The Institutional Foundations of Free Action

Abstract

Although the very first word the title of Linda Zerilli's book is feminism, one does not have to read it as a contribution to feminist literature. The reason is given the last word of the title, which is For the book's central concern is the defense of an Arendtian anti-sovereign, pro-relational understanding of political action as freedom, which is as relevant general political theory, fact general politics, as it is feminism. So I will offer a reading here, which the most part takes Zerilli's book as a general exercise political theory building. That is to say that I will completely refrain from wrestling with the question of what kind of intervention it aspires to make ongoing feminist discourses. This said, I would misunderstand the author profoundly if I did not at least also read the book as a political act. After all, it is a performance a wider genre, which might be called analogy to litterature engagee a theorie engagee, that is, a writing practice with a political agenda. In effect, then, the book offers a theory of political action as freedom while at the same time performing such an act. This offers us readers an opportunity to see how well the theory does self-application. My point playing this old trick of criticism is not to call attention to a possible performative selfcontradiction of the text the sake of judging its value terms of the seemingly transcendental value. Instead, my intention using this ruse is to reveal, a somewhat single-minded fashion, especially one significant substantive blindspot of Zerilli's conceptual apparatus, the question of the institutional foundations of political action as freedom. Moreover, I will show that this blindspot derives especially from an overreliance on Arendt's notion of freedom, while suggesting that there are other conceptions of freedom that might have served Zerilli's critical purpose just as well, while directing our attention precisely to the enabling conditions of institutional arrangements. Finally, we shall see at the end how my somewhat theatrically wielded sword of criticism is part blunted by Zerilli's own theoretization of the particular quality of the claims she is making as akin to aesthetic judgments rather than to truth-capable constatives. Throughout the book, Hannah Arendt is not only Zerilli's main source of inspiration but she is fact Zerilli's authorizing spirit and we shall see a minute what this means. It is from the author of the Human Condition (1998) and related essays (especially 1977) that she derives her notion of freedom as action. According to Arendt, freedom is not a matter of choice, not a property of the will, but instead a property of action. She captures the difference between what she calls freedom as sovereignty and her own model of freedom action with the distinction between the formulas I-will and I-can (Arendt 1977:157ff). As a matter of fact, I think, Arendt would have been better off referring to her own model terms of I-do, since she greatly emphasizes that freedom is strictly actu not posse. In all admirable brevity, Arendt (1977:151) says: for to be free and to act are the same. In that vein, she also emphasizes that free action has nothing to do with intellect, or with any kind of symbolically facilitated understanding. And yet, she admits that to realize a goal, action needs both intellect and will. But then, Arendt, free action is not action something else: it is based neither on a because nor on an in order to. Thus, it is not meaningful action the sense that Alfred Schiitz (1932)