Mapping rule and subversion: Perspective and the democratic turn in Machiavelli scholarship
| Date | 01 January 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885115599894 |
| Author | Boris Litvin |
| Published date | 01 January 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2019, Vol. 18(1) 3–25
!The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885115599894
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Article
Mapping rule and
subversion: Perspective and
the democratic turn in
Machiavelli scholarship
Boris Litvin
Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, USA
Abstract
This paper engages the debate within the ‘democratic turn’ in Machiavelli scholarship,
where an ‘institutional’ approach has celebrated Machiavelli’s theorisation of the institu-
tions under which the people can rule while a ‘no-rule’ approach has traced Machiavelli’s
attention to the popular capacity to subvert all relations of rule. What do we make of
Machiavelli’s concurrent reception asa champion of popular rule and an antagonist to all
rule? I argue that both institutionalising and subversive impulses appear simultaneously in
Machiavelli’sworks, though in a dynamic for which neither of the democratic approaches
adequately accounts – namely, a rhetorical dimension of Machiavelli’s works wherein
political knowledge unfolds from a continuous multiplicity of perspectives and the ensuing
implication that perspective is crafted and shaped through political action. Perspectival
readings of Machiavelli’s accounts of the Capuan debate and the Ciompi rebellion thus
reveal that both democratic approaches have neglected to question certain ‘princely’
orientations toward political action inherited in their conceptualisations of
Machiavellian democracy. In contrast, I suggest that Machiavelli’s comedy La Mandragola
offers an opportunity to reframe perspective as a uniquely democratic phenomenon.
Reading the comedy alongside the democratic turn, I argue that it enacts, satirises and
even casts doubts on Machiavelli’s princely lessons, in turn proposing a popular capacity to
cultivate perspective in a newly organised public space.
Keywords
Machiavelli, perspective, democracy, La Mandragola, comedy
While Niccolo
`Machiavelli remains notorious as the cynical, ends-oriented author
of The Prince, his works likewise continue to produce a second, scholarly notoriety:
a multiplicity of interpretations so divergent that one is surprised to find all
Corresponding author:
Boris Litvin, Scott Hall 601, University Place, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
Email: litvinb@gmail.com
accounts largely trace their readings back to the same narrow set of chapters,
passages and maxims. Even as the extent of this multiplicity has been well docu-
mented (Berlin, 1971), the particular conceptual disagreements of the current
‘democratic turn’ in Machiavelli scholarship provide an opportunity to reconsider
a number of persisting questions both for Machiavelli interpretation and for con-
temporary political theory.
On one end of the democratic turn, McCormick’s (2011) institutional approach
advances a Machiavelli who ‘endorses class-specific institutions’ in order to ‘ani-
mate’ the people into political action; on the other end, Miguel Vatter and Yves
Winter’s no-rule approach finds a Machiavelli who theorises a popular capacity to
subvert the distinctions under which any rule is organised and justified. What do we
make of a democratic turn that identifies Machiavelli as both a champion of the
people’s capacity to rule and an antagonist to all rule as such? Moreover, what
should we make of the fact that democratic theory appears to be receptive to (if not
demand) claims both from institutionalised popular rule and from no-rule subver-
sion? In this essay, I argue that both ruling and subversive impulses are present
in Machiavelli’s works, though in uneasy, unstable dynamics for which neither the
no-rule nor the institutional approaches can adequately account. While the above
approaches identify Machiavellian features indispensable to a democratic politics,
each likewise fails to theorise an organising logic unique to the amalgamation of
theoretical and rhetorical dimensions of Machiavelli’s works, which enable both
rule and subversion to emerge together and maintain an ongoing tension between
the two. In what follows, I identify this logic with Machiavelli’s continual themat-
isation of a diversity of perspectives in ascertaining political knowledge. Attention
to the Machiavellian interplay of perspectives will serve both to organise various
conflicting impulses in Machiavelli’s works and subsequently make possible a
popular capacity to navigate rule and subversion.
Following my conceptualisation of perspective in the next section, the perspec-
tival approach engages the question of a democratic Machiavelli in two stages.
First, I return to the two democratic accounts to examine the difficulties they
encounter in providing the conceptual tools needed to address the apparent contra-
diction between democratic institutionalisation and subversion, in turn navigating
this contradiction through a perspectival lens. Specifically, I consider McCormick’s
use of the Capuan debate from Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, offered as illus-
trative of the people’s capacity for good judgment, and Vatter and Winter’s uses of
the Florentine Histories’ Ciompi Rebellion, presented as illustrative of no-rule sub-
version. Reading the two cases together, I suggest that both downplay the tensions
between subversion and institutionalisation, thus eliding the implications of poten-
tial failures and co-optations. Given this discussion, the challenge is thus to con-
ceive a positive function for perspective within a democratic theory that advances
both no-rule and institutionalising demands. In other words, what would a demo-
cratic relation to perspective look like?
With this question in mind, in my subsequent sections I argue that Machiavelli’s
comedy La Mandragola, though often overlooked by political theorists, offers an
opportunity to reframe perspective as a uniquely popular, democratic
4European Journal of Political Theory 18(1)
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