socialconditioning of thinking on the one hand, and inthe sentential reduction to apodictic validity onthe other. So it is, or at least hold it to be.

However, a supplement that makes such ameditation on the “image”, and no longer on thethought of communism - and this meditation is asĐilas assumes always hybrid and fragile -,consistent - i.e. that what makes it possible forthe author’s writing to take seriously and totestify credibly of the subject of his elaborationis his invocation of becoming and intellectual’scourse of life.

“In my life I’ve crossed, as an intellectual,the entire road that one communist has to go - fromthe lowest to the highest ranks of hierarchy, fromthe local and national to the international forums,from the establishment of a true communist partyand organizing the revolution, to the building upof so called socialist society. No one had forcedme neither to join the communism nor to part fromit. I made my decisions myself, to the best of mybelief, freely, as much as man can be free in sucha moment. I do not belong to those who have beendisappointed, although there were disappoints, butI moved gradually and mindfully, creating an imageand conclusions presented in this book. By drawingaway from the reality of contemporary communism, Iwas increasingly drawn nearer to the idea of ademocratic socialism. This personal developmentmust have reflected on this book, although its goalcould neither be nor is in that.”

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The supplement that allows Đilas to depict thecontemporary communist world, and at the same timeallows his non-systematic meditation to attain adiscursive homogeneity necessary for approaching atask such is the description of the communism inits living totality, is the experience ofintellectuality, experience of “personaldevelopment”. As such, and in order to distanceitself from the reality of the world, thisexperience needs - so that it could leave theimpression of a psychological and social integrity- be structured as a teleological (gradual andrational) process.

On the one hand, we thus have a meditativethinking, which in an unstable form of an apodicticassertion “so it is” illuminates in flashes theimage or subject of enquiry, and on the other, wehave a thoroughly teleological and closed process,where a life’s experience of an intellectual livingin a communist world doesn’t leave much room for asuspicion as to what it is that we are here dealingwith.

However, not even this constellation or montageof the incompatible is that peak which securesĐilas’s thinking a status of a thinking of thestate of exception, or rather a thinking as thestate of exception.

That what structures Đilas’s text is neithermeditation nor (purposeful) pragmatic experience of“personal development”, it is rather the timepressure of circumstances hasting him to bring theexposition to an end.

Or, to quote: “Furthermore, my personalcircumstances are insecure to a degree, and theydepend on me only insofar as I still haven’tsuccumbed, where I’m forced to haste with theexposition of personal observations and

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experiences, although I am aware that a moredetailed enquiry might make more complete and evenchange some of the conclusions.”

Herewith the basic economy of Đilas’s text isposited, one that - under constant pressure to fendoff an unnamed, yet presumed threat that wouldprevent finishing of the writing - oscillatesbetween different genres of writing, and itoscillates between reductive, sententiousdescriptive insights and sedimentary richness oflived experience. The distancing from the realityof the communist world as a political state ofexception becomes, in Đilas’s case, itself a stateof exception. The meditation that aspires to give a“real” image of communism from a genetically higherstate (i.e. democratic socialism), because of itsimmanent riddenness and collatedness does notmanage to provide an alternative normativity thatwould no longer be the one of the perversion of thepolitical.

In this sense Đilas’s genealogy of thecommunist world is not in the least original, quiteon the contrary it belongs to the same milieu itwants to distance itself from.

Thus the communism in the East, according tothe author, was indeed necessary as a motor for themodernization that the national bourgeoisies werenot able to kick start, but at the same time thatnecessity was also detrimental, insofar as acertain ideology (communist), that was alreadyobsolete in the Western world, has charged for themodernization by bringing the society to an impasseof an insurmountable social stagnation andimpossibility of development into the(teleologically) higher social formation. Thecommunist monolith is a key for understanding ofall processes, and therefore even a particularYugoslav phenomenon of workers participation in the

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management is assumed to be nothing but a bloodlessrevisionism of the basic communist matrix that byno means implies a higher degree of democracy, butmaybe only provides yet another perfect illusion ofthe humanity of the communist project. But let usbe frank: on these counts Đilas repeats what isalready known and offers nothing new.

However, an unstable point of reference of theentire text that Đilas himself particularly isconcerned with, as should we be when trying todemonstrate a certain use to a long forgottencritique of communism in the context of a globlizedworld, is the concept of “new class”.

The new class is, briefly, a class that hasrisen in the name of overcoming of all classes, inthe name of overcoming the political and statedomain, in the name of social revolution. That is aclass that is a remnant that left over once theclass society has been suspended, and therefore itcan no longer be described in terms of classantagonism, but it still is not a perfectrealization of a classless society. That is a classthat is in an interregnum. Đilas will invest a lotof energy in his book trying to demonstrate thatthe “new class” is no longer a classical, vanguardrevolutionary party, nor the Western technocraticelite. The new class as an interregnum is not“forgetting of politics”, but simply a totalperversion of the political. However, the “newclass” is neither simply the “nomenclature”, or atleast not at the moment when Đilas does hisresearch and description. The “new class” is halfway through the 50-ties still not stable enough andstill not systemically positioned enough to be ableto reproduced itself as nomenclature.

This is in part so because the communistproject of modernization meant by and large alsothe project of national emancipation, and hence the

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external threat of war was still looming large overthe internal (closed) project of transformation ofthe social. But merging of the form of civil warbeing led in the (internal) process of destructionof social divisions and the form of war as a threatfrom outside is for Đilas still not good enough todescribe the exceptionality of the communist state,because the merging of different forms of thethreat of war (internal and external) maybe mightexplain the geopolitical, block division, but thatis by no means universal enough to describe ordefine the communist state of exception.

At this juncture, before we go on to quote thepassage that we think is crucial for theunderstanding of Đilas, we will remind that it isthe intellectuality that we have named the motor ofthe state of exception. What that might mean whenit comes Đilas, we will explain after a longerquote:

“The most important reason for there not beingan organized opposition in the communism lies ofcourse in the comprehensiveness - totalitarianismof the communist state. It has pushed its way intoall pores of society and personality - into visionsof scientists, into inspirations of poets and intodreams of lovers. To stand up against meant notonly dying a desperate man’s death, but also to bebranded and ostracized from the society. […]

Not even the two basic forms of opposition -one of the old classes and another from within thecommunism - were capable either to find programs orforms of struggle. The first were pulling back, andthe second were competing with the regime in anaimless and senseless revolutionary zeal anddogmatic outsmarting. The conditions were still notripe to find new ways.

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However, the people spontaneously intuited anew way and resisted in every step and in everydetail This resistance is today the greatest andreal threat to communist regimes. The communistoligarchs no longer know what their people thinkand feel. They feel insecure in a sea of dark anddeep protest. […]

It seems that the more the consciousness isconstrained and the lesser the potentials forcreating an organization are, the more silent andgrim grows the protest.

The communist totalitarianism leads to a totalprotest, where gradually all other differences arelost and only desperation and hate remain.”

It seems to us that the following is crucial:the communist formation is defined by an inabilityfor one kind of rationality (for instance,rationality of governing) to perceive other kindsof rationality (in this case, rationality ofprotest). Perceptive field is divided and there isno “third way” that could overcome the division ofrationality and the inability for differentrationalities to perceive one another. And insofara true job of communist government doesn’t evenbegin with a mere overthrow and taking of power, asĐilas informs us, but rather with an everyday,total revolutionizing of relations after the “yearzero”, then this division of rationality tends tobecome permanent, i.e. it becomes a perpetuummobile of the state of exception (as both the causeand the purpose of the process). Đilas in histeleologically determined perspective thinks thatthe permanency of such state is fragile and willnot be continuing for long (what should so called“fall of communism” testify to?), because theplunder of material and intellectual resourcescannot continue forever before they are depleted.But, what if the exploited resources are not

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limited, an if the very act og anthropogenesis(“becoming of man”) has become a primary resourceof production? - This seems to us as a crucialquestion for life within a globalized world.

To sum up: the state of exception is a crucialmeans, but also purpose of communist politics. Assuch it can be brought to bear on the issue ofmodernization, national emancipation ortotalitarian-terrorist plunder of social resources(and all in the name of establishing of a classlesssociety), but the essence of the exceptionality ofexactly the communist state of exception is itsprimarily intellectual character, i.e. a permanentand total production of the division of therational and the perceptive. “Poverty” of thecommunist East reflects the fact that the basic“material” of production nothing else that thatvery complex of rational/perceptive. But that wasalso an index of “wealth” (of utopian potential) inthe East.

When we talk about the division of rationalitywe don’t think of a Weberian model ofdifferentiated types of rationality, but of aconcept that was introduced by Jacques Rancière:partage du sensible. In brief, it is a conceptwhereby Rancière describes paradoxical mechanismsof political processes, staking his voice againstthat tradition of political philosophy as we’vecome to know since Hannah Arendt.

Partage du sensible is a splitting ofrationality that can no longer be reconciled, notonly insofar as there is no comprehensiverationality, but primarily because of the simplefact that the different types of rationality cannotbe reciprocally perceived, recognized. Partage dusensible is therefore an indication of afundamental social misunderstanding, where noteleological movement of different and opposing

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rationality towards a consensual mode ofreconcilable rationality is given.

Rancière’s truly classical example is thestatus of demos in the Athenian polis. The demosis, looking structurally, left outside of the orderof knowledge (as it doesn’t adequate thegeometrical intelligence), as well as outside ofthe order of wealth (i.e. arithmetic rationality) -demos is that unaccountable that escapes thestructural order, but it is this same “demos” whois denominator that the Athenian democracy uses toattain the title of “democracy”. Demos is a “partof those who don’t have a share” or “thequalification of those who are unqualified”, andthat after all serves as a motor to the political,implying also the possibility for a true political,democratic dynamics.

Or to quote Rancière: “That what characterizesthe democracy is a pure accident or a completeabsence of qualification for ruling. Democracy is astate of exception […], where there is no defaultprinciple of assignation of roles.” Democracy is astate of exception, we add, exactly for it is aparadoxical and irreconcilable splitting of therational into different rationalities, the same assplitting of the rational into incommensurabledomains of intelligible and perceptible.

Đilas’s “new class”, at least as we havepresented it here, ironically completelycorresponds to the essential element in thedemocratic politics according to Rancière Đ that ofa dissensual and contingent creation of the stateof exception, where “part which has no share”deconstructs no longer a political, but ratherstrictly policing logics of the socialadministration. Ironically, because the communist“new class” of the European East perverts andridicules the neo-classical modeling of political

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community (such as Arendt’s) and radicallyantagonistic models of democratic sociality (suchas Rancière’s)

The “new class” - that central concept in Đilasthat eludes every rigid definition, but that weknow of that it is neither the party vanguard, northe bureaucratic nomenclature, nor the technocraticelite - is a name of a historical project that has,while trying to answer to the challenge of thesocial state of exception, by the way of mimicrybecome the state of exception itself. But thatdespite of that has in one moment - in the emphasison the intellectual character of the state ofexception - has left a window of possibility opento think the sociality beyond the state ofexception, or more precisely, beyond the permanentstate of war.

The “new class” faced us with a possibility ofa radical perversion of the political in the nameof social revolution. However, the “new class” isat the same time a name of a normative project thatis interested in - beyond all modernist andbiological fantasies of creating a “new man” -radically exposing the fundamentally intellectualcharacter of the sociality, creating thusindirectly that what is always and only at stake -free people.