Étienne Balibar on the dialectic of universal citizenship

Abstract

In this article, I reconstruct Étienne Balibar’s work against the background of the debate on modern universal citizenship. I argue that universal citizenship is neither fundamentally emancipatory nor fundamentally oppressive but is rather both. In order to defend this position, I build on Balibar’s concept of the “citizen subject.” First, I parse this concept, showing how it allows us to think about the contradictions of modern universal citizenship. In the second section, I elucidate its temporal logic and show how it undermines the telos of modern universal citizenship. In sections three to five, I show how citizenship’s universalism clarifies both its oppressive and its emancipatory thrust. The dialectic of universal citizenship, I argue, unfolds as a conflict between and within political universals. In the conclusion, I will tie up these different strands and end with some reflections on the conditions of possibility of this dialectic.

From agonistic to insurgent democracy

“…By now, multiple commentators have highlighted the crucial and persistent reference to Marx in Balibar's writings(Bromberg 2018;Ingram 2015;Boonen 2022). 7 Ypi (2020) has recently provided a new normative defence of the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat.…”