Definiciones de Democracia

survived the eschatological catastrophe, or as a kind of bridge between ruin and salvation. It is even more misleading to interpret the remnant as outright identical to Israel, in the sense of its being an elected people that survived the final destruction of peoples. A closer reading of the prophetic texts shows that the remnant is closer to being a consistency or figure that Israel assumes in rela­ tion to election or to the messianic event. It is therefore neither the all, nor a part of the all, but the impossibility for the part and the all to coincide with themselves or with each other.

At a decisive

instant, the elected people, every people, will necessarily situate itself

as a remnant, as not-all.

This is the messianic-prophetic concept of the remnant that Paul resumes and develops, and this is also the ultimate meaning of his aphorism, his division of divisions. For him, the remnant no longer consists in a concept turned toward the future, as with the prophets; it concerns a present experience that defines the mes­ sianic "now." "In the time of the now a remnant is produced [g

e

go­

nen] . "

An unusual dialectic is found here, a dialectic that brings three elements together without any media-

tion. First there is the all

(pas, panta) .

The All and the Part

Taubes has already noted that the

entire First Letter to the Corinthians is constructed in the form of a fugue around the word

pas

(in the Greek Bible, the term

pas

is unquestionably the most frequently used term after

kyrios,

"Lord," with circa seven thousand occurrences) . In Paul,

pas,

"all," is the expression proper to the eschatological

telos.

At the end of time, God will be "all in all"

(panta en pasin;

I Cor. 15:28-this formu­ la, which in itself unites both its summational and distributive meanings, will be used again by the pantheists). In this same sense, Paul specifies that, in the end, "all of Israel will be saved" (Rom. II:26) .

Next is the part

( meros)

that defines the secular world, the time under the law. Everything here is divided, everything is

ek merous,

"in part." Remember the famous passage

I

Corinthians 13:9-13,

THE TIME THAT REMAIN S

"For we know only in part

[ek merousJ ,

and we prophecy only in part; but when fulfillment comes

[to teleion] ,

that which is in part will be made inoperative . . . now we see in a mirror, in enigmas, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part, then I will know fully as I am fully known. Now faith, hope, and love dwell

[menei]

in these three; and the greatest of these is love."

Finally, the messianic remnant, which does not go beyond the part, but, as we have seen, results from the part's division, is inti­ mately linked to this division. In this sense, the fact that the mes­ sianic world is nothing other than the secular world, means that it is still in some way partial. And in 1 Corinthians 12:27, Paul clear­ ly reminds the members of the messianic community of this: "You are the body of Christ and members in part

[ek merous] . "

Nevertheless, the rernnant is precisely what prevents divisions from being exhaustive and excludes the parts and the all from the possibility of coinciding with themselves. The remnant is not so much the object of salvation as its instrument, that which proper-· ly makes salvation possible. In Romans n:n-26, Paul describes the remnant's soteriological dialectic with clarity. The "diminution"

(hettema)

that makes Israel a "part" and a remnant is produced for the salvation of the

ethne,

the non-Jews, and foreshadows its

pleroma,

its fullness as the all, since, in the end, when the

pleroma

of the people will have come, then "all of Israel will be saved." The remnant is therefore both an excess of the all with regard to the part, and of the part with regard to the all. It functions as a very peculiar kind of soteriological machine.

As

such, it only concerns messianic time and only exists therein. In the

telos,

when God will be "all in all," the messianic remnant will not harbor any particu­ lar privilege and will have exhausted its meaning in losing itself in the

pleroma

(1 Thess. 4:15: "we, who remain alive, unto the com­ ing of the Lord shall not overtake them which are asleep" ). But in the time of the now, the only real time, there is nothing other than the remnant. This does not properly belong either to an eschatol­ ogy of ruin or salvation, but rather, to use Benjamin's words, it belongs to an unredeemable, the perception of which allows us to reach salvation. The only possible meaning of Kafka's aphorism, in

The Third Day

57 which there is salvation, but "not for us," is found here. As rem­ nant, we, the living who remain

en to nyn kairo,

make salvation possible, we are its "premise"

(aparche;

Rom. n:r6). We are already saved, so to speak, but for this reason, it is not as a remnant that we will be saved. The messianic remnant exceeds the eschatologi­ cal all, and irremediably so; it is the unredeemable that makes sal­ vation possible.

If I had to mark out a political legacy in Paul's letters that was immediately traceable, I believe that the concept of the remnant would have to play a part. More specifically, it allows for a new perspective that dislodges our antiquated notions of a people and 'l1iU

a democracy, however impossible it may be to completely renounce them. The people is neither the all nor the part, neither the majority nor the minority. Instead, it is that which can never coincide with itself, as all or as part, that which infinitely remains or resists in each division, and, with all due respect to those who govern us, never allows us to be reduced to a majority or a minor- ity. This remnant is the figure, or the substantiality assumed by a people in a decisive moment, and as such is the only real political subject.

'6 The messianic concept of the remnant undoubtedly permits more than one analogy to be made with the Marxian proletariat-in the lat­ ter's noncoinciding with itself as class and in its necessarily exceeding the state and social dialectic of Stande-which underwent "no particular wrong but wrong absolutely [das Unrecht schlechtin] ." This concept also enables a better understanding of whatj)eleuze calls a "minor people," �eople that is cOflstiJllt:iy�IY PQsitioned as a minority. (This notion most certainly has older origins, since I remember that Jose Bergamin, hav�ng lived through the Spanish civil war, used to say, almost like an �4

;g

io, el pueblo es siempre minoria, "the people is always a minority.") In a ' somewhat analogous fashion, in a interview with Jacques Ranciere, Foucault spoke of the a�"nondemarcatable element absolutely irreducible to power relationships, not simply external to their limit in some manner: "The pleb does not exist in all probability, but there is something of the pleb, nevertheless (il y a de la plebe) . Something of pleb is in bodies, in spirits, in individuals, in the proletariat, but, with each dimension, form, energy, and irreducibil-

THE TIME THAT REMAIN S

ity, differs i n each and every instance. This part of pleb does not repre­ sent some exteriority with regard to power relationships as much as it represents their limit, their ruin, their consequence" (Foucault, 421). Years' later, Ranciere himself returned to this Foucauldian concept so as to develop it into the concept of a people, understood as the "part of those who have no part," meaning a sup_ernumerary party, the bearer of a wrong which establishes democracy as a "community of dispute." But everything here depends on how one interprets "wrong" and "dispute." 'If democratic dispute is understood for what it truly is, that is, the pos­ sibility of stasis or of civil war, then this definition is pertinent. If, how­ ever, following what Ranciere seems to think, the wrong for whom the people are the cipher is not "absolute" (as it still was in Marx), but, by definition, can be "processed" (Ranciere, 39), then the line between democracy and its consensual, or postdemocratic, counterfeit (which Ranciere goes so far as to overtly critique) tends to dissolve.

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The Fourth Day

In document Volumen 2 noviembre 2014 ISSN: X (página 179-184)