What is an Insurrection? Destituent Power and Ontological Anarchy in Agamben and Stirner
| Author | Saul Newman |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321716654498 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321716654498
Political Studies
2017, Vol. 65(2) 284 –299
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321716654498
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What is an Insurrection?
Destituent Power and
Ontological Anarchy in
Agamben and Stirner
Saul Newman
Abstract
The aim of this article is to develop a theoretical understanding of the insurrection as a central
concept in radical politics in order to account for contemporary movements and forms of
mobilisation that seek to withdraw from governing institutions and affirm autonomous practices
and forms of life. I will develop a theory of insurrection by investigating the parallel thinking of
Giorgio Agamben and Max Stirner. Starting with Stirner’s central distinction between revolution
and insurrection, and linking this with Agamben’s theory of destituent power, I show how both
thinkers develop an ontologically anarchic approach to ethics, subjectivity and life that is designed
to destitute and profane governing institutions and established categories of politics. However,
I will argue that Stirner’s ‘egoistic’ and voluntarist approach to insurrection provides a more
tangible and positive way of thinking about political action and agency than Agamben’s at times
vague, albeit suggestive, notion of inoperativity.
Keywords
insurrection, destituent power, Giorgio Agamben, Max Stirner
Accepted: 3 May 2016
The aim of this article is to develop a theoretical understanding of the insurrection as
a central concept in radical politics. The notion of insurrection has been increasingly
deployed as a way of describing recent uprisings around the world – from Tahrir
Square to Occupy Wall Street, from the ‘movement of the squares’ in Madrid and
Athens to Gezi Park in Istanbul (see Invisible Committee, 2008, 2014).1 Here, one
observes a form of action and mobilisation reducible neither to simple acts of civil
disobedience, nor to a classical revolutionary model of politics. Instead, these move-
ments signify a kind of withdrawal from formal systems of power; their emphasis is
Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK
Corresponding author:
Saul Newman, Goldsmiths, University of London, 47 Lewisham Way, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, UK.
Email: s.newman@gold.ac.uk
654498PSX0010.1177/0032321716654498Political StudiesNewman
research-article2016
Article
Newman 285
on the creation of autonomous communal spaces and modes of interaction rather than
on the construction of political agendas and the representation of demands to the
state. By contrast, the idea of revolution, as the seizure of political power by an
organised vanguard party, seems less easy to appeal to today. Despite attempts
recently by some political theorists to resuscitate and rethink the idea of the vanguard
party (see, for instance, Dean, 2012) – others suggest that this has been entirely
superseded by a new model of emancipatory politics, in which self-organisation and
the desire for autonomy from state institutions are the defining features (see Castells,
2015; Graeber, 2009, 2014). Whereas the revolution is an instrumental form of action
which aims, through organised political force, to seize the reins of government and
use state power to transform the totality of social relations – that is, to constitute a
new society – insurrection works within the fabric of existing social relations, open-
ing up spaces of resistance and autonomy that are in a sense immanent within it. It
does not seek to impose a unified political will to reshape or reconstitute society
according to a particular vision or plan but, rather, affirms, in a pre-figurative way, a
free form of activity and being-in-common in the present.
My aim here is to understand the insurrection as a distinct idea of politics. I will do this
in a slightly oblique way by exploring the parallel thinking of contemporary Italian phi-
losopher, Giorgio Agamben, and nineteenth-century German philosopher and Young
Hegelian, Max Stirner. I will argue that, despite their differences, they share an insurrec-
tionary theoretical approach which can help us clarify the coordinates of the contempo-
rary political horizon. I shall suggest that both thinkers propose a form of political activity
and ethics which is neither Marxist nor, strictly speaking, anarchist – although it is cer-
tainly closer to the latter – and which is reducible neither to constituent nor constituted
power but which, rather, affirms a kind of destituent power or, as I put it, an indifference
to power.
I will trace this theme through a number of points of intersection. First, I will explore
the structural similarities between Stirner’s model of insurrection or ‘uprising’ and
Agamben’s notion of destituent power. Second, I will link these parallel concepts to a
notion of ontological anarchism, which I argue both thinkers are in different ways com-
mitted to, despite their ambivalent relationship to anarchism as a political ideology. I
interpret ontological anarchism here in terms of a non-foundational approach to politics
in which essential identities and fixed normative categories are destabilised. Third, I
explore what I see as the profane thinking characteristic of both thinkers – that is, the
attempt to desacralise life, to free it from the abstract and theological categories in which
it has hitherto been trapped. Next, I examine the implications this has for subjectivity:
both thinkers, in different ways, put forward an alternative notion of the subject as being
without vocation – that is, without a pre-defined purpose or telos. Here, I draw on
Stirner’s related notions of egoism and ‘ownness’, and Agamben’s ideas of ‘whatever
singularity’ and ‘form of life’. Last, I will show how important differences between these
thinkers emerge around questions of agency, community and political action, which
highlight some of the key dilemmas facing radical politics today. Here, I will argue that
Stirner’s ‘egoistic’ and voluntarist approach to insurrection provides a more tangible and
positive way of thinking about political action than Agamben’s at times vague, albeit
highly suggestive, notion of inoperativity. My overall aim in teasing out these points of
convergence and difference is to formulate an alternative model of insurrectionary polit-
ical theory as a way of understanding non-hegemonic, post-sovereign forms of radical
politics today.
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