Modern Leaders: Between Charisma and Trickery 2020010148, 2020010149, 9780367333669, 9780429319433

Citation preview

Modern Leaders

This book considers the current striking rise of ‘outsider’ political leaders, catapulted, apparently, from nowhere, to take charge of a nation. Arguing that such leaders can be better understood with the help of the anthropologically based concept of ‘the trickster’, it offers studies of contemporary political figures from the world stage – including Presidents Macron, Tsipras, Orbán and Bolsonaro, among others – to examine the ways in which charismatic and trickster modalities can become intertwined, especially under the impact of theatrical public media. Looking beyond the commonly invoked notion of ‘charisma’ to revisit the question of political leadership in light of the recent rise of new type of ‘outsider’ leaders, Modern Leaders: Between Charisma and Trickery offers an account of leadership informed by social and anthropological theory. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in political thought and the problem of political leadership. Agnes Horvath is a founding and chief editor of International Political Anthropology. She taught in Hungary, Ireland and Italy, and was affiliate visiting scholar and supervisor at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Modernism and Charisma, the coauthor of Walking into the Void, and The Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil: Tricksterology, and the co-editor of Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality. Arpad Szakolczai is Professor of Sociology at University College Cork, Ireland, and previously taught Social Theory at the European University Institute in Florence. He is the author of Max Weber and Michel Foucault, Reflexive Historical Sociology, Comedy and the Public Sphere, and Permanent Liminality and Modernity, and the co-author of From Anthropology to Social Theory: Rethinking the Social Sciences. Manussos Marangudakis is Professor of Comparative Cultural Sociology at the University of the Aegean, Greece and previously has taught at Queen’s University in Belfast and the University of Ulster. He is the author of The Greek Disaster and its Cultural Origins, Greek Anarchism as a Religious Phenomenon, Genealogies of Sociology, and American Fundamentalism.

Contemporary Liminality Series editor: Arpad Szakolczai, University College Cork, Ireland

Series advisory board: Agnes Horvath, University College Cork, Ireland Bjørn Thomassen, Roskilde University, Denmark Harald Wydra, University of Cambridge, UK This series constitutes a forum for works that make use of concepts such as ‘imitation’, ‘trickster’ or ‘schismogenesis’, but which chiefly deploy the notion of ‘liminality’, as the basis of a new, anthropologically-focused paradigm in social theory. With its versatility and range of possible uses rivalling and even going beyond mainstream concepts such as ‘system’ ‘structure’ or ‘institution’, liminality is increasingly considered a new master concept that promises to spark a renewal in social thought. In spite of the fact that charges of Eurocentrism or even ‘moderno-centrism’ are widely discussed in sociology and anthropology, it remains the case that most theoretical tools in the social sciences continue to rely on taken-for-granted approaches developed from within the modern Western intellectual tradition, whilst concepts developed on the basis of extensive anthropological evidence and which challenged commonplaces of modernist thinking, have been either marginalised and ignored, or trivialised. By challenging the assumed neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian foundations of modern social theory, and by helping to shed new light on the fundamental ideas of major figures in social theory, such as Nietzsche, Dilthey, Weber, Elias, Voegelin, Foucault and Koselleck, whilst also establishing connections between the perspectives gained through modern social and cultural anthropology and the central concerns of classical philosophical anthropology Contemporary Liminality offers a new direction in social thought. Titles in this series The Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil Tricksterology Agnes Horvath and Arpad Szakolczai China at a Threshold Exploring Social Change in Techno-Social Systems James B. Cuffe Modern Leaders Between Charisma and Trickery Edited by Agnes Horvath, Arpad Szakolczai, and Manussos Marangudakis For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/sociology/ series/ASHSER1435

Modern Leaders Between Charisma and Trickery Edited by Agnes Horvath, Arpad Szakolczai, and Manussos Marangudakis

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Agnes Horvath, Arpad Szakolczai, and Manussos Marangudakis; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Agnes Horvath, Arpad Szakolczai, and Manussos Marangudakis to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Horváth, Ágnes, 1957- editor. | Marangudakis, Manussos, editor. | Szakolczai, Árpád, editor. Title: Modern leaders : between charisma and trickery / Edited by Agnes Horváth, Manussos Marangudakis and Arpad Szakolczai. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Series: Contemporary liminality | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020010148 (print) | LCCN 2020010149 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367333669 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429319433 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Political leadership. | Charisma (Personality trait)–Political aspects. | Tricksters–Political aspects. | Personality and politics. Classification: LCC JC330.3 .M63 2020 (print) | LCC JC330.3 (ebook) | DDC 303.3/4–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010148 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010149 ISBN: 978-0-367-33366-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-31943-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK

Contents

Notes on contributors Preface Introduction

vii xi 1

AGNES HORVATH, ARPAD SZAKOLCZAI, AND MANUSSOS MARANGUDAKIS

PART I

On charis and charisma 1 Beyond charisma: catacombing sensual governance by a painful breaking of human ties

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15

AGNES HORVATH

2 Charisma: from divine gift to the democratic leader-shop

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CAMIL F. ROMAN

PART II

Plato’s statesman 3 The virtues of leadership: beyond the pleasure principle

59 61

ARPAD SZAKOLCZAI

4 Constituting power: Plato’s weaving of human emotions

75

HARALD WYDRA

5 Plato’s statesman: defending phronesis from coding JOHN O’BRIEN

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vi Contents PART III

Contemporary case studies 6 A study in charisma and trickery: the case of Alexis Tsipras and SYRIZA

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MANUSSOS MARANGUDAKIS

7 The trickster logic in Latin America: leadership in Argentina and Brazil

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OSVALDO JAVIER LÓPEZ RUIZ, FABIANA AUGUSTA ALVES JARDIM, AND ANA LÚCIA TEIXEIRA

8 Political leadership in contemporary France: the case of Emmanuel Macron

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HELEN DRAKE

9 The failure of democracy in Italy: from Berlusconi to Salvini

172

DANIEL GATI

10 Viktor Orbán’s leadership: the prince, the political father, and the doomed trickster

191

ZOLTÁN BALÁZS

11 Duplicity, corruption, and exceptionalism in the Romanian experience of modernity

211

MARIUS ION BENȚA

Concluding comments

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AGNES HORVATH, ARPAD SZAKOLCZAI, AND MANUSSOS MARANGUDAKIS

Index

233

Notes on contributors

Zoltán Balázs is Professor of Political Science at the Corvinus University of Budapest, and Advisor at the Social Science Research Center of the L. Eötvös Research Network, Budapest. He has published in political and moral theory, the history of political thought, and the philosophy of Conservatism. His recent publications include The Principle of the Separation of Powers: A Defense (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), ‘The never ending story of political moralism and realism’ (Ethical Perspectives, 2018), Homer’s Sun: Essays (Gondolat, 2019), and Trends in Hungarian Political Thought: Present and Past (Osiris, 2019). Marius Ion Bența received his PhD in 2014 from University College Cork, Ireland, with a thesis on Alfred Schutz’s sociology. His recent publications include Walling, Boundaries and Liminality: A Political Anthropology of Transformations (a collective volume co-edited with Agnes Horvath and Joan Davison; Routledge, 2018), Experiencing Multiple Realities: Alfred Schutz’s Sociology of the Finite Provinces of Meaning (a research monograph; Routledge, 2018) and ‘Fluid identity, fluid citizenship: The problem of ethnicity in post-communist Romania’ (an article published in Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 2017). He lives in Cluj, Romania and is a Research Fellow in sociology with George Barițiu History Institute, an Associate Lecturer with Babeș-Bolyai University and an Associate Editor with International Political Anthropology. Professor Helen Drake is the Director of the Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance at Loughborough University London, and also holds a Chair in French and European Studies at Loughborough University. From 2012 to 2018 Helen was Chair of the UK’s Association for Contemporary European Studies, UACES (www.uaces.org). Between 2016 and 2018, Helen undertook two research projects on ‘Brexit’, both ESRC-funded. The first, ‘28+ perspectives on Brexit: a guide to the multi-stakeholder negotiations’, involved five researchers across different academic disciplines; the second, entitled ‘Future-proofing the UK electorate: simulating real world, postBrexit decisions on EU freedom of movement in UK Schools’, took ‘Europe’ into schools in England via simulation exercises to raise awareness

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of UK–EU relations, and to develop students’ transferable skills. Publications from the 28+ Brexits project are already in print in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, and on open access in the International Journal of Information Management. Daniel Gati is Associate Editor of the International Political Anthropology Journal. Has a BA in Art History from the University of Florence, a First Class Honours HDip in Sociology from University College Cork and an MSc in Sociology from the University of Amsterdam. Daniel has worked for over a decade for the IPA (International Political Anthropology), organising conferences such as the first and second International Beauty Conference and the IPASS summer schools. His main areas of interests are the nature of political power, mimesis, and technology. Dr Agnes Horvath is a political theorist and sociologist. She is the chief and founding editor of International Political Anthropology, and was an affiliate visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge from 2011 to 2014. Her recent books include Modernism and Charisma (Palgrave, 2013), Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality (Berghahn, 2015, co-editor), Walking into the Void: A Historical Sociology and Political Anthropology of Walking (Routledge, 2018, co-author), The Political Anthropology of Ethnic and Religious Minorities (Routledge, 2018, co-editor), Divinization and Technology: The Political Anthropology of Subversion (Routledge, 2019, co-editor), Walling, Boundaries and Liminality: A Political Anthropology of Transformations (Routledge, 2019, co-editor), and A Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil: Tricksterology (Routledge, 2020, co-author). Fabiana Augusta Alves Jardim is Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of São Paulo (USP) and also of the Graduate Program of Education (FEUSP). With Osvaldo J. López-Ruiz, she coordinates the Group of Researchers on Government, Ethics and Subjectivities (GES). She has published Entre desalento e invenção: experiências de desemprego em São Paulo (2009), Max Weber and Michel Foucault: paralelas e intersecções (2018, co-editor) as well as articles and book chapters. Her main interests of research are: anthropology in the margins of the state, racial dynamics in Brazilian Politics and sociability, Latin-American governmentalities and the politics of trauma, testimony and memory. Osvaldo Javier López Ruiz is a researcher at INCIHUSA – CONICET, professor at the Doctorate in Social Sciences at UNCuyo, Mendoza, Argentina, and Visiting Fellow at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, Switzerland. His research interests are the values promoted in contemporary society, which is framed within three lines of research: (1) Max Weber and the ways of leading life; (2) Michel Foucault and the processes of subjectivation; and (3) neoliberalism as the organizing reason of our social cosmos. He has published Os ejecutivos das tansnacionais e o espírito do capitalismo: capital humano e empreendedorismo como valores sociais (2007), Max Weber and Michel

Notes on contributors

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Foucault: paralelas e intersecções (coeditor, 2018), and several articles and book chapters. Manussos Marangudakis is Professor of Comparative Cultural Sociology at the University of the Aegean. He received his PhD at McGill University, Department of Sociology in Historical Comparative Sociology and has held posts at Queen’s University in Belfast and the University of Ulster. His research interests focus on historical comparative sociology and in particular the social construction of nature and science in the West, the impact of religion in the development in Latin West and Greek-Orthodox East, and the role of evangelical Protestantism in American civilization. More recently he has taken on the role of liminality in shaping critical moments in European history such as the latest immigration flows from the Middle East to Europe via Greece, and the Greek anarchist movement in the midst of the Greek crisis. Recent book publications include The Greek Disaster and its Cultural Origins (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); Greek Anarchism as a Religious Phenomenon: A Sociological Analysis of Anarchism in Greece (Propompos, 2019); European Social Thought from Machiavelli to Weber (Propompos, 2019); and American Fundamentalism: How the Political, Religious, and Scientific Debates in the West Shaped the Intolerant American Protestantism (Papazisi). John O’Brien is a lecturer in sociology in Waterford Institute of Technology. He is President of the Sociological Association of Ireland and Co-Director of the Moral Foundations of Economy and Society Research Centre. His main research interest is social theory, historical sociology and the sociological analysis of alcohol use. His monograph, States of Intoxication: The Place of Alcohol in Civilization was published in 2018. He has published chapters and articles on topics such as Plato, contemporary social theory, public health policy and alcohol, the night-time economy, public order offences, commemoration, and urban regeneration. Dr Camil F. Roman (PhD, University of Cambridge, 2017) is Lecturer in Political Science and Sociology at John Cabot University and LUMSA University, and is associate editor of International Political Anthropology. He is interested in reflexive, historical and interpretative approaches to the following areas of research: modern democracy and revolutions, the political sociology of modernity, religion and politics, the philosophical anthropology of modern science. Currently he is writing on a research monograph for Routledge on The French Revolution as a Liminal Process: Understanding the Political Schismogenesis of Modernity. His latest publications include Divinization and Technology. The Political Anthropology of Subversion (2019, co-editor with Agnes Horvath and Gilbert Germain), and ‘The French Revolution and the craft of the liminal void: from the sanctity of power to the political power of the limitless sacred’, in Historical Sociology (2018).

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Arpad Szakolczai is Professor of Sociology at University College Cork, Ireland; previously taught social theory at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. His recent books include Sociology, Religion and Grace: A Quest for the Renaissance (2007), Comedy and the Public Sphere (2013), Novels and the Sociology of the Contemporary (2016) Permanent Liminality and Modernity (2017), Walking into the Void: A Historical Sociology and Political Anthropology of Walking (2018, with Agnes Horvath), and The Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil: Tricksterology (2020, with Agnes Horvath), all by Routledge; and From Anthropology to Social Theory: Rethinking the Social Sciences (2019, with Bjørn Thomassen). He published articles among others in Theory, Culture and Society, the American Journal of Sociology, the British Journal of Sociology, the British Journal of Political Science, the European Journal of Social Theory, Cultural Sociology, International Sociology, and the European Sociological Review. Ana Lúcia Teixeira is an Associated Professor of Sociology at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) and Vice-President of the Research Committee 37 (Sociology of Arts) of the International Sociological Association (ISA). She works in the area of Sociology of Literature, mainly on the following themes: sociology of literature, sociology of art, sociological theory. She has published Alvaro de Campos, ele mesmo and ’Franz Kafka, Fernando Pessoa e Mário de Andrade: o alcance das pequenas literaturas’, among other works. She also edited the thematic issue Literatura e conhecimento Sociológico and co-edited Max Weber e Michel Foucault: paralelas e intersecções. Harald Wydra is a Reader in Politics and Holden Fellow at St Catharine's College (University of Cambridge). He held visiting fellowships at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and the Australian National University in Canberra. He was a Visiting Professor at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense and the University of Wrocław. He is a founding editor of the academic journal International Political Anthropology (www. politicalanthropology.org). His publications include six books, most recently: Politics and the Sacred (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality (Berghahn, 2015, co-editor), and Handbook of Political Anthropology (Edward Elgar, 2018, co-editor).

Preface Agnes Horvath, Arpad Szakolczai, and Manussos Marangudakis

If we have neither content, nor form or even fitting truth, as if living in darkness – what then? In Modern Leadership: Between Charisma and Trickery we ask with the poet about charis, a Greek word about feeling golden pleasure, clearly untranslatable into English. Charis grows into the vital qualities of life. When we contemplate its presence among the Greeks, it looks back at us and says different things about mindedness/mindfulness (phronesis) to the dull and those who are contented about the difference of the polis, about the personal and social relations governing it (philia), extending to the relationship with the gods. Golden charis has no definite form or content either, except the sensual of joy, erotic if you want, which is the only thing that keeps us alive. What charis means, nobody really knows, and the question is very rarely asked, Bonnie MacLachlan’s (1993) The Age of Grace: Charis in Early Greek Poetry being a remarkable exception. Its entailed enjoyment fills a mutual, reciprocal sensual, with a thousand meanings on the quality of being, sprung from it there and then when it is seen, touched and tasted, even thought: the entire tradition of political theory and not only speaks about it. We can never cut ourselves off from charis unless we intend to revert to mechanical existence, without looking back to each other with joy; without being inclined (in the specific, etymological sense explored by Michel Serres) and well-disposed. Consequently, nothing in material enrichment and in the refinement of life automatically produces charis, but it follows from the premises that underdevelopment can only disappear when a certain all-embracing poverty is overcome. This is because golden charis is a social, mutual, reciprocal pleasure, tying friendship/philia to the commonwealth/polis and the gods with mindedness/ phronesis. It is an amorous, strong, devoted and secure personal affection for the fellowship of citizens in a community lightened with the bonds of freedom. Charis is social pleasure found in giving and receiving joy, favouring others and forgetting ourselves. It is this social component of charis that gives that abundant, delicate beauty in all that relates to individuals, without the exploitation and exhaustion of mere relations, which only lead to distressing and ugly indifference, because we wear out each other’s charis. We want this book to speak to the antique tradition of political theory. Our book is built on the notion of charis, the Greek root of charisma, as much as it can be

xii Preface allowed by the constraints of the arguments of the different chapters. Therefore we had to expand our account of Greek charis to the Christian charis-ma, which is not the same. While they both play around the idea of divine gift and the circulation of social gifts and the joy of living emanating from that, the Christian term has gained the connotation of salvation that deviates from the authentic one. There is a definite tension and divergence existing between the two, and we try to provide a more rounded account of the original and of charisma, a sort of modern usage, which gives countless opportunities for the deserting and demolishing trickster, a completely insecure and temporary existence: the doomed man of Nietzsche, who is getting their dignity in so far as becoming the tool of the charismata (Nietzsche 2017: 176).

References MacLachlan, Bonnie (1993) The Age of Grace: Charis in Early Greek Poetry, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich (2017) On the Genealogy of Morality and Other Writings, ed. by Keith Ansell-Pearson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Introduction Agnes Horvath, Arpad Szakolczai, and Manussos Marangudakis

Over the past few years, almost literally from one day to another, modern political life (including that in most advanced Western countries, the very heart of liberal democratic establishment, most prominently the United States, Britain and France) has become populated by a new kind of political leader. The names are so familiar, repeated every day like an incantation in every media outlet, that one is embarrassed to reproduce the list, but as many of the chapters of this book deal with them, it is inevitable that they should be mentioned here. The list prominently includes Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron, Boris Johnson, Matteo Salvini, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Jair Bolsonaro. Analysts and commentators are at a loss in characterising them, the most frequent term used being ‘populist’. However, as others are quick to point out, the term is almost devoid of meaning, as any and every contemporary political movement or party defers in one way or another to the people as the ultimate source of legitimation, and at any rate the term makes no distinction between the left and the right, ‘populist’ being used sometimes for extremist movements, but just as often for centrist ones. The aim of this volume is to offer a new and hopefully illuminating perspective on this development in political anthropology, starting with two of the main common features of the rise of these new kind of leaders: that they all gained power under particularly confusing, uncertain, critical, thus ‘liminal’ conditions; and that they all were outsiders to politics. Stunning and sudden as this development is, it is by no means the first time this has happened in modern times. The closest analogy, arguably, is just about a century ago, the period after the First World War. Then, at the end of a war that produced massive technologised violence and destruction at an unprecedented level, everyone was hoping for some kind of return to decency, but instead a new kind of political figure came to the foreground, with whom everybody was forced to make acquaintance. The names, now, are overly familiar, with pioneers gaining power during the last years of the war, while others only at the time of the next main crisis, the economic depression starting in 1929. Furthermore, the current generation of ‘new leaders’ also recalls the idea of ‘catch-all’ parties, first proposed by Otto Kirchheimer in the early 1950s (Krouwel 2003), though in some way, especially concerning their effects, they are also just the opposite, sowing division and discord instead of uniting.

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Before moving on, it is well worth keeping in mind that what is immediately common in the conditions under which such figures emerge is a liminal void situation, a spread of weariness: the slow infiltration of perplexity, even despair, produced by a previous destruction of social and cultural ties and stabilities. Any crisis is a void situation, which usually drastically changes the personality and identity of those undergoing it. It opens a space for the emergence of models to mimic, which can be either beneficial or fatal for a society. If the model seems to work, people adopt it in the long run; it is in this way that people who previously suffered adopt charismatas for their final salvation. People no longer find their sense of security in their own qualities (what can be called their own authority), but in their leader, leading them into the voided insecurity.

Leadership in political sociology: Max Weber’s charisma Arguably, these developments can be captured by the term ‘charismatic power’ or ‘charismatic leader’, introduced into political sociology by Max Weber. Weber took the term from Protestant theology, where ‘charisma’ denoted a freely given gift of divine grace, relying especially on the letters of Paul, where the term was frequently used. Weber made this term into a tool of sociological analysis by making a distinction between the ordinary or everyday, and the ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ (ausseralltäglich) moments in historical time. His central and indeed crucial idea was that standard theoretical frameworks, and conventional/normal institutional mechanisms, function during ordinary times which they simply assume, and not when the taken for granted order becomes questioned. In this respect, there is no difference between tradition-based and modern, legalrational modes of legitimate authority: both assume that there is a set of normative and institutional arrangements which are widely accepted as legitimate, the only difference between the two being that in one case such rules are formalised and written down, while in the other they are so well known that there is no need for such formal codification. However, Weber maintained that in the life of every community, culture or civilisation there might emerge such extraordinary situations that are not foreseen by the standard rules, or where these rules break down and some other kind of solution becomes imperative. It is under such conditions, through the infiltration of the incommensurable, well embodied in the German hyper-inflation that broke out shortly after Weber died, that charismatic leaders are supposed to emerge, offering a way out of the situation. However, the coincidence of certain socio-historical conditions that might necessitate the emergence of a charismatic leader and the actual arrival of such persons on the political scene is not assured. The question also concerns who such charismatic leaders might be, what exactly charismatic is, and how and why people with such qualities would suddenly jump forward at the moment when they were needed. Here the certitudes of Weber’s idea suddenly break down.

Introduction

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A serious and often ignored part of the problem with Weber’s related ideas is that they were practically only made available in posthumous publications, and so Weber never really had the chance to discuss them. The idea became codified in political sociology as a master concept, and questions concerning its problematic character were simply ignored. Nonetheless, Weber’s great merit was in adding the point of out-of-theordinary conditions to the theologically based concept of charisma, thus deriving a sociologically useful concept to address a gap in the existing literature. However, as always, the shortcomings are just where the greatest merits are. If it can be argued that out-of-the-ordinary situations might be solved by the emergence of charismatic leaders, in the sense of concrete persons having special will power or talent, it remains a mystery how and under what circumstances a would-be charismatic leader might emerge out of the blue. The nature of charisma also remains vague, as Weber’s characterisations sway with preoccupying uncertainty between simple personal qualities (but then what does ‘virtue’ or ‘excellence’ mean in politics? Even Plato in Meno could not offer a clear specification) and outright divine gifts. If the case is the latter, waiting for the emergence of a charismatic leader is little different from the famous ‘waiting for Godot’. Charisma did not exist for the Greeks, though charis did, and Plato referred to it as fertility, joy and energy in nature, and also as social, reciprocal pleasure. What an ‘out-of-the-ordinary situation’ exactly is, however, remains more or less unspecified. Weber evidently only has in mind rather extreme cases like wars, revolutions, or threats of conquest, but he offers little help in understanding the exact nature of such extraordinariness. Further difficulties concern the recognition of charismatic power. While Weber acknowledged the possibility that a would-be charismatic leader might not be recognised, he paid less attention to the possible situation when charisma is attributed to an unworthy figure. As we certainly are aware now, such a situation can happen particularly under conditions of media power, especially the kind of technologised media that proliferates image-magic through the ‘enchantment of technology’ (Alfred Gell 1992). We argue in this book that certain concepts developed in political anthropology, in particular liminality and the trickster, offer us vital tools for a better understanding of the dilemmas surrounding political leadership in our times.1

Leadership through political anthropology: liminality and trickster The term liminality was introduced in anthropology by Arnold van Gennep’s 1909 book The Rites of Passage. However, not only was the period too brief for this concept developed in France to reach Weber, especially given the imminent war between Germany and France, but – as an amazing and still not fully understood peculiarity of intellectual history – this potentially extremely useful and important master-concept was systematically resisted and literally

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repressed by Durkheim and his school, including his most prominent ‘heirs’, Lévi-Strauss and Bourdieu,2 only gaining importance over the past few decades in the social sciences, due to, among others, the writings of Eisenstadt and Bauman. The importance of the term lies in capturing, with theoretical precision, the kind of uncertain, out-of-the-ordinary situations where, according to Weber, charismatic leaders are supposed to emerge. In its most general sense, a liminal situation is a temporary moment of transition in between two stable states, whether in the life course of an individual, or the conditions of a community. If such a liminal situation is due to the growing up of a child, or the change of seasons, the outcome is pretty routine, so the temporary suspension of normal order creates relatively little strain. However, even here, the suspension of everyday normality implies a void situation where unexpected and even threatening things can happen, even when such possibilities are foreseen by the ‘masters of ceremonies’ who traditionally officiate. When such a situation is unanticipated, however, the anxiety generated is much greater, emotions can escalate, the behaviour of people might become unexpected, with violence easily and quickly spiralling out of control. The first crucial theoretical gain in using the term liminality is that it can develop out of any moment of transition, even any in-between situation, thus does not require an immediate dualism between order and disorder, between ordinary everyday life and the outright emergency of a war or a natural catastrophe. Any mediation between entities can involve a potential threat. It also helps to understand that one of the most preoccupying occurrences of human life beyond clearly negative outcomes like death or other kind of destruction, is the possibility that a temporary transitory situation can become lasting, pushing everyone involved in the brink of despair, while also generating favourable conditions for the incommensurable, for example through an outsider, to become source of growth and production. The next level concerns a degree of conscious awareness about liminal situations and the potential disruptions they bring about, which then can be foreseen and manipulated by people without scruples. As liminal situations involving entire communities generate considerable emotional stress, with nobody inside a community being free from such emotional involvement, a conscious and purposeful manipulation of liminality is almost unthinkable. In fact, this only happens through a particular type of figure, another major, and much-ignored, conceptual discovery in anthropology: the trickster, a figure of the incommensurable and of indistinctness where even the difference between conscious manipulation and the instinctive proliferation of confusion breaks down. The term ‘trickster’, with a potential usefulness equalling that of liminality, has a similarly perplexing intellectual history. Put into the centre of his work by Paul Radin, one of the first students of Franz Boas, the (re-)founder of American anthropology, whose patriarchal power over the origins of modern anthropology can only be compared to Durkheim’s, the concept was pushed

Introduction

5

backstage and ignored in anthropology for long decades, while Radin, like van Gennep, was unable to find a permanent academic position.3 The trickster is an outcast and outsider, not belonging to any stable human community, as it is incapable of having proper emotions, not being able to follow the most simple rules of behaviour necessary to maintain emotional and human commitment. Its behaviour is always erratic, as it fails to respect any limits of decency, being continuously occupied with performing its bodily functions, eating and drinking without any limits, and also being engaged in any imaginable sexual acts with any possible beings, without any sense of decency. Such trickster figures are present in the folktales and mythologies of every human culture, which teach everyone to treat such characters with the utmost caution. Thus, tricksters always have to mask themselves as harmless and benevolent pranksters who only tell tales and jokes, ready to provoke laughter in everyone; but for all this, whenever they do manage to infiltrate a society, they would soon turn things upside down, and proliferate divisions and conflict. Under ordinary conditions, the recognition of tricksters is relatively easy. However, if the everyday order of things is suspended – under the uncertainty and chaos of liminal conditions – emotion can escalate, the sense of judgment can be undermined, and tricksters might present themselves as the savers of the community, who can return things to normality. Given that they can preserve their cool when everyone is engulfed in emotionality, they might even make suggestions that seem eminently reasonable. Recognising tricksters for what they are is all the more difficult, especially in the midst of liminal confusion, because of their brilliant capacity for mimetic fakery. In order to achieve social acceptance tricksters must disguise their true, thankless, mercenary character; they must hide behind the mask of benevolence, and imitate or enact a person that is cheerful and easy-going. And more than anything else they must hide that they are not interested in anyone and anything else except their own private concerns or ‘interests’; they do not have the slightest intention of genuinely helping anybody. What is interesting is the trickster as a state of mind or as a repetitive archetype, beyond labelling people as tricksters. They do not each take on all the features of the anthropological figure. But they are all at one in a basic feature; and this is being without any inhibitions.

Leadership in political science: the puzzles of democratic theory If we approach the theme from the perspective of the standard political science literature on leadership, we get results that are surprisingly complementary. In lieu of a comprehensive review of the literature – as such a review is bound to reproduce a perplexity concerning the rise of the current leadership generation, and is anyway dominated by the Weberian concept of charisma – we’ll focus on a representative set of works, produced by the Jepson School of Leadership Studies.

6

Agnes Horvath et al.

As a start, we need to point out the inherent paradox posed by the problem of leadership for democratic political theory. Modern democratic power is vested in popular will, so any (elected) leader is only supposed to represent what people want. The personality of the leader, and especially its supposed charisma, is thus bound to be deeply suspicious. Yet, leaders are evidently necessary, even if they are to be elected; and for every election journalists, commentators and fellow politicians are desperately seeking for the would-be charismatic leader who could win the elections and reverse the fortunes of the party. Compared to this standard scenario, the works of J. Thomas Wren and his colleagues contain a novel element.4 Far from seeing a conflict between the exigencies of democracies and of leadership, they rather perceive a common affinity. This is done through a distinction drawn between leaders and leadership. According to this, in any polity there is a need for leaders; but it is only in (modern) democracies that there is need for leadership as such. This is due to the radical egalitarianism of modern democracies. In all other polities the leaders of a group of people to whom the general population owes an allegiance and deference are part of a specific, innate social or cultural elite. Any question of political power is limited to a small group of people who already possess social or cultural power. It is only in democracies – and there were very few democracies in the history of mankind before modern times, especially if we ignore the supposedly earliest stages of evolution, where at any rate it is highly questionable whether we can talk about ‘democracy’ at all – that leadership as such becomes the issue. What this supposedly means is that leaders in modern democracies are not selected due to any other reasons than having a particular aptitude to political leadership. Apart from such abilities nothing pre-selects or destines them for political power. Strangely enough, this perspective indeed seems to work, in the sense of getting close to capture the current situation. However, the issue at stake is that this is exactly the problem.

The inherent troubles with democratic leadership The central fiction of democratic politics, and indeed a fiction, is the idea of radical political equality. According to this every citizen of a given polity is entitled to vote and to be voted, thus to obtain political power, if certain very basic and evidently necessary qualifications are met – being adult, or above a certain age; being physically and especially mentally sane; and not having prior troubles with the law. In fact, for the avant-garde even the limitation to a concrete polity is increasingly unacceptable, promoting instead the idea of cosmopolitanism, thus a kind of political government that ideally does not recognise any spatial/territorial limitation. Political debates in countries with formal democratic representative systems were dominated by the concern with the right to vote, and for a very long time; especially the extension of such rights. Perhaps this was even rightful and

Introduction

7

beneficial; at any rate, there is very little to do about this – but also there is hardly any possibility of extending such rights further. However, there was much less discussion concerning the right to be elected, and especially the ‘meaning’ of such a right – as if this were trivially true, as a matter of simple reciprocity, that whoever has the right to vote also should have the right to be voted, or elected. The problem is that while the right to vote is very simple to administer, the right to be voted is much more difficult to be made effective, real. In principle, the fiction of democracy works in the same way as the fiction of the free market: people make their choices according to their preferences, based on their knowledge of goods and services in one cases, and of candidates in the other. The question concerns the meaning of this knowledge; and if the fiction of the fully informed rational consumer is difficult to maintain even in the case of the market of goods and services, in the case of the political sphere ‘knowing’ the candidates is absolutely impossible. Under such conditions, how could somebody become a politician? Or, putting it differently, how could somebody reach a position where people would elect them ‘as’ a political figure? And could the means by which somebody would become recognised guarantee a proper capacity for political action? It is here that the difficulties soon become intractable. Returning to our anthropologically based concepts, the question is: how could it be that trickster-like persons become elected? Especially given that it usually happens in liminal times, when tricksters can do most harm, and when the sense of judgment of the electorate is most undermined? The problem is that there is absolutely nothing in the dramaturgy of modern democracy that could help to diminish such eventuality; while the central features of the increasingly technologised media positively assure that trickster logic would become rampant in the public arena. This can be rendered clear by investigating the meaning of a particularly important, even trademark modern word: ‘choice’.

The vagaries of ‘choice’ Choice, for us moderns, is mostly associated with freedom. Free to Choose was the title of the bestseller book by Milton Friedman, certainly one of the most destructive, pernicious figures of modern economics, the libertarian expert on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and the complexity of stabilisation policy – or in other words, the expert on how to steal common property, who therefore did much to further undermine the gift logic that according to Mauss is the foundation of any decent culture or civilisation. Yet, while ‘choice’ obviously involves a degree of freedom, though more in the mathematical than the voluntaristic sense, it is fundamentally a matter of testing – thus, it is closely connected to liminality, developed on the basis of rites of passage, thus a par excellent practice of trial and testing.

8

Agnes Horvath et al.

When we chose something, or someone, exerting our ‘degree of freedom’ even in such fundamental, existential life-choices as love, friendship, or marriage – or rather a fortiori so – we are fundamentally concerned with the distinction between the genuine and its fake version, the lie. This is the central issue concerning the ‘testing’ of our choice: as it is one thing to say that we ‘like’ something on the face of it, but is this really so? As often, Hungarian language, in its basic structure, is surprisingly helpful even in this instance. To choose in Hungarian is választ, a derivative of the root vál, which in its basic meaning means ‘become’, but it also means to ‘separate’, root word for ‘divorce’, among others. To ‘become’, however, in Hungarian is not a call for arbitrariness; rather, it is strictly preordained according to charis, as we will argue. The question of ‘choice’ is a matter of recognition: one must recognise, in advance, in due time, who would become eventually what, according the unfolding of its truth content. Thus, a choice implies the testing of one’s recognition: given our degree of freedom, can we recognise the object, the service, the good that would indeed do us good; or would our mind be led astray by some volatile appearance?! It is in this sense that a ‘choice’ (vál-aszt) is etymologically connected to ‘crisis’ (vál-ság), which could end up in a divorce (vál-ás), or a need for ‘change’ (vál-tás). Or, returning now to the end of the previous paragraph, the testing of how something would only turn out in the long run can be expressed in an extremely short but pregnant Hungarian sentence in the future tense: majd elválik.5 Yes, in the future, it would all turn out (elválik), and we’ll eventually see. But we must choose (választ), in the here and now, especially if this is a political election (választás); and especially in the second power if it is a particularly difficult, ‘critical’ (válságos), liminal time. But this choice, in the here and now, can be terribly flickering; people can easily be (mis)led by appearances, especially under liminal conditions, and the consequences can be disastrous – as, for example, the Friedman-like economic policies can be adopted, and in the nick of time a country could be deprived of its resources, which then can hardly be regained. Offering another example, and not the most controversial or even tragic one, we all know now what was the effective outcome of Mussolini’s rule in Italy. But few people knew or expected that in the late 1930s; in fact an embarrassingly great number of people followed, enthusiastically, the Duce into the bright future. Could this have been foreseen and avoided, especially without having fallen into the opposite, but equally disastrous trap – as the most outspoken opponents of Mussolini were the Communists?

Revisiting Mosca Well, actually, there was a quite different and similarly outspoken opponent of Mussolini, even the only person who took the risk of standing up in Parliament and speaking against the bill imposed by Mussolini, making him an all but permanent head of the government. This person was Gaetano Mosca, only

Introduction

9

known today as one of the three classics of elite theory, together with Vilfredo Pareto and Roberto Michels, who – in contrast to him – tended support to Mussolini. The central concern of Mosca, however, was not ‘elitism’, whatever this might mean (as the word is hardly if at all more useful than ‘populism’), but the idea of a ‘political class’. By this idea Mosca did not mean the rich, or the privileged, members of an established aristocratic class, rather a group of people who lived for, and inside, politics, understood as the promotion of the common good of those people living in a particular political community, somewhat similar to Weber’s ideas concerning politics as a ‘vocation’, but less tied to Protestant, puritanical overtones. Members of the political class would meet regularly, discuss political matters on a daily basis, thus would come to know each other, and under proper – not ‘ideal’, in a Habermasian sense – conditions, which are still to be specified and ascertained, would test each other’s genuineness. Under such conditions, they would not represent a closed shop, a group of people who would promote their own vested interest, but their knowledge, genuine familiarity and acquaintance, with each other could be used to promote the public good, as acting up inside a group whose members intimately know each other becomes more difficult. Their pre-selection would guarantee genuineness – and the ‘people’, or the electorate, could then make their own choices. It would seem that contemporary political events, far from refuting them, rather make Mosca’s ideas strangely relevant. The common element of contemporary ‘populism’, right, left or centre, thus giving meaning to ‘populism’ in so far as it has one, is to reject the political ‘establishment’. Thus, it would seem, it agrees in nothing else but in rejecting the very ideas of Mosca. Anything is better, so it would seem, according to the electors, than the members of the ‘political class’. However, we would argue, what the electorate almost everywhere is rejecting is not Mosca’s political class, rather those who were elected exactly by an unlimited popular vote previously, combined with belongingness of an impersonal and alienating political machinery. So, if there is a pattern, this is the paradoxical pattern of the populace, the electorate, rejecting its own choices – its own arbitrary choices, and of course without realising what is going on. Here again, strikingly, Italy offers a perfect example, as Berlusconi ‘entered the field’ (sceso in campo) against the previous generation of politicians, supposedly all corrupt, while himself supposedly being clean – only to reveal himself more corrupt than anybody before; even entering politics, as we’ll see, exactly due to his own questionable business dealings. As a result, now another call for a new cleaning could become possible, but only moving forward with politicians who practically the day after being elected reveal themselves again being even more corrupt then the previous group, with the new mayor of Rome possibly leading the group. Or, the situation is the opposite of revealing the ideas of Mosca being wrong; rather, it is the absence of a proper political class that time and again reveals to

10 Agnes Horvath et al. feed the same, evidently inexorable, ‘iron law’ of trickster corruption through a cumulative outcome of liminal periods.

Description of chapters The book has three main purposes. First, it intends to revisit, at a theoretical level, Weber’s concern with charismatic power and leadership, in light of the problem posed by leadership in our times. Second, it will do so by introducing terms from political anthropology, in the broadest sense of the term. This implies the bringing together and integrating with Weberian political sociology of a series of crucial terms developed by contemporary anthropologists, like liminality, trickster, imitation and schismogenesis, but also of returning to some of the fundamental concerns of classical political philosophy, the ideas of Aristotle and especially Plato, as political anthropology in our understanding implies the bringing together of modern anthropology with classical political philosophy, but also the genealogical or reflexive historical sociological/ comparative civilisational perspective of thinkers like Weber, Foucault, Elias, Voegelin and Eisenstadt, among others. Finally, third, it will offer a series of empirical studies on contemporary political leaders, making use of the perspective of political anthropology as sketched above. Needless to say, such a task goes way beyond the remit of a single volume, so this book only represents, hopefully, an initial step in the direction of understanding the problems of contemporary leadership, indeed of political democracy. However, it was our decision as editors of not limiting attention to one of the three main issues, but publishing a book that goes in some way of addressing all of them jointly. Thus, the book consists of three parts. Part I contains two chapters, by Agnes Horvath and Camil Francesc Roman, that focus on revisiting the Weberian term, with an eye on our present. The three chapters of Part II, by Arpad Szakolczai, Harald Wydra, and John O’Brien, focus on Plato’s most relevant dialogue, The Statesman, based on a Socratic Symposium of International Political Anthropology, which is devoted each year to a Platonic dialogue. Finally, Part III contains six case studies on contemporary leadership, focusing on important leader figures in seven countries: Argentina and Brazil, France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Greece. From the volume some key countries, and leaders, are missing, for a variety of reasons, like Donald Trump and the US, Boris Johnson and the UK, or Vladimir Putin and Russia, among many others. One of the most important reasons was size. We hope we’ll have a chance to include these and other cases, including further historical background chapters, in a follow-up volume.

Notes 1 For some flagship publications, see the journal International Political Anthropology, and also Horvath, Thomassen and Wydra (2015), Horvath and Szakolczai (2018), and Wydra and Thomassen (2019).

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2 For details, see Szakolczai and Thomassen (2019). 3 For further details, see again Szakolczai and Thomassen (2019). 4 See Wren (2008), and the three-volume leadership reader Wren published with Douglas A. Hicks and Terry L. Price for Edward Elgar (Wren et al. 2005). 5 It should be noted that in Hungarian ‘excellence’ (kiválóság), a term so important for political (and not only) leadership, back to Plato (see arête, especially in the Meno), though also problematic in its own ways, is from the same root.

References Gell, Alfred (1992) ‘The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology’, in Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton (eds.) Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, Oxford: Clarendon. Horvath, Agnes and Arpad Szakolczai (2018) ‘Political Anthropology’, in Stephen Turner and William Outhwaite (eds.) Sage Handbook of Political Sociology, London: Sage. Horvath, Agnes, Bjørn Thomassen and Harald Wydra (eds.) (2015) Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality, Oxford: Berghahn. Krouwel, André (2003) ‘Otto Kirchheimer and the Catch-All Party’, West European Politics 26 (2): 23–40. Szakolczai, Arpad and Bjørn Thomassen (2019) From Anthropology to Social Theory: Rethinking the Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wren, J. Thomas (2008) Inventing Leadership: The Challenge of Democracy, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Wren, J. Thomas, Douglas A. Hicks and Terry L. Price (eds.) (2005) The International Library of Leadership: v. 1. Traditional Classics on Leadership, v. 2. Modern Classics on Leadership, v. 3. New Perspectives on Leadership, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Wydra, Harald and Bjørn Thomassen (eds.) (2018) Handbook of Political Anthropology, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Part I

On charis and charisma

1

Beyond charisma Catacombing sensual governance by a painful breaking of human ties Agnes Horvath

Introduction: the troubles with Weber’s charisma Since the term was introduced, almost exactly a century ago, Weber’s charismatic power or charismatic leadership has become one of the most widely used conceptual tools in political sociology or even political science. Yet, in spite of its wide acceptance, the term also has its limitations. Its indiscriminate application to the most varied kind of political leaders, including extremes from both right and left, following the word though arguably not the spirit of Weber, exposed such limitations. For this reason in a series of previous publications I suggested to introduce the anthropologically based term trickster as a complementary ideal-type (Horvath 1998, 2000, 2008, 2010, 2013, 2019; Horvath and Szakolczai 2018, 2020). In this chapter, instead of repeating the arguments that are effectively used in most contributions to this volume, I rather turn to some inherent problems with Weber’s term itself. As is well known, Weber took charisma from Christian theology, in the context of his long-term effort to understand the rise of the modern world out of religious developments: in particular classical Hebrew prophecy and Christianity. As part of his efforts to offer a foundational narrative to the sociology of modernity, Weber connected the rise of the major world religions to specific religious-psychological experiences undergone by particular individuals that had proneness to such experiences in specific historical moments (Weber 1948a), characterised by uncertainty and insecurity produced by major and escalating violence, wars and conquests. The terms specific and particular make it clear how extremely limited the original context of such appearance of charisma was. Based on Nietzsche’s work around nihilism, Weber coined the general concept of world-rejecting religions in order to characterise the nature of such developments (Weber 1948b), advancing ideas that would later be expressed, much based on his work, as the axial age (Jaspers, Eisenstadt) or the rise of Gnosticism (Voegelin), themselves constructions on the debris of civilisations. A connected term used by Weber, central for his ideas about charismatic power and also based on the work of Christian theologians, was salvation religions. In this framework, persons who had a charismatic power were those – mostly religious – leaders like prophets

16 Agnes Horvath (but also lawgivers or military heroes) who in a condition of very deep civilisational crisis, on the basis of outstanding personal qualities to be considered as divine gifts and Weber never ruled out the possibility of an actual divine intervention, though – in line with his ‘value-free’ interpretive sociology – never asserted it either rose to the occasion and came up with a solution to the desperate situation. The introduction of the term charismatic leadership into the study of politics thus not simply secularised this term, but in a way also trivialised it, in the sense that the solution of any political crisis by the rise of a charismatic leader was modelled on the very specific situation and context of world-historical turning points. The term charisma, however, as used in Christian theology, had an additional, and even more problematic, characteristic. This was also fully taken over by Weber, even contaminated his ideas, just as it contaminated modern ideas in general at their core – to exclude itself from ‘charis’, the Greek word for good life – and thus helps to explain the problematic success of Weber’s term in political sociology and political science. This concerns the narrow connection between charisma and the historical development of Christianity as an individualising salvation religion. What this means is that prophets, lawgivers or mythologicalmilitary leaders did not offer individual salvation to their followers, rather attempted, in a perceived situation of utmost need, to save their culture or people as a whole. The spread of Christianity, however, took place in a quite different manner, through the conversion of single individuals, and by the promise of individual salvation, in another world. Thus, while at a world-historical theological level, the arrival of Christ was supposed to offer redemption to the entire world, the effectively victorious march of the conversion to Christianity as a religion progressed through belief in securing individual salvation. Charisma as divine grace became manifested through the salvation of concrete individual souls. These considerations offer a dual correction and partial critique of Weber’s perspective. To start with, there is a particularly tight connection between salvation, charisma and world rejection in historical Christianity. A liminal crisis is a general, universalising term; but the idea that the divine intervenes not simply in the ‘world’, but in the life of singular individuals, and not only in a moment of world-historical crisis, but practically in a regular, almost everyday basis is a specifically Christian idea, and is tightly connected to salvation – arguably the most problematic element of Christianity.1 Second, this can help to understand that secularisation is not only connected to the rationalisation of ethical prophecy, but also to this specific kind of individualised salvation. What this implies is that the aim of modern secular politics, and the ‘vocation’ of a secular charismatic political leader, is not simply to steer the course of government in the right direction, but also to directly promote the happiness and wellbeing of every single member of the population. Still in other words, the concern with wellbeing, declared aim of every modern state, is not simply a secularised version of Christian individualised salvation, but stretches a brutally wielding power over life and death. The frequently made claim that the individual, with its rights, only exists

Beyond charisma

17

in Christianity is true in this specific sense – and not in the sense that in all other cultures concrete human beings were unimportant. It got the emphasis of shaping one’s fate, with all the means at its disposal –a meaning quite different from charis. A further connection, underlining the importance of this point, is that in this salvation lineage, and in contrast to the lineage of ethical prophecy, secularisation is different from disenchantment. Throughout the long history of Christianity a number of magical means were accepted for reaching salvation, from the cult of saints through praying up to the Eucharist itself. Even further, as this chapter will argue, this can be traced to practices associated with catacombs, the Early Christian underground network of burial places. Disenchantment, in the strict Weberian sense, rooted in the Reformation, means the rejection of all such magical means and a rigorous and arguably even excessive return to the ideas of Paul and Augustine, according to which salvation is strictly a matter of divine grace. This sense of disenchantment, however, went hand in hand with a radical divinisation of the world, in the sense of assuming a kind of divine intervention or presence in the life of single individuals on a regular, daily basis – or, Protestantism was nothing else than another modality of enchantment, through the presumed omnipresence and permanent activity of divine grace. In this perspective, every individual selected by the community of elects for a political office was charismatic in the sense of demonstrating, or revealing, the grace of God as a means of conquering the world. Modern political elections, supposedly leading to the election of charismatic leaders, represent the equally brutal secularisation of this process. There is something still more – and this concerns the way in which emotions, sentiments, or ‘sensuals’ (emotional vibrations) are evoked in the process. The soliciting of certain sensuals for salvation, as it will be discussed in detail, was central for the conversion process to Christianity, through catacombing, erecting a sensual imperialism of the unreal realm of death.2 The certain issue concerns the performance of magical rituals by which the resurrection of the body – something clearly beyond the ways of everyday life and Nature – can be secured by necromancy. Curiously the secular version of such necromantic sensualisation can be perceived in the images spread by advertisement or the campaigns for political elections; central aspects of the secularisation of salvation in modern political democracy and economic wellbeing, developments which are absent in any other culture or civilisation – and, as the reverse side of this happens to be the destruction of Nature, we start to realise that perhaps for the better. What remained for us is the incarceration of our principles, the fallen and exiled charis in the absurd bowels of the catacombs.3

The flip side of Salvationism: an ugly dream of retribution In the thinking of Weber, the importance of charismatic power, the role of vocation in politics (Weber 1948c), and the disenchantment of the world (Weber 1976) were closely related features of the modern world. However, according to this chapter, ‘disenchantment’ is certainly not the way how modernity works,

18 Agnes Horvath quite the opposite is true. Modernity on the one hand meticulously destroys the faculty of people’s carefulness and attention for charis, and on the other, by bombarding them with images, incites their sensuals for abandoning themselves to future promises. Erasing presence is bringing ruins to people, which is the way of magic, in accordance with the simple Faustian definition of an ability to change one’s heart (Goethe 1994), and is also very close to alchemy, to the matrixing replicator.4 In this way governance becomes more an issue of the deployment of enchanting technical methods, a manner of conditioning sensuals for the benefit of their operative forgery, essential to the leading of people, than promoting the common good through rootedness in reality. To take this point even further, an irrational, sensualised state of mind was promoted as the surest promise of wellbeing and future goodness, advised and practiced as the first or perhaps the only merit of a modern person. Or, even further, from such a perspective concrete people, together with their life and reality, family bonds and responsibilities, the heritage of their families, the trusts of their parents and homes, are to be erased or rejected with contempt. Individuals should be humbled, forced to lose their coherence, eventually subverted to the dogma of change through a magical way of alternating substances. Modernity is reconstructing matrixing replication according to its own concept of ‘creative destruction’, where we all have to live with ever new demands of subversion and calls for unity on the basis of impossible demands of salvation. In each case, whether religious or secular, these demands imply an impossible fantasy of retaliation on life. There is a possibility to explain this logic of impossibility in a geometric way: if every subatomic particle, like the basic triangles of nature (Plato, Timaeus, 53e), has a natural strength which supports structures against any external pressure, has the property for arranging the constellation of particular forms, with finitude and perfect solidity, then their reconstruction into a seemingly more perfectly symmetrical body only brings incomplete, infinite imperfection. Charis or Greek χάρις is goodness of existence in the perfection of forms, in grace and gentleness, alongside with other concrete beings similarly possessing charis and forming a harmonious whole, while a sensual is always arranged alongside other sensuals as a relational system, among which there are only quantitative differences, thus their places have to be assigned from the outside.5 Charis is life itself, the world of being, where every form (every concrete body) contains a sense of beauty and splendour, full with joyful happiness, at one with themselves, and so consequently do not need to undergo transformation or even change. Why should they lose, or ‘be delivered from’, the pleasantness of charis? Our entire modernity has become modelled around transformation, obsessed by change, implying a kind of permanent, radical, violent intrusion into the order of nature, failing to realise – or rather actively making us forget – that Nature is change itself, and continuous, beautiful change, though not any change: summer follows spring, but not the other way around, so its change is stabilised. This solidity of reality, where every form has a finished angle, has one exception, which is the incommensurable, the square

Beyond charisma

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root with its upper opening for impulsive sensuals that are ever changing, transforming entities into the irrational. Salvation is the weapon against ratio, which is laid down in every solid form of Nature, it rejects the reason implied in death, when something lasts and everything is justified, thus life and so death has a meaning by the end. The irrational claim of salvation is replicating ratio only by its own, absurd means of necromancy. Thus, the greatest problem with modern rationality is that it is not rational at all, in any meaningful sense, implying ratio as harmonious proportionality, rather is advancing an inner-worldly salvation by colonising it. All the desires and hopes for a restoration of charis, the goodness that flows from divine love to man, as also embodied in Nature, were rather secularised and then used for a subversive transformation or manufactured in any other ways. Secularisation in fact amounts to a technological enchantment; it is the outcome of technical processes using all manners of jugglery. These processes are best rendered evident through the already mentioned slogan ‘creative destruction’ (coined by Schumpeter). However, promoting creativity by destruction, or taking it from charis-dead material is a very questionable undertaking, as it can be technically captured as a version of necromancy. Necromancy is in itself an alteration of reality, a kind of divination by communication with the dead, or divination from dead corpses, to be inspired by dead matter. Through such processes the lames start to walk, the blind to see, the dead become raised, and the laws of nature become to be suspended for the sake of those divinisers who can operate such miracles. Such metamorphoses are not so different from the operation of modern technology that persuades men to hate themselves, not to set up for themselves charis as a principle, so to become nothing. Through a technological secularisation of such processes we continuously transform our society from its ruins – where we moderns, ourselves, have launched it – to an ever more shadowy, weak and fleeting state, and at any rate in the state of insubstiantiality, itself evil, as the absence of real existence (Boethius 2014: 305). But genuine charis/ma, which we must see as a principle in all things, cannot be influenced by events or by producing marvels using hidden natural forces. It is not an art, not even a supernatural art, and especially not an art of transformation, as the goodness of charis can only be found in untransmuted objects, and never in water that tastes like wine. We certainly would not want the charis of objects to start transforming themselves into different substances than they are. It would be against charis, the fundamental principle of life: ‘most great and good and fair and perfect in its generation – even this one Heaven sole of its kind’ (Plato, Timaeus, 92c). Plato leaves no doubt that transformations are not the ways of discerning goodness. This is already there in nature and does not require any alteration. Such alteration, especially death, or the destruction of form (the body), is rather the end of charis’s higher life. In fact a real statesman is nothing else than one who can recognise such innate stability, which at the same time gives the opportunity to the citizens to follow him in perceiving charis, the context of authentic politics in the social pleasure of ancient Greek life.

20 Agnes Horvath But Weberian charisma is not so much the inner strength of a charismatic leader, rather is rooted in the relationship between the leader and his followers. The leader’s charismatic value is founded on their deliverance, recovery or saving something lost through divine help. However, transforming reality into salvation leads to an infiltration of the incommensurable, a realm containing both what is usually called as the divine and the diabolical, a pure territory of dreamy sensuals, like salvation. The incommensurable has no common measure: as every infinite, it is imperfect, having a never ceasing annihilatingpossessing (‘demonic’) energy for the finite and the formed. Such energy has no actuality, reality or existence; it does rely on factuality, but only in the sense of reducing facts to non-existence. It is invisible like the senses. This is why the incommensurable is set apart from the real world of forms: it is somehow withdrawn and hidden, even concealed and secret. The incommensurable appears to Plato in the form of a secret, not known appearance: ‘Or does anyone, do you think, understand the name of anything when he does not know what the thing is?’ (Plato, Theaetetus, 147b). The incommensurable is a secret and poisonous appearance, like a virus infection of the replicator, whose potential connections are infinite in combinations, which can reduce anything to nothingness, can annihilate in a nick of time those features that give cohesion to a character. But this transformative power of the incommensurable sadly gives a commanding power into the hands of its operators with their inexhaustible desire to embrace forms. Divinisers learned to master the investing of an inordinate energy of desire into proper subjects, producing a restlessness that may even be the source of Weberian charismatic authority. It cannot even be otherwise if the inner strength of subjects, as if souls detached from their bodies, are deposited in their leader, transforming charisma into a divinatory category, into a passion to possess and to be possessed by the sensuals. Through the summoning up of their sensuals by devotion to charisma people are first persuaded of the necessity and desirability of the goodness they are induced to pursue, but which does not bring them closer to goodness at all. Contempt of life, the suspension of social ties, a deliverance from present responsibilities rather results in an immediate, unbounded enthusiasm, where the goodness of charis becomes itself relative, losing its ties to bordered forms, to the social, transforming itself further like any facsimile replicator, as once a copy was made of reality, further copies can easily be made, without any limitation, while becoming ever more distant from the original, though still carrying in a way its image. However, the discrepancy and restlessness that stems from the incommensurable ensures a certain power, the power of dissolution, which puts a persuasive spell over us to enjoy its growth and multitude. In the growing void not only outrageous emotional bonds are multiplying between the sensual operators and their followers, but also various networks emerge to monitor every deviation from the new orthodoxy of maintaining the fermentation of sensuals. Such operating by the sensual incommensurable is the secret poison that was recognised by Gibbon as causing the fall of the Roman

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Empire (Gibbon 1994). In this way the charismatic growth, the power, the productivity and multiplication, the instance of the transcendental incommensurable loses its bearer and becomes transformed into magic incantation. In particular, through the strange practice of depositing the dead, unburied, into catacomb pockets, in early Christianity charisma became an institution for escalating the growth of sensuals, which paid less regard to the human ties than to invocating their sensuals, with the simple reason that it must destroy in order to create. Divinisation became a necromantic processuality for changing the mind of people, using the power of a no-man’s land between the two realms, those of the dead and the living, where they both desire the other one: the living by an induced contempt for existence, and the dead by their annihilating zeal for the living. This chapter will present a curious technique invented by the early Christians, which transmitted necrotic energy through the catacombs, the place of the unburied dead, used by the operators of the sensuals. The word that is repeated most often in the church is salvation, and the most frequently represented images are those of corpses, but the obstinate institutional usage by catacombing sensuals, or the gathering and monitoring of emotions evoked through the hope of an afterlife, leading to the use of catacombs instead of traditional burials is much less discussed and analysed. This is perhaps due to the complicity of the operators of sensuals, who strongly and without any inhibition desire to command, towards the incommensurable or perhaps by starting a new process of reasoning once we have already lost orientation. At any rate we are here at the birth cradle of the dangerous idea that energy is not linked to life, but could be separated from it in order to recycle it into a new matrixing coherence. Without doubt the value gained is enormous, as the lifeless corpses, the painfully broken images of the real ones have an absolute energy for transformation, producing multitudinous sensual growth and productivity or, in one expression, charismatic growth. The lifeless corpses, painfully broken images of the real ones are not just declining bones and muscles but their once living soul is still existing in their claiming dominion over life until they succeed to cross the Acheron. Ghosts are utilised by the necromancers, arrayed for the transformation of dead individuals into self-loathing living corpses, as if stored for divination, and never crossing Acheron. The catacombs that were competing against ancient Roman burial traditions were multi-layered holes for the dead beneath the surface, raw material extractions in millions, opening into the incommensurable in their non-finished, not buried state, but never arriving there. They were the openings and at the same time the closures for the fluctuation of energies between them, operating in obscurity, indifferent to the social, real, family and friends or any other claims, yet possessive with their ghostly desires for the living world: having a dark, calumnious, separate reasoning. Their moves, impulses rather than thinking, established the foundations in regard to the growth of Christianity. This point could be best illustrated by the contemporary integration of human subjects, whose roots are

22 Agnes Horvath cut and who mix themselves with rays, feed themselves with sensuals and no longer comprehend anything except the desire for new stimulations into the web of networks. There is a similar poignant will to harm that is difficult to grasp, yet crucial. One can be catacombed in two ways, in both cases by lacking the affinity for charis. One is losing self-governance, the other is selfhatred, each defines the void in annihilation. Therefore the ultimate goal of this mechanism is separating energy from life, transforming every being into an enormous network of energy pulsation, as seen in a little-understood and gory episode in the genealogy of Christianity.

Le Bon and crowd psychology: a way towards sensuals In order to understand the separation of charis from charisma as part of the problem, Weber’s perspective should be complimented by the ideas of thinkers focusing on imitation or replication and the psychology of crowds whom he unfortunately but probably not accidentally excluded from his interpretive sociology (Weber 1978: 23–24). By evoking sensuals, we step into the territory of the irrational, unmeasurable infinite of the incommensurable. But this is a step we are forced to take, just as Plato was forced to discuss not-Being due to the activity of the Sophists. Le Bon (2009) introduced the term ‘crowd psychology’ – and indeed what could be more tremendously infinite than emotions, sensuals, enthusiasms, all properties of our soul, pullulating in crowds or ‘masses’, which can generate a transformative enchanting process. So, beyond the contrast between rationalists (the Hobbesian–Kantian approach) and enthusiasts (Le Bon and Weber), proposed by Max Scheler (2014), who is using here an old Platonic concern (see Meno, 99C), we need to re-think the relation between these modalities. The problem is that modern politics, in particular through its fixation on charismatic leadership, a necessary appendix of media power, incorporates jointly the Kantian type of systematic rationalisation and Le Bon-ian mass enthusiasm, focusing on the momentum generated through mass psychology, though the final result is the perversion of both, as none of them could exist without drawing the energy from concrete characters, taking advantage of their weaknesses, their lack of ability to keep themselves sane and safe in charis. But what were the origins of this combination? Evidently terms like energy, wavelength, and emotional vibration describe something very much essential for modern politics, which has quickly turned to ‘spirits’ in order to depict the nature and implications of the changes reflected in the rise of crowd psychology and mass movements. Investigating why Kantian science was cast in terms of magic, where things are altered, forms are transformed, reality enchanted, offers fascinating insights into the boundaries between science, religion, and the occult, into the energy mass of people’s mind. Indeed, to understand how the science of politics came to be so tied up with magical tropes and images, we must turn to an apparently unscientific phenomenon: the transubstantiation of matter.6 The principal difference is that the term energy requires a definition that can incorporate spiritual phenomena that of course the natural sciences are

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lacking. The natural sciences do not have a conceptualisation for the act that changes the form, character or substance of matter. This is indeed not easily comprehensible, but political science in fact possesses such terms – see its major mobilising concepts, like Hegel’s spirit or its derivative, Marx’s ghost, which are set to change the world, where the evil capital and private property can eventually be defeated by the spiritual unification of the workers’ power. The ‘ghost’ or ‘spirit’ from political science and the energy from the natural sciences are analogous to each other in terms of their essence, substance and usage, as they are contained in every being. This can be illustrated by Sartre’s unburied dead or living dead, at the heart of most of Sartre’s play written around the Second World War; those who could not step over the limit, the threshold between life and death, but are still with us, continuously murdering, destroying themselves: the self-murderers, the painful breakers of human ties, encaged in existence, but forced out from life.7 They are the incommensurable in human flesh, ‘condemned to freedom’ or ‘free to choose’ (in the affiliate terminology of Milton Friedman) as no longer real, concrete beings with their manifold connections to human beings and objects in Nature, but mere ghosts, living dead, as transubstantiation is not different from alchemy or magic; all are concepts of unreal fictionality, derived from a technology of summoning up charismatic energy.

Charisma technology A central feature of modern politics, and not just of political science, is the pretence of possessing an effective technology to promote happiness, which is a misapplication, for our life, of the universalistic logic of the exact sciences, under the pretext of betterment. Modern politics, it is taken as an axiom, does not simply search for the public good, but actually promotes this effectively, unfailingly, globally, in a universalistic sense, as individualised wellbeing, presumably using scientific technology to achieve such transformation, in order to turn everyone redeemed and happy, living in a blissful this-worldly salvation promoted by adept, sometimes charismatic, leadership. This chapter claims that this is exactly what is erratic with it, and we should not be blinded by the fluid effervescence of contemporary political life, due to a sufficient application of modern, scientific methods to politics, rather should see it as an enclosure into catacombs, the direct consequence of summoning of ghosts, in the form of sensuals; a necromantic application of divinisation. The accumulation and the density of sensuals are inevitable for summoning up the incommensurable, so the more pushed the sensuals are into an intermediate status, between life and death, the more effective is the destructive power manifestation enacting the unearthly realm of the catacombs. Certainly, nobody desires to possess something that is bad, and insubstantiality is a weak and shadowy existence. The very desire to possess something shows that it is valued as good, almost tautologically, but modern politics searches goodness at the wrong place and in the wrong way, through uniting aggregates in a fundamentally incommensurable manner, where forms do not correspond with their appearances anymore. Newly versioned or

24 Agnes Horvath subverted forms hurt ratio and symmetry in the alchemical way of creative destruction which, while trying to promote salvation at a discount price, actually and infallibly further promotes contempt for existence. The ensuing problem with knowledge, the idea that only the capable-powerful can properly gain and possess it, is central in the problematic claims around charisma. Thus without principled charis set up by us, knowledge itself is weak, it spreads and escalates mimetically, fleeing into an unending proliferation of the incommensurable, into various ragged ideas of the transubstantiation or unlimited transformation of matter as the way to realise salvation, whether through the eventual resurrection of the dead, or through a supposed innerworldly paradise of accumulating sensuals as the road to happiness. While transubstantiation seems to offer a way that does not do apparent violence to the original character of the forms, just alters commensurability into an eternal subdivision without an end, into a perpetually fluxing incommensurable – the transportation of every part into an ever smaller part does indeed end their self-reliance and commensurability, so is a factual violence. Transubstantiation implies that the incommensurable becomes present physically, and its quantity also starts to grow inside, which is possible only in incommensurability, where the ratio is gone between forms and appearances, so proper knowledge (acquaintance, familiarity) becomes impossible, as if in the void. The bread and wine served at the Eucharist are converted into divine flesh and blood through a process known as transubstantiation, thus becoming incommensurable. The incommensurable belongs to a separate existence, though not real, so everything which gets a place in it, becomes unreal itself. While existing, just like the images of film projections, which can provoke love and hate, thus producing feelings and even mobilising action on our part, they never become real in the sense of being capable of reactions: whatever is the charm of Pál Jávor, the famous Hungarian actor of the 1930s and 1940s, he will never come out of the celluloid to respond to our feelings, being a ghostly fantasm. Images forever remain in the fluxing, incommensurable infinite, are mere emaciations. In itself, the incommensurable is reduced to the void: nothing can be known about its shapeless, liquid inconsistence, apart from the sensual images. Such images, however, can be so vivid when connected to the realisation of Christian salvation, driven by the idea of sinful existence. This is why images about the tormenting of St Anthony by demons were so popular time and again, also as if programmatically demonstrating the problematic character of such images, themselves being demonic, and not just the demons actually depicted on them (Castelli 1952). Indeed salvation is problematic, as it requires first separation, then destruction or permanent transformation; it is the unending creative destruction to dissolve things and then combine them into a new whole, inside the church. At the beginning the images themselves did not give form to anything. So, for hundreds of years, the Church existed only in the minds of Christians, without rituals, without concrete sacral edifices – rather they gave an unreal, quantum reality to the nothing by separative thinking. Then, slowly, even these imperceptibles that exist only in the

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mind, the so called invisible church that belongs to the incommensurable, acted through transubstantiation, only that it violated its world, as it proceeded to substituting reality. Similarly, the enchanting magic of modern technology (Gell 1998), which was a direct, secular heir to the enchanting necromancy conjured up through catacombing and transubstantiation, and also captured in Nietzsche’s nihilism, Weber’s world-rejection, and Voegelin’s Gnosticism, went through these same stages.

The trickster’s sensual governance Sensual governance denotes the technique by which the barriers of forms are dissolved through the artificially forced escalation of emotions, and from the decomposition of forms energy is ejected and transferred. This radiating energy that can be gained over all of us is derived from the incommensurable, sometimes called as charismatic or termed as trickster, as many chapters in this volume argue. Still, either way, both derive strength from an absence, leading an existence that is not rooted in a concrete life, rather being animated by a spiritual effervescence, as Durkheim coined the term for the sensual that excites individuals and serves to unify them (Durkheim 1965). However, in Durkheim’s hands this seemingly innocent and natural phenomenon has got a further turn, towards a peculiar transformativity. This is because by such effervescence individuals reinvest themselves into another body, form or structure, until they become the same in the creation of one body, with god and society becoming one and the same. Incarnation, the bodily manifestation of the divine may provide a seemingly perfect, wholesome, infinite and self-sustaining solution in incommensurability, an ever-expansive and never-ending power transportation into the void, to its transformative, total source. But what exactly assumes a human form in a supposedly ‘divine’ person, which is a kind of incommensurable became flesh, always remains an uncertainty, after the first alteration of the form itself. And so, during the next steps of destruction always a new alteration occurs, in which it becomes more and more doubtful that the excellent outcome that the doctrine promoted will actually be realised, as the whole process is full of craft and guile by definition. In a similar way, the resurrection requires nothing but repenting in goodness, resulting in an infinite goodness once one returns and lives in Paradise, but without the ancient belief that righteous men receive rewards during their lives, and not that it is postponed into another world. Strangely enough, one could even exist accepting this reasoning about postponement, considering the capacities of the mind. Yet, it creates a biohazard in the sense of its continuous, consistent and permanent annihilation of reality during the entering of the deceitful sensuals into the threshold of understanding. By being present in time and space any sensual can be effective without being valid or real, even can grow into an organic set of relationships, however fake, and into a mechanical producer of more sensuals, with a peculiar operational success in the void, which can be called as the matrix, the receptor

26 Agnes Horvath of the sensuals. Operational constructions might make existing beings obey and act accordingly such abstractions by the simple fact that sensuals are the only mischievous substance on Earth that is essential. They can be unlimited in escalation, mixing up colours and voices, exaggerating and patching together everything that is inflated in waves in the void in a complete confusion. It is illegitimate in the realm of forms, an intermediate incommensurable. A child of Poros and Penia, Eros is the offspring of opposites, abundance and poverty. Eros has many attributes (erotic, romantic, artistic),8 one of which is the Christian agape, the selfless love or caritas/charity. Still, in each of its modality Eros possesses a passionate energy, a never-ceasing blind desire to possess. All the mediations of Eros are sensual, and as so they could become the subject of governing and operating by means of catacombing or channelling toward the incommensurable. It is for this reason that sensual governance, this demanding freedom for passion became the common denominator between Christianity, globalisation, neoclassical economics, the technologising of society, Communism, managerialism, neoliberalism, mediatisation, and the unification promoted by the EU, due to the single common characteristic feature of motivating and governing sensuals through the technological means of enchanting transformation. Thus an impassioned realm is putting an end to forms, and so gaining ever more sensual waves by making things different from what they were – forever destroying the subjects of their previous desire.9 Incommensurability implies the alteration of substances not linked to authentic forms anymore: it is the irrational itself, and so the appearances of forms lose their borders, solidity and also capability, thus becoming subjected to the fury of infinite subversion and never-ending multiplication, when the tortured entities are trying to return to their elements and reborn again in their new versions: in the brutal way of salvation. This discussion leads to a problem with knowledge. Without a proper capability for justice and reverence knowledge only produces multiplication, an unending proliferation of bits of information that lack coherent meaning. The detrimental consequences are quite vividly illustrated in Michel Serres’s Thumbelina, about a transformation in which all paradigms are redefined, about a civilisational rupture between the past and the present (Serres 2015), supposedly leading into secular salvation – a sad reversal as compared to Serres’s earlier work about the parasites of communication or the violence done to nature by unbounded technological change. The book is about the inflation of the sensuals that direct their subjects fading mind to the voided, infinite incommensurable, which is without doubt energetic, though empty. This idea leads back as far as the 1920s, when quantum mechanics already experimented with the transformation of matter into pure energy. This was not just a change from one form of movement into another one (Born 1937), more significant are the grade differences in the decaying process, which is breaking down the forms, while accumulating energy. Not caring for the things that exist in life anymore of course has a decaying effect on perception, present not only in Serres’s Thumbelina, but in a description of the early Christians as people of mere deficiency: they want and are able to convince

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only the foolish, dishonourable and stupid (Origen 1964: 3.44). We should add that at the same time they were incredibly successful in magnifying the incommensurable; yet, it was practised by a dull, monotonous, drabbled way, for procuring effective utility. Dullness probably explains the misnomer of rational modernity, where boredom and monotony is confused with order, short-term efficiency with utility and function: ignoring the beauty of forms, thus – according to Plato – order itself. The plain and seemingly unpretentious technique of transubstantiation/ transformation can gain a monopoly position, stamping out criticism and homogenising understanding in the sincere, humble yet powerfully radiating sensual nothing. ‘For I am a wheat of God’, as St. Ignatius said, the early Christian bishop of Antioch, so ‘let my spirit be counted as nothing’ (Ignatius 1997, emphasis added). The growth of contempt toward existence over time has become explosive. Invasive, nihilistic tools are most effective, as their underlying technology makes the system work, covering enough area for obstinate sensual monopolisation through spiritual effervescence, creating an effective ‘critical mass’ for transformation. The sensual is light, overwhelming, but not pretentious. Its rays travel through space with high velocity, embracing all with enchanting easiness, having a simple set of instructions to follow, valid for everybody with minuscule requirements, a simple chore of nothing, ideal for the ne’er-do-wells and for those without inhibitions. The sensual is a single ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in affirming conversion, ‘the light quanta’, a subversion of the real to the presumed universal truth. It lacks ornamentation, complicated and costly rituals; you just need to trust in their bearers or carriers. The sensual requires no elaborate commitment, only a simple trust in the humble feelings of the sweet, illuminating light of eternity, shared with circles of enchanted souls in contrast of the negligent world. The sensual is lowly in condition and in matter. The sensual is lightness, does not know inhibitions, pleasing to the senses, gratifying, seemingly even gracious, as everything can be faked or imitated: it is the pleasant vibrating radiation into our eyes, the sunshine and the sweet breath of the air, the rising sweet sounds of bells: the whole mystery of living occurring in our mind, as if encapsulating inside our skull, catching our attention and even possibly catch and pocket them in the same place in order to transfer to the incommensurable. Here trickster and charisma overlap with each other, as they both want the same: to grab our thinking and push it toward the incommensurable. Not that this sweet poison is finished with the end of our life, quite the opposite is true: its necrotic radiation is even stronger just before and just after our death, at the very moment of our real and factual transubstantiation of becoming impulsive rays ourselves; becoming remembering sensuals.

Salvation in the gift of grace The history of death and burials is the history of the encounter with the unknown. The usual manner of burial was the pacification of the dead one, by burying it with pity and remembrance about the qualifications of its lived life: burials ‘designed to win gratitude and remembrance for the deceased’ (Ferguson

28 Agnes Horvath 2003: 248). There is a reward and there is also punishment in this, according to Plato’s thinking about this matter, as the excellent, virtuous individual evidently possesses the divine and the weak one does not. It even cannot be otherwise if the body is the vehicle of the invisible soul, given that Plato shared this idea with Orphic and Pythagorean thought. However, in the Christian framework this notion got a negative tone. Where existence is considered as bad and sinful per se, it is to be destroyed. What is more, Christians were holding the faith that the world is empty of Roman gods, and these two negations – self-denial and impiety – enforced each other into a new world view. The sinful substance is to be broken down in order to build it up into a new existence of eternal perfection in the otherworld, which ‘is a stumbling-block to those that do not believe, but to us salvation and life eternal’ (Ignatius 1997; based on 1 Corinthians 1:18). The result is that death, instead of eliminating it, just prolongs existence on a lower grade, becoming a mere repositioning of the dead from one container into another, from the body into the cup of the after-world, from one receptor into another one. This charis-ma was ascribed to the Christians alone, during their life and also in their afterlife, marking their separation from the rest of mankind,10 as such possession identified a third kind of man, the pure sensual one: immortal, delivered from death itself, undividable radiating, an infinite incommensurable in a corporal shell. In this manner an essential border, the one that walls life and birth from oblivion and meaninglessness became evaporated, resulting in the living dead in fluxed incommensurable; existing and vengeful dead bodies without death, also called ghosts or spirits. As the anthropologist Katherine Verdery (1999: 27) noted: bodies have the advantage of concreteness that nonetheless transcends time. The qualifying position of the bodies’ souls, when they survived their form, is either that they would like to return again, or would like to unite with the divine, but in both cases this sensual desire is an energy, powerful like the changes from life to death and vice versa. By pointing the location of energy, productivity and growth – the content of charisma – downward, problematising them due to the sinful weaknesses of humankind, Christianity constructed catacombs, hollow structures for the bodies of lost souls, bringing down, into the underworld, the commensurable for transformation into the incommensurable. Their dead remained unburied, exploited for transformation, in particular for the enactment of binding their souls to salvation. In their death the catacombed Christians become like the Eucharist cup of Bolsena,11 a matrixing substance, mixing their souls with the sensuals of the incommensurable for union and transformation into a new, perfected existence in the church. But as Borkenau noted, the materialisation of the spiritual is, incidentally, the essence of magic, where the Eucharist is itself a piece of magic, when those taking the Eucharist eat the body of their saviour in order of giving a meaning to incorporation into an infinitely great effectiveness (Borkenau 1981: 407). Magic is needed for this revenge, by the simple reason that now the unburied could not cross the border between life and death and thus never arrive at Acheron, remaining in restless in-between,

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and so became possible subjects for divinisation, the ones who are commended (because they abandoned the perfection of their own soul; see Plato, Apology 29d–30b), or could be called out in divinisation by various offerings, anytime. In necromancy the ones who lack a proper burial can be subverted, subjected to evocation, as if a soul-manipulation of the emotional appeal. When the history of catacombs ended the church, as maybe itself became embarrassed by the legacy of the pungent places, walled up the catacomb entrances by the end of eighth and beginning of the ninth century, and changed its funeral methods. After that Christians deposited corpses not into catacombs, but left them in the churches,12 a vivid practice until the French Revolution (Ariès 2013), and nobody bothered anymore about the catacombs. But for centuries Christians fed the catacomb structures by bodies, estimated at 6 million by 360 AD,13 as if evolving the Church into a vertically integrated monopoly firm specialised in salvation that solidified the transformation of dead souls into eternal radiated rays at the very place of the catacombs.

Conclusion Contemporary politics is increasingly based on circular, transformative and multiplicative techniques of sensual governance. The application of the word ‘sensual governance’ to modern politics, in one sense, is of course metaphorical, as modern politicians and political theorists are not often using explicitly sensual expressions and techniques – or do they? Carrying the world’s sensual in one’s baggage, just as travelling merchants carry their samples and patterns, and sell the real goods when occasion allows them, forwarding them by carrier wagons to their destination is not so rare, as Lenin’s famous and ‘charismatic’ April 1917 train trip from Switzerland to Russia shows. Creative destruction is a word commonly used for the modern economy (Schumpeter 2011, but see also Keynes or other similar liquidationist economists like Hayek),14 expressing the technique-trick of forcefully inducing entities into a never-ending movement of destruction and creation, which offers an inventive technological growth, also demonstrated by Hitler’s famous transubstantiation from a nameless soldier (his own words) to the absolute leader of Germany. Creative destruction, also widely associated with the anthropological trickster figure, is thus the perspective from which Lenin or Hitler, among others, could indeed by conceived of as ‘charismatic’ leaders – just as any modern business entrepreneur synthesising in energy re-distribution human subjects. In this way both the specific concerns of concrete individuals and communities, and the question of the common good, thus the central matter of politics, became ignored or excluded, lost in the terminology of a blank, universal salvationism, but gaining vividness as a mode of necromancy.15 Here the crucial problem is not really that charismatic leaders are in fact tricksters, but that they both are figures of the incommensurable, of the better-to-avoid irrational realm of sensuals, which divinise with dead corpses. Destruction is associated with either the raising of dead souls, or the charming of living souls

30 Agnes Horvath by magic. In both cases their natural progress is interrupted, either by bringing the dead back to existence, or by sucking the charis out of the living. A much-ignored element in modern politics is the fear in classical philosophy of the disintegration of entities, as this would contribute to the growth of the irrational incommensurable. Giving form to yourself, being an author, had to be cast down into the incommensurable, until such concerns did not seduce minds anymore. No doubt this was a paradoxical undertaking, as on the one side stands the narrow and unsocial zeal of annihilation, but on the other the persuasive promise of Christian universalism, the tolerant spirit of Christianity that could easily be adopted to all climates and every conditions, with the promise of divine power offered to anyone, as the unity with the divine incommensurable was open to all. But the two are linked by their contempt for forms, for mindfulness, for caution in action and also for repositing reality into an apocalyptic key, through their longing for the incommensurable, by a confidence of immortality: an immortality in a material sense of keeping dead bodies alive by the sensuals. In the language of modern science this is formulated in the following way: your corpse will never die, we can keep it alive by radiation or so. The waves of radiation absorb body cells and redirect their electromagnetic radiation into other bodies, just as after death the body redistributes energy into the void. Necrotic radiation, the energy of dying matter contains inflammatory and growth factors, but at any rate causes the inflammation of the mind, changes thinking and alters understanding. We notice here the growth of the void, the expansion of the incommensurable around sensuals, where charis/ma – as what remained from charis – grows, in the hollow cavity of liminality. Weber’s rationality axiom as a modality of modernity is now questioned by contemporary social theory (Szelenyi 2015). However, such questioning, while now being extended to economic development (through the issue of sustainability) was still not extended to the idea of universal social progress. Modern rationality is first and foremost a breakage of human ties, a main reason why modernity turned away from representing charis and instead became an explicit instrument of the technological destruction and transformation of the real into a fictitious existence, a radiating, image-driven, multiplicative progress into the void, while hiding the violence of the process behind formalised methods and institutions. This chapter turned attention to the devastating impact of this so-called rationality on the integrity of beings, including their charis, fertility, power, and goodness in themselves.

A coda on Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil The modalities and effects of sensual governance in the context of charisma are encapsulated in the very first strophes of Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil. It is not only the emblematic poetry book of Baudelaire, the poet of modernity, but was also written by the same person who first used emphatically the term modernité, considered by key social theorists like Simmel, Benjamin

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or Foucault as a prime analyst of modernity. Furthermore, a main source of inspiration was Joseph de Maistre, an arch-conservative anti-revolutionary French Catholic thinker, who, together with the similarly conservative Catholic de Bonald, was also one of the main sources of Saint-Simon, thus foundational for sociology. The four lines of the first strophe of the Prologue ‘To the Reader’, with geometrical precision, as if in a French quartet, lay out a precise description of the effect mechanism of sensuals, the catacombing technique. The very first line contains a list of sensuals, like silliness, error, sin, and avarice, together bringing out particularly clearly the contrast of sensuals with mindfulness. The second line captures the modality of their operation: they jointly occupy or invade our spirits, and at the same time work on our bodies – our spirits and bodies, us moderns: as the last line of the prologue will make it explicit that this ‘we’ is indeed all of us, moderns, who are his readers, and not only readers, but ‘hypocritical readers’, and thus his similes, even – and in this specific sense – his brothers, united in the hypocritical brotherhood of modernity. The third line reverses the roles: from being invaded by such sensuals, we become active partners in the operation as we also feed or aliment these sensuals, and even in a particularly hypocritical way, anticipating the concluding adjective, as feeding such sensuals produces remorse in us, but we love even this remorse sensual, after the painful breaking of human ties. The fourth and last line completes the argument with a metaphor, where we moderns, with our sensual operations are compared to beggars – a metaphor that would prominently return with Bunuel, in the Exterminating Angel or in Viridiana, jointly evoking the devil and Christ – feeding their vermin. The second strophe further explores the modality of the modern symbiosis with sensuals, the endless circular games between obstinate vices and half-hearted repentance. The argument is raised to a further and conclusive level in the next, third strophe, worthy of its sacred number, also corresponding to Hegelian synthesis. Here the spinner of the game is identified as a factorial outcome of the Christian Devil, Greek Hermes, and the Egyptian-alchemic figure of Trismegistus, or the archtrickster, who is rocking our enchanted spirit – note that the astonishing image contains both the magical word enchantment and also a stunning, rolling charisma. As the result of this irresistible activity, identified in the fourth line as knowledgeable/expert alchemical operations, our once iron will is simply vaporised – evoking an annihilation even stronger than liquidation. The outcome, as the fourth strophe renders it plain, is that step by step we descend to Hell, though – not doubt due to the expert enchantment – we no longer even notice the horror. In this way, as the fifth and sixth strophes intimate, while pretending to be suffering victims who enjoy pleasures that were for long denied to us, in fact our mind becomes filled with a crowd of Demons, while into our lungs, instead of the clean air, we breath Death itself,16 impersonated in a striking vision of liquidity (it is an ‘invisible river’). The seventh strophe only adds that if we moderns fail to pursue further, even more abominable sensuals like rape, poison (meaning drugs), murder or arson, this is only because we lack the courage for it.

32 Agnes Horvath The final strophes, as a culmination, though in a way also as a kind of letdown, evoke the ultimate spectre of boredom – where Baudelaire, as often, escapes as ultimate apologue of modernity, failing to realise that even the demon of boredom is a creation of modernity itself – as in authentic charis nothing is boring, but in its alteration everything becomes so.

Notes 1 The central problem, as this chapter will argue, is that such promise of salvation in another world on the one hand enabled Christian societies and states to gain the consent of their subjects for any mode of living that they would otherwise have deemed inacceptable, while on the other prepared the ground for the deployment of secular transformative techniques that similarly stole the significance and meaning of life, while also destroying nature. From this perspective salvation is thus part of a pact, an exchange of this our life for another – and a pact not that much different from the Faustian! 2 In order to avoid any misunderstanding, we need to emphasise that the chapter is not taking up the impossible task of addressing the entire history of Christianity, rather is focusing on the meaning of the connection between the idea of individualized salvation and the practice of depositing the dead unburied in catacombs. 3 As it is only evident, the current worldwide quarantines represent a secular version of this catacombing, only for the purpose of this-worldly naked life, substituting other-worldly salvation; ‘naked life’ in the sense of Agamben (1998). 4 About Goethe’s Faust as rendering evident the alchemic character of the modern economy, see the striking book of the Swiss economist Hans Christoph Binswanger (1994). The term ‘replicator’ is taken from virology. 5 As an illustration of ‘sensuals’, let us refer to the use of the freely circulating ‘likes’ in the internet, supposed means towards a democratic Paradise, where the ‘best’ programmes to watch or songs to listen are indicated almost automatically. and democratically, yet a practice which also, in a nick of time, can turn life into hell for anybody singled out, for any reason, or with no reason whatsoever, for negative attention. It also has an obsessive, addiction-generating aspect. 6 The idea that political representation can be traced to the Eucharist is argued by Borkenau (1981) and Pizzorno. 7 See in contrast Arnold van Gennep (1960) on burial rituals for pacifying the dead. 8 For more details, see the special section ‘Plato and Eros’ in the December 2013 issue of History of the Human Sciences, edited by Agnes Horvath and Arpad Szakolczai. 9 One of the most evident forms of contemporary sensual governance is the evocation of victims. Wherever there are victims, they of course should be helped. But sensual governance through victimhood means something quite different: the need for victims in order to justify otherwise unjustifiable political operations. That this was the modus operandi of Communists by now is well known. However, it is much less realised that this is increasingly becoming the modus operandi of ‘democratic’ Western governments and extra-governmental organisations as well, much animating the current wide-spread malaise about politics, misdiagnosed as ‘populism’ – though of course much used and abused by ‘charismatic’ leaders. This is because reactions against sensual governance are themselves sensuals, thus can lead to a further round of sensual governance – evidently growing, just like economic capitalism, beyond any limits, through different modalities of ‘creative destruction’. 10 Extracts from a letter to the Romans (Cap. 4:1–2; and 6:1–8:3) of Saint Ignatius: ‘I am no longer willing to live a merely human life, and you can bring about my wish

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12

13

14

15 16

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if you will.’ It appears in the Roman liturgy on the Feast of St Ignatius on 17 October (Ignatius 1997). The Eucharistic Miracle: in 1263 a priest, Peter of Prague, who found it difficult to believe that Christ was actually present in the consecrated corporal, stopped at Bolsena while on a pilgrimage to Rome. While celebrating Holy Mass blood started to seep from the consecrated cup and trickle over his hands onto the altar and the corporal. In rule many corpses were not buried in coffins until the French Revolution. Cemeteries established on the outskirts of a town are relatively recent, dating to the nineteenth century. Except the elite, everyone else was buried somewhere below their church―away from the high altar, which was the most prized location―or, in some cases, around the church (Ariès 2013; Dexeus 2016). Already Pliny the Younger, who was the governor of Pontus/Bythinia noted in his letter to Trajan, about their success, because the Roman temples are deserted and Roman religious rites are neglected: already a multitude of people are involved in Christianity (Pliny, Letters, 10.96–97). While at a trivial level the economic ideas of Keynes or Hayek differ, such differences are ‘no more than storms in a children’s paddling pool’, using an expression of Michel Foucault (1970: 285), as they all assume the same exchange-society utopia, where Paradise can be realized on earth by liquidizing every human substance and concrete object. We should note here how Foucault in his The Birth of the Clinic called attention to the problematic nature of the fact that modern medicine is based on anatomy, or the opening up of dead bodies. Note that in the poem only the words Hell, Demons, and Death are capitalised.

References Agamben, Giorgio (1998) Homo Sacer, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ariès, Philippe (2013) The Hour of Death, London: Penguin. Binswanger, Hans C. (1994) Money and Magic: A Critique of the Modern Economy in the Light of Goethe’s Faust, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Boethius (2014) Theological Tractates, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Borkenau, Franz (1981) End and Beginning: On the Generations of Cultures and the Origins of the West, (ed) Richard Lowenthal, New York: Columbia University Press. Born, Max (1937) Atomic Physics, London: Blackie. Castelli, Enrico (1952) Il demoniaco nell’arte, Milan: Electa. Dexeus, Ana (2016) ‘The Bones of our Ancestors’, Contributions to Science, 85–94. Durkheim, Émile (1965) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, London: The Free Press. Ferguson, Everett (2003) Backgrounds of Early Christianity, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Foucault, Michel (1970) The Order of Things, London: Routledge. Gell, Alfred (1998) Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gennep, Arnold van (1960) Rites of Passage, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gibbon, Edward (1994) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, New York: Penguin Books. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1994) Faust, New York: Continuum. Hobbes, Thomas (2012) Leviathan, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Homer (1990) The Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, Chicago, IL: Encyclopædia Britannica.

34 Agnes Horvath Horvath, Agnes (1998) ‘Tricking into the Position of the Outcast’, Political Psychology 19, 3: 331–47. Horvath, Agnes (2000) ‘The Nature of the Trickster’s Game: An Interpretive Understanding of Communism’, Ph.D. thesis, European University Institute, Florence, Italy. Horvath, Agnes (2008) ‘Mythology and the Trickster: Interpreting Communism’, in A. Wöll and H. Wydra (eds) Democracy and Myth in Russia and Eastern Europe, London: Routledge. Horvath, Agnes (2010) ‘Pulcinella, or the Metaphysics of the Nulla: In Between Politics and Theatre’, History of the Human Sciences 23, 2: 47–67. Horvath, Agnes (2013) Modernism and Charisma, London: Palgrave. Horvath, Agnes (2015) ‘The Genealogy of Political Alchemy: The Technological Invention of Identity Change’, in Agnes Horvath, Bjørn Thomassen and Harald Wydra (eds) Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality, Oxford: Berghahn. Horvath, Agnes (2019) ‘Charisma/Trickster: On the Twofold Nature of Power’, in Harald Wydra and Bjørn Thomassen (eds) Handbook of Political Anthropology, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Horvath, Agnes and Arpad Szakolczai (2018) ‘Political Anthropology’, in S. Turner and W. Outhwaite (eds) Sage Handbook of Political Sociology, London: Sage. Horvath, Agnes and Arpad Szakolczai (2020) A Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil: Tricksterology, London: Routledge. Ignatius, St. (1997) ‘Ignatius’ Letter to Ephesians’, in F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone (eds) The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kant, Immanuel (2007) Critique of Pure Reason, London: Penguin Classics. Keynes, John Maynard (1964) The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. [1936]. Le Bon, Gustave (2009) Psychology of Crowds, London: Sparkling Books. Origen (1964) Against Celsus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plato (1925) Plato in Twelve Volumes, London: Heinemann. Pliny (2014) Letters, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Scheler, Max (2014) Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge, London: Routledge. Schumpeter, Joseph A. (2011) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, London: Routledge. Serres, Michel (2015) Thumbelina: The Culture and Technology of Millennials, London: Rowman & Littlefield. Szelenyi, Ivan (2015) ‘Entzauberung: Notes on Weber’s Theory of Modernity’, International Political Anthropology 8, 1: 5–14. Verdery, Katherine (1999) The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change, New York: Columbia University Press. Weber, Max (1948a) ‘The Social Psychology of the World Religions’, in H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds) From Max Weber, London: Routledge. Weber, Max (1948b) ‘Religious Rejections of the World and their Directions’, in H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds) From Max Weber, London: Routledge. Weber, Max (1948c) ‘Politics as a Vocation’, in H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds) From Max Weber, London: Routledge. Weber, Max (1976) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London: Allen. Weber, Max (1978) Economy and Society, Berkeley: University of California Press.

2

Charisma From divine gift to the democratic leader-shop Camil F. Roman

This chapter seeks to arrive at an anthropological understanding of charisma. To this purpose, it takes the idea of charisma as divine gift seriously and starts by interpreting Weber’s uses of charisma as a symbol of order expressing the classical Greek and Christian outlook on existence as metaxy. The latter refers to the state of (in-)betweenness or the (metaxological) tension experienced by human life towards the divine ground of being. Based on such foundations, the chapter moves on to expose the scientific errors involved in the application of positivist and critical methodologies to charisma, especially with a view to modernist ideological corruptions of the term. It then elaborates on the anthropological interpretation of charisma by linking it with the experience of liminality and with the political underpinnings of human life. In this context, charisma properly understood is identified as a restorative quality aimed at safeguarding against depersonalization processes and the corruption of gift relations. Charisma achieves this by re-establishing or pointing towards right relations among the three active powers characteristic of political life and the anthropological condition: the one, the few and the many. The chapter closes with a few reflections on the strains emerging between the practice of modern democracy and charisma. By introducing a fourth active power – the incommensurable all – modern democratic politics transforms the question of leadership into a double paradox. On the one hand, with the complete gratification and political instantiation of democratic citizens, political leadership properly speaking cannot emerge and so charismatic leadership should be a non-problem. On the other hand, the annihilation of the question of leadership is brought to fruition by symbolically transforming the citizen body into a charismatic people, hence corrupting our understanding of charisma through reducing it to a mere electoral leader-shop, of Puritan genesis.

The Weberian birth pangs of charismatic domination Since Weber’s pronouncements on the subject, the history of the concept charisma and its derivatives charismatic domination, leadership, legitimacy or authority (see esp. Weber 1978, 2019) has been fraught with a series of unfortunate misunderstandings. This should maybe come as no surprise. Given

36 Camil F. Roman that knowledge is a highly reflexive activity, pinning down charisma poses the serious problem of how to square the circle: it immediately begs the question of how uncharismatic scholars and intellectuals are supposed to understand charisma analytically and mediate in language (as a formulation of objectified knowledge) that which by its very nature and ‘definition’ remains to a certain extent mysterious, ineffable, unquantifiable and for the better or worse, fundamentally personal and therefore irreducible. In addition, Weber himself was a charismatic personality, and to complicate things even further, his premature death before Economy and Society was published, prevented him from discussing and clarifying his own work on the subject. Taking on board the potential self-irony involved in my endeavour, this chapter will try to pick up the concept and develop it further. Providing an anthropological interpretation of charisma, I go much against the grain of established wisdom, of the type claiming that Weber’s charisma takes the place of ‘a more or less clandestine residual category’ in his tripartite model (Joas 1992: 47). On the contrary, the chapter shows that charisma is a foundational concept in Weber, a concept with which we can shed light not only on the constitution of particular socio-political forms of organization, but also on the constitution of the political itself, being thus especially relevant with a view to understanding the ups and downs of modern democracy. While not offering a close reading of Weber’s widely scattered formulations on the subject,1 I will nevertheless take the Weberian starting point seriously. Hereby, we need first to properly set our wits to charisma as an analytical category and take into account the exact senses involved in its etymological, historical and cultural contexts. Borrowed from legal and theological scholars like Sohm (1892),2 Holl (1898),3 and especially significant in the theology of Saint Paul (1 Corinthians 12–14), the latter also clearly known to Weber, charisma (Greek charis) refers in the new testamentary environment to a semantic field encompassing a ‘gift of divine grace’, a ‘spiritual person’ or a ‘spiritual gift’. Such meanings are different from but also clearly related to pre-Christian Greek sources where charis is associated with the Graces and thus with beauty, charm, and the joy of nature and living (Grimal 1990: 94; March 2014: 209). The commonalities concern the link established in both cases between the divine and the pervasive goodness of all things ‘touched’ by the divine, or in relation with the divine. This is strikingly confirmed by an additional meaning of charis referring to granting and receiving favours, or in other words, to the loveliness, goodwill, kindness and graciousness of gift-giving and the pleasure, gratitude or thankfulness of gift-receiving.4 It is this connection between charis and the circulation of gifts between the divine, the human and among humans, which connects the Christian and Greek senses, symbolizing charisma as something that is indeed out-of-the ordinary and yet paradoxically also pervasive because sanctioning the goodness of all existence. Thinking also with Mauss’s cognizance of the gift as the key anthropological foundation of social order (2002), from this brief description results that charisma is a divine gift,

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a spiritual quality that sets or orients all things to their proper relations to each other, pointing also towards the joy radiating from a life lived in such conditions. Unsurprisingly, Weber’s initial thrust in using charisma as one of the types of legitimate authority referred not so much to (modern) politicians and questions of power and politics, but as a commentary on the ancient Judaic prophets. These prophets were not augurs who predicted the future, but clairvoyants who could see that, if specific negative moral conditions persist in the people, they can be certain of specific negative outcomes (Zeitlin 1984). In comparative anthropological terms, this means that while charisma exists it is not simply up for grasp as it is a received gift (Szakolczai 2001: 377–378). Its origins are therefore beyond human powers in the sense that we cannot make charisma but only acquiesce to it, something Weber would recognize and continuously wrestle with, for example in his reflections on the routinization and institutionalization of charismatic domination (1978). Rather than dismissing such religious-theological roots of charisma, the chapter reads them in an anthropological, experiential key. Hereby, politics is not simply a sphere of organized institutions and structures, with legal provisions and political dispositions establishing relations of power enacted for the satisfaction of daily economic needs. Any such ‘system’ always begs the question of its own institution within a historical field of succeeding political orders. Thinking with foundational moments in history, it becomes clear that politics is first of all constituted through a symbolic, existential ground of experience rooted in deeper anthropological conditions. Such conditions fall back on processes of meaning formation at the level of personhood and deny a simple-minded antagonism between the political and the social or the individual and the state (Foucault 1984; Voegelin 1987; Lefort 1988; Horvath and Szakolczai 2018; Szakolczai 2018; Wydra and Thomassen 2018). In this sense, charisma designates a pre-political and meta-political experience of the world, at once within the confines of any political process but also fundamentally outside of its reach. In a very literal way, it refers to a field of tension spun between a human pole receiving and oriented towards a divine gift, and a divine pole constituting itself as presence through the same act (see also Pleșu 2012). Far from this situation leaving us with an insurmountable problem, the notion of charisma can in fact be tackled by applying essential cues from Voegelin’s life work, in many respects one of the most important followers of Weber (Szakolczai 2011). Inspired by classical Greek and Christian thought, Voegelin’s central idea is that all science of man has to start from recognizing human consciousness as part of a historical process embedded in a metaxological structure of reality, whereby metaxy refers to the human experience of life in tension towards the divine, to something located in-between immanence and transcendence, the here and the beyond, the now and the thereafter.5 In Voegelin’s words:

38 Camil F. Roman existence has the structure of the In-Between, of the Platonic metaxy, and if anything is constant in the history of mankind it is the language of tension between life and death, immortality and mortality, perfection and imperfection, time and timelessness; between order and disorder, truth and untruth, sense and senselessness of existence; between amor Dei and amor sui, l’âme ouverte and l’âme close; between the virtues of openness toward the ground of being such as faith, love, and hope, and the vices of infolding closure such as hybris and revolt. (Voegelin 1990: 119) From this metaxological condition develop all symbols of order and alienation about the cosmos. As Voegelin was fully aware, such symbolisms of participation are to be found not only in Plato’s methexis and metaxou (see also Desmond 1995, 2001, 2008),6 or in Aristotle’s metalepsis but also specifically in the Christian idea of divine grace. In this sense, charisma properly understood emerges as an experiential symbol manifesting a process of life that gleams in the consciousness of a primordial community between man and the Cosmos, the human soul and divine order. Without going into further detail, the present chapter approaches charisma analytically as exactly such a symbol of order in which the anthropological structure of experience as in-betweenness becomes manifest. Moved by a gift of grace, the carriers of charisma participate in this world at the right distance in the tension between the human and the divine pole. In contrast to the spiritual physiognomy of ‘common’ mortals, charisma corrects the negative effects of existential wastefulness and one can speculate in how far the encounter of charisma is one of the all-time experiential sources of anthropological enchantment and alienation, of a human condition defined as homo religiosus.7 That Weber was fully aware of this is visible in his work on Jewish prophets and emerges with greatest clarity in one of his most significant ever made formulations on the subject: ‘charisma lives in, though not off, this world’ (Weber 1991: 247). By recognizing charisma as a rejection of any rational economic conduct, Weber’s vision constitutes a spectacular inversion of the order of things established in the world since at least the agricultural revolution, exposing the potentially parasitic nature of all civilization.8 It thus implicitly reverses the modern, and specifically English perception of pre-historic huntergatherer societies as ‘foraging’ human groups. Going even further, the formulation has a clear other-worldly allure to it, being in fact an evident echo to Jesus’ Sermon of the Mountain, where Jesus is lifting the weight of existence with a supremely serene and confident call: Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them … So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his

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righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. (Matthew 6:26-34) With this in mind, we have already marked the key outline of the problem involved in the sociological use of the term, as well as the essential source for the morass of confusion. As I suggest, Weber recognized the metaxological field of tension involved in charisma and the challenge associated with giving it a scientific formulation. It is therefore quite likely that he insisted on working out charisma as one of the three possible types of legitimate political domination not in spite of the encountered problem, as the usual critiques to Weber go, but effectively because of it and as a very conscious choice. This becomes clearer if we take into account Weber’s well-known scepticism and even despair at the face of modern developments completing longer trends of ‘disenchantment’. Such views are expressed at vital points in his work with astounding and breath-taking even prophetic clear-sight, as if further intimating his personal relation to the problem of charisma. Part of such insights refers to powerful poetic visualizations expressing the ossifying and life-hostile nature of modern capitalism. As he formulated at the end of his famous Protestant Ethic: ‘In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the “saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.” But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.’ Further down, Weber indicates that in the absence of new prophets or a rebirth of old ideas and ideals, what waits in store for us is ‘mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive selfimportance’ where figures of nothingness (dies Nichts) reign like ‘specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart’ (1971: 181–183). Such evaluations would be later reconfirmed in a similar way in January 1919, at the end of his lecture on Politics as Vocation, where he is warning about the looming ice age. Introducing this image with a formidable juxtaposition to Shakespeare’s evocation of summer in Sonnet 102, Weber claims that ‘Not summer’s bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness … [w] here there is nothing’ (1948: 128). About the same time, his last completed lecture on General Economic History described the nineteenth century as a new age of iron, alluding to Hesiod (1981: 369). At the face of such considerations, charisma as a form of political domination can be conceived in Weber’s overall picture as a measure of last resort. It is a breezy opening meant to bring cracks in the political and economic machine and prevent the organization of human life from succumbing entirely to the power of modern bureaucracy, itself the inevitable end product of traditional and legal-rational domination. And here lies the golden thread to the whole problem. Weber’s long-standing engagement with charisma can be best understood when seen from the perspective of a philosopher whose central existential concern was the all encircling depersonalization process involved in the development of the modern age (Hennis 1988; Szakolczai 2015). Following

40 Camil F. Roman such a line of interpretation, it becomes clear that Weber’s take on charisma expressed his quest for an empirically promising modality to understand that which could cut the Gordian knot of modern bureaucracy and its afferent processes of rationalization. The result of his explorations and dilemmas could not be but a very delicate act of tightrope walking. On the one hand, his writings tame charisma, bringing it down to the level of a mere comparative tool for sociological anthropological enquiry, applicable to any set of characteristic conditions, as a ‘value-free’ category so to speak, thus illuminating with his erudition an incredibly vast array of historical, social and political experiences. On the other hand, he also slips in reflections that can only make the reader think of actual charisma and charismatic conditions, while refusing however to go too directly in any evaluations of content. This being said, it is clear that as soon as subsequent sociological enquiries lost contact in an experiential sense with the metaxological tension evoked in charisma, the sociological operationalization of the symbol could not but seriously muddle the problem at hand. In as far as it reifies the modernist mind-set, the sociological interpretation of charisma can only provide rationalizations addressing the field of the human pole as construed by the scientific dogma. This is clearly visible not just in the reductionism of positivist discourse but also in the critical depictions of charisma, both of them being in fact connected by an underlying social constructivism. It stands to reason however that this constitutes an illicit philosophical operation: if charisma refers to a divine gift, or at least to something that is and is so independent of human action or intent, then evidently the positivist and critical depiction of charisma along constructivist epistemological lines is dumbfounding, to say the least. Such treatments of charisma are in fact playing a game of holograms: they represent charisma while hollowing it out of any substance, even more, while forbidding any substance. In order for this to work, the sociological operation needs to rely on the two-folded philosophical charlatanism of scientism. First, the scientific reductionism needs to occupy the vantage point from which to claim to have solved the riddle of history by simply eliminating the divine pole from the construction of reality. Second, it claims to achieve this by pretending that the scientific operation can explain a reality larger than itself, or in other words, a world that it cannot and will never be able to reproduce at laboratory scale.9 Summing this up while providing a metaphor, if charisma is akin to a burning comet on the sky of common mortals, the sociological operation thus conceived would make sure that (i) nobody ever looks up, essentially rejecting the divine gift and (ii) the entire field of experience remains confined within the flattened out spiritual landscapes characteristic of the modern democratic age (Tocqueville 2010). The last point indicates that a discussion of charismatic domination needs to be genealogically sensitive in one additional sense. It should take into account that the scientific concern with charisma emerges precisely in the context of the

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rise of modern democracy as a political phenomenon. This means that at the same moment as there is a strong experiential basis into an equalization of conditions of life and the social body, the question of leadership is extraordinary, even paradoxical and posed in the most acute way.

The positivist and critical errors in the treatment of charisma The exposed difficulties in the origins of the concept’s formulation in social theory are methodologically significant as can be observed in the reception and application of the charisma bound concepts. The principal issue lies not only in Weber positing charismatic domination as one of the three types of legitimate authority, but also in understanding the way he attempted to anticipate and stem off future critiques and misuses of the concept. This refers, so the argument proposed here, to Weber’s methodological framing of charisma as an ideal-type and ‘value free’ concept. Without going into a critical review of the massive literature on charisma – impossible given the constraints of a chapter – we can nevertheless make sense of some of its key trends by identifying two widely diverging and yet equally infertile directions in dealing with the concept. The first follows a positivist methodology and the modernist scientific understanding of the world strictly speaking, either in a quantitative or more qualitative disguise.10 In the case of the former, the purpose is to ‘operationalize’ and hence quantify and analyse the ‘object’ of charismatic domination in terms of empirically rigorous definitional properties that can be tested and falsified against an exterior reality. On a substantive level, the concept hinges in this model on an exclusive ‘pragmatic’ criterion regarding the power of the charismatic person to create mass following and revolutionize or dominate social, political, cultural and/or economic configurations, with or without a crucial role assigned in this process to the (charismatic) community following the leader (Lubbers, Gijsberts, and Scheepers 2002; Pappas 2016). Regarding the latter and following Bourdieu’s lead (1987: 121), a symbolic interactionist theoretical frame is advanced in order to study the interactions between the charismatic leader, followers and lay people. The purpose here is to expose the processes underpinning the social construction of charisma by either looking into the performative, dramaturgic and staging aspects of charismatic display (Blasi 1991; Reed 2013), or by focusing on the role of followers in defining charisma in terms of their expectations, needs and representations (Finlay 2002; Chan 2013; Joosse 2017). Common to all such types of positivist research is that the understanding of charismatic domination is ‘sterilized’ by transforming charisma into a purely relational category of social construction. The resulting confusions could not be starker, to the point that any meaningful discussion of the concept becomes obliterated. In such a scenario, at least in theory, from Churchill to Hitler, from Lenin and Stalin to Jesus, Mao Tse Dung and Gandhi, from the various ‘populist’ leaders to medieval saints and the modern industry of social media

42 Camil F. Roman influencers and iconic pop stars, media stars, sport stars and so on, all could be shown to display various degrees of charismatic powers or leadership. The positivist value-free approach marries here epistemologically a most unfortunate and not at all value-free social constructivism that makes little sense in understanding the problem at hand. The methodological clarification of an ideal-type in its relation to the question of objectivity in the sense of ‘value-freedom’ can emerge by introducing in the discussion a criterion from the philosophy of science, adding also an anthropological twist to it. This refers to Weber’s implicit adoption of what goes by the name of ‘mind-world monism’, meaning an understanding of the relation between knowledge and the knower that denies a strict object-subject dichotomy. As such, the foundation of mind-world monism is the philosophical wager that in human terms there is no mind independent world and no world independent mind.11 To make the point, a more attentive look at Weber’s methodological approach indicates that his method is the historical comparative depiction of experiences of charisma and the analysis or determination of their social effects. It is emphatically not a rationalist definitional operation establishing abstractly what charisma is, followed up by standards of measuring up its ‘reality’, be they of a quantitative or qualitative nature. Weber’s purpose is to understand the phenomenon out of its existential contexts in order to formulate a meaningful ideal type that is precisely not the construction of deductive rationalizations and their verifications and/or falsifications oblivious of any question of meaning, experience and reflexivity. Ultimately, Weber’s formulation of ideal-types makes sense of the world by presupposing mind-world monism, that is, the existence of a constitutive relation between the mind and the world in which the subject emerges in the phenomenality of an object of knowledge. The anthropological interpretation of this epistemological criterion sets the problem of knowledge in the sense of a participatory ontology that is irreconcilably opposed to the positivist presupposition of the Descartesian ‘mind–world dualism’ (the assumption of a world independent mind and a mind independent world). The latter necessarily leads to an unbridgeable subject–object dichotomy and the formulation of a tautological social science. In this context, it is no small irony that the founding father of so-called ‘interpretive sociology’ should make a career in positivist reductionism whereby the subject takes over the position of an outsider and becomes thus ‘objective’, but only in the sense of the methodological reification of objects as social constructs, which, together with the idea of ‘social representations’ and ‘collective consciousness’ are the ultimate consequence of mind-world dualism. In all fairness and as already shown, this does go back to some of Weber’s difficulties regarding his attempts to steer between the irrelevance of a subjectivist, normative or even worse merely ideological position and the modern scientistic and technological-bureaucratic appropriation of reality. Even so, Weber’s ideal type of charisma moves here and there towards a more substantive understanding and search of the term, as when he switches from the

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idea of ‘pure charisma’ in the methodological sense of an ideal type amenable to anthropologically analysable phenomena, to ‘true charisma’. To exemplify, on the one hand he claims: Charisma is validated through the recognition of a personal proof by those who are ruled. This was originally effected through the performance of a miracle, bringing about a voluntary dedication to a revelation, to hero worship, to absolute trust in the leader. (Weber 2019: 374–375) On the other hand he immediately adds that ‘Where charisma is genuine, this is not, however, the basis for legitimation; it is instead rooted in an obligation on the part of those who have received the call to acknowledge their duty to provide personal proof’ (2019: 375, my italics). Or when he implies a clear distinction between genuine charisma, its rational (legitimate) imitation and its parasitic mimicry: The refusal of church office by Jesuits is a rationalised application of the principle of being ‘disciples’. It is plain that to this belong all heroes of asceticism, mendicant orders, and fighters for faith … The well-known saying of St. Paul, ‘If any who did not work, neither should he eat,’ was directed against parasitic missionaries (my italics), and in no respect endorses ‘the economy’. (Weber 2019: 378) This kind of multi-layered, polysemous narrative caught off guard (or pretended to) even towering figures such as Eric Voegelin who under the misleading momentary influence of Leo Strauss12 included Weber in his devastating critique of value-free science (Voegelin 1987: 1–26).13 As stated, the proposed solution to these puzzles refers to an anthropological interpretation of charisma as a quality and symbol of a (metaphysical) participatory ontology.14 This makes charisma neither objective in the sense of a positivist object observed from an outsider position, nor lacking objectivity in the sense that charisma exists and is therefore recognized, misrecognized, imitated, faked, ignored, ridiculed, rejected, followed, forgotten, lost, or recollected; neither is it universally valid in the sense of an equally participating ‘all’, nor not-universal in the sense of the metaxological reality that it symbolizes and that applies to every concrete man. Moving on, while the first strand misrepresents charisma in the sense of value-free positivism and objectivity, the second ‘critical’ strand takes stock against this already misconstrued position, charging Weber for his value opaqueness or even worse, going against the presumed dangerous normative implications of his thinking. To start with, Lukacs’s Destruction of Reason provides one of the first, most famous and vicious positions against Weber’s sociology, depicting it as ‘irrational’ and setting the tone for the association

44 Camil F. Roman between charisma and proto- or crypto-fascism. It is also illustrative for the subsequent normative-based misreading of charisma in Weber’s overall work. In this sense, a reformulation of this line of argument, albeit in softer and altered terms, portrays Weber as a thinker with little if any democratic pedigree. The basic premises of this punch line lie in Weber’s pessimistic and even ‘realist’ reduction of politics to a struggle for power, to instrumental rationality and the realization of interests, to a perpetual field of violence and domination, all resulting from his value-free definition of the state as central authority with a monopoly over the legitimate means of coercion. The impugning claim considers that Weber empties politics and the state of any ethical concern, downplaying it as a space with rational discourse and peaceful mechanisms of conflict resolution, as a non-Darwinian field of social action (Ferber 1970: 53–76; Aron 1971: 92; Habermas 1992: 134; Honneth 1995: 161). In these cases charisma is either non-significant in a normative sense, or it is simply entirely negative. While on the surface such discourses are more nuanced than the critique of irrationalism made by Lukacs, the general argument is nevertheless misplaced. It should not be forgotten for example that Weber’s famous Politics as Vocation where he (re-)stated his equally famous definition of the state (2003: 310–311) on which many of such assessments are based, constitutes in fact a follow up reflection on charismatic leadership. And it is in this general context that Weber makes judgments like the following: the politician driven by power ‘may give the impression of strength, but his actions merely lead into emptiness and absurdity’, with power politics stemming ‘from a most wretched and superficial lack of concern for the meaning of human action, a blasé attitude that knows nothing of the tragedy in which all action, but quite particularly political action, is in truth enmeshed’ (2003: 354–355). Such considerations alone should have prevented Weber’s (charisma) association with immorality/amorality. Nevertheless, Weber’s political writings and his assigned preference for plebiscitary democracy and charismatic leadership, for a strong and even discretionary constitutional position of the German president and thus for a type of executive that is potentially dictatorial and/or populist are seen as serious impediments to a ‘Weberian’ democratic political theory (Freund 1968: 218; Mommsen 1984: 332–389, 409–414, 1974: 72–94; Cavalli 1987: 318–319; Slagstad 1988: 122–123; Eliaeson 1998: 47–60, 2000: 131–148). Once more, such arguments entirely neglect that for Weber charisma and charismatic communities can actually work on anti-authoritarian premises, enabling various forms of ‘communism of love’ with strong group solidarity and equalitarian relationships (Weber 1978: 1119–1120). Yet beyond matters of content, the first methodological error of all ‘critical theory’ driven evaluations of Weber’s work refers to the fundamental problem of mistaking a concept made for the anthropological interpretation of social processes and the institutionalization of political power, for normative considerations regarding its viability in the democratization and modernization of societies. For the reasons already indicated, suffice to say that part of

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Weber’s insistence on charisma as a ‘value free’ ideal-type was supposed to prevent his work from being drawn precisely into such ideologically charged positions whose goals are simply the reification of modernist understandings of politics. At least since the Enlightenment (Voegelin 1975), at the root of such errors lies the growing modern confusion regarding the task of the philosopher in the world, a confusion that annihilates the classical distinction between bios praktikos and bios theoretikos (see Plato’s Gorgias), or the Christian one between vita activa and vita contemplativa. This confusion either destroys or redefines the life of the spirit in terms of the instrumental rationality of bios praktikos.15 The second essential error in the critical literature is that it sterilizes charisma in the methodological operation in two ways. For once, such literature assigns charisma to the irrationality or the retrograde nature of pre-modern times, thus making it entirely irrelevant for the sociological analysis of modern phenomena and especially of secular democratic politics and modern political and social movements; in this scenario, charisma simply ceases to exist, apparently due to the mere passing of time (Loewenstein 1966: 86; Bensman and Givant 1975: 610; Schluchter 1981: 124, 1988: 392–432). Alternatively, the critical literature proposes the dissipation of charisma in ‘charismatic communities’, transforming it so to say into a collective quality that gives the concept the apparent advantage of being viable for the theoretization of ‘radical democracy’ and radical democratic foundings (Kalyvas 2008: 1–78). All of these approaches and in the same way as positivist ones, while going back to bits and pieces of Weber’s writings, in fact don’t take charisma seriously, corrupting any meaningful discussion. At best, they reduce charismatic authority to an entirely relational category, and at worst to a composite type that exists only as a collage of put together fragments of different things. This chapter considers such arguments methodologically flawed as they simply fail to follow the substance and identify the animating spirit in Weber’s writings on charisma. The solution that brings the apparently contradictory parts of his arguments together is to understand his claim of objectivity guiding his ideal-typification as an existential, experiential and ultimately anthropological stance. This submits all epistemological claims to an understanding of reality as a metaxological participatory ontology. It solves both the apparent contradictions in relation to ‘value-freedom’ and has the distinctive advantage of respecting Weber’s intellectual formation as a philosopher in dialogue with the classic and Christian sources of European civilization. Finally, it also ‘allows’ Weber and us to claim both an anthropologically informed objectivity, and a meaningful category that should be opened up again to discussions of substance.

Charismatic liminality and liminal charisma The anthropological reading of charisma can be further clarified and reinforced by taking into account the approach of liminality. Referring initially to rites of

46 Camil F. Roman passage in small-scale communities (Gennep 1960), liminality has become a significant source for an anthropologically inspired social theory, one able to escape the pitfalls of modernist blind-spots at the level of concept formation and theory building (Szakolczai and Thomassen 2019: 1–43). As a tool of social theory, liminality captures the between and betwixt of crisis situations and transitions, the contingency of out-of-the ordinary circumstances in which social structures collapse and society faces the challenge of finding a way back to orderly social and political conditions. Liminality is therefore not part of an explanatory causal theory of social change, it is not even a mere universal metaphor for understanding what is actually involved in such processes of transformation, but captures the experiential quality involved in them (Thomassen 2014: 1–14). While the connection between charisma and liminality has been made before and their conceptual complementarity explored as early as the 1980s (Handelman 1985), the present chapter does not follow this approach. Even though highly accurate in its initial insight, Handelman’s proposition is practically unworkable. At no point does the author follow up on the radical contradictions existing between on the one hand charisma and liminality as foundational experiences relevant for an anthropologically inspired conceptual frame, and on the other hand the author’s neo-Hegelian and postmodern deconstructionist packaging of liminality and charisma, where the tensions between Hegelian and deconstructionist philosophy remain equally unclarified. To make the mishmash complete, Handelman’s introduction of a third term, the ‘symbolic type’, supposed to bring together liminality and charisma, is an additional useless complication given that all political and social instantiation is in fact always of a symbolic nature (Lefort 1988; Wydra 2012). The more promising path is simply to follow Weber. While he was unaware of van Gennep’s contemporary work, he nevertheless captured quite accurately the conditions of liminality under which charisma becomes manifest at social level (Weber 1978). There are two ways we can sift out from Weber’s work for establishing this link. First, there is charismatic liminality or the reactive modality when charismatic leaders are raising up to the occasion and assume leadership in the midst of generalized confusion and crisis in which taken for granted norms of the economic, cultural, political settings become questioned, doubt and scepticism arise and a frenetic search starts for finding new ways of living. Second, there is liminal charisma or the agentive modality when charismatic leaders decide to step outside of their ‘anonymity’, actively inducing liminality through their anti-mundane dispositions and their radical hostility towards any life conduct based on ossified practices, like the routinization of economic and political rationality. In as much as liminality is an anthropological, universal phenomenon that is part of the nature of any change and transition, there is a strong empirical case to be made for the association16 of liminal conditions with the emergence of any of Weber’s three ideal types of domination.17 However, in light of the above, charismatic leadership appears most visibly linked to the existence of

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precisely such liminal conditions in society. Thinking charisma with the experience of liminality requires therefore to bring charismatic domination on the same par with the other two Weberian ideal-types, and to lift it up from its presumed conceptual subordination to legal-rational and traditional authority. While by its very nature it is indeed exceptional, it is certainly not out-dated and especially not insignificant, but can contribute to our understanding of the problem involved in establishing social, political and economic modes of organization. The routinization of charisma addressed by Weber attempted to grasp in fact exactly this founding element of charisma. Even more and going against the grain of assigning it to a distant and irrational past, charisma is highly relevant for the understanding of modern politics, specifically in the context of modern (liberal) democracy.

Charisma and the political Without going into too many details, the European tradition of the past century has produced by and large two distinct understandings of the political. The first follows Schmitt’s or Arendt’s search for a contrastive and/or intensive approach to the political, whereby the political becomes sharply delimited from other spheres of society. The second engages Schmitt from a distance, being connected to Aron and much more importantly to Lefort and his attempt of thinking about the political in a foundational sense, as something that constitutes all domains of social life (Moyn 2017). While not ignoring the insights that emerge from the first strand of literature, any anthropological discussion of charisma must ‘translate’ them in the foundational and constitutive senses, engaging with the problem of the political by following the level of generative principles. In this sense, taking charisma seriously – as charismatic liminality and liminal charisma – makes it necessary to move beyond the concerns of political science, political sociology or political theory and enquire into the primary symbolic, existential and experiential foundations on which various forms of society and their institutionalized politics rest. It needs therefore to move downwards at this deeper level of the political in order to uncover everything that positive science needs to ignore or hide in order to deal with ‘empirical’ facts (Lefort 1988, esp. 1–20). Thinking with the problem of the political setting of a society (Lefort’s ‘mise en forme’) means that charisma cannot be confused in the first instance neither with a particular table of values, nor with a catalogue of purposes and goals, nor with the logic of organization inscribed in the social practices, beliefs and representations characteristic of any specific society. In this sense, simply pursuing or imitating the values, goals and practices of a political regime does not in itself make anybody charismatic, good nor noble, neither does it constitute an ultimate proof for being such things. On the other hand, this evidently does not mean that charisma can be in any sense ‘value-free’ or that it invites to moral relativism, or contradicts the goodness involved in certain universal values. Rather, by moving across the boundaries of concrete historical

48 Camil F. Roman configurations, charisma as a divine gift must be first of all connected to the problem posed to the good life by the mere existence in society. It needs to be thus connected to the ‘living thought’ of wisdom (see also Plato’s Meno) by which the good life becomes apparent within and beyond the dimly lit scaffold set by the standards of the common good. However, the exact meaning of this needs to be ascertained and for this purpose a few additional clarifications will prove useful. To start with, if we accept the anthropological interpretation of charisma as a metaxological symbol of order, it becomes clear that charisma points towards three constitutive experiences. First, the matter-of-fact shows that not all people can be claimed to be charismatic or equally so. For this reason, charisma tends to arrange the world according to a logic that transcends the purposive coordinates of routinized, everyday existence. Second, being a divine gift that in turn leads to the exchange of social gifts and thus to the joy, pleasure and rightfulness of social relations, charisma points towards the ‘one’. This has to be taken not in the sense of a quantity or as a number but as a participatory quality manifesting the oneness of reality. Third, charisma properly understood provides one of the most dramatic symbolizations of what it means to exist as a human being, as a person whose last resorts mark the undefinable, irreducible, intimate, mysterious, incalculable and ultimately unaccountable nature of the mere act of existence. In this respect, charisma can be assumed to be most viscerally opposed to any kind of depersonalization process that, as Weber recognized, will inevitably emerge at the heart of any civilizational setting. It therefore runs transverse to the senseless multiplication of purely mimetic effects, themselves the inevitable consequence of the rationalizations and standardizations generated by the manifestation of a common good. Evidently, this leads us to the heart of the controversy, to the paradoxical claim of charisma: ‘following’ or ‘imitating’ the charismatic person does not imply selfabandonment, but quite the contrary, the restoration of true personhood from the wasteful, depersonalizing effects induced by the common good.18 Moving on, as soon as we look more closely into the workings of the common good, we come to the cognizance of a few very significant aspects. In as much as it mirrors on a lower scale the principle of the oneness of reality, human consciousness identifies itself in the very act of realizing a common good. In this sense, politics cannot be reduced in the standard fashion to an activity that emerged in the context of sedentary and (partially) free societies; more specifically, the ‘grandeur’ or even the invention of politics cannot be overlapped with the ancient Greek polis. Furthermore, while the origins of the common good cannot be ascertained with any certainty, neither in genealogical nor in existential terms, we can nevertheless observe one of its most peculiar and even perplexing characteristics. That is, at the very moment it replicates or mimics the principle of the oneness of reality, it also institutes a quasiunbridgeable ontological separation between itself and something that lies beyond it. As such, the political sealing of the common good marks on an experiential level the loss of pure self-immanence. To put it differently, the

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political appears as a hesitation, as a tragic afterthought and after-event, a restorative impulse securing a common good that can only be about an act of recollection through which politics, any politics, tries to materialize the inexplicable haunting memory of paradise lost. At this point we can further clarify the problem of the political by appealing to classical philosophical thought. This is so because the Greeks were extremely aware that the oneness of reality, and with it the genesis of the common good, manifests on an anthropological level as at once a tripartite union and also separation between the one, the few and the many. Following Aristotle’s Politics (1997), this union and separation constitutes the foundational criterion differentiating between different forms of society, or the various political regimes. And this division does in fact correspond to the sociological understanding of the formation of personhood along concentric layers of recognition and friendship (Pizzorno 1991). In this sense, and following Manent, it is adamant to realize that the one, the few and the many do not refer to a quantity or a quantifying operation of the world, but rather to qualitative criteria. It reveals the political constitution of the human condition as determined by the interaction between these three active powers or principles that manifest at all times, quite irrespective of how societies are instituted. To illustrate, nobody really counts neither the one, nor the few, nor the many, to know nevertheless what they refer to, not as numbers in the sense of quantities, but as qualitative phenomena (Manent 2013: 64–68). From the perspective of an anthropological discussion of charisma it now becomes clear that (i) every person is part of a field of tension spun between the one, the few and the many; (ii) the further away one moves from the one and the few towards the many, the more the concrete person as the materialization of the one is at risk of undergoing mimetic depersonalization processes aimed at satisfying a presumed collective good; and (iii) charismatic leadership properly understood must therefore refer not to the (irrational) annihilation of any of these active powers, but to setting them in their proper disposition or relation to each other, bringing them back to their matrix, or in other words, to their natural levels of energy at which charisma is preserved and mirrored in the joy emanating from gift exchanges and the beauty of social interaction. The reason why political life appears more often than not out of joint is precisely due to the growing tendencies of these active powers and hence to the contradicting, pulsating, mutually annihilating and threatening dispositions in which they become enmeshed. In turn, such libidinous ‘growth’ falls back on point (i): with each person embedded in the field spun between the three active powers, at any given time the same person (the same ‘one’) will be part of both the few and the many for other ‘ones’. Communal existence is as a consequence always at risk of a mimetic aggregation towards the (threatening) many that can in fact bring about the sacrificial destruction of the common good (see also Girard 1979). Taken in this way, charismatic leadership is not vaporized in a relational category, but is marked as the substance with

50 Camil F. Roman the ability to recognize existing dispositions between active powers at any given time, and to bring or indicate necessary corrections. To illustrate this with a geometrical figure, charisma brings the edges of the triangle formed between the one, the few and the many to equal distance to each other, making social relations rational in the etymological sense of harmony, proportion and order, thus annihilating the insinuating power of the void and liminal incommensurability.

Modern/contemporary democracy and the ‘charismatic’ leader-shop In lieu of a conclusion and in light of the above, for the remainder of the chapter a few reflections will be offered regarding the relation between modern democracy and charismatic leadership. As the main line of argument has hopefully managed to indicate, practically the entire discussion around charisma in the context of modern political life is misplaced and sifted through ideological considerations. Charisma is certainly more than just a mere residual category and emerges most clearly as a problem precisely at the very moment of democratic consolidation. Thinking with the political, the meaning of this cannot be confused with the tenets of democratic ideology. Two observations need to be made in this respect. The first refers to the fact that with modern democracy an additional variable enters into the equation, further complicating things. This is the democratic pretence to overcome the active powers of the one, the few and the many by replacing them with the unifying power of the ‘all’, introducing in this way a simple division between the all of representative regimes, and the absence of the all from non-representative regimes. As Manent correctly observed, modern democracy achieves representative government through a rigorously applied quantifying method of computing numbers. It is not based on majorities and minorities per se, but on the act of counting (2013: 64–68). In this context, the glaring confusions of democratic ideology come to the fore by identifying charisma with the political power of an individual or a charismatic community to dissolve the all into the one, or into the People-as-One (see for example Talmon 1961; Lefort 1986: 292–306, 1988: 9–20). This is indicative of an inability to understand the one and the all as qualities or active powers, and not as quantities or mere numbers. Contrary to such views, with modern democracy quite the opposite happens, namely the ultimate decomposition of the one, the few and the many into the all, with liberal and totalitarian democracy espousing on a sociological level only a difference of degree. Following up on the idea of a graphic representation, in this new scenario the edges of the triangle between the one, the few and the many are annihilated as active powers by forcing them on the same, potentially infinite line of the all. What we witness is thus a process by which the all constitutes itself as the quality of the incommensurable. With the incommensurable all, political existence becomes an alchemical method applied for the permanent composition, decomposition and transformation of human

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reality, being thus degraded to the pastry of a completely levelled down and relational category (Horvath 2015). While the legitimate inkling emerges that political existence as such requires a degree of unification that makes the incommensurable all an ever-insinuating anthropological constant, modern democracy raises this problem to another level. Hereby, the institution of pure relationality required by the incommensurable all means that concrete entities, from persons to objects and even nature, are burned up as necessary ‘energy’ (see also Roman 2019). This sacrificial logic makes us understand a most perplexing characteristic of the active power of the incommensurable all, namely that the opposite or better said its underside is not the one, but rather nothingness. Of all people, Hitler and his propagandists were strikingly aware of this. In what is widely recognized as one of the most brilliant movies in the history of modern propaganda (Riefenstahl 1935), Hitler declares that the Nazi Party pulled Germany out of ‘nothing’, leading it to future glory and happiness by seeking the transformation of the German nation into a society of the all (one people), with no distinctions of rank and no classes(!). That is the same movie in which Hitler does not only invoke the idea of ‘nothingness’ Weber warned about a few decades in advance, but also demands that the Nazi party should be an ‘iron organization’ (stahlhart), literally turning Weber’s prophetic insight about the ‘iron cage’ (in Weber: ‘stahlhartes Gehäuse’, literally: ‘casing hard as steel’) on its head, assuming it as a mission (!). As with the false gods of yesteryear, today’s gods too demand in exchange for humanity’s happiness the same all-inclusive democratic rape of the one, the few and the many. At the face of already consumed modern experiences, one cannot stop wondering if below the early twenty-first-century operationalization of humanity as the active power of the ultimate all, the clutches of the abyss are not opening once again. The second observation points towards the Puritans as potentially the most significant historical source for the democratic all, explaining its ‘function’ as a most paradoxical sterilizer of charisma. In historical terms, political modernity advanced in the sense of the continuous expansion and institutionalization of political equality, the representation of the people (brotherhood), and the protection of civic rights (freedom). In this context and for a long time, actual political leadership was hold to be synonymous with the pursuit of such goals. For this reason, the ‘personhood’ factor was simply obscured by the identification of the leader with the display of democratic credentials, i.e. by melting the problem of the one into the all. Following this development, once the correct institutional formulas identified and the political battles won, democratic political regimes should presumably constitute waterproof political systems: (i) they make the people politically satisfied, (ii) they submit entire populations to legal-rational domination, eliminating arbitrariness and (iii) they work more or less on their own, as autonomous machines. Leadership should be therefore a non-question, and even more so charismatic leadership. However, as recent experiences show, at the moment of maximum democratic stretch-out, personhood makes a surprising comeback and it does

52 Camil F. Roman this in particularly significant and inevitable situations of political life, related to liminal crises and transitions, when masks are falling and the concrete person becomes the most important source of political guidance. We can see this return of the person happening in two ways. The first refers to politicians who look increasingly like anonymous, indistinct, inter-changeable apparatchiki specialized in the legal-rational distribution of goods under conditions of stability when what counts as ‘rational’ is generally accepted and remains unquestioned. The second refers to populist politicians who oppose the ‘system’ of bureaucratic career politicians by exposing their more than evident limitations in situations of liminal breakdown. In as much as both types (as ideal-types) are instruments of the democratic incommensurable all, they will be viscerally opposed to genuine charisma as ‘defined’ in this chapter. This being said, the current leadership crisis facilitates a most significant recognition. In established modern democracies any kind of leadership is literally a creatio ex nihilo manifesting in the liminal void moment of elections (see also Introduction). And any kind of discussion about democracy needs to take properly stock of the obscured, primary, basic meaning involved in this: elections are made possible because the people is held as elector, because in turn every individual is called and follows the calling of being an elect. In a nutshell, any genealogy of modern democracy needs to revisit in tandem Weber and Tocqueville and trace the exact historical processes linking the Puritan elect bearing the marks of charisma to the rise of the democratic political community as a charismatic people.19 It is precisely because each one person is symbolized and taken as charismatic that in modern democracy the question of political leadership cannot properly emerge, but only manifests as a paradox or anomaly. This means that far from being a secondary concept that advanced democracies and exceptionally enlightened scholars can safely ignore relegating it to the distant, ‘irrational’ past; even more, far from being antidemocratic, Weber’s charismatic leadership helps us understand the ways in which the very existence of modern democracy is in fact underpinned and constituted by the symbol and the belief in the symbol of a charismatic people. It is only within such a forma mentis that electing complete strangers or what are essentially virtual projections on electronic screens, and counting universal equal votes could be really thought off as sufficient for legitimizing political leaders, and not appear as anything but crazy. Nobody should mock the pure in heart, nor the innocence behind the selfdenying exaltation of Puritan heroism. Neither should anyone deny the intrinsic value, goodness and tragic dignity characteristic of every single person as concrete, unique and unrepeatable ones. Nonetheless, following the symbol of an elector charismatic people means indulging in a senile act of charismatic leader-shopping. Thinking charisma with its essence means that it is precisely a gift, leading in turn to the joy of living discovered in the circulation of social gifts, helping everyone to live through and fulfil. But the nature of the gift(s) is such that it cannot be about an equally participating all in the divine gift(s). If the latter were true, it would preclude any intuition for anything high and

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above, essentially sterilizing charisma as a divine gift and transforming it into an entitlement, a law of nature. It would lead by necessity to an inflection and impoverishment of the spirit as expressed in the exaltation of humanity as the ultimate all. That however cannot be the meaning of a divine gift because it subverts the very hierarchy in the order of being, intimately tied to every living thing, overcoming and even reversing the gap existing between the god and the man. One can still find beautiful expressions of wisdom and piety inscribed on buildings, paintings, books and the indelible memory of many European souls and they should make clear to us that while charisma exists, modernity advanced where charismatic people cannot and even less so a charismatic humanity.

Notes 1 See for example his reflections on world religions, his subsequent elaborations in Economy and Society and his late engagement with charismatic leadership in the famous lecture on Politics as Vocation. 2 For a discussion of the similarities between Weber and Sohm, see Speer (1978: 43–46). 3 See Weber (1978: 216). 4 See Liddell and Scott (1889). 5 This being said, by no means can Platonic and Christian thought be entirely congruent. In this sense, for some of the unresolved contradictions in Voegelin’s philosophy of history, see Nagy (2011). 6 ‘Metaxou’ is just an alternative English version of Greek μεταξύ. 7 On the formulation of the human condition as homo religiosus, see Eliade (1987). 8 On the relation between civilization and the figure of parasite, see also Serres (2014). 9 See Henry (2012) and Tyson (2015). 10 The relevant literature in this strand is more or less contiguous with the postWeberian scientific developments and so listing it would require a published outlet on its own. As a consequence, only a few examples can be given and only to illustrate the made points. 11 For a highly useful discussion of mind-world monism and its applications in the social sciences, particularly also regarding Weber’s mind-world monism underlying his work on ideal types, see Jackson (2011: 24–40; 112–155). 12 For the relation between Strauss and Voegelin’s interpretation of Weber in the New Science of Politics, see Szakolczai (2000: 56–58). 13 It is no small irony that Voegelin’s life long search for the philosophical grounding of trans-historical anthropological structures of experience could be hold up against him much in a similar manner in which he argued against Weber in the New Science of Politics. 14 This is in fact totally in accord with Voegelin’s efforts to establish an anthropological foundation for political science. 15 Löwith’s differentiation between Marx and Weber, whereby the former ‘proposes a therapy’ while the latter has ‘only a ‘diagnosis to offer’ (1993: 48) is in this sense quite accurate and revealing. 16 ‘Association’ is meant here not in the sense of ‘foundational’, but as merely constitutive of the historical process. 17 See for example the relation between liminality and the emergence of modern democracy as a rational-legal type of authority (Wydra 2009).

54 Camil F. Roman 18 While the chapter cannot go deeper into this, the flipside to the ‘common good’ as a problem is constituted by the ‘individual good’ as a problem. The latter is evidently also fraught by mimetic and depersonalizing effects. 19 In the opening pages to Democracy in America, Tocqueville makes very clear that the Puritan point of departure constitutes the ‘germ of what must follow and the key to nearly the whole book’ (2010: 49). Strangely enough, this quasi-Aristotelian sociological thesis on the rise of modern democracy has been so far by and large ignored or downplayed. As indicated in this chapter, a sociological interpretation of this claim must circumvent political philosophical discussions regarding the two foundings of America – one Puritan and one pertaining to the Enlightenment – and identify instead the historical conditions leading to a social reality underpinned by the symbol of the charismatic people, in America and Europe.

References Aristotle (1997) Politics, edited by Peter L. Phillips Simpson, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Aron, Raymond (1971) ‘Max Weber and power-politics’, in Otto Stammer (ed.), Max Weber and Sociology Today, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 83–100. Bensman, Joseph and Michael Givant (1975) ‘Charisma and modernity: the use and abuse of a concept’, Social Research 42(4): 570–614. Bible (2019) New International Version, retrieved at www.biblegateway.com (accessed 20 November 2019). Blasi, Anthony J. (1991) Making Charisma: The Social Construction of Paul’s Public Image, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Bourdieu, Pierre (1987) ‘Legitimation and structured interests in Weber’s sociology of religion’, in Sam Whimster and Scott Lash (eds.), Max Weber, Rationality, and Modernity, London: Routledge, pp. 119–36. Cavalli, Luciano (1987) ‘Charisma and twentieth-century politics’, in Sam Whimster and Scott Lash (eds.), Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity, London: Routledge, pp. 317–33. Chan, Cheris Shun-Ching (2013) ‘Doing ideology amid a crisis: collective actions and discourses of the Chinese Falun Gong movement’, Social Psychology Quarterly 76 (1): 1–24. Desmond, William (1995) Being and the Between, Albany: State University of New York Press. Desmond, William (2001) Ethics and the Between, Albany: State University of New York Press. Desmond, William (2008) God and the Between, Oxford: Blackwell. Eliade, Mircea (1987) The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, translated by Williard R. Trask, New York: Harcourt Inc. Eliaeson, Sven (1998) ‘Max Weber and plebiscitary democracy’, in Ralph Schroeder (ed.), Max Weber, Democracy and Modernization, New York: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 47–60. Eliaeson, Sven (2000) ‘Constitutional caesarism: Weber’s politics in their German context’, in Stephen P. Turner (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Weber, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 131–48. Ferber, Christian von (1970) Die Gewalt in der Politik: Auseinandersetzung mit Max Weber, Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer.

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Finlay, Barbara (2002) ‘The origins of charisma as process: a case study of Hildegard Bingen’, Symbolic Interaction 25(4): 537–54. Foucault, Michel (1984) ‘Nietzsche, genealogy, history’, in Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader, London: Penguin, pp. 76–100. Freund, Julien (1968) The Sociology of Max Weber, New York: Pantheon Books. Gennep, Arnold van (1960) The Rites of Passage, London: Routledge. Girard, René (1979) Violence and the Sacred, London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Grimal, Pierre (1990) The Concise Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Habermas, Jürgen (1992) ‘The horrors of autonomy: Carl Schmitt in English’, in S. W. Nicholsen (ed.), The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992, pp. 128–39. Handelman, Don (1985) ‘Charisma, liminality and symbolic types’, in Erik Cohen (ed.), Comparative Social Dynamics: Essays in Honor of S.N. Eisenstadt, New York: Routledge, pp. 346–59. Hennis, Wilhelm (1988) Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction, translated by K. Tribe, London: Allen and Unwin. Henry, Michel (2012) Barbarism, New York: Continuum. Holl, Karl (1898) Enthusiasmus und Bussgewalt beim griechischen Mönchtum: eine Studie zu Symeon dem neuen Theologen, Leipzig: JC Hinrich. Honneth, Axel (1995) The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, Cambridge, MA.: Polity Press. Horvath, Agnes (2015) ‘The genealogy of political alchemy: the technological invention of identity change’, in Agnes Horvath, Bjørn Thomassen and Harald Wydra (eds.), Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality, Oxford: Berghahn. Horvath, Agnes and Arpad Szakolczai (2018) ‘Political anthropology’, in Stephen Turner and William Outhwaite (eds.), Sage Handbook of Political Sociology, London: Sage, pp. 189–204. Jackson, Patrick T. (2011) The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and Its Implications for the Study of World Politics, London: Routledge. Joas, Hans (1992) The Creativity of Action, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Joosse, Paul (2017) ‘Max Weber’s disciples: theorizing the charismatic aristocracy’, Sociological Theory 35(4): 334–58. Kalyvas, Andreas (2008) Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary. Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lefort, Claude (1986) The Political Forms of Modern Society Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism, edited and introduced by J. B. Thompson, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Lefort, Claude (1988) Democracy and Political Theory, translated by D. Macey, Cambridge: Polity Press. Liddell, Henry G. and Robert Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, retrieved at www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus: text:1999.04.0058:entry=xa/ris&highlight=charis (accessed on 20 November 2019). Loewenstein, Karl (1966) Max Weber’s Political Ideas in the Perspective of Our Time, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Löwith, Karl (1993) Max Weber and Karl Marx, with a new preface by B. S. Turner, London: Routledge. Lubbers, Marcel, Merove Gijsberts and Peer Scheepers (2002) ‘Extreme right-wing voting in Western Europe’, European Journal of Political Research 41: 345–78.

56 Camil F. Roman Manent, Pierre (2013) Metamorphoses of the City: On the Western Dynamic, translated by M. Lepain, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. March, Jenny R. (2014) Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Oxford: Oxbow Books. Mauss, Marcel (2002) The Gift. The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, with a foreword by M. Douglas, London: Routledge. Mommsen, Wolfgang (1974) The Age of Bureaucracy: Perspectives on the Political Sociology of Max Weber, New York: Harper Torchbooks. Mommsen, Wolfgang (1984) Max Weber and German Politics, 1890–1920, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moyn, Samuel (2017) ‘Concepts of the political in twentieth-century European thought’, in Jens Meierhenrich and Oliver Simons (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 291–311. Nagy, Eugen L. (2011) ‘Noesis and faith. Eric Voegelin and Søren Kierkegaard’, in Lee Trepanier and Steven F. McGuire (eds.), Eric Voegelin and the Continental Tradition: Explorations in Modern Political Thought, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, pp. 85–107. Pappas, Takis S. (2016) ‘Are populist leaders “charismatic”? The evidence from Europe’, Constellations 23(3): 378–90. Pizzorno, Alessandro (1991) ‘On the individualistic theory of social order’, in Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman (eds.), Social Theory for a Changing Society, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 218–21. Plato (1997) Complete Works, edited with introduction and notes by J.M. Cooper, associate editor D.S. Hutchinson, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Pleșu, Andrei (2012) Parabolele lui Isus. Adevărul ca poveste, Bucharest: Humanitas. Reed, Isaac Ariail (2013) ‘Charismatic performance: a study of Bacon’s rebellion’, American Journal of Cultural Sociology 1(2): 254–87. Riefenstahl, Leni (1935) (2000 ) Triumph des Willens, DVD, Santa Monica, CA: Connoisseur Video Collection. Roman, Camil Francisc (2019) ‘The modern schismogenesis in European thought and politics, and the rise of the derivative self: subversion as divinizing the void’, in Agnes Horvath, Camil Francisc Roman and Gilbert Germain (eds.), Divinization and Technology: The Political Anthropology of Subversion, London: Routledge, pp. 53–72. Schluchter, Wolfgang (1981) The Rise of Western Rationalism: Max Weber’s Developmental History, Berkeley: University of California Press. Schluchter, Wolfgang (1988) Rationalism, Religion, and Domination: A Weberian Perspective, Berkeley: University of California Press. Serres, Michel (2014) Le parasite, Paris: Fayard. Slagstad, Rune (1988) ‘Liberal constitutionalism and its critics: Carl Schmitt and Max Weber’, in Jon Elster and Rune Slagstad (eds.), Constitutionalism and Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 103–30. Sohm, Rudolph (1892) Kirchenrecht, vol. 1, Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker & Humblot. Speer, Heino (1978) Herrschaft und Legitimität: Zeitgebundene Aspekte in Max Webers Herrschaftssoziologie, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Szakolczai, Arpad (2000) Reflexive Historical Sociology, London: Routledge. Szakolczai, Arpad (2001) ‘Civilization and its sources’, International Sociology 16(3): 369–86. Szakolczai, Arpad (2011) ‘Eric Voegelin and neo-Kantianism. Early formative experience or late entrapment?’, in Lee Trepanier and Steve F. McGuire (eds.), Eric Voegelin and

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the Continental Tradition. Explorations in Modern Political Thought, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, pp. 137–65. Szakolczai, Arpad (2015) ‘‘Disenchantment or irrationalisation: On Weber’s struggle to comprehend the dynamics of modernity’, International Political Anthropology 8(1): 15–27. Szakolczai, Arpad (2018) ‘Recovering the classical foundations of political anthropology’, in Harald Wydra and Bjørn Thomassen (eds.), Handbook of Political Anthropology, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Szakolczai, Arpad and Bjørn Thomassen (2019) From Anthropology to Social Theory. Rethinking the Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Talmon, Jacob L. (1961) The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, London: Mercury Books. Thomassen, Bjørn (2014) Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between, London: Routledge. Tocqueville, Alexis de (2010) Democracy in America. Historical-Critical Edition of De la démocratie en Amérique, edited by E. Nolla, translated by J.T. Schleifer, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Tyson, Paul (2015) Returning to Reality: Christian Platonism for Our Own Times, Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press. Voegelin, Eric (1975) From Enlightenment to Revolution, edited by J. H. Hallowell, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Voegelin, Eric (1987) The New Science of Politics: An Introduction, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Voegelin, Eric (1990) ‘Equivalences of experience and symbolization in history’, in Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 12, Published essays 1966-1985, edited with an introduction by E. Sandoz, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, pp. 115–33. Weber, Max (1948) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, London: Routledge. Weber, Max (1971) Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated by T. Parsons, London: Unwin University Books. Weber, Max (1978) Economy and Society, Berkeley: University of California Press. Weber, Max (1981) General Economic History, London: Transaction Books. Weber, Max (1991) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited with an introduction by H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, with a new preface by Bryan S. Turner, London: Routledge. Weber, Max (2003) Political Writings, edited by P. Lassman and R. Speirs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weber, Max (2019) Economy and Society, translated by K. Tribe, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wydra, Harald (2009) ‘The liminal origins of democracy’, International Political Anthropology 2(1): 91–109. Wydra, Harald (2012) ‘The power of symbols: communism and beyond’, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 25(1): 49–69. Wydra, Harald and Bjørn Thomassen (eds.) (2018) Handbook of Political Anthropology, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Zeitlin, Irving M. (1984) Ancient Judaism, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Part II

Plato’s statesman

3

The virtues of leadership Beyond the pleasure principle Arpad Szakolczai

Plato’s The Statesman has evident relevance to this volume. It is a dialogue explicitly devoted to questions of leadership. It thus offers a particularly helpful contrast to Weber’s term ‘charisma’ – a word that, while Greek, has Christian roots, thus absent in Plato. It is centrally concerned with problematising the idea, so dear for us moderns, that leaders must be elected, by popular vote, which again has Christian roots in the focus on electedness or calling, offering further contrasts with Weber’s ideas. Most importantly – and this will be the central theme of this chapter – it is primarily due to this that this dialogue significantly goes beyond Plato’s position as expressed in the Republic. If the word charisma is absent from the dialogue, its root word charis is very much present. It is even the first significant word in the dialogue, as it opens with the phrase ἦ πολλὴν χάριν, by which Socrates expressed his gratefulness to Theodorus for acquainting him with Theaetetus, protagonist of the previous, crucial dialogue on knowledge, and the Eleatic Stranger, who would surprisingly take over the leading role from Socrates in this dialogue and the next, the Sophist. One might take it as just a formal courtesy, with no specific meaning; however, it should be mentioned that a ‘play’ with the formal and substantive meanings of charis would return in the famous words by which the angel Gabriel addresses Mary (χαῖρε κεχαριτωμένη; chaire kecharitomene; ‘Hail [Mary], full of grace’).1 However, as charis is more a concern with the character of social life than a specific issue of political leadership for the Greeks, the term does not play a significant role in the argument. The main thesis of this paper is that Plato has undergone a quite significant reorientation of his own work at a late stage in his work; and that the Statesman even reproduces, in a dramatised form, the experience itself. This dramatisation is at the heart of the dialogue: situated at a central place, and referred to again at another important juncture, the dialogue is structured around this moment, the Archimedean point from which the late work of Plato can be properly understood. This crucial spot (291a–b) is well into the second half of the dialogue after not only a fair amount of discussion but also long and occasionally ironic detours. The Stranger is about to finish characterising the statesman by

62 Arpad Szakolczai separating it from similar figures when something like a vision occurs to him: a strange group appears, as if entering a stage. One would expect the Stranger to immediately reveal the content of this illumination-recognition, also as he was begged by the young Socrates to do so. Instead, he broke into another digression. The reason is simple, but in order to understand this we have to go back to the start and interpret, with this experience in hand as a master key – whose exact meaning is yet to be specified, as this only becomes intelligible once we arrived again at this point, with the previous content safely understood – the entire dialogue. Before the detailed analysis, however, we need to shortly introduce the condition of possibility of the discovery and its implications. The former point is related to the act of writing. Writing is a ‘spiritual exercise’ or a ‘technique of self’, a way to overcome one’s own ideas.2 Here we touch upon a major difference between Socrates and Plato, the significance of which was not yet fully understood. Plato not simply wrote down what Socrates supposedly had said, but his thinking therefore entered a dynamics not accessible to Socrates. Writing down one’s ideas might lead to an ossification of thinking – one only repeating what one has already written down; but can also lead to the opposite result: changing one’s way of thinking in a conversion-like experience, as a consequence of the work of thinking through writing. For Plato this evidently meant a definite moving beyond the horizon of Socrates. Given his character, Plato was not boasting about it, but neither could he hide away the truth. Hence the enigmatic way of proceeding. This was also necessary for reasons of pedagogy, his Academy. A shift in the thinking of a teacher is problematic for pupils. They were trying to understand, with full innocence and trust, what the master was saying so far, so could not simply become ‘re-programmed’ to follow his new line of ideas. We need to better specify the character of such an intellectual experience. It certainly did not mean repudiation. Rather, Plato’s idea gained a deepening in the sense of a magnitude leap; something that happens to our vision if we contemplate an object from close up, then take a step back, and suddenly realise a whole set of connections that previous escaped our view; the basis or background that so far remained hidden. It does not make its communication easier, though. It is now time to turn to the dialogue itself.

The title The title of the dialogue has a singularity shared only with the Sophist. It is neither a personal name, nor description of a genre. Being conceptual, it is comparable to the Republic and the Laws – but in another sense it is the opposite. The other two, Plato’s best known theoretical works, are programmatic, alluding to an institution. The Statesman, like the Sophist, however, captures a type of person.

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Still, the links are also evident between the Republic (Politeia) and the Statesman (Politikon). Their nature, however, is yet to be clarified. Does the latter complement the former, adding a personal side? Or does Plato imply a significant shift away, in importance, from the institutional to the personal element?

The start The dialogue begins by stating what is evident: the art of ruling implies knowledge; identifying the statesman means to specify the knowledge he is supposed to possess. The dialogue does not pretend to offer a textbook type of knowledge any statesman should possess; Plato rather enquires about the kind of personally held knowledge that would qualify one a statesman. The initial steps are smooth: a statesman must possess knowledge about commanding, but this should fundamentally be knowledge about how to bring something into being. The character of this ‘generating’ activity is not so easy to capture, and young Socrates, trying to get over as quickly as possible with the inquiry, immediately falls into a trap. He is indifferent about what it is that a statesman is supposed to ‘create’: a community, a herd, or ‘[w]hichever we happen to say’ (261e). This is clearly not good enough for the Stranger, who starts his first and most ironical, even hilarious digression.

First (ironic) digression: animal herding Here young Socrates, in his eagerness to finish quickly the inquiry, is conned by the wooden-faced Stranger into saying many stupid things, promptly rewarded by expressions like ‘silly boy’ (265a) or ‘my most courageous friend’ (263d); and where, if by accident he hits upon the truth, can be easily convinced of the opposite.3 At the level of methodological procedure Plato makes fun of the method with which he is still often identified, and which became codified by Neo-Kantian thought, the rule classification into two groups, cut roughly in the middle. Though the Stranger repeatedly identifies this method as the quickest or even best path, this is betrayed by the paradoxical, even absurd results to which it led. While classification as a mechanical technique might be used occasionally, this is out of question for such a delicate issue as the person of a true statesman. Chopping everything into equal halves was rather a preferred method of the Sophists, thus was widely known – this is why the young Socrates fell so quickly and easily into the trap, for which he gets from Plato a tongue in cheek praise. Once the absurdity is realised, Plato proceeds to clear at least out the mess. Explicitly going back to basics (267a), he recalls some key terms about giving commands, and finishes the section by characterising the statesman as a pastor of human beings. The young Socrates is happy with this result, but the Stranger isn’t at all. This is where a second digression comes, even more strange than the first, especially for us moderns: the digression about the cycles of the world and the generation of divine men.

64 Arpad Szakolczai

The second digression: world cycles The new digression can be rendered intelligible by recognising that it is aimed at restoring focus on the central issue: the character of a proper statesman as a person of quality, and not just the possessor of knowledge about handling or managing humans. This is why this digression addresses the manner in which such persons can be generated. The digression, however, goes into unexpected directions: on the one hand, it gives a philosophy of history about the cyclical, revolving movements of life on Earth and the divine intervention to put right things that have a tendency to disintegrate after a time; and a peculiar genesis of a race of rulers who were not born of human beings, rather an ‘earth-born race’ (gegenes, 271a). Perhaps the best way to interpret this myth, in between taking it literally or dismissing as just a tale, is to recognise its corrective function to the sophistic line of argument followed in the first digression. Instead of trying to define a general rule to be followed, the myth turns attention on the one hand to the type of period in which one is living, the concrete here and now in which human beings must be ruled; and on the other the manner in which leaders can then emerge who are able to recognise the character of the times and make the appropriate line of action. These two concerns will be explicitly brought together towards the end of the dialogue, at a crucial juncture, in the concept kairos (capturing the right occasion; thus, introducing the term ‘crucial juncture’ at a crucial juncture). The two concerns are also brought together at the conclusive section of the myth itself. The revolving moment came to a halt when the earth-born race became exhausted (272e), so mankind, left alone by the demiurge who withdrew from the world, had to take care of itself (epimeleian autous), with the help of new divine gifts (274d–e). This second digression helps Plato to make a diagnosis about the error committed earlier: in searching for a ‘general theory’ of politics, no attention was paid to the current state of the cycle, or the reality of the contemporary crisis in Greece (274e–275d), and the divine nature of the shepherd who alone is capable of proper rule. Currently, however, there are no divine rulers left: while ‘the form of the divine shepherd is greater than that of the king, … the statesmen who now exist here are by nature much more like their subjects’ (275c).

An (ironic) overview of existing statesmen The Stranger now returns to the line of investigation where it was mis-directed, as paying no attention to the difference between the noble and the ignoble (266d). He first introduces a banal distinction between feeding and caring, and then distinguishes between the tyrant and the true statesman through the difference between compulsory and voluntary ruling (277d–e). Here again the Stranger manages to bring out the worst from the young Socrates, his smug self-understanding as belonging to

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the glorious nation of tyrant-killers, failing to notice the generational gap. Helped by this distinction, he jumps to the conclusion: ‘Well, Stranger, it looks as though our account of the statesman were complete now’ (277a). The posture is so ridiculous that the Stranger does not even use irony here, only expresses his disagreement, and reprimands the disorderly youth for his ‘misapplied enthusiasm’ and haste. The quest (zetesis) must continue, and in order to return on the right path and restore clarity another example is given. The need for such examples (paradeigma; pattern, model or copy) is justified in a way recalling Shakespeare and Tarde: ‘for it would seem that each of us knows everything that he knows as if in a dream and then again, when he is as it were awake, knows nothing at all’ (277d); a statement that touches upon the very ‘experience of knowledge’ (epistemes pathos), thus foreshadowing the staging of Plato’s own experience (291a). This experiential aspect of knowledge is further clarified by the example of children. Now however he tries to drive home the point that a mere childish wondering at stories is not enough; the crucial element in the experience of children is the ability to recognise (diaisthanomai) things, for the first time. So a new example will be introduced by the Stranger, with the explicit aim of awakening the young Socrates from his slumber; to make him realise what is at stake in the dialogue, and thus to contribute to the identification of the Statesman, and his knowledge.

The third digression: weaving The new digression is about the art of weaving and at first seems the least relevant of all. The procedure followed again alludes to the Sophist, focusing on the distinction between two related activities: carding and weaving, or the art of separation and composition. The digression contains an intriguing wordplay, as the words weaving (uphaino) and carding (ksaino) are quite alike, and also similar to phaino (bring to light, appear, seem), especially given that the digression emphasises the significance of the metaphor of weaving (uphantikon), beyond what it merely seems (phantikon). The endurance of the young Socrates is stretched to its limits, but he still doesn’t get it. He is evidently bored. So the Stranger uses now this experience, and by reflecting upon it tries to secure an important recognition concerning the question of measure. With this point the dialogue is back on track: the question is not to find the statesman among the politicians of the day, but to define the main characteristics of a true statesman. Here comes a reference back to the dialogue that took place the morning before, the Sophist, and its concern with non-being. This problem is twice relevant for the argument: first, as this originates in empty talk, the discussion of things that don’t exist, but which by such talk are conjured into existence; and second, this non-being becomes embodied in concrete human beings who thus become vacuous. The Stranger tested the young Socrates with his talks, who consistently failed, revealing himself as a child of his times: a non-being.

66 Arpad Szakolczai So now Plato has to explain, in more plain words, the reasons for the proceeding he followed so far; how and why this was not simply a toying with non-being. All this is related to the dual problematic identified in the discussion that followed the digression on weaving: negatively, the problem of non-being, and positively, the problem of measure. Plato justifies the digression on weaving by the extremely delicate problem posed by the question of measure: the fact that concerning the most important things, the measure is simply not visible: ‘the greatest and noblest conceptions have no image wrought plainly for human vision’ (285e–286a). Being ‘immaterial things’, they can only be grasped, at least insofar as the measure does not take up a human form, through concepts, or by reason only; and so their grasping can be helped by ‘sensible resemblances’. So this is the reason why Plato used here, as in the previous dialogues, a digression that seemed – but only seemed (phainetai) – long and beside the point. At this point, after chastising young Socrates by pointing out that the reason for the digression was the ‘irritating impatience’ exhibited by his interlocutor (286b) the conduct of the Stranger becomes severe, unswerving, even categorical. The jokes are over; no more detours will be used to test out the young Socrates, who clearly deserves no more patience. With authority the Stranger expresses his ‘wish to avoid any such impatience in the future’. He even identifies the underlying ‘measuring rod’ used by the young Socrates to assess the length of a talk, the pleasure principle: ‘we shall not in the least want a length that is fitted to give pleasure’ (hedonen; 286d). The measure rather is given by reason, truth and rightness: whatever serves ‘to discover through reason the truth of realities’ (287a).

Focus regained At this point, well over halfway, the dialogue starts its march towards its conclusion, not anticipating any more interruption. The Stranger declares that he now will apply the example of weaving to the main theme, the characterisation of a statesman, while in terms of method, instead of cutting at the middle, a much more reasonable procedure will be followed: the separation will be done rather at the joints, or the liminal points in which the different parts are connected. Progress is made quickly, separating first those arts that are only instruments for statesmanship, and then those that pursue different ends (288d–291a). But just when the discussion seems close to the end, proposing to examine more closely the case of elected (klerotous) kings and priests and their assistants, something happens: this is the juncture at which Plato inserts the dramatised account of his vision.

The vision The consequences of the vision are straightforward. The line of argument is again broken, and the Stranger engages in another digression – this time not in

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order to test the youth, rather to retrieve his own way. The vision that has come into his mind suddenly made him realise the limits of his own previous way of thinking – awakened him. We need to search, microscopically, in the text for traces that might reveal the actual operator of this conversion type experience. The context is the separation between priests and kings, not a trivial matter in itself; more concretely, the performance of sacrifices; and in particular, the manner in which the ‘highest officials’ who were to perform the ‘greatest public sacrifices’ is selected (290d–e). It is at this moment of separating religious and political leaders that the vision experience comes to Plato. We now have to investigate the sentence that contains the first hint of the experience, with its extremely peculiar structure, where the sudden emergence of the vision is woven into the structure of the sentence that thus becomes highly paradoxical, hardly intelligible. It starts by trying to further investigate these ‘kings and priests and their assistants’, when literally out of the blue ‘another very large crowd of people has just come in sight now’, thus also must be investigated; and, even more, now this and this only has to be investigated as the previous group, again literally, have just disappeared – ‘are out of the way’ – evidently obliterated through the appearance of this new group (291a). The key is contained in a single word that illuminates the puzzle, rendering Plato’s vision-experience intelligible: klerotous. It is translated as ‘elected’ or ‘allotted’ officials; and in fact the meaning of the term lies exactly in between, in a conceptual transformation. The term goes back to Homer when it depicted the traditional manner in which public officials were selected by drawing lots; probably derived from klao ‘potsherd’. With the rise of Athenian democracy this method of election became changed in some cases into a method of direct election. The meaning intended in the previous passage (290d–e) is clearly the traditional one. But the meaning is changing in this sentence, and it is this change that underlies the paradoxical structure that when the new crowd comes into sight at the end of the sentence, it simply pushes away the image of the kings and priests with which the sentence began. It is no joke that Plato recognised some problems with democracy itself; he seems to take issue here with the most sacred of its principles, the principle of elections. We need to investigate very carefully what he could have meant. For this, we first need to investigate the word klerotous as closely as possible. Originally it simply meant the drawing of lots; and was then extended to the lot itself, like an allotted land. However, in the Pentateuch, the Levites were translated as kleros, a meaning preserved through Latin clericus up to English ‘clergy’. So Plato’s klerotous hiereas, the priests selected by the drawing of lots to officiate at public sacrifices, eventually turned into hieros kleros, sacred clergy. While this happened way after Plato, there is a final shade of meaning that might have been directly relevant, even crucial to Plato. The word kleros carried another, completely different meaning, with dictionaries indicating no connection between them: a ‘mischievous insect’ (Liddell 1861: 760), or a ‘destructive beetle’ (clerus apiarius) in beehives.4 This might be

68 Arpad Szakolczai considered as irrelevant, except that the beehive also appears in the dialogue at the location where the earth-born race was gestated. Thus, this small insect, the kleros, that has such a destructive impact on a bee-hive, might have given the spark to Plato to connect the two methods of election, and to recognise that, under certain conditions, the change from the method of drawing lots to direct election by votes, that might seem more ‘reasonable’, can actually be detrimental for the polis. We need to investigate these conditions, but only after giving a better specification of the exact content of the vision-experience. The sudden change not just in the talk but evidently the entire outlook of the Stranger (staying at the level of dramatisation) immediately aroused the attention of the young Socrates, thrilled about anything that appears ‘new’ and ‘exciting’. He keeps insisting: ‘I want to know what this is! Who are they! Tell me!’. The Stranger offers three responses that follow the logic of the one, the few and the many. The first response is a short phrase: ‘A very queer lot (atopous)’, a word of extreme importance, as it was several times used by Socrates as selfcharacterisation and singled out for attention by some key commentators like Kierkegaard, Pierre Hadot or Voegelin. The second is an entire passage, describing the crowd as being, or ‘at least they seem (phainetai) so now’, a ‘mixed race’, comparing them on the one hand to ‘fierce creatures’ like lions and centaurs, on the other ‘weak [but] cunning beasts’ like satyrs, and adds that his sight, apart from the suddenness of the vision, is also impaired by the fact that ‘they make quick exchanges of forms and qualities with one another’, thus adding metamorphosis to hybridity, making the distinction between true and false politicians particularly difficult.5 It is concluded with a sudden intellectual recognition, paralleling the suddenness of the emergence of the vision in the first instance: ‘Ah, but now, Socrates, I think I have just made out who they are.’ The third answer is another long digression, presented instead of a concrete answer, ignoring the questions of the youth. It is introduced by an important set of reflexive comments, commenting on the vision and the manner in which it changed Plato’s entire outlook, much comparable to the earlier, similarly ‘Shakespearian’ asides on dreams and awakening. The fact that things seemed strange for a moment were due to his own previous ignorance, as ‘ignorance makes things seem strange to everybody’ (291b); but now his ignorance was lifted as he recognised among individuals involved in politics those ‘which of all the sophists is the greatest charlatan (goeta; or Trickster) and most practised in charlatanry’ (291c). Such a claim evidently is of utmost importance, and the Stranger immediately draws some methodological conclusions: the hardest thing to do is to separate from real statesmen those who are most opposed to it but who fake it best.

Consequence of the vision: a digression on forms of government With this starts a new digression that revisits the argument of the Republic. It is important to realise how this digression compares to the previous ones. So far Plato presented the Stranger as being in the know, testing out the youth who repeatedly fell into the traps. Now, however, having recognised his own

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previous ignorance, he must revisit his previous ideas. The central point is a revisiting of the five-fold classification of the forms of government given in the Republic. We move from five to six, as here Plato does make a distinction between two types of government of the many, anticipating Aristotle’s six-fold classification; but the separation is not between the ‘bad’ and ‘good’ forms of government, but between forms of government that do or do not follow the law. Much more importantly, from the distance gained by the vision-experience, such a distinction becomes of secondary importance, as if fading into the background, due to the recognition of a seventh and only true and good form of government, which is not really a ‘form’ of government in the classical sense, rather a community governed by the true statesman. In this seventh form the specifically political knowledge (episteme politike) only to be possessed by the statesman (300e) and the divine character of this person are closely intertwined, just as at the very end of Meno (99e–100a) the ‘imparting’ of virtue is attributed to ‘divine dispensation’, with statesmen having the unique capability of transmitting virtue from one generation to the next;6 and just like at the start of Philebus (16c–d), the dialogue probably immediately following the Statesman and presumably replacing the promised Philosopher,7 true knowledge about the origins of things out of interweaving the one and the many and the finite and the infinite (apeiron) – or, in the similarly Platonic terminology of Agnes Horvath, the commensurable and the incommensurable – is attributed to ‘some divine source’, as a ‘gift of gods to men’. The core of the message is that the best government, or the statesman, should not simply follow the law; cannot be bound by the law. The young Socrates is shocked, cannot believe his ears: ‘Everything else that you have said seems reasonable; but that government should be carried out without laws is a hard saying’ (293e). The real statesman is a person who simply is in the knowledge, thus cannot tie his hands by written rules, cannot be reduced to imitating what has been prescribed. He knows better; and does better. This tests not the patience but more basic limits of young Socrates (297c), and more, as here Plato goes well beyond the perplexity often generated by Socrates and transgresses basic boundaries. The Stranger realises that he needs to go to the bottom of the error that imprisons the thinking of the youth, preventing him to realise that government by law is only the second best option, and returns to examples, this time the doctor and the captain of a ship. They clearly need to make their decision about the best way to act in an actual situation of emergency, and cannot be bound in their actions by written laws; and the same can be said about scientific research, that must pass beyond customary prescriptions (299b). In concluding this digression, Plato wants to avoid any possible misunderstanding about his views concerning (written, codified, prescriptive, normative) laws. Such laws should not be taken lightly; they are (usually) not arbitrary, but are derived from long experience; still, they are only second best (300b). This means that they can, and must, be used in the absence of the best: the real and true statesman. Still, they remain only imitations. In resuming the digression, Plato throws in two short remarks about the origins of the need for

70 Arpad Szakolczai a second best government and the mode to generate the best. Not only tyranny, but all the six forms of government, legal or non-legal, arose due to an error: the failure of men not simply to have trust in their actual rulers – who might be unworthy – but to ‘believe that there could ever be any one worthy of such power or willing and able by ruling with virtue and knowledge to dispense justice and equity rightly to all’ (301c–d). A true ruler, one that does not exist nowadays, should be produced ‘like the ruler of the bees in their hives’ (301e); a statement that could be considered as pure metaphor until recognising the crucial significance of kleros in Plato’s vision-experience. This aside is followed by a short exemplification of the evils that arise not through an unlawful government – evils that everybody knows about; but the much more difficult problem of evils due to the only second best forms of government, concluding with the argument that among governments by law monarchy is the best, while among governments without law democracy. At this point Plato identifies the seventh and best form of government as government by the true statesman, to be ‘set apart from all the others, as God is set apart from men’ (303b), and returns to the main line of argument about the type of personal knowledge to be possessed by the true statesman, now to be concluded without further digression.

Re-evoking of the vision At this crucial juncture the vision-experience is re-evoked, as the ‘festive troop of centaurs or satyrs’ that was then ‘coming into view’ (303c–d) can now be identified.8 The expression ‘festive troop’ is particularly poignant, as centaurs and satyrs were the mythological animals most associated with the unbridled pursuit of pleasure. But what Plato would say here is not an easy thing to swallow; indeed, he states that it was ‘very difficult’ (303d) to come to this conclusion; as he now claims that ‘those who participate in all those governments’, excepting the seventh, ‘are to be eliminated as not being statesmen, but partisans (stasiastikous)’ (303c).9 Through his vision-experience, Plato now gained a position from which the difference between democracy and tyranny, or monarchy and oligarchy, if not irrelevant, becomes of secondary importance. The conclusion is drawn with rare verbal violence: all politicians, democratic or monarchic, if they only focus on written rules, whether keeping or transgressing them, without having an eye on the best form of government, ‘are themselves counterfeits, and since they are the greatest of imitators (mimetas) and cheats (goetai; charlatans or Tricksters), they are the greatest sophists (sophiston sophistas)’. The reason for such verbal violence by now is clear: it is the direct link between the ‘festive troop’ of centaurs and satyrs, mythical beings reputed to possess an unlimited and uncontrollable impulse to satisfy their appetite for pleasure and democratically elected politicians. Once both the electorate and candidates become infected by Sophists with the pleasure principle, any value formerly associated with a democratic form of government is lost, as the method of voting only escalates the transformation of human beings into

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pleasure maximisers, and the community into a collection of idiotes (private citizens only concerned with the others in so far as they help one to maximise pleasure). While the Stranger now claims that this entire group has been successfully separated off from the statesman, this time the young Socrates is not convinced: ‘So it seems’ (phainetai; 303d). The Stranger is clearly relieved, however, as all those that disturbed the sight were now removed; and in order to finish the task suggests a new method, alike to the way the refiners of gold proceed. Now that only the valuable figures remained, or persons who do important things that are similar to the art of government but not identical to it, so in order to find the ‘golden knowledge’, the rest should be removed as copper or silver is removed from gold, by fire – another instrument of testing.10 So, by following the new methods of testing or sounding out the meaning of words, Plato quickly separates from the art of statesmanship the judges, military leaders, and the rhetoricians who use, for good ends, the powers of persuasion. These are closest to the true art of politics, and sounds and words have much to do with them. Apart from the analogy of refining gold and the use of music, the judge, the military commander and the rhetorician can be separated from the statesman through some kind of meta-reflexivity. While judges or commanders make decisions, statesmen make a decision about a decision (304c–305c), recalling the distinction between acting or having an action upon the action of others at the start of the dialogue: ‘the art that is truly kingly ought not to act itself, but should rule over the arts that have the power of action’ (305d).11 Even further, this meta-action should be based on a particular kind of meta-knowledge, which is as little abstract and as closely personal as possible: it ‘should decide upon the right or wrong time (kairos) for the initiation of the most important measures in the state’ (305d). No general knowledge helps a person to recognise when and how one should act.

The true art of statesmanship With this the circle is closed, as all those arts with which the true art of statesmanship might be confused have now been separated. This art can now be defined positively, through the metaphor of weaving. The central task of the statesman is to weave things and laws and living beings together into a polity (politeia); a task more difficult than it seems. This is because the most important assets of any community are human virtues; but true virtues are not only rare, but not easily compatible as well. Plato singles out for attention two virtues whose harmonious interweaving is most central for creating a proper political community. One is andreia. While the term means courage, its etymologically correct rendering is ‘manliness’, as andreios is derived from the Greek word for man (aner). In order to understand its significance, we need to turn to the other virtue. Terminology here is not identical, though quite consistent. Words used are sophrosune (temperance or

72 Arpad Szakolczai self-restraint), eremia (quietness) and cosmiotes (decorum). The latter is the most often used term, and indeed holds the key. The word cosmos in Ancient Greek carried two meanings whose interconnections we moderns would not even dare to imagine. On one hand, cosmos means the world, though implying the ordered nature of the world, in opposition to its twin concept, chaos, standing for a world without order. On the other, and emphasising the association with orderliness, it stands for beauty. This is similar to Latin mundus, meaning ‘world’ but also ‘female toilette’. The central task of the statesman is to harmonise these two virtues, by combining them and bringing out the best of each. If this is not done and the virtues become opposed to each other, a spiralling process starts that might be called schismogenic, entailing disastrous consequences, turning into a ‘most detestable disease in the state’ (307d), where ‘in a few years they and their children and the whole state often pass by imperceptible degrees from freedom to slavery’ (308a; emphasis added).

Concluding remarks We can now evaluate the significance of the discovery contained in the Statesman, and draw the consequences. When writing this dialogue, just after the Sophist, and before the planned Philosopher, part of a tightly defined series introduced by the Theaetetus, Plato suddenly recognised that the problem of which the Sophists were part is even greater and more dangerous, insidious, than he anticipated; in fact, even aspects of his previous thought were as if contaminated by the assumptions of a sophist outlook on the world. This was due to an excessive importance attributed to law and legalistic concepts, contaminating even the idea of justice that was held previously by him. The central problem consists in a set of interconnected links between law, rationality and the pleasure principle. The pleasure principle imitates and insinuates the most important principles of human life: the search for happiness, gaiety, love, friendship and merriment, which was originally indissolubly associated with the similar feelings of others, of one’s loved ones, one’s family, friends and community. This principle, however, was deviated by the Sophists into the principle that every single individual should search to maximise his own pleasures. Rationality and the law are unarmed against this menace, even can be turned into its instruments. Plato realised this through recognising the troubles with voting. Voting is fine if there is no divine ruler, and if this is granted to responsible reasonable people. While under certain conditions every adult could be considered as gifted with such reason and responsibility, the sense of responsibility can be undermined by the pleasure principle. Once people are insinuated by Sophists into believing that life is, or should be, devoted to maximise pleasures, then the principle of elections, and popular rule in general, becomes meaningless and at any rate self-destructive. The vision-experience of the Statesman helps to understand how the concern with the pleasure principle became central for Plato’s late work, also giving

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hints about the sequential order of his late work. This point, however, cannot be pursued further here.

Notes 1 This point would be lost on Erasmus and missing in his translation, much contributing to the ignoring of the full meaning of Greek charis in the Reformation and then modernity, just as underplaying the role of Mary. 2 See Foucault (1984a, 1984b, 1988), Hadot (1993), Patocka (1983), Reale (1999); and Voegelin (1957, 1974, 1978, 1987). 3 While this dialogue, like the Sophist, is often considered as dry and boring, lacking the usual wit of Socrates, nothing could be further from the truth, given its most enjoyable, often hilarious dramatisation. 4 See Liddell and Scott (1951: 959). The old edition of Liddell, but not the one updated by Scott, further directs the reader to a similar term, puraustes, or the moth that is singed by a candle (Liddell 1861: 1284). The point is not irrelevant, as candles are made from beeswax, so the metaphor can be considered as alluding to the ‘revenge of the beehive’. The metaphor was also used Shakespeare in the Merchant of Venice (II.ix), in the context of a testing by Portia, whose great monologue will be about grace (V.i.179–82). 5 See Sozopoulou (2017: 433), who furthermore focuses on conditions of crisis. 6 About this, see Reuter (2001) and Tarrant (2005). 7 In this light the title of this dialogue is intriguing, as it can be read as ‘philoephebus’, or ‘lover of young boys’, arguably a problematisation of certain practices associated with Socrates. 8 This wording makes evident the close links of this vision-scene with a similar moment in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (act 4, scene 1). See also the frescoes of centaurs and satyrs decorating the Villa Zianigo of Giandomenico Tiepolo, this amazing Platonic artist of late Settecento Venice, together with Pulcinellas (recalling Plato’s horror of the Puppet shows; see Gocer 1999-2000), and a rhapsode (recalling Plato’s Ion). 9 One might note here that the modern translation uses the word ‘statesman’ that etymologically is actually connected to the word used by Plato as capturing the opposite of true statesmanship (stasis). 10 Nietzsche’s philosophising with a hammer meant the use of the musical fork as a means of testing. This point was used by Foucault right after introducing the term basanos, in his 1983 Berkeley seminars on parrhesia, when he states that testing of the connection between words and deeds is related to musical harmony, referring to the term mousikos aner, or a man devoted to the Muses, and of the four modes of harmony places emphasis on Dorian harmony, which is ‘courageous’ (Foucault 2001: 100). Foucault’s work on parrhesia, central for his last period, draws directly on Plato, but this cannot be explored in this paper (see for details Szakolczai 2003). Note also that puraustes, or the moth singed by candle, is etymologically linked to fire, so testing by fire is specifically effective against insects that destroy the beehive, matrix of the earth-born race. 11 This also recalls the definition of power by both Weber and Foucault (see Szakolczai 1998).

References Foucault, Michel (1984a) L’usage des plaisirs, Vol. 2 of L’histoire de la sexualité, Paris: Gallimard.

74 Arpad Szakolczai Foucault, Michel (1984b) Le souci de soi, Vol. 3 of L’histoire de la sexualité, Paris: Gallimard. Foucault, Michel (1988) Technologies of the Self, London: Tavistock. Foucault, Michel (2001) Fearless Speech, Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e). Gocer, Asli (1999–2000) ‘The Puppet Theater in Plato’s Parable of the Cave’, The Classical Journal 95, 2: 119–129. Hadot, Pierre (1993) Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, Paris: Institut d’études Augustiniennes. Liddell, Henry G. (1861) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Liddell, Henry G. and Robert Scott (1951) A Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Patocka, Jan (1983) Platon et l’Europe, Paris: Verdier. Reale, Giovanni (1999) Corpo, anima e salute: Il concetto di uomo da Omero a Platone, Milan: Raffaello Cortina. Reuter, Mark (2001) ‘Is Goodness Really a Gift from God? Another Look at the Conclusion of Plato’s “Meno”’, Phoenix 55, 1/2: 77–97. Sozopoulou, Maria (2017) ‘How to Discern the Genuine Politician in a Period of Crisis: The Case of Plato’s Statesman’, in G. Maggini, V.P. Solomou-Papanikolaou, H. Karabatzaki and K.D. Koskeridis (eds.) Philosophy and Crisis: Responding to Challenges to Ways of Life in the Contemporary World, Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. Szakolczai, Arpad (1998) Max Weber and Michel Foucault: Parallel Life-Works, London: Routledge. Szakolczai, Arpad (2003) The Genesis of Modernity, London: Routledge. Szakolczai, Arpad (2007) Sociology, Religion and Grace: A quest for the Renaissance, London: Routledge. Tarrant, Harold (2005) Recollecting in Plato’s, Meno, London: Duckworth. Voegelin, Eric (1957) Plato and Aristotle, Vol. 3 of Order and History, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. Voegelin, Eric (1974) The Ecumenic Age, Vol. 4 of Order and History, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. Voegelin, Eric (1978) Anamnesis, Notre Dame, IL: University of Notre Dame Press. Voegelin, Eric (1987) In Search of Order, Vol. 5 of Order and History, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.

4

Constituting power Plato’s weaving of human emotions Harald Wydra

Like Plato’s other putatively ‘late’ dialogues, Statesman is considered to be amongst the most difficult of Plato’s works. It has been the object of much discussion due to three important digressions and long narratives that, in a different manner to other dialogues, do not at first glance seem well integrated into a single logical structure. Nevertheless, the central problem of the dialogue seems to concern the question: ‘Who should rule?’. Plato establishes the concept of rule as a relationship that acknowledges the inequality between the ruler and the ruled. However, he does not do this in the simple form of an antagonism of a rigid classification of systems of government. Plato defends the primacy of historical experience, more precisely a limit experience, where boundaries are transgressed and the relations of human beings are ordered anew. The Statesman, through the myth of Cronus, establishes that the permanent structure of the political lies in the existence of disharmony and disorder, which is owed to the fact that the original creator of the cosmos, the helmsman, departed (273a–d). Rule is therefore grounded in the hypothesis that the genesis of political authority requires a vision of the human condition as permanently unstable and potentially uprooted. The task in this dialogue is therefore to see whether we can reasonably expect that even in the absence of divine supervision there can be forms of expertise and knowledge by which a statesman can rule human beings by consent. In a different manner to the Republic, the Statesman does not only wish to illustrate the power over the citizenry of the polis in general. The dialogue also makes explicit the ways in which the statesman manages to rule his subjects (275a). The crucial point is that the statesman, being in possession of wisdom, remains the master of the process he has set in motion. It is here that Plato presents us with the hypothesis that the rule of a superior authority over people does not rely on written rules (grammata) or on laws (nomoi) but on the wisdom or knowledge of the statesman (politikē epistēmē). The holder of such knowledge is characterized as a ‘real man’, not in the sense of existence but in terms of genuine expertise that derives from divine dispensation but is distributed by the positive imitation of affective bonds through the process of weaving. The quality of the real man is based on normative ought, not on his empirical existence. Plato distinguishes between real and existing, as suggested by Gregory Vlastos (1981: 47–48). For him, the really good and noble man would be really good and noble

76 Harald Wydra even if he did not exist. As a result, the only true system – the political system par excellence- is one where ‘rulers are genuinely and not merely apparently knowledgeable’ (293c). Plato draws on the analogy with the doctor whose expertise still holds – even though patients have not consented to the treatment – as long as the instruction he issues are guided by expertise. Similarly, the many existing political systems who are ‘unreal impostors’ do not stand in the way of the one genuine form of knowledge and moral sense provided by the guardianship of the statesman at the helm of his subjects. To accomplish this aim, the Statesman seems to introduce into political thought the idea of discernment. In other words, to counteract injustice, disharmony and disorder, people have to undergo a revolution from within, a task that, from Plato’s perspective, cannot be realized through a form of government where the citizens simply follow administrative rules. What is needed for this formation of consciousness is a person who exercises self-discipline in congruity with the law of the divine. Furthermore, self-government should not be based on the inflexible and, ultimately, inadequate force of the laws. Plato’s critique of the law in Statesman does not advocate a preference for anarchy. Rather, it suggests that the coherence of the citizenry is more reliably structured through the invisible forces of affection and feelings that sustain the relationships among human beings. The Statesman succeeds in weaving together two visions, firstly, the anthropological vision of the human herd in need of being maintained and, secondly, the vision that the real man can create some social coherence as he weaves together the different components of society. I would like to limit my reflections on this dense, at times enigmatic, text to four observations. What concerns us first is the political aspect, meaning the introduction of the idea of power as the authority of a superior on those inferior to him, which is different from the Greek concept of political action carried out on people who are equal or similar to oneself (cf. also Aristotle, Politics, 1252a7–23). As we will see, Plato introduces the notion of rule as consisting of two kinds of activity: on one hand, that of action as initiation, as putting something in motion, and, on the other hand, that of technical fabrication. In a second part, I would like to comment on the methodology centred on the image of the weaver. This image is important for two reasons. We are dealing with a metaphor that is based on a manual and technical activity of everyday life, but whose aim is to illustrate the activity of the statesman. To make sense of it, I propose to take into consideration the dimension of weaving not as technē, but as the weaving of human emotions in terms of strengthening affective bonds. In a third part, I will examine the apparent paradox of the government of a ruler who should not follow the existing rules of the community. Here the point is to relate the anthropological vision of the liminal existence of the human being with the argument that the only political authority capable of genuine leadership should be centred not on universal rules (grammata), but on the example, the conduct and the spiritual strength of the ruler. In the fourth and final part, I ask the central question, which concerns the sociological viability of connecting the ability to make wise judgements (phronēsis) of the statesman with his subjects, who should not be guided by

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legal frameworks but by a comprehensive and total vision, which is the epistēmē. If the chasm between a universal rule and a particular reality cannot be overcome, how can the domination of others be underpinned by the capacity of self-rule in oneself?

Command as the art of the statesman The central theme of Statesman is the relationship between phronēsis (the ability to make wise judgements) and technē (the production or fabrication in material life). Plato is the first to introduce a concept of politics as structured on the distinction between the leader who commands and the inferior part of the citizenry that obeys.1 One can identify two main dimensions on which Plato relies to overturn the interpretation of ‘ruling’. First, at the bottom of the conception of dominion is the fundamental principle of the oikos (home), which consists in the relationship of inequity between the master and the slave. In the oikos, there is the absence of isonomia, the equality of the citizens who act in the public space. Here, the master rules. In an oikos, nothing could be done without the permission of the master, the chief of the oikos. In Statesman, Plato does not want to abolish the oikos, but rather wants to establish that the constitution of a big oikos is, in principle, structured like the polis. He says explicitly that the epistēmē necessary to rule a big territory and a small state with its pomposity are equivalent (259b–c). Secondly, Plato introduces the difference between archein and prattein, which in the Greek conception were strictly related. The crucial point is that political activity belongs to the first movement of the archein, which means to rule and to guide in the sense of initiating something and putting into motion. The second meaning of the term ‘to rule’ is that of prattein (to produce, to practice). From this perspective, praxis does not constitute an activity in the sense of originating something, but is a technē, which is aimed at the control of the citizens with a precise purpose. The point is that genuine kings do not actually do things themselves; they govern people whose domain is technical activity. They know when to embark on and initiate courses of action which are particularly important to a state, and when it’s better to hold back. They delegate action to others (305d1–5). According to Hannah Arendt, perhaps the entirety of political thought since Plato has attempted to limit action and, thus, to depoliticize. The public space of the polis is brought into life by means of action and language. Such action derives from the quest for excellence (arēte) with the purpose of achieving each citizen’s full potential. Statesman, however, introduces the concept that men are capable of living together, connected by the laws; if some are in command, others have the duty to obey (Arendt 1989: 222). Even if Statesman introduces a rupture with the conception of politics in the Greek polis, this relationship of the art of being in command is not presented as a solution which can be coerced through the technical measures peculiar to the state. Instead, Plato links the origin of authority to the human condition as this originates from a historical crisis.

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Epistēmē and historical contingency I would now like to turn to the question of weaving. The dialogue begins with the figure of the shepherd that takes care of the human flock. This model of power is abandoned because it does not recognize the difference of nature that exists between the shepherd and the flock. Immediately after, the Stranger introduces the myth that tells the story of two kinds of opposed times, the time of Cronus and the time of Zeus (268e–274e). Following this digression, Plato introduces the metaphor of the weaver to indicate that all the good in the universe is owed to its constructor. Originally, being under the supervision of the Spirit, human beings were sustained by it. Afterwards, however, this protective supervision was taken away from men who, deprived of tools and knowledge, found themselves defenceless (274b–c). In a pivotal part of the dialogue, Plato makes the Stranger speak of the situation in which the leader of the universe leaves the command and withdraws (273a–e). This break with the supervision of the Spirit represents the crucial event after which the development of the gifts of education and training begins. This digression can be considered irrelevant for the question of the ruling of a human society. In fact, the Stranger admits to having gone astray because the shepherd of the myth of Cronus belongs to the opposite cycle, meaning that his nature is divine rather than human (275a). However, it is very likely that here we are not dealing with an inquiry of theological speculation, but with an anthropological hypothesis. According to Cornelius Castoriadis (1999: 193), it is plausible that the myth was not introduced to give ground to the content of the dialogue, but the dialogue was introduced to give ground to the myth. He suggests that this myth does not only constitute the central piece that explains the writing of the dialogue of Statesman, but it is also essential for the entire work of Plato. The myth does not end with an observation of the paradise lost. Rather, it holds a strategic position, because it makes manifest an anthropological insight about the human condition as fundamentally characterized by permanent instability (294b). Plato’s vision on the dangers of democracy due to the great power of the supreme illusionist, the sophist, underpins the sense of instability of political order (291b–c). The main question is not which form of government would be more suitable institutionally. For Plato there is a co- science; an epistēmē through which one can see things in general and in human things in particular. The person who holds this science is defined as the statesman or the epistèmôn: he is in possession of knowledge and wisdom. He must also know everything all the single citizens must do (295a–b). Plato uses the practice of weaving as a very accessible example to illustrate the activity of the statesman (279a–289d). The weaver, the shepherd or the manufacturer are bearers of technical knowledge. The statesman should know all these techniques for organizing a harmonic regime. In 283c, Plato introduces the notion of metrion or ‘just measure’ as far as excess or lack is concerned. This is followed by the affirmation that, without epistēmē, there is not anything as ‘right measure’. As the Stranger points out (285e–286a), there are only few things that can be perceived as comprehensible appearances. Material objects

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often speak for themselves. They need no description. Very important phenomena, however, cannot be represented by an artefact whose appearance would capture the essence of the phenomenon. They cannot be comprehended by the perception of the senses. Consequently, the ‘real man’ is not defined by his mastery of the visible world and its outcome, its material production, but by his soul. The metaphor of society as a woven fabric anchors power in the incorporeal part. Notwithstanding the technical art of power in the world of appearances, the epistēmē of the statesman consists of the conception of this incorporeal essence. Plato claims that the only true system is one where rulers are genuinely and not only apparently knowledgeable (293c). We come back to the distinction between real and existing, introduced above. For Plato, many so-called political systems are ‘unreal impostors’, they exist but are not real. Despite his insistence on the empirics of weaving in order to connect different walks of life, he claims that ‘the most valuable and important things are incorporeal and need to be expressed in understanding and through a verbal account’ (286a). The ‘real man’ must assume responsibility for the city, for the entire conglomerate not only of souls, but also of the material base of the citizenry. Thus it is fundamental to see that the action of the genuine leader cannot be technical but must acknowledge another reality that is not divided by the technē. How does Plato conceive of this?

The epistēmē of the statesman as absolute authority Let us now turn to the third area of interest, which concerns the apparent paradox of the government of a ruler who should not follow the existing rules of the community. For Plato, there is only a single politeia which is just and correct (orthè politeia): this is defined by only one characteristic, which is the epistēmē. The other constitutional forms are more or less bad copies of reality. Epistēmē is total in two senses. Epistēmē encompasses the entire conglomerate of the technai, thus acquiring a general dimension that is above other kinds of knowledge. Moreover, it also possesses a creative function, because it is capable of setting into motion the best combination of all these materials (305e). How can one conceive of the position of the statesman in existing political communities? Every state is structured by laws, traditions and habits, which cannot be suspended from one moment to another. Surely, the power of the Statesman is not equivalent to an undertaking that would start from a tabula rasa. Nevertheless, the rule of the epistèmôn may need to suspend the authority of the existing rules. Here again it is necessary to return to the strategic positioning of the myth of the time of Cronus. Considering the human condition from the point of view of existential crisis, at the basis of social reality – which is fundamentally characterized by difference – there is loss, uncertainty and the dissolution of identity. Human beings are subject to the chaotic variability of life and its radical differentiation, if not atomization. Such are the anthropological

80 Harald Wydra existential conditions in relation to which political action needs an extrainstitutional force beyond the rules. Such force relies upon putting in motion a politikē epistēmē. Here we arrive at a crucial point. Plato seems to recognize that the permanent instability of the human condition does not allow for structuring social reality through a written law that would be recognized as the universal foundation for the conduct of the citizens. If legal frameworks establish universal rules of conduct for everybody, they can never be fully adequate with the variability of human beings. The true question hence is how to reconstitute authority. As we have seen, the Stranger reasserts that there is no return to the heavenly state in which the divine authority held the power (275a). It is important to remember that, for the Greeks, legislating was not just a political activity, but belonged to fabrication also; it was a technē (Rosen 1995: 155–156). Such a technical basis is contrasted with the anthropological vision illustrated in the myth of Cronus. The gap between a universal rule and a particular reality is precisely a permanent feature of human existence, if not the continuum of the human condition. It may be timely to remind us how Plato addressed this permanence of existential uncertainty in the Phaedo, the dialogue which discusses the soul. In the search for knowledge Socrates advocates doing two things: either he must learn or discover the truth about these matters, or if that is impossible, he must take whatever human doctrine is best and hardest to disprove and, embarking upon it as upon a raft, sail upon it through life in the midst of dangers, unless he can sail upon some stronger vessel, some divine revelation, and make his voyage more safely and securely. (Plato, Phaedo, 85c–d) By analogy, the Statesman takes up the idea of a sailing raft when the Stranger uses the example of the captain by underlining that his epistēmē is the law of the crew. He maintains that the ability to rule is very similar to that of governing a boat in the sense that the epistēmē of the ruler would be more efficient than a legal code (297a). Earlier, the Stranger had compared the law to a stubborn, stupid person who refuses to allow the smallest deviation from his rules, even in situations where it would be much better to contravene these rules (294c). The Stranger takes the example of the captain of a boat to demonstrate that a written law (tà grammata) cannot be valid without taking into account the situation. The experience of the disturbances involved in the crisis of democracy in Athens, however, induces Plato to make an ironic allusion to the modality with which the formulation of written laws is carried out in a democracy. Taking the examples of medicine and navigation, Plato reverses this relationship in a thought experiment regarding the seizure of authority by the Athenian multitude. While it can perfectly be the case that a doctor and a captain – who normally should do good to people – may opt to mistreat them (298a–e), the crisis of democracy in Athens consists in the overturning of the relationship between authority and obedience. People decide

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to gather in an assembly to establish what the captain and the doctor must do. Utilizing subtle irony, the Stranger takes the fate of Socrates as an example to show when the application of the laws hid the clear vision of the illness that Socrates wanted to cure. Instead, the laws and the values of the city of Athens had become a formidable obstacle to a sense of self-criticism and moral judgement. Here Plato has a very acute sociological intuition to express the decadence of the polis, precisely because the very values of the Greek polis had contributed to its disintegration. Plato extends this parable to the polis, saying that the knowledge of the statesman is more effective than a legal code. But to what extent can we say that the statesman of Plato disregards the law? In reality, this seemingly anarchic approach offers strong support for the authority of divine law. For Plato, positive laws are only the mimèmata, imitations or reflections of the truth. In his view, there is, always and everywhere, a difference among the multitude, the flux and the universal rule. This absolute incongruity between the general law and the changing reality does not admit the possibility, even for a limited period, of a technical government by procedural laws. We have seen that the paradigm of the weaver refers to two aspects of the government that are related but clearly distinct. First, political action is directed at generating something that did not previously exist. Without the art of ruling, in the sense of a beginning (archein), there is no government. This government of phronēsis must be beyond the law. But remembering that legislation is a practical activity in the sense of a technē and not a political activity in the sense of archein, this condition of illegality is not a political crisis but, strictly speaking, a technical problem. Despite the strong critique of positive, human laws, the Statesman affirms the need to obey divine law. Secondly, the conceptual analysis (diaeresis) is, in some way, an activity similar to weaving. For Plato, every analysis is in itself a synthesis of these articulations of the fabric of human experience, which constitutes the intuition of the analyst (Rosen 1995: 117). However, there is a third point that seems crucial. In a manner different from the Republic, the Stranger insists that, alongside the domination of a ‘real man’ over the republic, it is necessary to see how this is put into practice. In other words, in the Republic, Plato focuses on the vertical structure of the relationship between the philosopher-king and the illumination of reason. In Statesman, he complements this by showing how the exceptional quality of the leader, his phronēsis and politikē epistēmē, can be spread horizontally.

Emotions as carriers of political association We have now arrived at the fourth part, which explores the viability of connecting the ability to make wise judgements (phronēsis) of the statesman with his subjects, who should not be guided by legal frameworks but by a comprehensive and total vision, which is the epistēmē. How are we to understand this epistēmē, the knowledge and wisdom that is so important for the statesman? It is fundamental to recognize that epistēmē includes a total comprehension which is achieved through

82 Harald Wydra reason. This is the only way not to follow a reality that is distorted, mutated, uprooted and, ultimately, unreal. Two famous parables – one regarding the divided line, the other one concerned with the cave in Republic – (509d–521b) – express Plato’s position that the world at the time of Zeus (after that of Cronus) was ontologically inferior. In contrast to the epistēmē – a further reality, which can be accessed either through rational reflection (logismos) or through a mystical experience – there exists the world of opinion or belief (doxa) that is based on suppositions and appearance. This is the world that exists, the one we perceive with the senses, but which despite its existence lacks reality, it is the void. Nevertheless, humans can have access to the logismos, which is a vertical relation that mediates between God and man. The condition under which God can play with man is that humans accept the logismos as the connection between themselves and God. While Plato believed that human beings should be open to God, in practice only a few men are capable of this. Barriers to the achievement of this can be seen, for example, when Plato warns in the Laws that a state of intoxication can produce a confusion of threads, for instance with alcohol, which generates joy and pleasure, but which destroys thoughts (645e), meaning the connection with logismos is lost. However, if man allows himself to be guided by the logismos, he is on the path to phronēsis. The image of weaving is derived from manual activity and technical skill. Yet it also presupposes the strength of the soul with which the epistèmôn should realize the mission of re-educating society. The task of the statesman refers to the right measure, which unites courage and calm self- mastery (306e– 308a). There is also the postulate that he supervises the education of the youth and of its educators too (308d). In sum, the activity of weaving is the true task of the statesman. It will be completed once the two types of human character – the courageous and the restrained – have been connected in a well-knit fabric. Furthermore, consent and fidelity are fundamental for a life in common that, for the Stranger, rises above social inequality in the oikos. The dialogue ends on the note that the statesman weaves a closely-knit fabric without seams, enclosing all his subjects – slaves or free (311c). But how could this inclusive vision of the genesis of authority, beyond the legal and the traditional political divisions of Athens, be conceived? A first step in attempting to comprehend this problem is the discussion of the best form of government. After having clarified that the seventh system is the only good one,2 and that it must be separated from all the others in the same way in which God separated himself from humanity, the Stranger argues that one must get rid of the people who serve these systems (303c). The sophists practice sectarian politics, keeping their superiority in the technai through the division of the rules. The task to exit this situation would be through a process of recognition, which resembles the process for refining gold (303d–e). It is necessary to remove dirt, stones and other foreign bodies in order to arrive at pure gold. This purification is the precondition for arriving at phronēsis. How is this possible?

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Here we come back to the idea that the Statesman is a ‘real man’ in the sense of genuine reality, which contrasts with the existence of disharmony, evil, and the void. A look at Plato’s Laws can be helpful here. There Plato (Laws 644d–645c) presents us with the metaphor of man as an artificial puppet.3 We do not know whether this puppet for God is a joke or Plato takes it seriously. Making reference to Laws (803c), where Plato states that the best part of man is to be a plaything of God, one might resign oneself to the idea that human agency is severely limited. It is necessary to fully appreciate the meaning of being a puppet in God’s hand. This puppet is run through by strings that pull him in different directions. These strings represent the feelings (ta pathai) that motivate men to act in a good or in a bad manner. Each human being, however, should follow only one string, which is the one that is made of gold and is sacred. This string is the logismos, the reason that guides us towards the excellence of arēte. Whilst all the other strings are made of iron and of other inflexible materials, the string of the logismos is – differently from the others – flexible and it is made of gold. The metaphor of the puppet becomes even more interesting if one recognizes that the law belongs to the technical division, making laws resemble inflexible strings. Some may consider Plato’s propositions to border on anarchy. Yet he insists that disregarding laws – once these have been established – would mean to violate experience, advice and persuasive arguments (300a–b). It is for this reason that the laws, once established, represent the second best way and, therefore, anybody must be stopped from violating them even in the least (300c). The rule of phronēsis is liberating and aims at cohesion at the same time. If people are to be liberated from nomos, this means that they are also asked to overcome a tendency towards internal divisions. In 299d–e, Plato takes up the theme of the technical division, which is a great obstacle for epistēmē. If all the activities, from the breeding of horses to geometry, would be regulated by grammata, they would be the end of every epistēmē. Plato, nevertheless, is more radical in rejecting the division generated by legislation, which is a technical act. Every technē – even the laws – is founded on division, because the Greek word for law, nomos, also means construction of walls.4 Plato establishes that the true art of governing lies in weaving emotions that overcome such divisions by means of using the logismos in order to connect with the One. According to Plato, there exists only one divine law that transcends the multitude with its emotions and its multiplicity of judgement. The discussion of the golden string is framed by a reflection on the intoxication occurring through a variety of entertainments, which induce pleasure but confuse the strings that bind man to the divine law (Laws 642e–645/6). Thus, Eros and pleasure bring forward the variability of the human multitude and so prevent man from connecting with the true unity, the logismos of the divine law. Why is the just political judgement only obtainable through the logismos? In order to explore this, the analogy utilized in the metaphor of the puppet to human relationships is useful. As the access to the divine is possible both

84 Harald Wydra through the logismos and mysticism, the cohesion among men is possible thanks to the logismos, but also through the fabric of feelings (tà páthe). The statesman maintains his authority over the people by his skilful and spiritual mediation between humans and the unity of truth. Yet people also need the existence of a horizontal connection that would make the spreading of phronēsis as a guide to life possible. Plato seems to show that the only way to obtain phronēsis is through the imitation of those rare men who have reached the epistēmē through phronēsis. If the crowd follows its instinct, it does not matter so much whether the city is ruled by laws or not, because there will always be an abyss between the universal law and reality. Plato thus denies the possibility of what Aristotle would later introduce as the notion of equity. Aristotle, too, acknowledges the abyss between the written laws and the consistency of the concrete case. But, for Aristotle, the sense of equity is that the judge fills up the abyss: the judge decides according to the spirit of the legislator as if this would be present (Aristotle 1967: 1129 a3–1130 b17). As the laws are technai, Plato considers them a derivative, a product which is not strictly linked to political action. Furthermore, given their meaning as walls, the laws reflect a division among the sectors of a community. However, the Greek verb nemein not only means to divide but also to bring to the pasture. There is an association here that Plato makes with the nemeus, the shepherd, an allegory for government, which stood at the beginning of the dialogue. Here, too, Plato lays claim to the strength of the soul. Towards the end of the dialogue, he alludes to the capacity that harmonizes perceptions by connecting them in a divine manner (309c–d). In my view, we are very close to a sociological theory of the spread of emotions, which are the basis of the fabric of associational life, not according to abstract rules, but according to a model of imitation. In the Republic (501b–c), Socrates also compares the effort of the philosopher-king in making the city virtuous to the artist who constantly looks back and forth between the original and the copy, rubbing out and drawing again in order to achieve a better resemblance. The emotional and creative force of imitation, and the need for mental strength in this has been indirectly affirmed by Friedrich Nietzsche. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche states that Socrates understood that moral judgements were founded on irrationality. However, Plato wanted to prove with all possible strength – the greatest strength ever utilized by a philosopher, according to Nietzsche – that human beings strive for the good, for God. According to Nietzsche, Christianity has transformed this idea into faith, what for himself could be expressed as herd instinct (Nietzsche 1997: 649). Having sensed the force of imitation as a major element in social life, Nietzsche denies the possibility of overcoming the instincts of the herd and the tendency towards the bottom. Differently from Nietzsche, the Statesman introduces a vision of imitation by which it is phronesis, not eros that aims to elevate the herd into following the virtue of the ‘real man’. The bearer of epistēmē can be the factor for

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succeeding in bringing the phronēsis very close to the idea of self-government, or care of the self. Here we can recover the idea of uprooting and of the radical differentiation that fundamentally characterizes the human condition. Men are, to utilize a concept of the French political anthropologist Gabriel Tarde, like monads that, despite their individuality, tend towards other individuals. This tendency is not, however, prefigured by pre-existing facts or by a collective like society. Instead, there are interior forces like faith and desire that produce the force of attraction (Wydra 2012). From this perspective, Plato’s position appears to be pluralist and open to confidence in human affects as long as these are guided by a leader that possesses genuine knowledge of ruling people. This hypothesis can be explained with his rather positive attitude towards democracy. For the Stranger, democracy is the worst regime of all when the laws are strictly adhered to. Instead, it is considered the best when the laws are not respected (303a). Plato has a world-wide reputation for being anti-democratic. He is indeed often misread as propagating a seemingly elitist conception of knowledge, where decisions are irrefutable and limited to philosopher-kings. Political theorists often limit themselves to stating that democracy was anathema to Plato because, in this regime, the rulers were guided by tangible experience of everyday life. Thus, their common sense was guided by illusory realities, the unreal, and the opposite of the truth. Plato’s vision in Republic presupposed a strict distinction between the ruling and enlightened few and the many living in irreality, mainly based on his insistence that contact should be minimal in order to avoid bad imitation. Yet such a position misinterprets Plato’s point because it pays too little attention to the experiential basis of his writing. Plato’s Statesman is a response to a liminal moment, the breakdown of Athenian democracy, evidenced most clearly in the condemnation of Socrates by the democratic institutions. In Statesman, Plato is at pains to demonstrate that democratic government (government by a large number) is the weakest because it is incapable of being an effective force for either good or ill, because authority is broken up into tiny portions and distributed to many people. Democracy is thus the worst of all law-abiding systems, yet it is the best of all the law-breaking ones. This upward valuation of democracy is expressed as follows: ‘if no political system restrained its subjects, life in a democracy would take the first prize; if they all did, democracy would be the last one to live in’ (303a). The self-government that people can imitate in following the example of the Statesman is connected to democratic self-government. The connection is established through emotional affective bonds, which encompass a double dimension, both vertical and horizontal. On one hand, we are referring to the link through which the phronēsis of the ‘real man’ succeeds in obtaining epistēmē altogether through the trust inspired by his judgement and his life conduct. Furthermore, these feelings (tà páthe) also sustain relationships between the model to be imitated and the imitators. As there is no way to cross the abyss between the written laws and individual reality, which is always in transformation, and as no leader can constantly be by the side of every citizen, Plato suggests that this link

86 Harald Wydra between the archein and the prattein supposes a permanent democratic activity. This democratic activity is not mainly political in the technical sense, as based on the institutional rules, but is rather social in the sense of affective bonds, a work of the soul.

Conclusion It has been a commonplace in the history of political thought to classify Plato as idealist, utopian, conservative, or anti-democratic. Plato’s thought also has often been seen as synonymous to that of a tactician or technologist (technē) of power. Conservatism is certainly a tactic, as is utopianism in the sense introduced by Thomas More or, later, by the utopian socialists in the nineteenth century. It is closer to a technē than to phronēsis. But if philosophy is the activity par excellence by which people enquire, question, wonder at the world and thus inspire desires for change and excellence, Plato’s thought has laid the fundaments for this revolutionary aspiration. In the Statesman, Plato manifests himself as a ‘realist’, almost two thousand years before Niccolò Machiavelli. One of the key differences between Plato and Machiavelli seems to us to be the nature and the capacity of the model to be imitated by uprooted men. The famous rupture with a Platonic conception is announced by Machiavelli in Chapter 15 of The Prince, when he says that his intention is to analyse effectual truth. Machiavelli’s new conception of politics rests on the transformation of the sense of virtue. Differently from the epistēmē, virtue becomes a function of the multitude in its undetermined duality. For Machiavelli, the crucial concept is ‘glory’, the greatest desire of the Prince, which consists in seeking admiration among men. Machiavelli, too, locates at the centre of his concerns the relationship between political action and fabrication as guarantee for security, well established and ordered. In Chapter 25 of The Prince, he famously compares political action with a river torrent. Unlike Machiavelli, Plato’s realism relies on the insight that political rule must have an Archimedean point in the extraordinary condition outside the world, in divine law. The revolution proposed by Plato, therefore, does not seem to us a question of idealism at all, but rather of a realism without compromise. Plato’s point of departure is not a hypothetical exceptional individual that would follow positive law, social virtues, or cultural tradition. The realism is in the anthropological insights that human beings are, as he put it in Phaedo (85c–d), sailing through the vicissitudes of life and the political is no exception. They seek orientation and guidance. The Stranger indicates that existing leaders can hardly be distinguished from their subjects in terms of nature, education, or upbringing (275c). Yet, politikē episteme is a virtue that is neither natural nor taught. Rather, as he expresses it in Meno (99e–100a), it is ‘imparted to us by a divine dispensation without understanding in those who receive it, unless there should be somebody among the statesmen capable of making a statesman of another’.

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In the field of political rule, consequently, Plato’s central problem is not an ideal city (a political system) because social reality and history tend always towards decadence, the uprooting of rules, and existential anguish. Rather it is the attempt to create the conditions of rule by weaving together souls. The statesman can rule (archein) in the sense of originating, of putting in motion without, nevertheless, having to act (prattein). Archein and prattein are two completely different activities. Yet they are reciprocal in the sense that they constantly interact. The vertical structure is very much linked to the horizontal structure. In the vision of the statesman, every individual is connected to others through desire and faith, because the statesman’s authority to put into motion should be free from the laws.

Notes 1 Throughout the dialogue, Plato uses terms such as ‘herd-management’, ‘herdmaintenance’, or herd-responsibility (see 267a or 275c–e) 2 Plato’s system based on epistēmē is seventh after the six classical forms of government, including the three good ones (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy) and their degenerations (tyranny, oligarchy and ochlocracy). 3 Here I rely on the analysis of Blum (1990: 50–67). 4 The Greek word for law, nomos, derives from nemein, which means to distribute, to possess, and to dwell. A fragment of Heraclitus suggest the connection of law and hedge in nomos. It says that ‘the people should fight for the law as for a wall’, see Arendt (1989: 63, fn 62).

References Arendt, Hannah (1989) The Human Condition, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Aristotle (1967) Die Nikomachische Ethik, Zürich und Stuttgart: Artemis. Blum, Wilhelm (1990) Scripta Minora, Rheinfelden: Schäuble Verlag. Castoriadis, Cornelius (1999) Sur le Politique de Platon, Paris: Seuil. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1997) Werke in drei Bänden, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Plato (2005) The Statesman, Julia Annas and Robin Waterfield (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosen, Stanley (1995) Plato’s Statesman: The Web of Politics, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Vlastos, Gregory (1981) Platonic Studies, 2nd printing, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wydra, Harald (2012) ‘Passions and Progress: Gabriel Tarde’s Anthropology of Imitative Innovation’, International Political Anthropology 4, 2: 93–111.

5

Plato’s statesman Defending phronesis from coding John O’Brien

Introduction The contemporary political era involves a strange combination of leaders with clear character flaws, who claim to be charismatic figures, but in fact are more akin to trickster figures (Horvath & Thomassen 2008); engaging in incredible rhetoric and proposals, with an increasingly rationally managed world through protocols, procedures, law, code and algorithms which structure citizens lives and provide the sense that the way things are done are inevitable because they are the most rational way of doing things. Though we often speak of the contemporary as unprecedented, returning to Plato for hints of what might be going on and causing this peculiar coincidence is extremely revealing, not least because at a remove of 2500 years he retains a connection to something that could be called normality, despite the turbulence of his times. Furthermore, Plato stood at the point of emergence of a legally grounded democracy providing him with unique insights into its operation and effects. The goal of his dialogue Statesman similar to Republic is thus to provide an account of the correct disposition necessary for political leadership in the context of the twin threats of the non-being produced through the rhetoric of sophists, and displacement of a politics of virtue by a political order grounded in the law and codified instructions. As might be expected, Statesman deals with the form of embodied knowledge required for good leadership, and how this can be eroded in a legaldemocratic order. In a very different manner to rationalist philosophy, Plato’s model of the mind, outlined in Republic, incorporates passions, the body, desire and imitativeness along with intelligence. Thus, virtue, in the shape of the expertise in ruling that the Statesman has, is something rooted in habitus and a context of good models, rather than easily communicable knowledge. The dialogue is thus part of a series, beginning with Theaetetus, which investigates the nature of knowledge, followed by Sophist, which tackles non-being produced by the mere copies of truth spun by sophists who had deeply insinuated themselves into Athenian democratic society, then moves to defining the quality of proper leaders in Statesman, but with the promised culmination missing, as the dialogue on the Philosopher is absent. As the core insight of Plato is the necessity for a certain type of knowledge and disposition for

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political office and political life in general, we can speculate that this is intentional, as by Statesman, all has been said that needs to be said. The Statesman and the Philosopher are close kin or even one and the same. Such knowledge is threatened however on two sides, one by the sophist whose expertise is the mimicking of truth, thereby undermining reality and the knowledge that the correct disposition for leadership is based on, but on the other side by ‘coding’ – formalised, automatic modes of reasoning to achieve some goal. Law is one of the earliest examples of this, alongside algorithmic means of decision making. The combination of an analysis of deception and technical forms of reasoning in this series of dialogues provide them with an extraordinary contemporary relevance, in an age of populists and of the revolutionising of social life in general by experts in science and technology. On top of this, the dialogue examines the limitations of these modes of representing and organising social life, and offers, in a somewhat obscure way, alternatives. Even the enigmatic quality of parts of the dialogue could be read as part of its incisiveness, as that which is subject to rendering into a tight formula, is vulnerable to being reduced from a form of phronesis to a code, that can be picked up by those without true virtue, and let to run automatically and free from the influence of embodied human integrity.

The character of the statesman The greatest part of the dialogue deals with the nature of the embodied knowledge of the Statesman, which is shown to lie in the possession of expertise, care and consent. A leader with these attributes is able to demonstrate ‘judgement’ and ‘the capacity for direction’. Thus, Plato’s analysis concerns what in the parlance of social theory would be called habitus. However, this is not in the value-neutral sense that it is employed by Bourdieu (1990) or Elias (1996), but more in line with a concept of social pathologies. The essence of the idea here is that there is good and bad character, stemming from certain conditions, and that this is of fundamental importance for good order and preventing a descent into chaos. Good character is a form of phronesis, or capacity for virtue in action rooted in a particular disposition or habitus. We will now examine the different elements of this phronesis. Expertise involves the qualities of articulateness, discernment and the capacity for direction, both to mould character and co-ordinate others in some purpose. Articulateness means that they can give expression to the nature of reality, giving symbolic and poetic expression to the intersubjective lifeworld. Their skill is in symbolisation, which places them in the company of prophets whose world-historical impact was through giving expression to crucial experiences (see Szakolczai 2003: 79), with the Statesman appearing as the paradigm of such a figure. The dialogue addresses the import of symbolisation through explaining how knowledge of reality comes through symbolic representations of it, seen in how much of it deals with discussion of models and metaphors that can best epitomise it. Thus, it is noted how

90 John O’Brien one must practice at being able to give and receive an account of each thing: for the things that are without body, which are the finest and greatest, are shown clearly only by verbal means and by nothing else, and everything that is now being said is for the sake of these things. (Statesman 286a) Expert judgement, on top of this, is a qualitative rather than a quantitative skill, involving a sense of ‘the good’ or an external standard that serves as the measure of things, so that things are not just equivalent or more or less than something else, but are judged relative to this standard (Statesman 283d–284b). Alongside a quantitative art of measurement, there is one that assesses things by ‘what is in due measure, what is fitting, the right moment, what is as it ought to be- everything that removes itself from extremes to the middle’ (284e). The Statesman can thus identify what is in proportion and in due measure. Alongside the capacity for symbolisation and judgement is the ability to direct through their ability to weave. Very different from ‘command’, it is an ability to maintain the harmony of an interconnected web. Virtue, as Aristotle (2009) would later note is something that is practical and applied, which is manifested in action, rather than being theoretical or a form of abstract knowledge. The Statesman’s weaving in one sense is for bringing something new into the world but is mainly for preserving what is valuable that already exists. On the practical side, the skills of others are orchestrated to bring about a useful outcome. The skill of the leader is weaving rather than technical tasks, so ‘kingship must not itself perform practical tasks, but control those with the capacity to perform them’ (Statesman 305d). However, more important than directing practical tasks is the immaterial and mental aspect of this ‘weaving’ activity, where the Statesman cultivates character, or in sociological terms, the habitus of the community, weaving the different threads of the self into an appropriate balance, as is described at length in Republic. For instance, gentleness without courage produces meekness and courage without gentleness produces belligerence, so they need to be knitted in the appropriate manner. There is also a knitting of the right action to the right time, as a virtuous disposition is context dependent, where depending on the circumstances, orderliness can be tameness, courage can be madness, and gentleness can be timidity. Good political habitus hinges on the quality of the relationship between the led and leader too. A proper disposition for leadership requires care, in the sense of genuine concern and identification with those they direct (296e–297a). True care involves accepting that people will at times want what they do not need and need what they do not want, and so the person would not seek popularity like a demagogue, but rather remain focused on the good, whether the people understand, resist or resent what they order (296b–c). This of course is the nature of authority of a parent to their child, a master to an apprentice or of a coach to their team, despite it having the ring of tyranny. In fact, all of these are benign dictatorships. The lead themselves should accept the legitimacy

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of authority, recognising the virtue of the Statesman, thus accepting the power relation (276e). Summing up, the Statesman is adept at symbolisation, acting according to a measure, weaving interdependencies, and warmness between them and their charges, having a heartfelt identification with those they are responsible for, with these accepting the legitimacy of authority due to its foundation in virtue. The diagnosis of the role of character in leadership chimes with Max Weber’s delineation of the model politician in ‘Politics as a Vocation’. Weber (2005a) noted the importance of care, explaining that passion is an essential quality, in the sense of a commitment to a realistic cause, as well as a sense of responsibility over the consequences of their actions, which frequently are unforeseeable. They must also have expert judgement according to him, which he defines as combining ‘hot passion’ and ‘cool judgement’ (ibid.: 213) or ‘the ability to contemplate things as they are with inner calm and composure before allowing them to affect one’s actions’ (ibid.: 213) and the ability to not be ‘shattered’ if the world ‘from his point of view, is too stupid or too vulgar for what he wants to offer it’ (ibid.: 225). The bad politician for Weber in contrast has a character defined by hubris, vanity, insincerity, and a thirst for power to feed their self-intoxication. They are shown to be sophists who are in reality play actors focused on impression management rather than actual deeds (ibid.: 213). Plato’s model of leadership has some extra nuance than Weber’s though. Weber’s model of legitimate domination, reflecting the lack of anthropological grounding of his thought (Goody 2002), lacks a picture of the ordinary, with charismatic domination and legal domination being both clearly liminal or permanently liminal forms of power (Szakolczai 2000), but with even traditional domination being in reality an unstable structure maintained by patronage and invented traditions. Plato’s Statesman in contrast is a figure of the ordinary rather than the out-of-the-ordinary. It is a non-liminal form of power. While charismatic leaders emerge in time of emergency and win ‘a submission born from distress and enthusiasm’ (Weber 2005b: 226, 230), the Statesman is a product of and custodian of an intact world and tradition. They thus have much in common with Victor Turner’s concept of ‘master of ceremony’, who embodies tradition and guides others through the path to being a full member of the community (Turner 1969), and who have the power of perception, being able to recognise grace, beauty, order, law and how things hang beautifully together (Horvath & Thomassen 2008: 15, 21). In this way they can be seen as a type of memory of a pre-political form of power from a golden age.

Mimesis and entropy Benevolent leadership is necessary because of Plato’s definition of humans, which, incidentally, runs entirely counter to the Enlightenment emphasis on rationality and equality, instead seeing them as irrational to a large degree. This is to be expected since the programme of the Enlightenment was the tearing up of the Hellenic-Thomistic roots of Western culture. Human conduct, for Plato,

92 John O’Brien is to a large extent imitative rather than directed by a rational consciousness. When the focus of imitation is deficient, an error, or is good but becomes obscured, good order will shift into chaos. Plato’s ontology is grounded in a recognition of how mimetic processes rule much of human action, and how they always risk the collapse into chaos. This foundational insight in political philosophy is well recognised in mainstream social science, much of whose progress has been the unpicking of Enlightenment presumptions, and despite the continuing predominance of rational choice theory. Mark Granovetter (1978) for example argues against Durkheimian sociology, emphasising instead that norms have a limited effect on behaviour in comparison with imitative processes. There is an ongoing rediscovery of Gabriel Tarde’s (1969) thought on imitation as the key dynamic in human culture (Latour 2001; Szakolczai & Thomassen 2019). The insight can be seen again in the work of René Girard (1988), or in Elias’s (2000) work on blind processes that people are locked into. Social psychology also fully supports Plato, which has shown in endless experiments how rationality is overridden by imitation, appetites and authority. Game theory and experimental economics has even shown that people are indeed capable of rational behaviour, but only in pursuing simple and repeated games where they are provided with good information. Of course, such conditions exist in laboratory conditions but much less so outside of them, explaining the everincreasing influence of psychology in economics in the shape of behavioural economics (Kahneman 2011). Accepting the centrality of imitation to behaviour, the models that are imitated are crucial, and if these are good models, the question of how to prevent these from degenerating or being distracted from them is important to answer. In Plato’s thinking, conduct is based on the imitation of models, which are eidos – forms or ends that are thought of as transcendent and sacred (Horvath & Thomassen 2008: 3). The perceptive powers of the Statesman, as we will see are important as the majority follow these models in an imitative and non-conscious manner. Thus, a figure to clarify and protect them is crucial. Philosophical activity involves the perception, symbolisation and clarification of these forms, so that their existence is strengthened and to prevent them becoming unclear, as otherwise conduct will degenerate as it will be imitating inferior or erroneous models (Stern 1997: 274; McCabe 1997: 109). However, eidos is prone to deterioration. The cause of the degeneration of the models offered by eidos is four-fold. Entropy, firstly, grows to the extent that awareness of the need to symbolise and follow good models declines, as otherwise imitation will be indiscriminate, quickening the fall from order to chaos. Deception is the second cause. Error can metastasise through a loss of judgement through the spread of delusion driven by sophistry in particular, whether in the form of the contemporary public sphere or totalitarian ideologies (Horvath & Thomassen 2008: 20). The result of the spread of non-being, as discussed by Plato in Sophist is that good ends will no longer be identifiable, as pathological models proliferate, with people trapped into acting according to them despite the dysfunctional and unattractive forms of behaviour they call

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forth. Platonic thinkers such as Gregory Bateson have identified such processes, for instance in his concept of ‘epistemological error’ (Bateson 2000, 1958). Thirdly, a blindness to good models and their consequent corruption comes from appetites and impulses. Foremost among these are sexuality, comedy and violence, which cause confusion by distracting focus away from good ends. These are also among the most mimetic aspects of human experience (Horvath & Thomassen 2008: 12). The final cause is the primary focus of the dialogue, representing a counterpart to the previous dialogue on the Sophist. This fourth source is, surprisingly perhaps: rationality, which can have highly irrational effects. At the heart of this problem is a rationalist misunderstanding of what the practice of rationality is, and an excessive faith in the role of rational schemes in guiding human affairs. The attack on good models from rationalism, as just noted, comes in a pincer movement from two sides, one led by sophists and the other by ‘coders’ who create automatic forms of reasoning, with the law as the paradigmatic example, who we will turn to shortly. Sophists are the principle culprits for manipulating appetites and needs in order to simply win arguments and distract from the good through their art of rhetoric and spread non-being as a result. Plato says that these ‘men resemble lions and centaurs and other such things, and very many resemble satyrs and those animals that are weak but versatile; and they quickly exchange their shapes and capacity for action for each other’s’ (Plato 1997: 291b), and that they are ‘the greatest magician of all’ (Plato 1997: 291c). Due to their professional art of rhetoric they are masters of impression management and simulation. They are skilled at advancing themselves through feeding the masses what their appetites crave, rather than confronting them with truth (Plato Republic 493e). They advance also through selling their services in trickery to the rich to further their influence and power by helping them win disputes, but thereby spreading the negative appetites of resentment and malice (500c). Sophists are adept in this type of conduct because of their asocial personalities which means that they are not committed to the rules of the game and their moral basis, rather seeking to win by expedience. Unlike Plato and Aristotle who felt that virtue is something that is embodied in habits and emotional disposition and so not subject to articulation and rational control, the sophists argued that virtue is something that can be taught and is thereby something that can be possessed and exchanged.

Coders The primary target of the dialogue however is ‘coders’. Plato does not use this term himself, but it works well for the purposes of this chapter to summarise the main thread of his argument. These are figures who promote technical means of representing and coordinating social life. Code is a method of translating reality into communicable symbols, which also operate as a system of instructions that command actions. It ‘executes’ actions to achieve tasks according to encoded instructions and pre-scripted operations (Bateson & Ruesch 1951, cited in

94 John O’Brien Mackenzie & Vurdubakis 2011: 5). Law is the main example of this mode of ordering human affairs historically, and it is what Plato focuses on in his discussion. Indeed, the examples that Plato covers are quite basic such as ‘ancestral understandings’, meaning moral codes, codes of honour, etiquette and religious commands to law, compared to the proliferation of complex code in the contemporary world. However, it seems clear that Plato saw the connection between law and logical systems or algorithmic reasoning, due to the twinning of geometers with a discussion of the law. The role of law, contract and procedure has of course immeasurably increased in the era of legal domination, and are matched by the exponential role for coding in computer programming, the conceptualising of life as an executable code through the decoding of DNA (Mackenzie & Vurdubakis 2011: 7), and society is increasingly pictured through information codes which are processed algorithmically also of course. Coding can be seen playing an enormous role in financial markets, the management of terrorist threats, decisions on sentencing and prisoner release, plagiarism detection, and in marketing and consumer behaviour. The physicist John Archibald Wheeler has even conceptualised the universe itself as ‘information theoretic’, expressed in his phrase ‘it from bit’ (Wheeler 1990). Such thinking has been elaborated to understand the emergence of complexity through simple rules encoded in single cell automata, who in computer models ‘run’ producing complex systems through their interaction (Wolfram 2002), increasingly used as the basis of modelling economic and social life. Despite the pronouncements of techno-utopians, we would be right to heed Mackenzie and Vurdubakis’ (2011: 9) pronouncement that ‘[c]ode is the stuff nightmares, as well as dreams are made of’. Qualitative and ethical forms of reasoning have become marginalised through the rationalisation process that coding is an aspect of, as automatic commands and codified procedures replace leadership by ‘edict’ based on the moral foundations (and capriciousness) of the ruler. Max Weber (1978: 941–1006) saw the rationalisation process as ambivalent, as while it yields enormous gains in the efficiency with which actions can be co-ordinated and complex tasks administered, it depersonalises social relations, rendering it subject to technical formulas rather than personal say-so. The advantage is the removal of the need for consensus and consent from the coordination of action, and the reliance on the virtue of leaders, but the negative is what Weber saw as a moral crisis due to the de-ethicisation of social relations. The growing importance of code could de-ethicise society further through the way that it has empowered engineers, physicists and computer scientists in the management of society over sociologists due their greater mathematical nous, in contrast to the more theoretical and qualitative bent of the latter discipline. The enormous increase in availability of quantitative data has empowered the former disciplines, contributing to ‘a coming crisis of sociology’ (Savage & Burrows 2007, cited in Mackenzie & Vurdubakis 2011: 15). In this swing disciplines grounded in formal logic and empiricism alone displace those which have maintained a connection to value rationality.

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Rational, technical orientations to administration furthermore are irrational in their effects. Algorithms speed the pace of decision making, but to an extent that exceeds human capacity for supervision and comprehension (Mackenzie & Vurdubakis 2011: 16). This is evident in law as the principle form of social ‘code’, which typically produces unpredicted effects and more disorder (think for example of laws codifying minimum sentences that have baked crisis into various criminal justice systems).

How to set out a model of virtuous leadership, while resisting its codification Phronesis defines how virtue is an embodied practice. Virtue cannot exist in codified form. It is thus something that is an aspect of the lifeworld. An oftobserved phenomenon is the instrumentalisation of some model of the good. Environmentalism becomes greenwashing, revolutions become commodified, interesting neighbourhoods become gentrified, scientific wonder becomes harnessed by military-industrial complexes, and ethics become empty corporate speak of finding purpose, showing gratitude and performing humbleness. How can the immediate conquest of the language of virtue and the good by sophism be resisted? It could be well argued that Plato was not successful in finding the solution to this, but he certainly attempted to prevent this happening. If his argument is that virtuous leadership is a form of phronesis, an embodied and practical form of knowledge, then it is something that is lived, and thus it is part of the lifeworld, and so not logical, formalisable and subject to mathematical operations. Accepting this, the worst violence that could be done to phronesis would be to attempt to define it, subjecting it to Kantian classifications, as this would be the surest way to transform it into a zombie version of itself. Thus, Plato employs two tactics: firstly using a range of poetic forms to show the difference between virtue and code, which secondly serves as a defence against its instrumentalisation, as to ‘get it’ requires a reading experience and moment of recognition. More than this, the reality of phronesis as an embodied practice that is never quite definable, is shown in the multiperspectivism that is practiced through the various forms of representation that capture and communicate in their own specific way different sides and aspects of it. These perspectives are to begin, deconstructive in the shape of irony to rip up conventional thinking, then a constructive myth in the form of a cosmology to show archetypical dynamics, following this a dialogue to show how error creeps into thought and action, and finally biographical contextualisation to show the rootedness of virtue in disposition and involvements. The dialogue begins in this way with a comedic account of an attempt at ‘automatic reasoning’, as a definition of the Statesman is pursued through the application of rule-based form of reasoning called diairesis, to arrive at what conclusion it leads to. Apology is a tragic portrayal of the poor ability of the code of the law to establish the truth of things and to produce a good end through the exercise of good judgement. Statesman provides a more comic

96 John O’Brien depiction of the flaws of set procedures for deciding on the good, with some humorous conclusions reached (McCabe & Margaret 1997: 116). As with all of Plato’s dialogues it shows how naive ideas that knowledge of a topic is a possession or something easily acquired are faulty (Statesman 262b). A metaphor for this is given in how when children learn to write they can get the shorter syllables right but make mistakes with the longer ones (262b–263b). The discussion that is represented illustrates this through being full of wrong turns, dead ends, digressions, dubious analogies, radical shifts in perspective and perplexing exchanges (Stern 1997: 265–266). The source of the weird, twisting discussion is the automatic form of reasoning, diairesis, which like an algorithm is a technical means of logical inference, dividing a concept into two and eliminating the most unsatisfactory half in order to move closer to a useful definition. This provides a formal structure that runs automatically as a form of coding with set procedures, and relatively independently of the cognitive biases of human thought. However, though diairesis is a method specifically associated with Plato, here it is used in a satirical fashion to show up the limitations of such an approach. The dialogue is full of irony and comedic passages where the automatic running of this form of reasoning results in absurd conclusions, as the code runs freely, unconstrained by human judgement and ends. This is unsurprising of course as the thinking and acting of individuals let alone groups is very difficult to codify.

Cosmology: a story about archetypes As a result, diairesis is abandoned, with the Stranger (the leader of the discussion) noting ‘we must travel some other route, starting from another point … By mixing in, as one might put it, an element of play’ (Plato 1997: 268d) through the telling of a story. Thus, they move to the relaying of a cosmology, in an artistic depiction that in a not particularly logical way, nonetheless provides visionary insights about the archetypical structure of the world, in a free play space unconstrained by technical reason. The Stranger relays a cosmology, similar to that of Timaeus and the thought of pre-Socratics, that metaphorically and obscurely illustrates the imitative processes by which people mimetically follow models. The vision offered is of the universe and how it moves from order to chaos, through a metaphor that describes something like a spinning top (Mohr 1981: 212), where a dynamic order is maintained by an agent, but which gradually decays into disorder and chaos. The agent is the Demiurge who acts through the World Soul. With the withdrawal of the Demiurge’s influence it enters into a reverse circuit and the influence of the bodily which sows disorder becomes the predominant influence. The Demiurge is thus ‘the measure’ of conduct and is hence defined by perfect stability, and is permanent, unchanging and uniform, as seen also in Laws, where it is pictured as a circle that rotates like a wheel in place. This makes sense, as the figure is the embodiment of ends, which as forms, have greater permanence than the bodily. Since ends are the motivational force in people, the Demiurge is the cause of all movement and action, and is

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the only thing that moves itself. Furthermore, the Demiurge is the representation of reason, which is the source of morality and hence happiness, and the source of order. However, its influence is prone to decay, with Mohr (1981) using the metaphor of a clutch that engages or disengages power transmission, which when it disengages allows the shafts to which it is connected to continue to spin, but with the effect of the power it delivers ever decreasing. At this point the friction and counter-momentum of the bodily will become more and more influential. The Statesman clarifies ends, maintaining their expression, and through this orderliness and hold the chaotic influence of the corporeal in check. The bodily however, moves chaotically and breaks down orderly motion, with the result being a ‘chaotic flux’ in which ‘everything is driven and tossed this way and that, turned upside down just as in a tidal channel where the flux and reflux is strong, and nothing ever remains in one place for any time’ (Mohr 1981: 206). The corporeal thus moves chaotically and is the cause of the ‘retrograde cycle of the universe’ (ibid.: 215), which leads to chaos as it corrupts the influence of the World Soul (ibid.: 213, 215). An additional motivation to the cosmology is to provide a constructive mythology. The rationalism brought in by the sophists was implicated in deepening egoism, a ruinous foreign policy, and an increasingly fractured culture split between intellectuals and the common people. Profoundly aware of the limitations and dangers of rationalism Plato sought to build a bridge to tradition and mysticism that would link the people and intellectuals and thereby the unity of Greek culture, which was under severe strain as indicated by unease over the impiety of Pericles and his interest in ‘the new spirit that put reason and intellect in the place of religion and tradition’ (Ehrenberg 2011: 194), the persecution of Socrates, the flight from Athens to Macedonia of a disenchanted Euripides, and the radicalisation of religion with the introduction of foreign cults (ibid.: 281). At the heart of his concern was the impact of rationalism on character, and the sense that its negative expressions ‘were visibly destroying the springs of social conduct’ (ibid.: 204).

Dialogue and drama The final and most important method for grasping the qualities of the Statesman is the interpretive method of the dialogue, fully grounded in an acceptance of the symbolic nature of reality. Consequently, the main theme is the limitation of coding through a satirical depiction of the representatives of technical approaches to reason: Theodorus and Young Socrates, who suitably represent, not law, but mathematical reasoning. They are comically represented as hopelessly devoid of an appreciation of the symbolic nature of the social universe, which Socrates attempts to outline. Theodorus, the interlocutor of Socrates, is represented as a disappointing partner in Theaetetus, a dialogue dealing with epistemology, which serves as a prologue to Statesman. He had abandoned dialogue in favour of geometry in his studies, and implicitly, related to this he is a figure who has a range of flaws that prevent him perceiving and acquiring virtue as a form of phronesis, with these deficiencies rooted in the

98 John O’Brien very technical knowledge he possesses, despite the gifts of logical reasoning they should provide him with. He is highly incurious, seen for instance when he intemperately butts into the conversation to ask whether there is any point in it continuing, right at the beginning when the question is raised that knowledge is merely perception. In addition to a lack of interest, he lacks dispassion. His emotional involvements override his reason, seen where Socrates challenges Protagoras’ maxim that ‘man is the measure’, with him responding not logically, but rather on the basis of personal loyalty, stating that: ‘Protagoras was my friend Socrates, as you have just remarked. I could not consent to have him refuted through my admissions’ (Theaetetus 162a). Theodorus is asocial too, bowing out of the play contest of the dialogue when it becomes too trying, resulting in him being chided by Socrates with the perfectly Greek scold that he is like a man in a gymnasium watching other men exercising naked, without disrobing and exerting himself too (162b). It is only with considerable reluctance that he dragged back into the dialogue. The heart of the matter can be seen at the beginning of Statesman where he is criticised for only having a numerical intelligence, lacking the ability to engage in qualitative reasoning to discern the qualities and advantages of the different types of leadership (Statesman 257b). The main theme of this section of the dialogue is education, very naturally, considering the underlying point that virtue is a form of phronesis that is lived, and is an acquired disposition. It deals with the effort to train Young Socrates, the pupil of Theodorus and so already possessing a character stamped by his master’ deficiencies. Naturally, he is again a disappointing partner in the dialogue, being defined by the double-whammy of ignorance and overconfidence. This is explained through the type of reason he possesses, as a mathematician, representing thus a scientific-technical type. The type of knowledge he possesses makes him ignorant of his ignorance, due to the unjustified confidence it provides him to understand complicated subjects outside of his own quantitative domain. His interlocutor, the Stranger, as a result aims to make Young Socrates grasp his neediness and make clear to him the irreducibly complexity of the topic at hand (the proper disposition of the leader), and the limits of our knowledge. Such knowledge of the limits of our knowledge is the necessary step to being able to engage in philosophic activity (Stern 1997: 265, 274). The formation that Young Socrates has received makes this no easy task, as he is resistant to this line of questioning, responding to the Stranger with the bored response: ‘That, I think, is actually for you to do, visitor, not for me’ (Statesman 258c). Young Socrates’ sense of the whole matter being tiresome continues through the piece, with him offering curt and vexed responses, with a haughtiness that blinds him to the fact that he is on occasion being led around in circles and mocked for his obliviousness, for example when his reasoning is guided down a path to have him agree that governing humans is similar to rearing pigs (265c–e). The failure of the coders, Theodorus and Young Socrates, is to see the difference between the bounded logical problems that they face

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and the open, complex, contextual and meaning-based problems that philosophers face. The failure to grasp this is what leads the coders astray, with their misunderstanding being that the level of rationality and control that they have achieved in their fields can be applied to human affairs. The above dialogue along with the cosmology could be criticised with the argument that such narrative depictions can prove anything. There is the curious fact for instance that Socrates always turns out to have the right questions and is not mentally twisted around by others himself. We could see the cosmology through the lens of Freud (1989) as being essentially wish fulfilment, meeting our need to believe that there is a basis of order and way to overcome the inherent flux and uncertainty of existence. However, the point is that experience cannot be captured in a logical formula, as seen in the trajectory of the thinking of Logical Positivist philosophers such as Wittgenstein, who initially attempted the trick. Thus, for the dimension of reality of character, virtue and leadership, in sum phronesis, this is all that we have to grasp it, and shape the ethos that it is based on. And the validity of the discussion of it can never be provable, as recognition of its truth from a Platonic or Aristotelian point of view rests on the virtuous disposition of the reader themselves.

Involvement and context Because virtue is a disposition rather than a form of knowledge per se, and it is context specific rather than something subject to abstract classification, an account is given of how the phronesis of the Statesman relies on being grounded in something, along with how the attempt to give an account of this is grounded in a context. Socrates and Plato of course are shaped by the Greek Enlightenment and rationalist culture. As a result, they could hardly be simply reckless critics of technical and scientific culture, as they were immersed in, and appreciative of them. The teacher of Socrates was possibly Archelaus, a natural scientist and pupil of Anaxagoras (Ehrenberg 2011: 269). The appreciation is evident in Republic (525b–526e, 536d), where the education of the philosopher kings should begin with mathematics, which dialectic requires as a preliminary. In Phaedo, however, it is explained that logic and the sciences are insufficient for understanding human conduct, as they tend to completely screen out human agency and the meaning of things for people. Socrates explains here how, when he was a young man, he was very interested in the natural sciences, thinking that they could locate the cause of all things. He explains that he became disappointed, though, when he realised that these only locate causes in physical elements and processes. For example, it would say that: the causes of my talking to you: sound and air and hearing, and a thousand other such things, but he would neglect to mention the true causes, that, after the Athenians decided it was better to condemn me, for this reason it seemed best to me to sit here and more right to remain and to endure whatever penalty they ordered. (Phaedo 96b–d, 98c–99b)

100 John O’Brien As a result, Socrates turned to his own method of gaining knowledge, as he concluded that his initial studies were leading him away from understanding rather than towards it. He made the turn to seeing how people’s conduct is caused by their pursuit of the ‘good’, or to put it another way, agency is directed by ethical goals. Socrates explains how ‘I thought I must take refuge in discussions and investigate the truth of things by means of words’ (99e), rather than logic and abstract reasoning. The codes that emerge from logic are detached from human bias because of their automatic nature, and so, as with Weber’s model of instrumental rationality they run detached from any concern for those they address. The idea of a code such as a law that is conceived of without some ethical purpose is absurd, yet as Weber showed means tend to become ends in an era of coding. As a result, the dialogue provides an account of the context that the discussion on the virtuous disposition necessary for proper leadership takes place in. Codes are abstract, but ethical questions are grounded in times and places, with their own challenges. The dialogue thus makes a statement on the unavoidability of involvement in life and politics by being explicitly placed in a lived context. Plato’s representation of the discussion takes place following Socrates’ indictment and before his trial, questioning whether he was guilty of corrupting the youth. The context leading to this was the political traumas of plague, the disasters of the Peloponnesian War and the civil strife that followed in the Rule of the Four Hundred. It was this period of chaos that made the question of proper education for the formation of a virtuous disposition so central to Plato’s thinking, indeed the question at the heart of his entire intellectual endeavour. As we have seen already, the dialogue dramatises the process of education, with the Stranger helping to mould the ideas of Young Socrates, who is immature and in the process of formation, and who has already been led into learned ignorance. A comment on the role of involvement in a particular political society may also be implicitly made through the contrast between the Stranger and Socrates. The Stranger is the main discussant, and it is striking that the political positions articulated in Statesman are quite different from those articulated in Republic, likely due to the nature of the figure at the heart of the dialogue. The Stranger is a cosmopolitan figure, hailing from the sophisticated metropole (like Athens) of Elea, a city in Magna Graecia (now in Campania, Italy), which was the home of the philosophers Parmenides and Zeno and where the pre-Socratic philosophical school of the Eleatics was based, and so was detached from the immediate political context (Mara 1981: 380). Theodorus, the geometer and teacher of Young Socrates, is similarly from Cyrene. While the Stranger engages in conversation with Young Socrates with benign intent, his interlocutor, like Athens in general, is dealing with such cosmopolitan figures bearing Enlightenment ideas. It raises the question of the responsibility of intellectuals to their host society, whose negative expression was sophistry. The very fact that Socrates is named, while the Stranger is not, indicates that the former will have to bear

Plato’s statesman 101 responsibility for his words, while the latter will likely not. The stakes are high, as only proper education, in the sense of character formation, can lead to proper leadership, and only proper leadership can maintain good order and prevent the slow descent into chaos. Young Socrates is the symbol of the character formation of the Athenians, and he is shown to be impressionable and vulnerable to bad as well as good influence. In Republic Socrates plays the role of a parrhesiast, being a citizen who engages in speech that is ‘dangerous’, as it is likely to offend others present, such as the democrats Anytus and Callicles. The Stranger, then, is a type of figure who ‘is a kind of image of a Socrates who might be able to both survive and converse in Athens but who would do so at the cost of his peculiar public/private harmony’ (380). Plato may also be making an implicit comment on the nature of the public sphere and the effect it has on the quality of speech and discussion. We have already seen how Theodorus was unwilling to engage in a discussion of the great sophist Protagoras’ thought. The discussion in Statesman takes place in a public setting unlike the discussion represented in Republic which is in private outside of Athens, allowing greater frankness. Enlightened Athens has as its central institution a public sphere, with democratic spaces for decision making, law courts and theatre. While this is at the heart of the heroic selfimage of the West, as the root of its progressivism, Socrates and Plato were extremely ambivalent about it, even seeing it as the source of the corruption of the Athenian spirit. Szakolczai (2013) writing against the heroic understanding of the public sphere, as found in Habermas, notes that the public sphere and its demand for transparency violates the boundaries that are essential to maintain identity, so that a certain type of shamelessness and an irresponsible wearing of masks spreads, rather than a sincere and responsible articulation of a position. This makes it fertile ground for sophists. Some of the irony and caginess of the discussion can be explained through this. Some of the boredom and casualness of the discussion can be explained in addition by how the participants are logicians, in contrast to the gifted young political men who are Socrates’ friends and a famous teacher of rhetoric, who are the audience in Republic. There is a difference between the intimacy and warmth of one group, and the coolness and detachment of the other. Thus, in contrast to the audience of Republic, who are intimately involved in the political and social scene, the audience in Statesman are detached figures, with a more theoretical and technical perspective on reality. We should conclude this section by making the very obvious point that knowledge is pursued through a dialogue, which is inherently social and context specific. The focus on the involvements through which people are tied together is always maintained also through the method of the dialogue, which underpins authentic human relationships. It is founded on graciousness, pleasant competition and nurturing, with the Stranger schooling and caring for Young Socrates by trying to instil insights in him. The embodied knowledge that the Statesman possesses is cultivated in such sociability.

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Conclusion We can conclude this chapter with its main argument: that code undermines phronesis, and thereby increases the role of mimesis, making conduct more chaotic and obscures good models, creating more and more deviations from the original and authentic. The Statesman acts according to phronesis. The final section of the dialogue deals with the threat to the embodied form of knowledge that they possess from law due to it being a form of code. Plato was concerned that code will undermine this phronesis by crowding out the space where it can be exercised, and thereby the space where it can be acquired in the long process by which character is formed. Code, in the shape of law, is contrary to the sureness of touch and wisdom of the Statesman who can act according to circumstances. Once a collective decision has been encoded in law, it is set in stone and action will follow the stipulations and limits set down by it, on pain of punishment (Statesman 298e). Both people and situations change though, meaning that laws are clumsy and cannot determine what is best in every case. Even more, laws promote a trickster logic. Plato (294c) explains: But we see law bending itself more or less towards this very thing; it resembles some self-willed and ignorant person, who allows no one to do anything contrary to what he orders, nor to ask any questions about it, not even if, after all, something new turns out for someone which is better, contrary to the prescription which he himself has laid down. Phronesis is blocked again, as laws are made through collective agreement meaning that they are the product of the compromises of many non-experts. Despite this messy origin, laws are perceived as sacrosanct preventing dialogue about them with Plato noting that if anyone queries the application of the law rather than being called an expert, they will rather be denounced as a ‘stargazer’ or a ‘babbling sophist’, and will be charged with corrupting the young against the morals of society (Statesman 299b). Absurd but also dangerous consequences derive from this. The darkly comical outcome is shown through the question of what the outcome would be in generalship, hunting and painting. To modernise the metaphor we could imagine how successful a sports team would be whose play was based on collectively decided, codified procedures. While it may be an amusing thought experiment, Plato (300a) explains that ‘It’s clear both that we should see all the various sorts of expertise completely destroyed, and that they would never be restored … so that life, which even now is difficult, in such a time would be altogether unliveable’. How can the spread of law and other codes that programme the conduct of social life be explained if their effects on phronesis are so dire? It is partly due to the uncertainty of whether people with the virtue of the Statesman will emerge, and in situations where natural leadership is unavailable, people will need to be protected from their own judgement (Statesman 300e). The

Plato’s statesman 103 influence of virtuous character in a complex, large-scale society can also be weak, as it will be impossible for a possessor of phronesis to exert direct influence on many people, or direct them in a personal manner. Thus, codified prescriptions and proscriptions become necessary as a tragic outcome of the social complexity that characterises large-scale societies (294e–295c). Most importantly, the conundrum is that where the phronesis of the Statesman is absent, laws will be necessary. Plato views democracy as an inferior form of government, but only when a virtuous leader is a possibility, and often it is much more likely that trickster pretenders to the crown will be the reality. Where bad character reigns, the law is necessary as a protection and a solvent of complicities. Monarchy or aristocracy is the best form of government where good character exists, as there is wide scope for the application of good judgement. However, these are the worst types of government where good character is lacking, degenerating into tyrannies and oligarchies, with the mimetic effects of the bad character of the leaders infecting society at large (303a–b). However, through scrupulous adherence to the procedurality of such legal codes, a schismogenic relationship starts to spiral, with codes/ laws not just mending the situation in the absence of virtuous leaders, but furthermore rendering even the emergence of such leaders impossible, populating politics instead with quasi-statesmen, mimes who imitate leadership qualities by catering for votes – fully in conformity with legal technicalities, but undermining all meaning and substance, as we are witnessing now, documented amply in this book. Thus, while the codifying of right action in law prevents wanton misuse of power and exploitation, it creates a society where there is no scope for those who could learn to act as good models to develop this expertise, preventing the emergence of a virtuous circle of imitation. Thus the law, rather than protecting against the growth of chaos, in fact becomes complicit in its growth, and complicit in a vicious circle where protecting people from bad character actually makes bad character more prevalent.

References Aristotle (2009) Nicomachean Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bateson, Gregory (1958) Naven, Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Bateson, Gregory (2000) ‘The Cybernetics of “Self”: A Theory of Alcoholism’, in Gregory Bateson (ed.) Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Chicago IL: Chicago University Press. Bateson, Gregoy & Ruesch, Jurgen (1951) Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry, New York NY: Norton. Bourdieu, Pierre (1990) The Logic of Practice, Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Ehrenberg, Victor (2011) [1968] From Solon to Socrates, London: Routledge. Elias, Norbert (1996) The Germans: Power Struggles and the Development of Habitus in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, New York: Columbia University Press. Elias, Norbert (2000) The Civilizing Process, Oxford: Blackwell.

104 John O’Brien Freud, Sigmund (1989) ‘The Future of an Illusion’, in Peter Gay (ed.), The Freud Reader, London: W. W. Norton & Company. Girard, Rene (1988) Violence and the Sacred, London: The Athlone Press. Goody, Jack (2002) ‘Elias and the Anthropological Tradition’, in Anthropological Theory, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 401–412. Granovetter, Mark (1978) ‘Threshold Models of Collective Behavior’, in The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 83, No. 6, pp. 1420–1443. Horvath, Agnes & Thomassen, Bjorn (2008) ‘Mimetic Errors in Liminal Schismogenesis: On the Political Anthropology of the Trickster’, in International Political Anthropology, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 3–24. Kahneman, Daniel (2011) Thinking Fast and Slow, New York: Ferrar, Straus and Giroux. Latour, Bruno (2001) ‘Gabriel Tarde and the End of the Social’, in P. Joyce (ed.), The Social and Its Problems, London: Routledge. Mackenzie, Adrian & Vurdubakis, Theo (2011) ‘Codes and Codings in Crisis: Signification, Performativity and Excess’, in Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 3–23. Mara, Gerald (1981) ‘Constitutions, Virtue and Philosophy in Plato’s “Statesman” and “Republic”’, in Polity, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 355–382. McCabe, Mary & Margaret (1997) ‘Chaos and Control: Reading Plato’s “Politicus”’, in Phronesis, Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 94–117. Mohr, Richard D. (1981) ‘Disorderly Motion in Plato’s “Statesman”’, in Phoenix, Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 199–215. Plato (1997) Plato: Complete Works, Cooper, John M. & Hutchinson, D. S. (eds.), Cambridge MA: Hackett Publishing. Savage, Mike & Burrows, Roger (2007) ‘The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology’, in Sociology, Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 885–899. Stern, Paul (1997) ‘The Rule of Wisdom and the Rule of Law in Plato’s “Statesman”’, in The American Political Science Review, Vol. 91, No. 2, pp. 264–276. Szakolczai, Arpad (2000) Reflexive Historical Sociology, London: Routledge. Szakolczai, Arpad (2003) The Genesis of Modernity, London: Routledge. Szakolczai, Arpad (2013) Comedy and the Public Sphere: The Re-birth of Theatre as Comedy and the Genealogy of the Modern Public Arena, London: Routledge. Szakolczai, Arpad & Thomassen, Bjorn (2019) From Anthropology to Social Theory: Rethinking the Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarde, Gabriel (1969) On Communication and Social Influence, Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press. Turner, Victor (1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, New York: Aldine De Gruyter. Weber, Max (1978) Economy and Society, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Weber, Max (2005a) ‘Politics as a Vocation’, in W. G. Runciman (ed.), Weber: Selections in Translation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weber, Max (2005b) ‘The Nature of Charismatic Domination’, in W. G. Runciman (ed.), Weber: Selections in Translation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wheeler, John A. (1990) ‘Information, physics, quantum: The search for links’, in W. Zurek (ed.), Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information, Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley. Wolfram, Stephen (2002) A New Kind of Science, Champaign, IL: Wolfram Media.

Part III

Contemporary case studies

6

A study in charisma and trickery The case of Alexis Tsipras and SYRIZA Manussos Marangudakis

Among the main topics of sociology are the processes of institution building, social transformation, and symbolic creativity; processes that involve the formation, reproduction and transformation of major types of institutions and cultural symbols. If the long accumulative process of minor changes in various spheres of life is one way to achieve such a response, Max Weber’s ‘charisma’ is the other. Charisma stands for these abrupt and radical alterations of the main contours of social life, of the basic rules of social organization and the symbolic premises which constitute the public sphere. The result of a sudden dramatic innovation – which usually starts at peripheral spheres of life and then infiltrates and impinges on the central stage – charisma is the most dramatic expression of human creativity. This is to say that creativity does not exist outside institutional frameworks but is found in certain aspects of social relations. It constitutes a radical reinterpretation of the systemic organizational and symbolic contours of a certain social configuration, it entails its own constrictions and rigidities, and it often co-exists with processes of destruction of institutions that it wishes to replace or utterly eradicate. In this chapter we will examine a paradigmatic case of the second possibility, of a radical and comprehensive interpretation of creativity as charismatic action that occurred in Greece when the country went virtually bankrupt in 2010, and ‘charismatic’ Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the radical leftist party SYRIZA, came to power. What can we learn about charisma from this meteoric rise and fall of Tsipras and its party?

The setting The year 2015 was the ‘Year Zero’ of Greece, of the Greek economy, and of Greek society, which defined the country since 1974, when democracy was restored in the country. It was the year radicalism came to power, accusing the ‘old political regime’ for corruption and treason, and promising the Greek people to force the European debtors to erase the Greek debt. This was to be achieved by the self-proclaimed charismatic party of the ‘Coalition of the Radical Left’ (SY.RI.ZA., ‘SYRIZA’ henceforth) and its equally charismatic leader Alexis Tsipras.

108 Manussos Marangudakis ‘Charismatic’ we call them nominally, as this is how they presented themselves – as virtuous underdogs who in the past always fought for the rights of the people – even though the people did not appreciate them until now; this is how they were hailed by the media and the voters – as the wrath of the people against globalization, neoliberalism and the austerity measures imposed by the ‘Troika’.1 But, mostly, we call them ‘charismatic’ because both the leader Alexis Tsipras and the SYRIZA party as such seem to comply with the elementary features of charisma as this was described by Max Weber (see below). Yet, four and a half years later, in the eve of the 2019 elections which removed SYRIZA from power, the country was in a peculiar state of being; notwithstanding the worsening of all social indicators, the country was experiencing an ‘in-between’ condition of uncertainty, insecurity, and lack of institutional orientation: neither capitalist nor socialist; neither democratic nor autocratic; neither individualist nor collectivist, the country had virtually lost its bearings. Greece, which since 2010 had experienced a state of deep crisis, in 2015, after SYRIZA came to power, had entered a state of institutional liminality. This is a rather paradoxical situation since charisma, notwithstanding its specific orientation, is meant to bring order out of chaos, meaning out of confusion, and purpose out of despair. How can we make sense of such an outcome of charismatic rulership? One way to respond to this circumstance is to proclaim Tsipras and SYRIZA fake; to proclaim them ‘tricksters’ who took advantage of a country in despair to impose a regime (which indeed they tried to) to advance their personal gains at the expense of the country (which actually they did). In fact, perpetual liminality, as Arpad Szakolczai (2009) has argued, is a definite feature of a trickster in action. Yet, while the facts indeed suggest that the SYRIZA governance was disastrous except for the rank and file of the party, this does not necessarily mean that they were ‘fake charismatics’. What if they had won the 2019 elections? The condition which they had established would have had eventually created a new set of organizational basic rules and a new set of hegemonic symbolic representations, and thus a new framework of routine social action – exactly as their role models, Chavez and Maduro, managed to accomplish in Venezuela. Would this accomplishment be sufficient to pronounce them genuinely charismatic? Or is it adequate enough to pronounce them ‘fake’ because they failed to carry their radical vision to its logical conclusion? And in either case, how do we incorporate into the pattern external, yet highly influential factors, such as the international relations of the country, above all with the EU but also with individual foreign powers (e.g. the US, China and Russia), who blocked alternative options and in effect did not allow SYRIZA to proceed with exit from the EU, a precondition for the establishment of a ‘populist democracy’? All this is to say that SYRIZA and its leader Alexis Tsipras could either be proclaimed ‘charismatic’ (though they did not have the chance to finish the transformation of Greece in a social configuration in line with their radical

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vision), or be proclaimed tricksters who could do nothing more but to perpetuate the agony of a desolated country to their advantage. This raises questions concerning the theoretical premises of the concept charisma as such, as it is quite different to identify two distinct processes, one creative and one destructive, in the form ‘charisma vs. trickery’, or one generic process, ‘charisma’, of no clear moral bearings.

Organizational and symbolic structure of the SYRIZA party SYRIZA is the sectarian and antinomian end result of a series of splits and reconfigurations2 of Greek communism which started in 1968, triggered by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, between the ‘orthodox’ KKE which remained loyal to Stalinism, and the Euro-communist offshoot (referred to as ‘KKE (interior)’). Through a process of various transformations and adaptations first to the Cold War dynamics, and later on to the rise of new social movements, the anti-globalization movement, and the movement of multiculturalism, it was eventually self-defined as an anti-establishment, antisystemic party of the New Left committed to the deep transformation of the Greek society in line with anti-capitalist, internationalist egalitarianism. Throughout the last century the progenitors of the party never attracted more than a very small percentage of votes in the general elections (2–5%), yet its prestige was high as it was always seen as the party of intellectuals, political refinement, and humanistic sensitivities. The party changed course and became officially ‘radical’ when it came to be controlled by its more unconventional wing which initiated a coalition with extremist leftist-anarchist organizations, and the re-orientation of preferred political arena from parliament to the streets, and from political debate to generalized insubordination. During the anti-Memorandum frenzy (2010–2014), the party adopted an original and highly effective strategy. Instead of trying to approach social initiatives and mobilizations with an attitude of control and guidance, as was the norm until then, the party simply provided participatory and symbolic support to the various forms of opposition to austerity measures imposed by the Memorandum and to the new mobilizing practices. With these movements and initiatives, most importantly with the anti-parliamentary ‘square movement’ (Simiti 2014; Karyotis and Rüdig 2017) – an informal alliance of the far-right and the far-left which demanded the closing-down of the Parliament, it developed a symbiotic relationship. Since 2006 SYRIZA has placed itself close to the social movements. It has benefited from them (social forums, civil rights, environmental movements, immigrant groups, and the new rank and file trade union movement); it has learned their language, shared their technology of political mobilization, but did not submit to the narrowness of their single issue perspective (Spourdalakis 2014: 358). This became possible by stripping its ideological platform of any mentioning of communism and by redefining itself as the revolutionary spirit of any

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conceivable confrontation against the ‘system’. Its nefarious ideology facilitated both the support by all kinds of frustrated and alienated social groups, and the alignment of all the ideological and theoretical traditions of both the old and new left. It was this rather unique and peculiar openness which combined strict criteria of membership (see further below) with loose criteria of electoral support which was conducive to the party’s strength and self-confidence: SYRIZA is present and intervenes everywhere, within and outside institutions, in the streets and in the movements of the squares, in the cities and villages, in the workplaces and in the neighborhoods, in the social institutions and in social initiatives, in cultural activities and in fight of ideas, in the public sphere and on the internet.3 Thus, instead of proclaiming itself as the political vanguard of a socialist revolution, it introduced themselves as the political facilitator of other people’s contestations. In this context, ‘intervention’ aimed to direct frustrations and demands to the wider context of anti-systemic radicalism aiming at toppling the establishment: The Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) is a united, mass, democratic, multi-party of the modern Left. It aspires to express politically the world of work, of the self-employed, of peasantry, of youth, of progressive intellectual and artistic creation, all those who are exploited and oppressed. It struggles with all its might for democracy, national independence, popular sovereignty, social prosperity and liberation; it struggles for socialism. SYRIZA supports the workers’ and people’s struggles in parliament, while at the same time striving to contribute to the establishment and development of a strong popular, mass and united movement, a resistance and disobedience movement to a growing State and employer authoritarianism, effective solidarity with the victims of the crisis, a movement that is ultimately one of political takeover.4 The party’s political enemy is ‘oppression’ while its vision is the egalitarian ‘social ownership’ of the means of production with no further ideological elaboration or explication: For us, socialism is a form of social organization based on social ownership and management of the means of productive. It demands democracy in all the nuclei of public life, where collectivity demonstrates its superiority over individuality and solidarity over competition, so that workers are able to design, direct, control and protect, with their elected members, production, directing it to the satisfaction of social needs.5

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‘Collectivity’, the desired form of social organization, remains elusive: it is not signified either by the Party (as an Avant-guard to socialism) nor by any concrete organizational form to be established by the new social order. Rather, collectivity is understood negatively: as a condition that prohibits the appearance of oppression, alienation, and ‘systemic violence’. In all, it would not be an exaggeration to say that SYRIZA is a class party without a class agent, and a ‘new social movement’ party only in name: without environmentalism, feminism, or anarchism as an emotive and experienced constituent of the party’s rank and file. Thus, ‘social ownership and management of the means of production’ remains ideologically suspended, more a gloss than a platform for social and political reform. This is of crucial importance: the revolutionary agent is no longer the proletariat; instead, it is any social group which considers itself ‘marginalized’ and considers itself as sidelined by the relentless pursuit of neoliberal globalization: the youth, the labourers, the sexual minorities, the immigrants, and so on. This anti-establishment eclecticism transformed the party into an extremely aggressive political hybrid made of three layers of (i) rank and file, (ii) followers, and (iii) supporters. The core was consisted of the ‘old guard’; the experienced ex-communists who in the past were marginalized and expelled from the orthodox Communist Party of Greece to form the ancestor of SYRIZA, the ‘Communist Party of Greece (Interior)’ now called ‘Coalition of the Left and of Progress’ (‘Synaspismos’). Around them stood the ‘satellite’ radical movements and marginal parties who, together with the core, formed the official SYRIZA party. The third layer consisted of all the social movements and initiatives that were mobilized during the crisis in reaction to the Memorandum. Through the osmosis of these relatively different but equally radical tendencies, an ideological profile was formed that combined (a) a Marxian conception of history, (b) an Althusserian conception of culture, (c) a Gramscian analysis of (ideological) hegemony, (d) a Leninist conception of political power, and (e) a deeply divisive populist rhetoric and performativity. All of these were used accordingly both before and after the party came to power. Crucially, as the party was becoming the vanguard of radicalism and of frustrated social movements, it became highly exclusive: it shut the door to any newcomer wishing to join ranks to retain its character as a select club of comrades with close and intimate ties among them (approximately 20,000 strong). This core of committed, life-long comrades of all ages are a group of people that Nikos Alivizatos calls ‘the descendants of the losers’: [They] lost the battles for the control of either the KKE or the KKE (interior) and the battles to control the youth branch of KKE (KNE), those who lost the battles over the ideological modernization and strategic planning of either of these parties. Those who lost the battle for the control of the KKE (interior) were those who insisted on maintaining the communist character of the party rather than becoming a party of the New Left; the losers of the

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What brought together the core of the party was not ideological similarity, but the label of the outcast. This configuration is not only organizational but symbolic as well. It is a structure not only of the intensity or investment of commitment, but of meaning structured around a certain quality of emotions. If the third layer, the supporters of SYRIZA who previously were voters of the mainstream parties, were stirred by anger, and the second layer of radical fringe organizations were stirred by animosity to the systemic powers and social configuration, the core of the party was stirred by resentment, by a sense of hostility towards a system which had rejected them and turned them to eternal losers. As the secretary of the youth branch of the party wrote in an angry statement following a public outcry for being appointed an undeserved governmental post after the party’s ascendancy to power in 2015: We were never afraid of the ruffians. Do you understand? You, scum! When I was young, during the years of prosperity in Greece, I remember my parents telling me about the left, about the [leftist] movement, about our roots and how we should not forget where we came from. Then I was 10 years old and we were listening to ‘Axion Esti’ [a song] and they were telling me stories. About my grandmother, the proud EPONITISA [guerrilla fighters during the German occupation], tormented by the Hitlerites in her village, who reaches 90 these days, and welcomes me every morning. For my grandfather, whom I was lucky enough to meet, a judge of the EAM [the communist guerrilla organization during the German occupation], and for my grandfather, a rebel in the Democratic Army [the communist army during the civil war that followed the German occupation], who escaped execution in the nick of time after arresting him in the days of defeat. And then, being a grandfather in the city of Amaliada, the fascists told him they would shave him because he was a communist goat-priest and had to go elsewhere, and gave him unfavourable transfers and ‘of you go’ by the preachers of love. And I remember my mom telling me that she was taught guerrilla songs in the secret when she was still a child, and she was wearing rags and that the mountains were trembling when the guerrillas danced on the mountains … I always remember that my parents’ friends also went around there, in the struggles, in the streets, some in the youth organizations and others outside the parliament, and somewhere there was frustration, defeat, insecurity. Because some retreated and went back to their homes, others did not, and things moved ahead …7

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The party members, this company of living saints, perceived themselves primarily not as carriers of a new set of organizational basic rules able to lift Greece out of the crisis, but as a morally superior caste of people, who having survived the tribulation of persecution and rejection, and having remained pure at heart, were now vindicated and recognized as what they have had always been: a superior political species. In the summer of 2016 Stelios Pappas, a member of the ‘old guard’ and father of the Minister Nikos Pappas, dedicated a poem to Alexis Tsipras for his birthday. The poem was addressing the younger generation of the party, now the ruling party of the country as ‘dragongeneration’: The dawning sunrise, Sweet homeland’s bitter breath, Warms up our People’s sorrows and hopes The journey is long The load heavy And you dragon-generation’s shoots of Wheelmen … And us the honor and pride of our fathers8 Impinged on the party, as indicated by the poem’s différance of ‘sorrows and hopes’ and ‘our fathers’, is the genealogy of modernity, of the Soviet regime and its ‘questionable’ (sic) rule of Eastern Europe, of the Greek civil war and the Cold War politics, of Eurocommunism and the new social movements, of anti-globalization, multiculturalism and the open-borders movement which the party embraced full heartedly. But being always the losers, the underdogs, these genealogical markings, these Christian stigmata, could not take the form of organizational experience. Instead, they took the form of symbolic representations, of memories, sentiments, and imageries of persecution and tribulation. They were taken for politics, and politics indeed they became. SYRIZA’s advance to power relied first on its ability to attract and organizationally bind a significant number of structural, semi-liminal enclaves, within which new cultural orientations had been developed and upheld, partially as counter-cultures, partially as components of new alternative cultures; enclaves which served as reservoirs of revolutionary activities and groups. And second, on its ability to attract large numbers of frustrated ex-voters of the mainstream parties and to convince them that the party is able reverse austerity policies and to restore their income and style of life. This is an extraordinary fit, considering the sectarian character of the party. But the fact that it is an antinomian and exclusive party, and to an extent an actual caste, offer us the key to decipher the paradox. This exclusive and superior state of being allowed the rank and file of the party to perceive the wider support by the ‘outsiders’, instrumentally, as nothing more than a means to achieve a triumphant victory over their enemies; thus they were not burdened psychologically by the liberty they took to promise everything to everyone, no matter how impossible that promise was. Second, the charisma they felt they

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enjoy permitted them to use extremely unethical means to achieve moral supremacy: fake news of hundreds of suicides committed by the victims of the crisis, of hidden bank accounts of the corrupted establishment, of children fading at schoolyards due to hunger, of pensioners’ money handed to the Troika, were circulated in social media before they were reproduced as selfevident facts on mainstream news and discussion panels. And third, physical violence was used against their political opponents to make headlines on television news as incidents of ordinary citizens’ justified anger against those who signed the treacherous Memorandum. In all, while the party’s rank and file shared an egalitarian ethos of mutual trust and devotion to the cause, and their institutional positions were easily interchangeable among them, the relationship with the outsiders was not. There was a great degree of autonomy and of symbolic differentiation between the party and its periphery, and between the modes of mobilization and structuring, which allowed the party to remain relatively autonomous and in control of the mobilization and protest processes which were taking place in the public sphere. It also meant that the party could first articulate and then control by default the models of cultural order, or the cultural elites, which the crisis had allowed to emerge.9 In other words, the type of the social organization/social movement developed by the party was noncongruent. It allowed it to remain autonomous of its social milieu and to direct the wider protest movement, not in an authoritarian style, but by trickery, manipulation and intimidation. Yet, while this manipulation of the public mobilization, of the social and mass media, and of the semi-liminal social groups explains the ability of the party to convince its audience for the insincerity and the treachery of the mainstream parties, it does not explain the popularity of the party, of being sincere and capable to bring Greece out of the crisis safe and sound;10 after all they were so far a marginal party with no organizational or governmental experience. Neither does it explain the intensity of the conviction felt by their supporters. To this, we need to turn our attention to the leader of the party, Alexis Tsipras, and his own charisma.

The ‘charismatic’ Alexis Tsipras Tsipras was born in 1974 and became involved in radical politics at a very young age, with a proclivity towards totalitarian ideologies. In 1989, at the age of 15 he became a member of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the same year the peoples of Eastern Europe were rebelling against the Soviet Union and the communist regime. Two years later he became the unofficial leader of a student movement which shook the country when the students, revolting against the educational reforms issued by the then conservative government, occupied the schools for a prolonged time in 1990–1991. During the same period, and under the pressure the collapse of the Soviet Union brought to the Communist Party, the latter merged with the old splinter

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communist, euro-communist, KKE (interior) to form the Synaspismos Party (Coalition of the Left and of Progress) precursor to SYRIZA. This was a crucial development, since it allowed Tsipras to leave behind him the exclusive and unpopular identity of a ‘communist’ and adopt a new identity, that of the progressive ‘leftist’. When, at a later point, the Communist Party left the Coalition to reemerge as an independent party once again, Tsipras, alone with some other prominent ex-members of the Communist Party (the ‘Banias’ clique’), refused to return to the re-established KKE, and instead remained a member of Synaspismos. When a university student at the Polytechnic School in Athens, as the leader of an independent student political organization co-founded by him, called ‘Enceladus’, which belonged to the ‘Alternative Radical Leftist Schemes’, he developed a populist discourse which became his trademark hereafter. In a television interview in 1995,11 radiating self-confidence, Tsipras stated: Instead of trying to find collective solutions, that is, to demand some things, the right to work! In the 1970s the workers where demonstrating their demand for better working conditions. Today, what will they demand if they were to demonstrate? Since they do not have any work! They demand work, let us say. So, instead of demanding some solutions such as that, what do we do? We turn to ourselves and we are concerned with how to finish as quickly as possible the degree, and how to enroll to a good MA program by licking a professor to accept us in the program, or even the more soft version of how to be educated professionally, which is very good, but we ignore all other aspects of our self, since we are young people and we should make sure we should have free time available, we should make sure we cultivate our cultural interests, to read a book, to go to the movies, all these thinks do not exist today. Q: So, which are the problems the university students face today and the students should focus on: The problems university students face, are the ones they face in their everyday life in their schools. The deliverance of knowledge… what is our contact with knowledge? The three examination periods every year… one month before we work hard, we do what we do at the examination time, we work hard, we fail the exams, we pass with a 5/10, or a 6/10, some pass with higher marks, and finally what is left (out of this process?). I mean, at the end, this process is not substantive. At the end, it is very formal. At the end, what is left is a university degree that doesn’t mean too much. I believe that a very important concern, of the autonomous political schemes included, is to examine the everyday problems students face … the lack of free time, that they (the professors) make him write essays and

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Manussos Marangudakis essays without being benefited from them … these are substantial problems that we need to examine collectively … Q: I have noticed that in high schools the element of collective action is more intense than at the university level … what’s wrong with the university students? The school students have rejected the party syndicalism many years ago. And the great burst that happened in 1991 with the occupation of the schools, that was the out loud rejection of those who wished to, no matter that they did not show it, to direct the movement toward some certain directions this movement. This was very important and I am not sure if the parties learned something from this.

As a prominent activist of Synaspismos, he was elected Secretary of the youth of the party, a post he held until the 3rd Congress of the party (March 2003). Meanwhile, he quickly moved up the ranks as a young activist. In 2001, at the age of 26, he was one of the ‘ringleaders’ of a group of 1,000 Greeks hoping to make it to the protests of the G8 meeting in Genoa, Italy. At the 4th Synaspismos Congress (December 2004), he was elected to the Central Political Committee and subsequently to the Party’s Political Secretariat, where he assumed responsibility for education and youth. Tsipras went on to study at the National Polytechnic University of Athens, where he pursued a degree in civil engineering. In 2006, with the backing of Synaspismos, Tsipras ran for mayor of Athens at the age of 32. He received 11% of the vote; more than double what the party was polling elsewhere. This success attracted media attention, made him a household name overnight, and eventually transformed his political career, as he became the public face of the party. A profile in the Straits Times says that this was the moment that ‘would transform Mr Tsipras’s career. Any thoughts of an engineering career ended. He was now the face of the party’.12 At the 5th Regular Congress of the Left Movement and Ecology Coalition (February 2008), he was elected party chairman. In 2009 he was elected to Greek Parliament and became SYRIZA’s leader there, and began his march towards becoming prime minister as Greece’s economy descended into chaos. With the economic collapse came a parallel collapse in the support for the centrist Greek parties that had ruled the country for so long. The Greek people became disillusioned with their leaders, and many turned to Tsipras, the man who echoed their concerns and their thoughts. Tsipras represented a breakaway from the leadership of the mainstream political parties, as he was not only very young, but a gifted performer and rhetorician as well. Based solely on these abilities he was able to surpass the perennial problem leftist organizations face when they try to rally under one banner, by bypassing ideology altogether and by mobilizing popular collective representations of ‘the people’ he called for an alternative, confrontational approach to the Troika’s demands; a call that resonated with the already strong anti-Memorandum public.13

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Resonance is here the key word: he managed to personify the unconventional, virtuous, innocent, and brave politician, while simultaneously he managed to portray his opponents as banal, corrupted, deceitful and coward – according to Greek cultural standards. While a ruthless disciplinarian and cynical manipulator of his comrades,14 to the public he staged himself as a young, indeed youthful, outsider to the political establishment, yet a seasoned and successful leftist activist.15 His dress code (always avoiding to wear a tie), spontaneity of manners, folkish trope of conversing with his supporters in the street, and informal behaviour in formal occasions made him appear as unconventional, sincere, and in a sense, ‘innocent’ in the midst of hypocrites. Yet this innocence could be symbolically apparent, as when he chose to be escorted in the dinner party at the Presidential House for the annual celebration of the Restoration of Democracy in 2008 by a second-generation immigrant from Sierra Leone, rather than his partner. It was also politically loaded, and quite unique. Instead of cultivating the persona of either the detached charismatic or of the familiar politician (as were all the previous prime ministers of Greece), he cultivated the persona of charismatic familiarity. This became possible by his ability to turn the familiar to radical, and the radical to familiar. As Vamvakas (2020) explicates, he managed to style in a new frame ‘archaic political trends (clientelist and corporatist statism, populist resentment, nationalist miserabilism, etc.) and to make them once again unconventional and anti-systemic, always flirting with the possibility of turning Greek democracy into a Latin American one (Vamvakas 2020)’. The narrative he constructed placed the anti-memorandum discourses in the framework of the recent national cultural traumas turning a pragmatic, economic, matter to a moral issue of democracy and national pride: All the generations of the unifying struggles of our people meet again here, in Omonοia Square, at this crossroads of Greece. The generations that lived through the millstones of History; the National Resistance [resistance against the German occupation]; the National Liberation Front [the leftwing resistance organization during the German occupation]; the Gorgopotamos [the guerrilla operation for the demolition of a vital to the German supply network bridge during German occupation]; the generation of the democratic struggles of 1-1-4 [the civil rights Cold War movement]; the Unified Democratic Left; the defiant demand for Democracy; the generation of the struggle against the Dictatorship; of leaving behind the cold-war dividing lines; of the political radicalism and the unmaterialized subversion. But the younger generations too, the present and the future of this land, that we have an obligation to get them out of the muddy grounds … Due to this debt we meet today here, [us] the key-holders of history (Pantazopoulos 2013: 159) Perhaps equally important was his charm, manliness, and imposing deep voice. A female reporter writing in a leftist newspaper shared her feelings for him

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when she attended a party meeting where Tsipras spoke. Recalling the instance and her reaction of her emotions she wrote: I do not fall in love only with the ones I fall in love … I think no one does. We fall in love with those who are interested in us, precisely because something is moving us, moving us along. Those who have this precious, longing, precious ‘something’. In the aura, in the look, in the smile… In a recent speech Alexis Tsipras, for an infinitesimal amount of time which he certainly didn’t even realize, looked at his audience intently and paused, smiling for a long time. He smiled at us with enviable innocence and manifest sincerity. I was there and saw it. I was at the front; ‘first table’. I nailed him with my relentless, selfless way. It was as if I was seeing Stelios Mainas or George Michalakopoulos [Greek actors] on stage, whom you want more and more, and even more so to look at them and admire their talented existence. This instant, Alexis’ strong smile is of paramount importance, precisely because it is spontaneous and as such signifies the optimism of the will. No one can blame this bright smile, which was clearly out of protocol. This smile is a very ‘erotic’ smile. Erotic, my reader, in the sense of ‘love’, that is, ‘question’ [playing with the Greek words ‘eros’ and ‘erotisi’]. And she continues reflecting on the qualities of the ‘leader’ – of what makes him attractive to the followers: And I make myself clear: Why do we ‘fall in love’, really, with the strong public man? Because with his presence he ‘moves’ us and, in a way, induces us into a ‘questioning’ process of ourselves and of things. I ask you to review History, my reader… A powerful bellwether through speech and presence puts you in the path of love, that is, of questioning. This is achieved, of course, not by his narrow party affiliations, but by its human, inadvertent escape from the boundaries set by public office. So the prime minister’s spontaneous, unfiltered move the day before yesterday betrays the quintessence of his deepest inner thoughts. ‘Thus much I stared…’, the erotic prime ministerial smile, which filled me with strength and provided me with a momentum and thirst for the days to come. ‘Is beautiful smile a matter of sharing facial features?’ I asked poet Nikos Moschovakos in an interview with presspublica.gr. ‘Smile is a matter of soul distribution’ the poet replied to me…16 Panagiotis Karkatsoulis, a Professor of Public Administration and MP with the centrist party ‘To Potami’, reflects on this same Tsipras but from another point of view: ‘His word is totalitarian, his views are totalitarian, even the architecture of his thinking is totalitarian. He holds the conviction (which he radiates) that

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everything that happens on earth is, as such, immediately grasped by everyone. History is interpreted on the basis of common and simple knowledge. The deficit, the debt, the banks, all these complicated private and public deficit financing systems, the rating agencies, the globalization, all these he does not understand, but he does not need to know. Suffice it to be able to convey the certainty to the audience that he understands them. In fact, those who, in the civil interpretation, have the presumption of knowledge (must) be deprecated as ‘bankers’ and enemies of the people. The orator is passionate, intolerant. He broadcasts a covert or naked anger (depending on the audience) that overshadows any ‘rational’ argument. The arguments, on the other hand, are, for the totalitarian orator, only ‘numbers’. With malice and anger he rallies not, of course, society (made up of various kinds of citizens) but his community, his Gemeinschaft. Mr Tsipras addresses the general public through his own audience. His closeness and self-reference do not tolerate any exception. No discount of his word and no openness to the wider society are allowed. The totalitarian leader does not believe in society as a self-regulated system, but as a construct that needs guidance, leadership. And the Leader speaks authentically, does not reflect, and does not introduce critical elements into his speech in order to be ‘heard’ by a wider audience.17 Youthful and innocent, activist and brave, outsider and saviour, unconventional and familiar, imposing and mesmerizing to his followers; arrogant, intolerant, and scornful to his opponents; these were the features that constituted Tsipras’ charisma. A ‘soul provider’ for his followers, an ignorant and authoritarian bamboozle for his opponents. No wonder the public opinion was fixated on these two images, freely swinging between them before and after the elections.

Tsipras and SYRIZA in government Many thought that after SYRIZA came to power in January 2015, Tsipras would change his political orientation and populist outlook and abandon radicalism –especially after the disastrous negotiations with Troika which cost the Greek economy roughly 100 billion euros18 and made Tsipras beg for a deal (i.e., the third Memorandum of Understanding) which would keep Greece in the Eurozone and the EU altogether. He did abandon radicalism, but only in respect to Troika and the international aspect of Greek politics, as he came to comply with every demand imposed on him, primarily, by Troika, Germany and the US; but not on how his government and himself ruled the country. In this aspect, he followed a rather unique and unusual combination of anti-liberal, indeed, anti-civil, and authoritarian policies as follows: (1) Utter disregard of formal rules and regulations, and their replacement with voluntarist, nepotistic, and ad hoc appointments and decision-making processes instead.19

120 Manussos Marangudakis (2) Nepotistic and partisan control of the state through mass recruitment of unqualified party members and executives into neuralgic government positions.20 (3) Efforts to collapse the separation of powers, that is, the distinction between the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, and turn them to facilitators of the will of the government and the party.21 (4) Extensive and overt squandering of public resources by government and party appointees and luxurious life style socializing with the moneyed oligarchy.22 (5) Directly or indirectly promoting policies of impoverishment by curtailing public investment, blocking foreign direct investment, increasing taxation, devaluing the value of real estate, and disturbing employment in the private sector.23 (6) Initiating policies of social de-differentiation through the depreciation of every institution of educational and administrative excellence, the descientization and de-symbolization of secondary education, and the levelling of all types of tertiary education institutions.24 (7) Dividing the political community by declaring the opponents of the government’s policies ‘enemies of democracy’ (Treaty over the name of the state of Northern Macedonia, the Bill on gender identity, open-borders policy over the incoming illegal immigrants, etc.).25 (8) Efforts to neutralize its political opponents by unfounded accusations, intimidation of opposing newspapers and television stations, fake news promoted by a party-controlled newspapers and stations, and aggressive buying out of MPs belonging to other parties.26 (9) Vulgarization of public discourse, public rituals and performativities by members of the government and party MPs inside and outside of the Parliament and distortion of the meaning of concepts according to the liking of the party, by overt bullying of other voices in social and mass media.27 (10) Adoption of policies which promote and cultivate insecurity in the public sphere, such as instructions to the police not to prosecute ‘anarchist’ attacks on civil institutions, deprecating the significance of terrorist attacks such as the one on the former Prime Minister Lucas Papadimos (Tsipras refused to pay a visit to him in the hospital where he was recuperating), governmental statements of support for left-wing violence, and relaxation of 17N member detention measures.28 (11) Complete and utter lack of empathy for the victims of various deadly ‘natural’ disasters which occurred during their time in government, underplaying the significance and their responsibility in case of ecological disasters, and staging blame-washing performances.29 (12) Pronouncement of the refugee/illegal immigration issue as a supreme symbol of moral value in conjunction with the complete depreciation of the individual rights of refugees and illegal immigrants, and embellishment of EU funds directed to support the reception of illegal immigrants.30

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(13) Strong and outspoken support for the Maduro regime in Venezuela both in Greece, and in the European Union.31 (14) Full compliance to the third Memorandum of Understanding rules and directives with no efforts to improve it for the benefit of the Greek side, as did happen in the previous two Memoranda.32 (15) Efforts to distort the ethnic identity of the population in Greece by policies which invite and keep foreign immigrants in Greece (primarily Pakistanis and Afghanis) and ease processes of attaining Greek citizenship.33 (16) Perhaps the most crucial component of the governance was the complete absence of any effort to promote intentionally and purposefully the construction of egalitarian institutions, or to facilitate such initiatives thereof. Out of these policies a pattern emerges: The transformation of Greece into a populist or post-democracy which Crouch (2011) defines as a society ‘that continues to have and to use all the institutions of democracy, but in which they increasingly become a formal shell. The energy and innovative drive pass away from the democratic arena and into small circles of a politico-economic elite’ – and this with the latent approval of the EU. More detailed is Pappas’s definition: first and foremost, the idea that society is split along a single cleavage, ostensibly dividing the good ‘people’ from some evil ‘establishment’; second, the promotion of adversarial and polarizing politics rather than of moderation and consensus seeking; and third, the adherence to the majority principle, as well as a certain predilection for personalist authority over impersonal institutions and the rule of law. (Pappas 2014: 3–4) SYRIZA, and Tsipras personally, made serious efforts to achieve in practice such a model, to the extend the EU framework of governance allowed it: (a) to de-differentiate the social configurations of the country by inflating educational institutions and loosening educational standards, by curtailing job opportunities, increasing rates of unemployment and emigration of the Greek youth, and by restricting direct investment; (b) to install liminality in the midst of the public sphere by accepting the unregulated presence of thousands of illegal immigrants in the inner cities, anarchist violence against state and civil targets, and occupation of various public and private premises by far-leftist organizations and collectivities as part of the democratic process; (c) to attack by legal and illegal means internal opposition, civil and civic, and thus to attain moral and legal supremacy in the public sphere; and (d) to enjoy the privileges of rulership by using access to power and control of public resources for personal use and immediate consumption.

122 Manussos Marangudakis All these are definite signs of the intention to establish a neo-patrimonialist regime whereas the state would belong to the party’s rank and file while paying lip-service to leftist promulgations of anti-imperialism, radicalism and egalitarianism. Reflecting on the implementation of this plan with a hindsight, at the aftermath of the SYRIZA governance, we can conclude that the general effect of this political programme, under the watchful eye of the party’s antinomian living saints, did manage, to a significant extend, to achieve liminality in the public sphere, to barbarize public discourse, to neutralize one (‘To Potami’) and absorb another small party (‘ANEL’), and to inflict blows to the autonomy of the judiciary – all preconditions for the application of neopatrimonialism. Yet, it did not succeed in firmly establishing it. Pressed by both EU structural constrains on governmental voluntarism and the frustrated Greek civil society, the party did not achieve to neutralize its major parliamentary opponents of the conservative party, as Maduro’s judicial system did in Venezuela. Rallied around the conservative party, in the last general elections of June 2019 the disaffected middle-class turned its back to SYRIZA and restored the liberal regime. But the question still remains: was it a (failed) attempt by a charismatic party and a charismatic leader? Or was it an attempt organized by tricksters? Let us examine the question vis-à-vis their theoretical premises.

Charisma and trickery Key to the process of radical transformation of society and thus of the basic rules of social interaction is the ‘charismatic leader’; the individual who personifies this new vision and carries the message to wider social strata. Weber describes charisma as ‘specific gifts of body and mind’ acknowledged by others as a valid basis for their participation in an extraordinary programme of action (Weber 1978: 241–244). The leader’s authority and programme are thus specifically ‘outside the realm of everyday routine and … [therefore] sharply opposed both to rational … and to traditional authority … Both are forms of everyday routine control … while charismatic authority is a specifically revolutionary force’ (ibid.). In this sense, ‘charisma is self-determined and sets its own limits’. It ‘rejects all external order … it ‘transforms all values and breaks all traditional and rational norms … In its most potent forms, [it] overturns all notions of sanctity’ (ibid.). Instead of respect for rational rule and tradition, it compels ‘the surrender of the faithful to the extraordinary and unheard-of, to what is alien to all regulation and tradition and therefore is viewed as divine’ (ibid.). It constitutes a release from ‘traditional or rational everyday economizing…’ from ‘custom, law and tradition’, from ‘all notions of sanctity’ and release from ‘ordinary worldly attachments and duties of occupational and family life’ and ‘from oneself or one’s conscience’ (ibid.). A social configuration based on charismatic legitimation displays certain characteristics which reflect the forceful and personal nature of charismatic authority. First, the recognition of the leader is an unquestionable duty, even when it is formally voluntary: ‘The authority of the leader does not express

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the will of his followers, but rather their duty or obligation’. Thus, a distinctive moral fervour comes to replace traditional morality and sober rational calculation. Accordingly, groups which are formed around charisma disdain formal systems of roles, rules, and procedures to guide routine administrative functions. They scorn ‘everyday economizing’, the attainment of a regular income by continuous economic activity devoted to this end. In a sense, the charismatic condition is the total antithesis of routine social institutions and relations, traditional and rational alike. This juxtaposition places charisma in the domain of antinomianism and predisposes it as against institutionalization – thus the strong tendencies towards the destruction and decomposition of institutions: due to their alleged proximity to the very sources of human creativity, its absolutistic moral fervour and the radical disdain of formal procedures, charismatic activities and orientations contain a strong anti-institutional outlook. Weber stresses the extraordinary condition of the rise of charisma as a social force and the unusual predisposition of the appeal to the charismatic individual, which is closely linked to his emphasis on the extraordinary character of charisma. He suggests that charisma ‘may involve a subjective or internal reorientation born out of suffering, conflicts or enthusiasm’, and that this may take place ‘in times of psychic, physical, economic, ethical, religious, political distress’. Thus it is in situations of stress or, to use Durkheim’s term, of anomie, that more and more people tend to feel disoriented, alienated, and helpless, and feel that a charismatic leader will restore order to their own social self by restoring societal order. A genuine charismatic leader is a passionate personality with great oratorical skills (an ‘orator’ and a ‘demagogue’ in Weber’s nomenclature) who manages to balance determination with actual facts, avoiding pure and ‘sterile excitation’, always channelling affective mobilization towards a concrete cause. But this is not what SYRIZA and Tsipras achieved. Instead, they ‘managed’ to situate Greece in a state of permanent liminality as the way to achieve political and cultural supremacy in an international order they could not alter without being prosecuted for high treason:34 of Greece’s EU membership. Unable to use naked force even though they were thinking of this possibility,35 as their role model Chavez had done in Venezuela, or to find alternative sources of borrowing from Russia, China, and Iran in the first months of their governance (February–June 2015) they were forced to tolerate the status quo and allow Greece to remain in the Eurozone and the EU. Thus, they resorted to low-intensity implementation of policies (tolerance of thousand illegal immigrants occupying buildings in Greek cities, nonprosecution of anarchist violence, blocking economic development policies) to achieve permanent liminality as permanent insecurity, permanent reversal of the process of differentiation, and permanent poverty and dependency on the state and its resources (Marangudakis 2019). If anything, the figure of Tsipras, his notorious ignorance and naivety, his mindless self-confidence and simplicity in dealing with complicated and highly specialized subjects, and the liberty to turn economic matters to moral issues,

124 Manussos Marangudakis and moral issues to political ideals, brings him closer to Weber’s ‘mystic’ rather than Weber’s charismatic politician: If the mystic does not follow this path towards becoming a mystagogue … he may bear witness to his god by doctrine alone. In that case, his revolutionary preaching to the world will be chiliastically irrational, scorning every thought of a rational order in the world. He will regard the absoluteness of his universal acosmistic feeling of love as completely adequate for himself, and indeed regard this feeling as the only one acceptable to his god as the foundation for a mystically renewed community among men, because this feeling alone derives from a divine source. (Weber 1978: 550) And further below he touches on matters of charismatic communities such as SYRIZA: The core of the mystical concept of the oriental Christian church was a firm conviction that Christian brotherly love, when sufficiently strong and pure, must necessarily lead to unity in all things, even in dogmatic beliefs. In other words, men who sufficiently love one another, in the Johannine sense of love, will also think alike, and because of the very irrationality of their common feeling, act in a solidary fashion which is pleasing to God. (Weber 1978: 551; emphasis added) This extract explains quite precisely the nature of the sectarian and congruent character of the party, as well as the regular splits, internal clashes, constant reinterpretations of communism, and re-constitutions of the non-orthodox, nonStalinist, communist movement in Greece: having abandoned the security of the dogmatic fixity of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), they are in constant yet, apparently, futile search to establish a new dogma. But having thrown themselves in the confusion and the flux of late modernity, they are unable to do so; not for a long period of time. Unwilling to accept fluidity and a plural interpretation of communism (a contradiction in terms), they clash over matters of ideological purity and they split organizationally as they try to impose an exclusive interpretation to the rest; a perpetual division of living saints-to-be in search of an illusory city on the hill – in a sense, a party caught in its own perpetual liminality. Yet, we need to recognize that all this turmoil that was taking place before the rise of Alexis Tsipras was about symbolic identification, not actions aiming to power attainment. The party had never thought of ever gaining electoral power. Instead, it was a sect seeking salvation in the right dogma; for, to achieve the goal of gaining supreme power, an extra-ordinary leader was necessary. This need was well understood by the first president of SYRIZA, Alekos Alavanos, who firstly envisioned the possibility for the party to attain power in a way similar to the Arab spring(s), and then realized his own

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inadequacy to be the one to achieve this. Therefore he promoted and backed Tsipras’ candidacy as the new president of the party believing in his charisma. He was right. Weber had already recognized that in politics, charisma needs to be a personal quality, and it was for this reason he altered the meaning of the word ‘charisma’ from the original plural tense ‘charismata’, i.e., the ‘gifts’ distributed to a (Christian) community, to the singular, of being a ‘gifted’ individual. He did so since extraordinary, voluntary, social action could only be performed by an individual. Groups cannot ‘act’ since social action would demand a concert of voluntary and independent of each other individual actions; a sheer impossibility. SYRIZA is charismatic, but not as a voluntarist entity; it is charismatic in the original definition of the concept: an organization of charismata. When Alexis Tsipras became the new leader of the party, he strengthened the unity of the party under the authority of his own charisma, from 2010 (the last split before SYRIZA came to power) until June 2015 (the latest split). When he decided to sign the Third Memorandum, and thus to put an end to the aspirations for leaving the EU, the revolutionary ‘satellite’ factions left the party. The remaining, original, party members stayed loyal to him, and after winning the September 2015 elections they shared with him the spoils of his victory for the following years. But while Tsipras exemplifies in some respects the ideal-type of a mystic, in others he does not. A mystic is committed to his vision and mission, and he is earnest with his followers; Tsipras is not. Most crucially, a mystic is the ‘vessel of God’, the means by which the divine speaks to humanity – Tsipras is not a means; he is an end in himself. And last, the mystic wishes to attain a certain kind of knowledge, the knowledge of God, of the divine, of the ‘word’ – in our case, of the dogma; the mystic is not a man of action: In any case, the typical mystic is never a man of conspicuous social activity, nor is he at all prone to accomplish any rational transformation of the mundane order on the basis of a methodical pattern of life directed toward external success. Wherever genuine mysticism did give rise to communal action, such action was characterized by the acosmism if the mystical feeling of love. Mysticism may exert this kind of psychological effect, thus tending – despite the apparent demands of logic – to favor the creation of communities. (Weber 1978: 550) Tsipras does not belong to this ideal type; he is a populist, not an ideologue. The fact that he is recognized by his followers as a ‘virtuoso’, the fact they wish to be ‘saved’ by being attached to him, does not make him a virtuoso. His metamorphoses, his deceitfulness, his betrayals, his blatant ignorance of basic skills and of the wider world around him, but also his exceptional cunningness and ability to ‘read’ political dynamics, suggest that we should seek out our answer elsewhere: in the literature on the trickster.

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Trickster and perpetual liminality The Trickster in mythology is an archetypal figure whose role is to reverse and question the social order and established values (Radin 1972). In a benevolent reading a trickster’s aim is to poke fun at the rigid norms and values, and thus to contribute to their renewal; on a darker note, it is to confuse, undermine and eventually to destroy, luring their public in a position of defenselessness and vulnerability. Arpad Szakolczai writes: In a situation where the attention of the community is on the wane, in an instant the trickster can capture the occasion and institute a lasting reversal of roles and values, making himself a central figure in place of the marginal outcast. The condition of possibility for such trickster takeovers is a liminal situation where certainties are lost, imitative behavior escalates, and tricksters can be mistaken for charismatic leaders. (Szakolczai 2009: 155) Tricksters are not the ‘vain upstarts’ who Weber scorns in ‘Politics as a Vocation’ (Weber 1948), nor charismatic politicians who are out of balance – ignoring completely either the politics of responsibility or of ultimate ends, but a distinct type of political personality, the mirror image of political charisma. Instead of being a person of strong conviction, the trickster is a hollow person, a person of no conviction other than their desire to rule. He is not guided by binding moral principles; he cannot empathize with others; and he abhors any obstacles to his rule, institutional or otherwise. More crucially, he lacks distinct individuality and thus a concrete vision of his own: he is a reflector of collective representations and visions of others, a simulacrum who imitates prevalent behavioural configurations and speech acts to convince his audience of his authenticity. This authenticity though is not original nor personal, but collective: it is the reflection of the thoughts and emotive state of his audience and according to it. As a heteronomous entity, he cannot produce an apposite political programme of his own – a political programme situated in linear time, combining in one comprehensive narration past conditions, present actions, and future results. Instead, the political vision a trickster promulgates and emerges naturally out of his anthropological outlook, is a perpetual moral struggle of past wickedness, present struggle, and future purity. ‘Struggle’ is not chosen by chance; it is a discourse which escapes timetables and rational planning and can recycle itself ad infinitum. It defines and constructs a political arena of perpetual crisis since moral enemies are, in principle, endless, emerging spontaneously from any corner of society, even from within the ranks of the pure. Thus, when infused with a Manichean struggle, linear time becomes frozen, thus allowing the trickster to escape the pressure of accountability that ordinary politicians face. They become images of heroes fighting the beast in an endless battle between good and evil. For all these reasons a trickster

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could gain influence by the successful manipulation of the vulnerable emotions of others, through tricking, faking, plotting or other kinds of ‘rational’ strategic devices, so well captured in game theory, but also posited as the way any ‘normal’, ‘rational’ human being behaves … [a]s they thrive only under confusing, liminal conditions, tricksters consolidate their power by consciously and purposefully generating liminal situations. (Szakolczai and Thomassen 2019: 231) Tricksters then are not metaphysical entities. If myth uses them as an archetype to make sense of the ‘errors’ and upsets embedded in knit mythical worldviews, in actual politics are tangible, hollow and vain, individuals who are attracted to conditions of liminal crisis: the rupture of certainty and predictability caused by an overwhelming social crisis which effect the loss of taken-for-granted social identity and the agonizing search for meaning and purpose (Eisenstadt 1985; Thomassen 2014; Horvath and Szakolczai 2018). Is Tsipras a trickster? His chameleon-like transformations according to the occasion and his interlocutor, his imitation of his role model Andreas Papandreou in style and tone of voice, the adoption of the lifestyle of places he visits to drop them as soon as he departs, his ignorance of basic skills but also of indifference to his deficiencies and inexcusable limitations, lack of interest for the wider world, the easiness of lying to his audience, his ability to eliminate his party benefactors when they become an obstacle to his ambitions, and his blatant nepotism, as well as other, more personal qualities of his, match the specifications of the traits of the mythological trickster remarkably well. Thus, the crucial question arises: How could a person of such a psychological profile first become popular, and then a prime minister? The answer lays in the elective affinity between Tsipras’s symbolic orientation and those of his age cohort, and then the elective affinity between Tsipras’s performativity and the specific political demands of a bewildered people in search for an exponent of their voice. I explain: Tsipras is a representative sample of complacent but frustrated post-junta Greek youth; a person who emerged out of an over-groomed but under-trimmed new generation to become its front-runner before becoming the leader of a leftist party desperately looking for a non-Marxist, New Left radical discourse and orientation able to attract public discontent. Tsipras convinced the old guard of the party that he is the one to achieve this – and indeed he did. When the economic crisis occurred, Tsipras imposing oration and convincing performativity managed to manipulate the various concerns and frustrations uttered during the crisis: With disregard to any ideological reference, he made full use of the symbols of the antmemorandum protest, and combined them with the symbolic representation of the Greek political community. Thus, he divided the Greek people between the ‘traitors’ – those who were not supporting his strategy – and the ‘patriots’, and merged all three anti-memorandum discourses into one: The People against the foreigners; the honest working man against the parasites; and of the labour movement against ‘neo-liberalism’, all wrapped up in the discourse of the

128 Manussos Marangudakis cultural trauma of the defeated side of the civil war (1946–1949). Since the rest of the mainstream parties had already committed themselves, in different ways, in supporting the Memorandum, SYRIZA, together with the Communist Party of Greece and two far-right parties (the Nazi ‘Golden Dawn’ and the ultraconservative ‘Independent Greeks’) gathered the entire anti-Memorandum vote; SYRIZA won 37% out of the total 55% the anti-memorandum parties received in both general elections held in 2015. When in office, and having failed to blackmail the Troika to erase the Greek deficit during the first six month of 2015, he had nothing to fall back to. He remained a reflector of others’ wishes, desires, and visions but this time these ‘others’ were not the Greek anti-memorandum voters who had demanded a return to the good old days, but the international and national systemic powers he despised so much. Thus, his governance became the aggregation of the rule of others: of the Troika, of the German government, of the Church, of the anarchist movement, of various NGOs, and of his ministers who were implementing their own policies. In his international contacts, he becomes what his interlocutor expects him to be: a staunch admirer of Trump in his visit in the US, a determined revolutionary at Castro’s funeral, a converted socialdemocrat in Brussels, a stalwart radical in his party’s gatherings, and a passionate populist in his public speeches ready to stair old civil war wounds to attain the sympathy of the leftist audience.36 In all, his behaviour suggests a person without an inner self. If there is a matter which is distinctly his, this is continuous plots to subvert his political enemies. Subversion became an end in itself (Marangudakis 2019: 149–151).

Conclusions This chapter is structured around the question of whether SYRIZA and its leader Alexis Tsipras are charismatics or tricksters. Yet, instead of a disjunction, the analysis suggests the presence of both charisma and trickery; that while SYRIZA qualifies for a party of charismata, in the original version of the concept, its leader Tsipras is not charismatic – not even a mystic. Rather, the personal traits of the man, as well as his public persona, strongly point to a trickster figure. Charismatic SYRIZA and Tsipras the trickster were conjoined by desire: the desire of a party of martyrs to be vindicated, and the insatiable desire of Tsipras to rule. This combination reveals a structural hindrance and simultaneously a precondition: an anti-systemic party-sect of radicals and outcasts could never come to power, notwithstanding the intensity of the crisis the system was experiencing. Its dogmatism and inwardly observance of purity would always stand as an unsurpassed obstacle between them and the would-be followers who demanded the restoration of their social status – not to be the subjects of socialist collectivism. The only way to gain prominence was through an outsider who, not being restricted by traditional dogmatism, would use the party and its symbols piecemeal and instrumentally to achieve his personal goal. Naked power remained their sole objective when they came to power.

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There was no effort to implement any socialist institutions, and no socialist compassion for those in need. Their only concern became, by default, how to remain in power neutralizing those social groups and political and institutional elites who could challenge their hegemony. Yet, none of their schemes worked. Today they stand accused for a series of misdemeanours and prosecution is a real possibility.37 At the end, trickery took the best out of charisma. The four years SYRIZA remained in government is not without long-term consequences. The low-intensity anomie the party installed in the midst of the public sphere – a consequence of the party’s antinomian dislike of any law-andorder configuration – altered the contours of trust, solidarity, regulation of power, and legitimation of social order in the country. Established civil bonds were weakened as the party brought to the central political arena semi-liminal peripheral social movements and organizations, and managed to define radicalism as a legitimate discourse for the symbolic re-articulation, indeed definition, of the Greek society. The strong popular support SYRIZA still enjoys (it received 30% of the vote in the August 2019 elections) effects a significant symbolic reorientation of the basic contours of social life: ‘anarchic individualism’, a popular routine, personal, self-serving rebellion against ordinary conventions, mutates, as we speak, to political antinomianism sheltered and instrumentalized by SYRIZA. In other words, SYRIZA has managed to politicize various and separate types of insubordination and to frame them as ‘anti-systemic’. In effect it has managed to introduce new, antinomian, criteria of trust, solidarity, legitimation and meaning to ordinary criteria of social organization with far reaching consequences. It has achieved this by symbolically affiliating previously dispersed semi-liminal enclaves, symbolic orientations of counter-cultures, new alternative cultures, and antiglobalization interpretations of social order.38 Thus we cannot claim that the implementation of radicalism which occurred when SYRIZA governed was an unfortunate interlude to an otherwise relentless systemic development of liberal democracy in the country. It is quite possible this politicization of anarchic individualism, semi-liminality and counter-culture will lead to a deeply polarized cleavage between systemic and anti-systemic cultural forces which will renew, in effect, the Greek civil wars of the distant past.

Notes 1 The joined committee made of representatives of the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Community (EC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) who dealt with the financial aspect of the Greek crisis. 2 Splitting from the institutionalized orthodoxy of Stalinist KKE (the Communist Party of Greece) the splinter party adopted various names: ‘interior KKE’, ‘Coalition of the Left, the Movements and Ecology’, ‘Coalition of the Radical Left’, ‘Coalition of the Radical Left and constituencies’, and eventually ‘Coalition of the Radical Left’ that is, SYRIZA. 3 See www.syriza.gr/page/katastatiko.html 4 Ibid.

130 Manussos Marangudakis 5 Ibid. 6 See http://booksjournal.gr/%CE%BA%CF%81%CE%B9%CF%84%CE%B9%CE% BA%CE%B5%CF%82/%CF%80%CE%BF%CE%BB%CE%B9%CF%84%CE%B9% CE%BA%CE%AE/item/2786-poso-kommounistikes-einai-oi-katavoles-toy-syrisa 7 See www.athensvoice.gr/politics/317603_ypodeigma-politikis-ekfrasis-o-grammateastis-neolaias-toy-syriza 8 See www.tovima.gr/2016/08/04/opinions/wdi-ston-syntrofo-aleksi/ 9 Such as political commendation, popular comedy and mockery, etc.; anyone who tried to challenge the party and its programme in social or mass media, was immediately assaulted and ridiculed. 10 The party rose from 3.3% in 2004, 5.4% in 2007, 4.6% in 2009, 27% in 2012, to 35.46% in the 2015 elections, and managed to gain the sympathy of 70% of the public regardless of who they had voted for in March 2015 (MRB poll). 11 See www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFpK8S-RYgU 12 See www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/10-things-to-know-about-greek-prime-minis ter-elect-alexis-tsipras 13 According to Stavrakakis and Katsambekis, Tsipras referred to the ‘people’ only five times in his central electoral speech in Athens in the 2009 general elections. This number rose to fifty-one in the corresponding event of 2012 elections. This decisive shift corresponds to SYRIZA’s jump from a marginal leftist coalition to becoming a main contender for seizing power (Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2014: 127). 14 See www.iefimerida.gr/news/294926/synedrio-syriza-i-stigmi-poy-o-tsipras-ekneyris menos-zita-epanalipsi-psifoforias-vinteo 15 Tsipras had already made a name for himself years earlier, in 1990, as the unofficial leader of a students’ movement in 1990, and later on as the most successful leftist candidate who run for mayor of Athens in 2006 when he received 10% of the vote. 16 See www.efsyn.gr/nisides/189317_erotiko-hamogelo-toy-alexi-tsipra 17 See www.athensvoice.gr/politics/471309_kathari-exodos-kai-apo-ton-oloklirotismo. 18 See www.tovima.gr/2016/06/23/international/regling-argues-that-varoufakis-costgreece-100-billion-euros/ 19 See www.iefimerida.gr/politiki/otan-o-tsipras-synantise-tin-merkel-sto-berolino. 20 See www.oligarchsinsider.com/beyond-syrizas-nepotism-cousin-tsipras/; https:// greece.greekreporter.com/2016/01/18/eu-officials-express-concerns-over-nepotism-ingreek-government-under-syriza/ 21 See www.amna.gr/en/article/173903/Judges-and-prosecutors-accuse-government-ofseeking-to-manipulate-justice 22 See www.newgreektv.com/english-news/item/25635-pm-tsipras-family-implicated-inpublic-works-call-to-tender-scandal; Political turmoil over Tsipras’ vacations on luxury yacht in Ionian sea www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2019/05/07/tsipras-yachtvacations/ 23 See www.ft.com/content/a1d97232-02a7-11e9-9d01-cd4d49afbbe3 24 See www.ekathimerini.com/241810/article/ekathimerini/news/education-minister-pro poses-upgrading-tei-degrees 25 See www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2019/01/30/macedonia-protesters-far-right-populiststsipras/; www.ekathimerini.com/236807/article/ekathimerini/news/tsipras-blamesextremist-elements-for-clashes-protesters-cry-staged-provocation 26 See http://banksnews.gr/novartis-case-accusations-against-ex-pm-tsipras-and-ex-minis ter-papangelopoulos-forwarded-to-parliament/ 27 See www.kathimerini.gr/1021635/article/epikairothta/politikh/aytogkol-diarkeiaso-polakhs 28 See https://economico.gr/o-royvikonas-ekthetei-tin-kyvernisi-to-mega-erotima-einaian-ta-metra-asfaleias-toy-koinovoylioy-einai-trypia-i-an-kapoioi-sto-systima-syrizakanoyn-ta-strava-matia-sta-quot-dika-toys-paidia-quot/

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29 See www.france24.com/en/video/20180729-greece-fire-victims-blame-high-death-tollauthorities 30 See www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/26/lesbos-refugee-camp-at-centre-ofgreek-misuse-of-eu-funds-row 31 See www.independent.co.uk/voices/venezuela-nicolas-maduro-us-sanctions-alexis-tsi pras-greece-support-a8751771.html 32 See www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/05/syriza-greek-alexis-tsipras-euimposed-austerity-polls 33 See www.protothema.gr/politics/article/877003/vitsas-stous-pakistanous-tis-athinastha-vroume-tropo-na-erheste-stin-europi-me-asfaleia-kai-taxi/ 34 See www.fortunegreece.com/article/tria-chronia-apo-to-dimopsifisma-tou-2015-tiegine-ekini-ti-nichta/ 35 See www.iefimerida.gr/news/215104/apisteyti-dilosi-kammenoy-o-stratos-diasfalizeiti-statherotita-sto-esoteriko-tis-horas 36 See http://newpost.gr/politiki/626,864/g-maniaths-xamailewn-toy-kareklokentrikoyethnola-kismoy-o-k-tsipras 37 See www.thepresident.gr/2019/08/01/pos-tha-cheiristei-ta-skandala-toy-syriza-o-kyria kos-smitsotakis/; www.in.gr/2019/08/10/politics/kyvernisi/ta-skandala-tou-syrizavazoun-fotia-sto-politiko-skiniko-ola-sto-fos-prospatheia-na-teleiosoun-tousantipalous/ 38 See www.pronews.gr/amyna-asfaleia/ethnika-themata/817363_binteo-apo-tin-proetoi masia-ton-10-koritsion-tis-koroidias-tis

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132 Manussos Marangudakis Stavrakakis, Yannis and Giorgos Katsambekis (2014) ‘Left-wing populism in the European periphery: the case of SYRIZA’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 19 (2): 119–142. Szakolczai, Arpad (2009) ‘Liminality and experience: structuring transitory situations and transformative events’, International Political Anthropology, 2 (1): 141–172. Szakolczai, Arpad and Bjorn Thomassen (2019) From Anthropology to Social Theory: Rethinking the Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomassen, Bjørn (2014) Living Through the In-Between, London: Routledge. Vamvakas, Vasilis (2020) ‘Radical familiarity: the political style of Alexis Tsipras’ in Manussos Marangudakis, Thodoros Chatjipantelis and Panagiotis Tsakonas (eds), The Antisystem in Power, Athens: Sideris Publications (in Greek). Weber, Max (1948) ‘Politics as a vocation’ in Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York: Oxford University Press.. Weber, Max (1978) Economy and Society, vol. 2. Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

7

The trickster logic in Latin America Leadership in Argentina and Brazil Osvaldo Javier López Ruiz, Fabiana Augusta Alves Jardim, and Ana Lúcia Teixeira

This chapter aims to present the experiences of Argentina and Brazil and to examine the conditions that have led to power two figures that can be thought of as trickster – Mauricio Macri and Jair Messias Bolsonaro, respectively. For this purpose, the text is organized into three sections: first, we briefly contextualize some of the processes that took place in Latin America, particularly in Argentina and Brazil; second, we present these two leaders that emerged in each of the countries, describing their appearance on the public scene, their mode of operation and how they articulate and release, in very different ways, a trickster logic in national political life; and third, we discuss the possibility – an eventual analytical utility – of considering the figure of the trickster as a ‘collective personality’ to think leadership in contemporary democracies. In the final considerations, we seek to highlight aspects of the Argentinean and Brazilian experiences that, seen in light of the analytical references that guide this book, broaden the understanding of what is happening in each country and, we hope, contribute to sharpen the theoretical tools mobilized, such as ‘crisis’, ‘liminality’, ‘transition’, ‘schismogenesis’ and ‘trickster’.

‘Latin America’: political dynamics in the margins of West Modernity I am convinced that the concept of the west that we have so lovingly nourished is in deep crisis in the west itself. The idea of participatory democracy and active popular sovereignty which was the moral foundation of modern politics since the time of the French revolution has been largely eroded by the instrumentalist doctrine that political choice is only about how much benefit can be reached to how many people at what cost. … And now that the neo-liberal storm of the 1980s has blown over, it has left behind a capitalist social order with few ideological resources to cope with the moral embarrassment of unequal opportunity, unemployment, sickness and destitution. … It is incumbent upon us, those who are still marginals in the world of modernity, to use the opportunities we still have to invent new forms of the modern social, economic and political order. (Chatterjee 1998: 1336)

134 Osvaldo Javier López Ruiz et al. During the first years of the 2000s, it seemed that the Latin America was experiencing, as suggested by Partha Chatterjee, new forms of response to the problems of poverty and inequality. For almost two decades, South America was characterized by the convergence, in most countries, of governments that promoted inclusive social reforms, access to consumption and expansion of rights for vast sectors of society that had hitherto been marginalized. This period has been known as ‘the progressive cycle’ in Latin America and refers to a succession of mostly centre-left governments – such as those of Lula da Silva (2003–2010) and Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016) in Brazil, Néstor Kirchner (2003–2007) and Cristina Kirchner (2007–2015) in Argentina, Michelle Bachelet (2006–2010, 2014–2018) in Chile, Tavaré Vázquez (2005–2010, 2015–2020) and José Mujica (2010–2015) in Uruguay, Rafael Correa (2007–2017) in Ecuador, Fernando Lugo (2008–2012) in Paraguay – and others from the left – such as Hugo Chávez (1999–2013) and Nicolás Maduro (2013–) in Venezuela and Evo Morales (2006–2019) in Bolivia.1 But this progressive cycle closed with the arrival in several of these countries of right-wing governments with orthodox economic policies, such as those promoted by the International Monetary Fund, concentrated on the adjustment of the State deficit. The ‘end of the cycle’, as some analysts describe it, comes with the arrival of centre-right governments such as Mauricio Macri (2015–2019) in Argentina, Sebastián Piñera (2010–2014, 2018–) in Chile, Horacio Cartes (2013–2018) in Paraguay; Lenin Moreno (2017–) in Ecuador and Iván Duque (2018–) in Colombia; or far-right in Brazil with Jair Bolsonaro (2019–). Much has been and still is being discussed about the successes and errors of progressive governments in defending the role of the State in the redistribution of wealth and as a brake on the simple game of market mechanisms. A commonly used formula has been to raise the question in terms of ‘populism’, alluding, in some cases, to possible similarities between the progressive governments of the early twenty-first century with the populist movements of the region that had much relevance in the twentieth century, as was the case of the leaderships of Getúlio Vargas (1951–1954) in Brazil, Juan Perón (1945–1955) in Argentina or Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940) in Mexico. However, to advance in this matrix of analysis is a complex task because of the various theoretical currents that in different ways have conceptualized ‘populism’ and is destined, by the very polysemy of the term, to mean nothing. Nowadays, governments like those of Trump, Bolsonaro or even Macri are referred to as right-wing populism. It can be argued that, effectively, in their attacks with ‘anti-populist’ discourses on the governments that preceded them, they end up using populist rhetoric. But again, ‘the word “populism” has become an empty shell, which can be filled by the most disparate political contents’ (Traverso 2019: 20).2 On the other hand, the so-called ‘new populism’ in Latin America, regardless of its limits, has had an essentially social objective, seeking the redistribution of wealth and the inclusion in the political system of the generally excluded sectors. As Traverso states, ‘in Latin America, left-wing

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populism was the most consistent form of political resistance against neoliberal globalization’ (2019: 22). Paradoxically, many of these social inclusion projects that gave the middle classes and popular sectors access to new patterns of consumption, values and aspirations also strengthened an individualistic and meritocratic vision that associates the improvement in living conditions exclusively with personal effort and not with redistribution and social inclusion policies. At the same time, as the distances and social hierarchies between the different groups became less evident – with ‘poor people’ who could travel by plane, take vacations or aspire to have their own vehicle – tensions increased due to ‘status incongruities’ and discomfort, especially in the middle sectors. Many of those who had obtained material benefits during the progressive cycle were threatened, however, in their social status. The paradox of social inclusion projects was the ‘preference for inequality’ (Canelo 2019: 172), expressed in the option for right-wing governments to maintain the known order and hierarchies. Thus, while the socio-economical gap was being reduced, the politico-ideological gap was growing.

Argentina and Brazil: similarities and differences in the working of a trickster logic The arrival of the right-wing by the electoral route in Latin America in general, and in Argentina and Brazil in particular, coincides with a process of violent social polarization – ‘savage polarization’, according to some – between those who were for and against progressive governments. This polarization was politically exploited by both sides and forced all social actors to take a position on one side or the other of la grieta (the ‘rift’).3 This division that crosses all sectors of society has meant a rupture of the social fabric and of family and friendly ties. Also, it meant the installation and perpetuation of a permanent crisis situation that has been strongly stimulated by the media. And here we are referring both to the traditional media and to the role played by social networks. Of the former, it is necessary to point out that their property is strongly concentrated in large economic groups (for example: the O Globo network in Brazil and the Clarín group in Argentina) that defend their own political and economic interests. Of the latter, social networks, it should be pointed out that they have transformed the ‘public sphere’ into ‘micro spheres’ – or ‘echo chambers’ – uncommunicative among themselves and in which the same messages circulate and constantly reaffirm the pre-established positions. Both types of media have favoured the ‘demonization’ of the other and the construction of an ‘internal enemy’.4 In this way, through the stimulation of the most visceral passions such as hatred, bigotry and the ‘ignorance of the masses’, that is to say, not wanting to know anything about what is different (Merlin 2019), a striking situation of liminality and schismogenesis has been installed in

136 Osvaldo Javier López Ruiz et al. several of the countries of the region that seem to be intentionally produced and constantly stimulated. Mauricio Macri, President of Argentina (2015–2019) The son of an Italian-born businessman who migrated to Argentina at the age of 18, Mauricio Macri (b. 1959) is the heir to one of the country’s most important fortunes. His father, Franco Macri (1930–2019), was the founder and leader of the Macri-SOCMA business group. This group, always criticized for obtaining commercial benefits from the governments in office, grew enormously during the Argentine civil-military dictatorship (1976–1983) through public works and then in the 1990s, during the presidency of Carlos Menem, through various concessions from the Argentine State. Thus, it became one of the largest business holding companies in the continent. Mauricio Macri, graduated in civil engineering, worked in several companies of his family group holding managerial positions. However, it was in 1995, as president of Boca Junior – one of the most important football clubs in South America – that Macri began to be known not only as a member of the jet set, but also acquired great visibility as a sports manager. Years later he entered politics and in 2005 he was elected national deputy for the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. In 2007 he won the elections for Head of Government of the city and was re-elected in 2011. In 2015 he ran for president and won the national elections in a second round (ballotage) with a difference of 2.68 % of the votes. Thus, he assumed the Presidency of Argentina on December 10, 2015 for a period of four years until December 10, 2019. Virtually all his political career has been in the hands of his coach, Jaime Durán Barba (b. 1947), perhaps, according to some, his true maker as president. Author of The Art of Winning: How to Use Attack in Successful Electoral Campaigns (2011) and Politics in the 21st Century: Art, Myth or Science (2017) – both books co-authored with Santiago Nieto – Durán Barba is an Ecuadorian image consultant and political adviser who is sometimes presented as a political scientist, sociologist and professor at George Washington University. Also as a columnist of Perfil (an Argentinean newspaper), ‘star consultant’ of Mauricio Macri, ‘guru of politics’, ‘shadow of the kin’, ‘president builder’, ‘anthropologist of the present’, ‘a male Pythia’, ‘a male sibylline’, ‘sorcerer’, ‘magician’ or simply as a ‘chanta’.5 Durán Barba formed the political advisory firm Informe Confidencial more than forty years ago and boasts of having participated in successful election campaigns in countries such as Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina. Macri came to power as the leader of a centre-right political electoral coalition that was formed among opponents of the centre-left Peronist governments that previously ruled for three terms in Argentina – Néstor Kirchner (2003–2007) and Cristina Kirchner (2007–2011, 2011–2015).6 Among Macri’s main campaign promises were to lower inflation, zero poverty and unite Argentines. However, during his administration he failed to fulfil practically

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anything promised during the campaign. On inflation – an endemic disease in Argentina – Macri said that ‘it is the demonstration of the inability to govern’ and that in his government this problem would be resolved quickly and would not even be even an issue. When he became president in 2015, inflation was around 25% a year, at the end of his term inflation reached 55%. With respect to his ‘zero poverty’ commitment, Macri received the government with 27% of the population living in poverty but, by the end of his mandate, Parliament had to pass a food emergency law because the index was approaching 40%. Finally, the promise to ‘unite Argentines’ refers to the great polarization of society between ‘Kirchnerists’ and ‘anti-Kirchnerists’, which we have referred to as la grieta (‘the rift’). Interestingly, throughout Macri’s administration, the situation received from the previous government was permanently referred to as ‘the heavy inheritance’ – a slogan repeated ad infinitum – as a way of excusing the non-fulfilment of campaign promises and the severe deterioration in the country’s social and economic indicators. Even more striking is that the entire campaign strategy for Macri’s re-election had as its main axis the polarization with Cristina Kirchner, a figure that in spite of being the political leader with the highest number of votes (around 40%), also arouses a high percentage of rejection in ‘the other half of the population’. In other words, Macri’s 2015 campaign promise to unite Argentines was not only not fulfilled during his administration, but stimulating the opposite became the strategic basis of his campaign for re-election in 2019. The strategy was designed by Durán Barba, the president’s star adviser. A ‘mixture of street vendor and international lecturer’ (Muro 2018: 2), he is the most famous of the Latin American electoral advisers. When he was discriminated against because he was Ecuadorian, he scoffed at having reassured the media taking advantage of the fact that he studied in Mendoza (Argentina) for a brief period, by making them to clear up: ‘the Ecuadorian adviser trained in Argentine’ (Hoy 2007) Although he has his main house in Quito and has been renting an apartment in Buenos Aires for years, one never knows where he really is. He travels constantly between Ecuador, Argentina, the United States, Mexico, Brazil and Spain (Blanco 2018). For some, he is a sophisticated political analyst, whose real interest would be to understand society through epistemology and sociology (Fontevecchia 2017: 5; Blanco 2018). For others, he is a weak sophist with intellectual pretences; a provocateur who plays hard, an implacable competitor. For still others, he is a mercenary with no ideology, no homeland and no principles. Today Durán Barba sees himself as an exponent of modern liberal democracies and as a staunch enemy of left-wing populism. According to a recent biography, his slogan is ‘anti-populism or death!’ (Fidanza 2019: 15),7 which seems to contradict both his past – when he flirted with the left and with Peron’s Peronism – and the Durán Barba who kindly preaches the end of the right and left in the world. He denies having taken an ideological turn, he says, simply, that he has matured. He presents himself as the bearer of universal, neutral and disinterested knowledge. The truth is that he claims to know nothing about

138 Osvaldo Javier López Ruiz et al. economics and his political proposals are often very vague. He is convinced that ‘all past time was worse’ (Hoy 2007) – or that ‘all future time was better [sic]’ (Fidanza 2019: 15) – because for him history travels in a monorail of permanent progress and constant acceleration. In his articles and books he exposes a kind of evolutionary discourse, a certain ‘enlightened faith’ based on scientific and technological advances.8 He constantly invokes science, from where he says he speaks. He affirms that winning an election is a scientific work that is based on not having prejudices and on permanently analysing the population through surveys, the use of Big Data,9 Focus Groups and experimental psychology. Durán Barba describes his work as ‘a methodology that is beyond ideologies and geographical limits’ (2017: 12). In his scarcely concealed eagerness for intellectual and academic recognition, he claims to have four university degrees: a bachelor’s degree in scholastic philosophy, a master’s degree in sociology and doctorates in law and history. However, whoever attempted to verify it only found a bachelor’s degree in Political Science registered in 2006 (Tres Líneas 2019). On the other hand, his recourse to empiricism and scientificity contrasts with his conception of politics – what he calls ‘modern politics’ in contrast to ‘old politics’. In this new politics what matter are not arguments or reasons, rather emotions, affections, fears, resentments, the necessities and dreams or, indeed, the insomnia of the voters. According to the consultant, there has been a shift from words that conveyed ideas to images that convey feelings. In other words, for him, the great majorities that allow the elections to be won are not interested in discussing political and economic models. ‘We know that’ – he states in one of his books – ‘in the management of elections and the image of governments the only real thing is that it is in the minds of voters’ (Durán Barba and Nieto 2011: 89). It is precisely about this ‘reality’ that Durán Barba proposes to operate and, in this operation, the communicational strategy and image management acquire a central role. In that sense, Mauricio Macri’s image has changed over time. When he met Durán Barba and he took charge of his campaign strategy in 2005, he had a 64% negative image. Ten years later, the candidate Macri, who lacked any oratorical skills, became President. His adviser dismisses the great speakers. According to his conception of the ‘new politics’, what matters is the image, not the content of what has been said. Election campaigns address the emotions of voters rather than trying to persuade them with facts and reasoning. His wife Juliana Awada – a fashion designer and textile entrepreneur – and his daughter Antonia, played very important roles in the construction of Macri’s new image. With them the image of the perfect family was transmitted. It was formed by a husband, President Macri, his young and attractive wife and his charming little daughter. It’s not unusual to see the three of them hugging and smiling, dressed informally on a picnic in the sun – in what would be a typical credit card or bank insurance advertisement photo if they weren’t who they are. Photographs like that are uploaded directly by Awada to Instagram and her other social networks. Since her husband’s inauguration in 2015, she left

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everything to devote herself entirely to her (communicational) role as a good wife, a good mother and the architect of the president’s ‘happy home’. Because of her attractiveness and class distinction, some have even compared her to Jacqueline Kennedy. Thus, her image in particular and that of her ‘ideal family’ in general became ‘aspirational objects’ for large sectors of the Argentine population who were enchanted by them (Canelo 2019: 135–140). These ‘magical images’ have the possibility of influencing the way in which human beings act, evoking in them certain desires, anxieties and dreams. Macri’s communicational strategist certainly does not ignore the fact that ‘whoever can imprint a desirable image in the eye of a human being, has power over him or her’. And that ‘if human conduct is stimulated by images, then power is held by those able of implant images into human beings’ (Szakolczai 2007: 3, 12). It is important to consider that among the characteristics of the magical images is its capacity to, with its enchanting influence, provoke confusion of the senses and loss of the power to discriminate and distinguish. Producing a more enjoyable ‘reality’, creating a more desirable one, allows many to elude their own and project themselves into the ‘reality’ of others. That is why in the very well cared images of the presidential family there is no place for Macri’s other three sons and Awada’s other daughter, who can evoke that each of them had a life prior to these images without time, another life with other husbands and other children: a life perhaps not as perfect. As far as Durán Barba is concerned, his paleness contrasts with the intense darkness of the jet dye of his hair. He has almond-shaped eyes, a generous double chin and a fresh smile that makes his nose furrow and bulges his cheekbones. His hands have a feminine grace, as if equipped with a hinge on each wrist when he moves them. (Blanco 2018) The political adviser is short in stature, with a prominent nose and belly and a thick hair dyed black. As a child, he remembers being the shortest in the class, so his classmates always kicked him, until he discovered that if he studied hard he could fool with them – and with his teachers too. As an adult he boasts that he has always been disruptive and talks smilingly about the mess he generates every time he appears in the media, driving people crazy with his political impropriety – as when he stated that ‘Hitler was a spectacular guy!’ He accepts that he plays a little with that kind of statement and says he’s an expert at it, measuring the impact and not letting it hurt any of his clients. With a self-confident attitude and quick intelligence, he never talks about his private life. He alleges that his life is boring and that he has no contact with many people. The truth is that Durán Barba, like the shadow of the king, makes the electoral machinery of macrism work. He is a trickster, an ingenious man, a creator of tricks, of

140 Osvaldo Javier López Ruiz et al. image strategies, of symbolic powers, capable of conquering and preserving the power of the government, recommending adjustments and course corrections based on the permanent survey of public opinion. (Muro 2018: 6–7) However, ‘Durán Barba is not an evil genius. … [rather] a specialist in the art of pleasing who appeals to advertising deception, but on the basis of a relatively pre-existing electoral consent’ (Muro 2018: 33). For him, the public image of a ruler no longer depends on management but on media (in) communication (Domínguez 2014). And the media, as is known, promote a depoliticization of politics. Durán Barba does not distinguish between campaigning and managing. ‘For him it is the same activity. Communication rules’ (Fidanza 2019: 19). His formula for winning the elections is: ‘No speeches, no traditional communication, modern communication and a lot of research’ to understand the world of the voter and on this basis to do campaigning (Hoy 2007). Some are concerned about this extreme pragmatism of the political adviser and worried about his contempt for ideas in favour of management. Regarding voters, the marked ambiguity of Durán Barba is surprising. On the one hand, he presents them as increasingly independent and less manipulable: there is ‘an uncontrollable public opinion, without hierarchies, that democratized the values of society and politics’, since ‘the Internet weakened the power of the old authorities and strengthened in the people a subversive sensation of independence and equality’. These are ‘independent people who connect dozens of times a day’ (Durán Barba and Nieto 2017: 10–11; 2011: 31). This almost amounts, one could say, to an ode to the romantic illusion of the autonomy of the subject.10 On the other hand, he infantilizes them considering them as a kind of ‘child-electors’ for whom the playful and the emotional would be central (Canelo 2019: 50–57). ‘We humans are apes with Cartesian pretensions [he affirms]. We suppose that we live guided by the mind but, even those who think we are more rational, we act dragged by our superstitions, feelings and instincts’ (Durán Barba and Nieto 2011: 262). For Durán Barba, ‘in campaigns, the voter we are most interested in is the least educated’ (La Nación 11/19/2006). The consultant’s central challenge is ‘to reach the immense majority that detests politics and is the one that elects the leaders’ (Fidanza 2019: 16). In his opinion, ‘there is an immense majority of people who are in another world. People who are basically looking for pleasure: they want to live well. They want to be happy’ (Blanco 2018). That is why Macri’s communication strategy was to ‘avoid conflict’ through promises of happiness, prosperity and joy that would keep people happy – and away from politics and ‘populism’. If the previous government had politicized the conflicts by bringing into the discussion arena problems such as the social inclusion of marginalized sectors – which for other sectors meant an ‘excessive politicization’ – the Macrist proposal instead came from ‘post-politics’ or ‘antipolitics’. He promised to professionalize the state with managers from the private sector, calling on ‘the best’ to produce ‘a cultural change’ in the country. Thus,

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there was a massive influx of CEOs who went from directing large companies to leading ministries and secretaries of state. There was talk of ‘CEO government’ or ‘CEOcracy’ (Vommaro 2017: 317–331). As presented by Macri, it was the ‘best team of the last fifty years’ that would finally solve in Argentina the ills produced by politics. However, during his term in office, Argentina was the country that saw its foreign debt grow the most in the world. In 2018, it had to turn to the IMF, which granted the largest loan in the history of this institution to a single country – 60% of its lending capacity – and yet, at the end of 2019, Argentina defaulted selectively on its debt and had to implement exchange controls. Despite having complied with all the IMF’s demands for structural adjustment of the economy, the country once again saw, following the same recipe, all its social and economic indicators fall sharply as in the crisis that led to its default in 2001. Macri’s populist strategy against ‘populism’, as well as his ‘anti-political’ political strategy, had produced an enormous disorder in the country and left it once again on the edge of the abyss. Jair Messias Bolsonaro, President of Brazil (2019–) The Brazilian case seems to take some of the characteristics of the trickster to its limits: the proximity to the grotesque, the connection by means of ambivalent jokes that progressively become violent against minorities; the production of an experience of unreality, given the incredulity that certain enunciations and gestures cause and the effect of disintegration of the social fabric, concomitant to the rise of the trickster (Horvath and Szakolczai 2018). This is why we chose to start presenting Bolsonaro’s trajectory and the forms of his public appearance and then introduce some contextual elements to (1) clarify the contours of the emptiness that made it possible the emergence of such trickster, (2) help identify the crisis that his appearance reiterates and, finally (3) name some of the promised magic effects, which operate his legitimation with segments of the Brazilian population. We start with a brief description of the trajectory of Jair Messias Bolsonaro, as well as the characteristics of his mode of public action. As is well known, Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil on 28 October 2018. He is a retired captain of the Brazilian Army who, after leaving the army in circumstances that were never fully clarified, dedicated himself to legislative work as a councilman in Rio de Janeiro between 1989 and 1991, and as a federal congressman between 1991 and 2018 – someone who has been part of institutional politics, therefore, for almost three decades. Both his joining and leaving the Army are shrouded in narratives difficult to verify. In his father’s biography, Bolsonaro’s eldest son tells that on 8 May 1970 (during the civil-military dictatorship, therefore), the army was conducting searches for one of the main leaders who fought the dictatorship, Carlos Lamarca (1937–1971), in a rural area near the city of Eldorado, where Bolsonaro lived:

142 Osvaldo Javier López Ruiz et al. At that time, Bolsonaro was 15 years old and, as an acquainted person in the forests of the Ribeira valley, he approached the Army’s military by offering to collaborate with information in the region to capture the terrorist Lamarca.11 That was how he met and was enchanted by the Brazilian army, when he felt the desire to serve his country touch his heart. … In this operation, a military man handed him a prospectus known as Icam – Instruction of Contest of Admission and Registration. (Carvalho 2019: n.p.) Luiz Maklouf Carvalho, in his extensive research on Bolsonaro’s career in the Army, says that ‘in the official documents of the Army on the episode … there is no indication, much less nominal, that the military who hunted Lamarca in Eldorado have received any help from the people’ (Carvalho 2019: n.p.). In the episode, as narrated by his son, however, it is worth highlighting the presence of a religious language, which suggests that this supposed meeting ‘awakened’ Bolsonaro, whose heart was then ‘touched’ by a ‘call’ to serve his country. The retirement of Bolsonaro from the Army is a more complex case and presents us more interesting elements to think about the trickster strategy. In 1986 he caused a tremendous unease at the high level of the Army by publishing an article in a large circulation magazine in which he denounced the low salaries of officials during the first civilian government after the end of the civil-military dictatorship12 – indiscipline that gave him a punishment of 15 days in prison. The next year, Bolsonaro was denounced as the mentor of a plan to install bombs in the city of Rio de Janeiro, something he denies to this day. The accusation brought him to trial at the Superior Military Court, where he was cleared by most of the judges, who applied the in dubio pro reo principle, since two of the four technical experts that analysed the bomb installation plan attributed responsibility to Bolsonaro, and two others did not.13 In the midst of all this doubts, Bolsonaro ran for councilman in the city of Rio de Janeiro and, as soon as he was elected, even before his process was decided by the Court, he chose to retire from the Army and change profession. Elected mostly by the military, in 1991 he assumed his first political position in the national legislature and began the career that would take him to the Presidency of the Brazilian Republic. During his 27 years in the Chamber of Deputies, Jair Bolsonaro presented about 170 bills, but managed to pass only two – which shows the reasonably marginal place occupied by the congressman, although having served seven consecutive terms.14 Inexpressive out of his electoral field, Bolsonaro has sporadically attracted the attention of some media outlets over the years by issuing opinions that directly confronted conviviality and democratic institutions.15 The following is a brief inventory of these statements, which help us understand why his candidacy was initially not taken seriously: •

‘Let’s make a Brazil for majorities. The law has to exist to defend the majorities, minorities will adapt or simply disappear.’

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• • • • •

•

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To a journalist who asked him, on 23 May 1999, if he would close Congress if he were ever president: ‘There is no doubt. There would be a coup on the same day.’ ‘I am in favour of torture, you know that, and the people are in favour of that too … now, don’t talk about military dictatorship here, only 282 [people] have disappeared, most of them outlaws, bank robbers, kidnappers.’ Regarding taxes: ‘Here is my advice, which I take too: I evade everything that is possible.’ ‘When a son begins to get sort of faggy, he gets beaten up and then he changes his behaviour.’ To a female member of the Workers’ Party who accused him of encouraging rape: ‘I don’t rape you because you don’t deserve it.’ On the equivalence of salaries between men and women: ‘I wouldn’t employ [men and women] on the same salary.’ To Preta Gil, a black presenter who asked what he would do if one of his children fell in love with a black woman: ‘Oh Preta, I’m not going to discuss promiscuity with anyone, I don’t take that risk because my children were very well educated and didn’t live in an environment like yours.’ About receiving refugees: ‘Senegalese, Haitians, Iranians, Bolivians, and all that scum of the world, you know, and now the Syrians as well are coming here. The scum of the world is coming here to our Brazil.’

Of the set of similar statements it is worth highlighting the denial that there has been a dictatorship in Brazil and the praise both to the military who presided over the country during the civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985)16 and to the torturers denounced by the survivors of the regime after the democratic reopening.17 A liminal character within Brazilian political institutions does not ascend to a position of prominence that allows him to dispute the presidency of the country in a sudden. His anti-democratic and violent positions were reasonably limited by the institutional dynamics of the legislature through the paralysis or rejection of his bills, by the marginalization of his statements, framed as ‘madness’ or ‘clownery’ or, when taken seriously, denounced before the Ethics Council of the House (Carta Capital 2018). The Executive office, however, is dependent on a much larger set of voters than those of electoral fiefdoms that elect representatives of the federal legislature similar to Bolsonaro. His election appears at once as the outcome of an ability to read the political moment of liminality and as a social symptom of processes of deep transformation in the relations that produce the Brazilian social fabric. A starting point for understanding the conditions of emergence of a trickster leadership in the Brazilian scenario can be located in the country’s own history: its colonial matrixes, the marks of the institution of slavery (abolished only in 1888, one year before the proclamation of the Republic) and the lasting coexistence with abyssal inequalities. The social structure of Republican Brazil

144 Osvaldo Javier López Ruiz et al. was thus crossed by deep social distances, whose significances varied over time according to the cultural, symbolic and political mediations and their ability to attribute meaning to them. Brazilian sociability has always been based on a socioeconomic, racial and spatial fracture and its effects of violence, whether in moments of political disquiet or in moments of authoritarian escalation.18 Let us start with the issue of emptiness. 1985 marks the end of the civilmilitary dictatorship and the beginning of the democratic transition (a liminal moment, therefore), which was preceded by an intense popular mobilization. In response to the excessive centralization, characteristic of authoritarian regimes, there was a kind of ‘democratic overflow’ in relation to the institutions: since political participation was blocked, politics was produced in the intervals and, in this sense, daily life itself became meaningful (Feltran 2007; Sader 1988). The transition, however, was marked by concessions, anchored in a kind of ‘principle of reality’ that feared that any radicalization – whether in the redistributive dimension of social policies or in the will for truth and justice in relation to state violence – would awaken the ghosts of the violent regime recently buried. Thus, even though the democratic transition was operated from an institutional moment, that of the 1988 Constituent, the political energies forged in the gaps were progressively finding old and new forms, through a powerful process of creation and multiplication of institutional modes of participation (Avritzer 2010) and stabilization of the party political system, at the cost of emptying daily life from political meanings. Despite the growing distance between the apparent democratic normality and the more general depoliticization of the public sphere, the problematization of the limits of such an arrangement continued to occur in different collectives, marginal to institutional politics, organized around axes that hardly resonated in traditional political structures (such as parties or unions and in office and legislative spaces): cultural practices in the urban peripheries, organized families against persistent state violence against the poor, mobilization against the genocide of black youth, collectives of black women, indigenous and LGBTIQ+ population … those segments of population, therefore, whose experience of denied citizenship within the democratic order showed the arrangement was not enough to ensure them even basic civil rights. Although these actors have found channels of participations during the governments of PT, some of their most urgent agendas – such as the rejection of the process that we can call, in a synthetic way, the militarization of life – have not met institutional politics.19 The emptiness to which we refer is related to this low interpenetration between institutions of representative politics and the new political grammars built in public, local and decentralized arenas. We will now address the issue of liminality. The crisis of the arrangement constituted after the dictatorship became visible (although it never became fully readable) in the events of June 2013.20 That cycle of protests, sometimes referred to as the ‘demonstrations of June’, began with small demonstrations, organized by a young and anarchist social movement, then active for at least ten years – the Free Pass Movement (MPL), whose central agenda is urban

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mobility and the right to the city. These were well-defined demonstrations against the increase in bus and subway tickets. The intense repression of demonstrators and the indignation it provoked, however, operated as a password for massive demonstrations throughout the country and also for the vertiginous diversification of agendas – what analysts pointed out as the phenomenon ‘each poster, an agenda’ (Alonso 2017; Singer 2013; Tatagiba 2014), calling attention to the individualization of acts. They were no longer called by organized collectives, which released in the streets restlessness, discontent and resentment, deepened by the contradictions created in the context of mega events.22 Emptiness thus gained a rite – that of public demonstrations – and an image close to a classic performance of the People, that of a crowd occupying the streets. By showing the limits of the post-1985 arrangement, the demonstrations can be understood as a moment of crossroads – a place of liminality or of opening of possibilities – that is, a moment that precedes change. 2016 began with a new cycle of protests convoked by a part of the actors that emerged during the June journeys, catalysing part of the political energies released there. A movement began to take on a more readable form, configuring what Alonso called the ‘patriotic cycle’ (2017: 53) and a more delimited agenda: against the PT, part taken as a whole from corruption; against democracy – and in favour of a new military coup or, at least, the ‘rehabilitation’ of the historical meanings of what occurred in 1964. And we finally reach the magical effects operated by the figure of Jair Bolsonaro. In a scenario of chaos, instability and difficulties of diagnosing and assuming political response, Bolsonaro and his supporters foresaw an opportunity and bet all their chips on a candidacy built almost exclusively outside the political arenas and whose only programmatic coherence seems to lie in the promise of restoring order. However, for each population segment, this order assumes different meanings: in the popular classes, which are more subject to violence, it is a question of order linked to security (PinheiroMachado and Fachin 2018); in the middle classes, threatened by inconsistency of status, it is a question of order linked to social hierarchies and the possibility of continuing to base their projects of class reproduction and mobility on the exploitation of cheap labour (Souza 2014). Similar to the idea of nulla or ‘nothingness’ that marks the figure of Pulcinella as discussed by Agnes Horvath (2010), the figure of Bolsonaro – read as ‘authentic’ (as opposed to the falsehood of politicians in general), ‘courageous’ (daring to say ‘the truths’ blocked by ‘politically correct’), ‘efficient’ (in his promise to authorize practices such as torture and murder) – can take on meaning precisely because of the emptiness produced by the distance between institutional politics and the dense politicization of new social actors. Therefore, in a context of widespread anti-system sentiment, hopes were projected on Bolsonaro:

146 Osvaldo Javier López Ruiz et al. An image is just a fiction until it is seen and experienced by others, until it encounters a willing public that would perceive and understand it. It is this reception that makes it real, and in this way immediately modifies existence. The image creates a mood in which the real and the fictive coexist and therefore become inter- changeable. … We ‘realize’ thus the zero (literally ‘real’-ize, or ‘render it real’) insofar as reality and image become equal from the moment we all, participants or observers in this fiction, accept this image, the zero (nulla, cipher, zephyr), the pure representative of nothingness, and its value dissolving and sublimating character, giving it a name. As a consequence, we do not see the difference any more between a real thing and a fictional thing, as both gained a name, and so a value; the original measure and proportion of a thing are breaking down. (Horvath 2010: 56) In addition to the strategic use of his marginal position in the political-electoral system, which allowed him to place himself ‘outside’ the institutions that were under suspicion, Jair Bolsonaro operates by incorporating some of the languages circulating in the social body and allowing them to be projected on him. Escaping the framing of traditional media outlets in the country, keeping under control the narrative about himself and his actions (Beiguelman 2019), Bolsonaro began to productively agency grammars as disparate as that of neoPentecostalism, in its most visible denominations23 and that of war on the internal enemy, protecting himself from accusations of prejudice, authoritarianism or incitement to violence, having as an alibi ‘humour’ or his ‘authenticity’ and ‘courage’, which allows him to transgress the new frontiers of the enunciable, consolidated during the democratic period. What he also operates, therefore, is a set of resentments based on class, gender, sexual norm and race, released at the end of a progressive cycle in which, with countless limits, there was some movement in the structures of power – economic, and also symbolic (representativeness in advertising pieces, in the dispute for new consumers, for example, or the presence of racialized people in almost exclusively white spaces, such as public universities, given the affirmative action policies) and politics, with the arrival of new actors, forged in this process of continuous politicization in the struggle against the state (Nobre 2013; Pinheiro-Machado and Nascimento 2019).24 The language of violence mobilized by Bolsonaro, as well as the violence that he promises to release, whether on the part of the police or decentralizing it to the citizens themselves (promising to facilitate the access to weapons) makes him pass as someone capable of ending, by the use of force, the disorder characteristic of a society in transition: in his image, careless enough so it can be read as authentic and in the absurdities he states (as in the inventory presented above) he reinstates norms of family, whiteness, gender, sexual orientation and class, linking this order to the exclusion of all the ‘abnormal’. It was expected that, once elected, Jair Bolsonaro would be progressively limited by the rites and demands of his position. But it is not what can be

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observed (Nobre 2018, 2019), quite on the contrary. Given the emptiness of his projects, the tensioning effects of its way of acting publicly and the weakness of democratic institutions, the only way to confer legitimacy and support to his government has been to operate a ‘direct tweeted democracy’ (Nobre 2019), mobilizing daily the core of his supporters, true soldiers on social networks, always ready to defend their leader (and attack those perceived as enemies), therefore blocking the possibilities of public debate. Perhaps these voters/ soldiers are blinded by the illusion of proximity to power – after all, the president is guiding his decisions by the effect they generate on social networks, ensuring, in real time, as in a kind of political reality show, that the electoral costs of his decisions are minimal. It remains to be seen for how long the magic he operates will work. Or, to put it another way, it remains to be seen how long Brazil will be a prisoner of his spell, caught in a state of only apparent suspension (because, despite the chaos, important measures have been taken to destroy the fragile social policies erected since the 1930s) that keeps empty the space that allowed his appearance.

Contemporary democracies and trickster leadership as a collective personality? In Argentina, wrapped in the bubble built by its own ‘yes, you can’ communications strategy – its campaign slogan summarizing the promises of a bright future – the first to be surprised by the certainly surprising results of the August 2019 primary election was President Macri himself. Parity was expected with the main opposition candidate, Alberto Fernández, and the result was, however, a difference of 16% in favour of the latter. It was such a shock when the results began to be known that Macri became angry with the voters and made them responsible for the country’s situation and for the eventual return of ‘populism’ and politics. In the midst of his astonishment and anger, he went so far as to suggest that this election had never happened. What really happened was that, in the face of bewilderment, Macri was seen speaking for the first time without a script. It was finally possible to see him and not his ‘coached hologram’: the election result ‘ripped the veil’ and ‘made a cut in his mask’ (Russo 2019). The reality of the country’s catastrophic economic situation erupted in the face of the unreality of antipolitical politics. Or, in other words, not everything is communication and ‘the material situation matters and is a catalyst for emotions and opinions’ (Brito and Pascual 2019). The concrete results of Macri’s leadership ended up imposing themselves – at an enormous cost to the country and future generations – on the theories of the primacy of the image and media communication of the president’s coach. Durán Barba’s strategy of polarizing the choice between a Macri who aspired to re-election – and hoped to be able to show some economic achievement, after having complied with the reduction of public spending and the adjustment of the economy imposed by the IMF – and a Cristina Kirchner who represented the ‘old politics’ and ‘populism’ did not

148 Osvaldo Javier López Ruiz et al. work. Macri did not have any economic achievement to show (quite the opposite) and Cristina Kirchner, in spite of having the highest number of votes in previous polls, avoided the direct polarization giving a step to the side, going in the formula as candidate to the vice-presidency. It was she who proposed Alberto Fernandez as presidential candidate. He had been Chief Cabinet Minister during her government. Finally, in October 2019, Fernandez won the first round of general elections against ‘Macri-Duran Barba’. Just as in a theatre, politics in Argentina in recent years seems to have been played out by a scriptwriter and an actor. The figure of the main political leader of the country was occupied by a personality not individual but ‘collective’, formed by the persons wrote the libretto and who acted it. The ‘leader’ thus ceases to be incarnated by a subject and becomes constituted by an entity. The trickster, in this case, is a kind of collective personality, consisting of the one who wrote the libretto (Durán Barba) and the one who acted it (Macri), which together constitute a unity. Its logic and dynamics become evident. The situation of crisis and liminality are permanently stimulated, society is polarized and divided, magical images are used to appeal to emotions but, above all, to blur understanding and the capacity for discernment. All kinds of scenic effects, montages, simulations, combinations of images and sounds are used. A whole ‘semiotic orgy’ was enacted in order to seduce and produce enchantments that blind the understanding (Muro 2018: 37). In this spectacularization of politics, as it is well known, the media play a fundamental role. And this is particularly so in a country where there is a strong monopoly that went to war against the antitrust media law – and with the previous government of Cristina Kirchner that promoted and passed it in 2009; a law that President Macri was in charge of deactivating as soon as he came to power in 2015. It is very difficult to weigh the actual influence of the presidential adviser in the president’s decisions. For many, Durán Barba is not only the architect and creator of Macri as a candidate, but his influence has been permanent, having a voice and vote in most of his decisions. Others assert the opposite, saying that his weigh has been overestimated. It is also surely an excessive simplification to reduce in this case the collective figure of the trickster to a single scriptwriter and a single actor. The reality is more complex and in this theatrical game other characters also acted and intervened. This is the case, for example, of Marcos Peña, Macri’s Chief Cabinet Minister, a political scientist who disbelieves politics and the official with the most power after the president. Peña, who for most analysts formed along with Macri and Durán Barba a perfect electoral machine, faced more and more openly the ‘political wing’ of the government. But regardless of the precise composition of the ‘trickster-leader’ figure – and how collective it is – the underlying problem remains the emergence of trickster logic and its ability to turn the political actor into a theatrical actor. When the professional politician’s competence becomes acting, he as a politician becomes in-competent,25 losing breadth of vision, autonomy and decision-making capacity. In short, he loses his capacity for leadership.

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In the Brazilian case, the collective character of trickster leadership construction is significantly less apparent. Through the image of a strong man, who is not afraid to tell truths or to be held responsible for them, Bolsonaro concentrates attentions on himself, distracting the electorate from the fact that there are people controlling his profiles on social media, specially his Twitter account – in which often, like Donald Trump, very controversial tweets appear. The arrival of social network technology at the political game emerges as a fundamental tool of ‘self-making’ that this game involves. The virtual world allows the artificial creation of talents by obscuring, if desired, the authorship of the ideas that appear vocalized in a single voice. After all, the construction of characters in social networks unfolds out of technologies forged in other mass media: it is the teams that carefully produce images of public personalities, it is the ‘crisis managers’ who manipulate narratives in favour of their clients, or even deliberate frauds (such as playback voiceover singers). The accounts in social networks, thus, allow to operate the ‘author function’ in a new way: in the image of the owner of the account it is possible to attribute words and manifestations, in consonance with the effects that one wishes to provoke and, of course, provided that they are publicly endorsed. It is certainly from the political game that the projects, ideas and proposals presented are collectively produced. But what we seek to emphasize here is a dynamic of effective phrases that, for reasons that are always contextually defined, mobilize people emotionally and divert them from a properly political discussion. In the case of Jair Bolsonaro, this was managed masterfully during his campaign by his middle son, Carlos Bolsonaro, a city councillor from Rio de Janeiro, who controls his Twitter account. Carlos Bolsonaro’s ascendency over his father’s social network accounts is such that he managed to steal the password so he was the only one able to express himself through his father’s Twitter (Época 2019).26 The possibility of continuing to speak directly to readers without submitting to traditional media framing was guaranteed by a fatality: on 6 September 2018, Bolsonaro was stabbed while campaigning and submitted to surgery twice in a short period of time. With medical justifications, he withdrew from public debate, restricting himself to a few interviews with selected journalists and to the performance in social networks – which certainly obscured his little knowledge about any of the important themes for the country. His only poor participations in the first two debates broadcast on TV were no longer repeated and he did not face any more confrontation during the campaign.27 Thus, Bolsonaro campaigned with a monologue, being able to count on a probable army of militants (and web robots) working in their social networks and producing false/distorted news whose authorship could never be effectively connected to him. Different from Macri, who had a known coach, Bolsonaro gets more diffuse and less identifiable help. However, the question remains open as to whether his case can also be framed within a collective trickster personality. More importantly, we believe it to be very productive to explore the notion of a trickster-leader as a collective personality in order to analyse liminal leadership in contemporary politics.

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Conclusions One of the questions that opens this book remains unanswered: What, in modern democracies, can help to prevent trickster-like people from being elected to positions of leadership? What can help to avoid, particularly in ‘liminal’ times, the arrive into power of a trickster instead of a ‘charismatic’ leader? If we return to the interesting distinction that J. Thomas Wren analyses between ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’, we will notice that modern democracy is even more exposed than other polities to the possibility that the function of the leader is exercised by a collective personality. Based on the work of historian Edmund S. Morgan and sociologist Matthew Trachman, Wren first shows that the idea of leader is a long-standing social and historical construction. At the same way, but much closer in time is the term ‘leadership’, which arises between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, and which acquires importance only from the emergence of the democratic context to name ‘a new mode of social relations and a new way of determining who should stand among the few to govern the many’ (Morgan quoted in Wren 2007, 132). For Trachman, leadership is a conceptual product of the modern democratic revolution and therefore a relatively recent construction (Wren 2007, 134). Leadership is then understood as a construction and as a process that certainly involves the figure of the leader but gives the other members of the government system a more relevant role. Thus, leadership should be understood as a new social and political relationship of mutual influence between the leader and his followers to facilitate the achievement of the group’s objectives (Wren 2007, 1). Leadership is seen as a process, precisely because of the dynamic exchange that must exist between the leader and the people as they interact in the face of challenges to achieve the desired ends. In other words, the interaction between leaders and people is the essence of this new social and political relationship that is leadership (Wren 2007, 376–377). Nevertheless, this can apply to modern democracies functioning in ‘normal’ or stable conditions, but does not solve the problem of ‘out-of-ordinary situations’ where the need for the extraordinary qualities of a man – and the possibility to believe in his ‘charisma’ – are most urgent. Parallel with the passage from the authority of the leader to the ‘invention of leadership’ described by Wren, we can also see nowadays a relevant transformation. The notion of ‘charisma’, interestingly enough, goes from a freely given gift of divine grace that somebody receive directly from God to the idea of a skill that can be trained and developed with the aid of a coach. Or, in a more profane version: it goes from a natural gift or innate aptitude of a concrete person to an acquired ability obtained after ‘investing’ certain amount of time and money with the right adviser. In modern democracies, leadership, by being less focused on the extraordinary qualities28 of an individual and in the direct exercise of its authority, leaves more room for the figure of the leader to be the product of deliberate construction. Certainly, we may still have serious doubts if it is really

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possible to ‘acquire’ charisma itself but, of course, there are some skills in politics that can be trained. In times of permanent liminality, the need for a leader is much more compelling than in normal times. If with the help of the media the function of a leader could be exercised by a collective personality – with a main actor and some scriptwriters – the scarcity of leaders could be ‘solved’. Notwithstanding, the main problem persist: how can we make the distinction between genuine and fake charisma? The space for the trickster figure to show up has been widely open and the risks for the whole community of being immersed in the trickster logic are many and difficult to avoid in modern democracies. In this chapter we have analysed two cases of candidates for the main leadership position in their countries who, although in different ways, deliberately masked their essence of inner emptiness, have benefited from situations of lack of order, crisis and liminality and reinforced situations of social polarization as a political strategy. In this sense, they operated by deepening processes of schismogenesis in which the unity of the community could be irreparably lost. We have also seen the use that has been made in both cases of images as an attempt to consolidate false, fake personalities and the use of media (both traditional and social networks) in order to appeal to emotions and darken the capacity for discernment. All this has contributed to a significant increase in the sense of living at a time when the ‘absurd’, the ‘inconceivable’ or ‘what cannot be happening’, often become true and are happening. The general sense of unreality of contemporary politics has increased greatly in recent years, both in Argentina and Brazil. At the same time, abundant signs are beginning to spread that suggest the limits of these political strategies that fuel this unreal reality, directly affecting the daily life of people in several Latin American countries. The recent uprisings and demonstrations in Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia and Colombia29 may be the signs of first steps towards a new cycle of participation in political life and the need to recover other, non-trickster forms of leadership. In this context, as we tried to explore during the chapter, the trickster figure presents itself as a sharp analytical indicative, as long as we consider that it can only materialize in specific socio-cultural contexts, each with its own history. Thus, the different modalities of the trickster could not fail to translate their own peculiarities to the social groups that give them life. The study of these characters seems to demand [therefore] the recognition of the dissimilarities that oppose egalitarian societies to social formations constituted with inequalities. (Queiroz 1991: 104)

Notes 1 For a comprehensive analysis of this progressive cycle, see Santos (2018). 2 Traverso continued: ‘Considering the elasticity and ambiguity of this concept, Marco D’Eramo points out that it does more to define those who use it than those to whom it is usually applied: it is a political tool useful for stigmatizing opponents. (…)

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3

4

5

6

7 8

9

10 11 12 13

“Populism” is a category used as a self-defense mechanism by political elites who stand ever further from the people’ (2019: 20–21). In Argentina, this term refers to the binary division of society that crosses all social spheres and separates families, groups and friends. In the case of this country, it is ‘a formula constructed by the big media to allude to a certain state of things characterized by a persistent social tension and that ‘alludes to the reappearance of an old antagonism of Argentine history’ between Peronism and anti-Peronism (Mocca 2019). In Brazil, this term is not used but the characteristics of the extreme social polarization between those in favour and against the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores of Lula da Silva) are similar. The President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, after the disturbances and massive demonstrations that were triggered by the raising of the subway ticket in Santiago declared the state of emergency and the curfew and said, in a press conference on 20 October 2019, that his country was ‘in war against a powerful and implacable enemy.’ Also, his wife, Cecilia Morel, in a private audio message that was leaked to the press, said his country was ‘like facing a foreign, alien invasion’. ‘Chanta’ is an Argentinian slang word for someone who presumes to have a capacity, a knowledge or a power which in reality he does not possess. It is associated with a false and manipulative personality which only seeks self-interest, but pretends to be interested in others. It has been used in the media to characterize Durán Barba (see Blanco 2018; Brito and Pascual 2019; Hoy 2007; Perfil 2019). ‘Peronism’ is a political movement that emerged in the mid-1940s around the figure of Juan Domingo Perón. It has very diverse versions that incorporate both right and left. The ‘Peronist’ government that preceded that of the Kirchners was Carlos Menem’s (1989–1999) – being, however, centre-right. This government pushed the agenda of neoliberal policies promoted by the Washington Consensus and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which led to the Argentinean crisis of December 2001, or ‘Argentinazo’. This political and economic agenda follows the same general guidelines of the one implemented by Macri’s government, and goes in the opposite direction to the ones implemented by his heterodox predecessors – which were, putting it in a somewhat simplifying manner, more Keynesiandevelopmental. The expression plays as a counterpoint to ‘Perón o muerte!’ (‘Perón or death!’), the slogan of Montoneros, the Argentine guerrilla organization that emerged in 1970 and defined itself as Peronist. Regarding his books, some affirm that ‘they seem to be self-help manuals for campaigning politicians, but they are, in truth, an anthropological and philosophical journey through the history of politics and communication’ (Blanco 2018), while for others, in them Durán Barba metamorphoses auxiliary techniques into science while converting a self-help manual into philosophy (Pinedo 2019). There are significant suspicions that the services of Cambridge Analytica were used in Macri’s 2015 and Bolsonaro’s 2018 presidential campaigns. This is in part based on the statement of Alexander Nix, ex-CEO of Cambridge Analytica before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee at the British Parliament on 6 June 2018. Horvath and Szakolczai call attention to how René Girard, in his book of 1961, Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (Paris: Grasset), identifies the RousseauKantian idea of subjective autonomy as a romantic illusion (2018: 198). It is quite common among figures identified as belonging to the Brazilian far-right to call as ‘terrorists’ members of resistance movements to the dictatorship, in an explicit attempt of historical revision. ‘The salary is low’, appeared on Veja, 3 September 1986. Carvalho’s thesis is that there were only three reports (two that gave Bolsonaro as author of the plans and one that cleared him), but the latter was replicated: ‘It was

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15 16

17

18

19 20 21 22 23

24

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like counting as valid, at the end of a football game, a goal annulled by the judge’ (Carvalho 2019: n.p.). The first bill, approved in 1996, extended the tax exemption on industrialized products to IT items and the second, in 2016, authorized the use of synthetic phosphoethanolamine, a new but controversial drug for the treatment of patients diagnosed with cancer. The latter had no effect because it was invalidated by the Brazilian Supreme Court. In this sense, his figure bears similarities to that of Taufiq ‘Ukasha, analysed by Armbrust (2013). Among the five presidents that governed during the civil-military dictatorship, the one who received the most enthusiastic compliment from Bolsonaro is Emílio Garrastazu Médici (1969–1974), who adopted the most severe policies of persecution and murder of opponents. For more details, see Dieguez (2016). The day that President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment was voted, Bolsonaro declared he was voting ‘yes’ as a tribute to Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, an Army colonel who was the director of one of the most well-known torture centres of the period. Ustra is the only Army torturer recognized by Brazilian justice, having been responsible for the torture sessions that Rousseff was subjected to when he was arrested in 1970 as a member of the resistance. Bolsonaro’s statement includes the following passage: ‘To the memory of Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, Dilma Rousseff’s terror.’ In a classic text of Brazilian social thought, Santos characterized the political dynamics of the country in terms of a ‘citizenship of recess’: according to his hypothesis, throughout the democratic intervals that punctuate the Brazilian Republic, there is the politicization of a series of aspects of everyday life and the accumulation of public debate that could result in democratic deepening and redistributive reforms; however, each time such a crossroads has presented, the result was the suspension of political and civil rights and the introduction or reforms of social rights and, thus, the authoritarian management of social conflict (Santos 1979). For a discussion of militarization as a new social management device, see Leite et al. (2018). In naming that cycle of protests as ‘June events’, we follow André Singer’s proposal, referring explicitly to the enigma of the events of May 1968 in France which, because of their difficult readability, continue to question us (Singer 2013). See Movimento Passe Livre (2013). Brazil hosted the World Cup in 2014 and Rio de Janeiro hosted the Olympics in 2016. For a description of the dynamics of religious change in the country, see Pierucci (2004); for a more specific discussion on the expansion of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (IURD), see Mariano (2004); for a discussion that takes neoPentecostal religions as a new form of governmentality in the urban peripheries, see Feltran (2014). One of the paradigmatic cases of this representativeness, although minor to the political system, was the election of Marielle Franco as a councilwoman in the city of Rio de Janeiro: woman, black, ‘spawn to the Favela da Maré’, lesbian, single mother, human rights activist. At the same time Marielle repeated the trajectory of popular leaderships forged in the struggles of the 1970-1980s, she registered an important difference: her political action had as one of its main agendas the defence of life, against the militarization of the favelas and the war on the poor – an agenda against the limits of the democratic state, therefore. Marielle Franco was murdered on 14 March 2018, and the process of public mourning and fighting against the oblivion of this crime tells us about the deep popular understanding that the violence

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25 26

27

28

29

that was directed against her life also targeted all those similar to her, whom she represented in the institutional political arenas. In the sense given to this term by Jacques Derrida in Espectros de Marx, as pointed out by Gabriel Muro (2018: 33). In 2016, Carlos Bolsonaro stole the password of his older brother’s Twitter account, Flavio Bolsonaro, also a political figure. After the leader of his party threatened him so he would give the password back, C. Bolsonaro revealed that it was the word USTRA – see note 17 – followed by a few digits (Gaspar 2019: 18). In one of the last debates, Bolsonaro justified his absence for medical reasons while, however, he gave an exclusive interview, on the same day and time, to a competing channel – TV Record, which has among its owners the Bishop Edir Macedo (Veja 2018). Despite representing a violation of the Brazilian electoral laws, because the station did not grant the same time to the other candidates, there was no punishment. The privileged treatment resulted that it was to TV Record that Bolsonaro granted the first exclusive interview after the elections, as well as an exponential increase in transfers by government advertising during the first year of government (Folha de São Paulo 2019). Qualities such as the ability to be a statesman, to reconcile conflicts of interests and values, to propose alternatives. In short, as Kazi points out, an individual that Weber himself realizes is hard to come by because it had to be someone who would have to gather great convictions that are unconventional to society, yet have an ethic of responsibility to uphold society’s conventions. In other words, he must be someone who can guard society and yet bring in the new (2017, 172). Between October and November 2019.

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Durán Barba, Jaime and Santiago Nieto (2011) El arte de ganar. Cómo usar el ataque en campañas electorales exitosas, Buenos Aires: Debate [Ebook]. Durán Barba, Jaime and Santiago Nieto (2017) La política en el siglo XXI. Arte, mito o ciencia, Buenos Aires: Debate [Ebook]. Época (2019) ‘Após discussão com pai, Carlos confisca senha de Twitter do presidente’, retrieved from https://24horasnews.com.br/noticia/apos-discussao-com-pai-carlos-con fisca-senha-de-twitter-do-presidente.html (accessed 26 October 2019). Feltran, Gabriel (2007) ‘Vinte anos depois: a construção democrática vista da periferia’, Lua Nova, 72: 83–114. Feltran, Gabriel (2014) ‘O valor dos pobres: a aposta no dinheiro como mediação para o conflito social contemporâneo’, Cadernos CRH, 27(72): 495–512. Fidanza, Andrés (2019) Durán Barba: el mago de la felicidad, Buenos Aires: Planeta. Folha de São Paulo (2019) ‘Gasto do governo federal com publicidade cresce, e Record supera Globo’, retrieved from www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2019/04/gasto-do-governofederal-com-publicidade-cresce-e-record-supera-globo.shtml (accessed 30 August 2019). Folha de, São Paulo (2018) ‘Empresários bancam campanha contra o PT pelo WhatsApp’, 18/10/2018, retrieved from www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2018/10/empresarios-bancamcampanha-contra-o-pt-pelo-whatsapp.shtml (accessed 20 October 2019). Fontevecchia, Jorge (2017) ‘Antropologo del presente’, in J. Durán Barba and S. Nieto La política en el siglo XXI. Arte, mito o ciencia, Buenos Aires: Debate [Ebook]. Gaspar, Malu (2019) ‘O pit bull do papai’, Revista Piauí, 154, July. Horvath, Agnes (2010) ‘Pulcinella, or the metaphysics of the nulla: in between politics and theatre’, History of the Human Sciences, 23(2): 47–67. Horvath, Agnes and Arpad Szakolczai (2018) ‘Political Anthropology’, in S. Turner and W. Outhwaite (eds.) Sage Handbook of Political Sociology, London: SAGE. Hoy (2007). ‘Jaime Durán Barba: “Estoy convencido, todo tiempo pasado fue peor”’, retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20110101143636/http://www.hoy.com.ec/noti cias-ecuador/jaime-duran-barba-estoy-convencido-todo-tiempo-pasado-fue-peor-283207283207.html (accessed 2 November 2019). La Nación (2006) ‘Jaime Durán Barba: la politica erotizada’, 19/11/2006, retrieved from www.lanacion.com.ar/opinion/jaime-duran-barba-la-politica-erotizadanid859814 (accessed 2 November 2019). Leite, Márcia et al. (orgs) (2018) Militarização no Rio de Janeiro: da pacificação à intervenção, Rio de Janeiro: Mórula. Mariano, Ricardo (2004) ‘Expansão pentecostal no Brasil: o caso da Igreja Universal’, Estudos Avançados, 18(52), September/December: 121–38. Merlin, Nora (2019) ‘El neoliberalismo es un modo de totalitarismo’, interview by Oscar Ranzani, Página 12, 05/08/2019, retrieved from www.pagina12.com.ar/210331-el-neoli beralismo-es-un-modo-de-totalitarismo (accessed 2 November 2019). Mocca, Edgardo (2019) ‘¿Qué quiere decir “terminar con la grieta”?’, Página 12, 25/08/ 2019, retrieved from www.pagina12.com.ar/214305-que-quiere-decir-terminar-con-lagrieta (accessed 2 November 2019). Movimento Passe Livre (2013) Cidades rebeldes, São Paulo: Boitempo Editorial/Carta Maior. Muro, Gabriel (2018) ‘Durán Barba, el sibilino’, Espectros 3(4): 1–38, retrieved from http://espectros.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Duran-Barba-el-sibilino_GabrielMuro.pdf (accessed 2 November 2019). Nobre, Marcos (2013) Choque de democracia, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Nobre, Marcos (2018) ‘A revolta conservadora’, Revista Piauí, 147, December.

156 Osvaldo Javier López Ruiz et al. Nobre, Marcos (2019) ‘O caos como método’, Revista Piauí, 151, April. Perfil (2019) ‘Massot trató de chanta a Durán Barba por su “notable” cambio de Opinión’, retrieved from www.perfil.com/noticias/politica/nicolas-massot-contra-jaime-duranbarba-expuso-grita-interna-pro.phtml (accessed 2 November 2019). Pierucci, Antonio Flávio (2004) ‘Bye bye, Brasil – o declínio das religiões tradicionais no Censo 2000’, Estudos Avançados, 18(52), September/December: 17–28. Pinedo, Jorge (2019) ‘Modelo para armar (presidentes)’, El cohete a la luna, 08/09/2019, retrieved from www.elcohetealaluna.com/modelo-para-armar-presidentes (accessed 2 November 2019). Pinheiro-Machado, Rosana and Patricia Fachin (2018) ‘Do lulismo ao bolsonarismo. Entrevista especial’, retrieved from www.ihu.unisinos.br/581843-do-lulismo-ao-bolsonar ismo-entrevista-especial-com-rosana-pinheiro-machado (accessed 3 November 2019). Pinheiro-Machado, Rosana and Fernanda Nascimento (2019) ‘Homens brancos contra mulheres negras e LGBTs: a nova polarização política brasileira’, Catarina, retrieved from https://catarinas.info/homens-brancos-contra-mulheres-negras-e-lgbts-a-novapolarizacao-politica-brasileira/ (accessed 3 November 2019). Queiroz, Renato da S. (1991) ‘O herói-trapaceiro: reflexões sobre a figura do trickster’, Tempo Social, 3(1–2): 93–107. Russo, Sandra (2019) ‘El discurso de la supremacía’, Página 12, 17/08/2019, retrieved from www.pagina12.com.ar/212835-el-discurso-de-la-supremacia (accessed 2 November 2019). Sader, Eder (1988) Quando novos personagens entraram em cena: experiências, falas e lutas dos trabalhadores da Grande São Paulo, 1970–1980, Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Santos, Fabio L. B. dos (2018) Uma história da onda progressista sul-americana (1998– 2016), São Paulo: Elefante. Santos, Wanderley G. (1979) Cidadania e justiça: a política social na ordem brasileira, Rio de Janeiro: Campus. Singer, André (2013) ‘Brasil, junho de 2013: classes e ideologias cruzadas’, Novos estudos Cebrap, 97: 23–40. Souza, Jessé (2014) ‘A cegueira do debate brasileiro sobre as classes sociais’, Interesse Nacional, 7(27): 12p. Szakolczai, Arpad (2007) ‘Image-magic in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: power and modernity from Weber to Shakespeare’, History of the Human Sciences, 20(4): 1–26, 10.1177/0952695107082488. Tatagiba, Luciana (2014) ‘1984, 1992 e 2013. Sobre ciclos de protestos e democracia no Brasil’, Política e Sociedade, 13(28): 35–62. Traverso, Enzo (2019) The New Faces of Fascism. Populism and the Far Right, London: Verso. Tres Líneas (2019) ‘Jaime Durán Barba: biografía’, 30/10/2019, retrieved from www.tresli neas.com.ar/jaime-duran-barba-bio-151.html (accessed 2 November 2019). Veja (2018). ‘“Espertalhão” e “oportunista”: as opiniões sobre a ausência de Bolsonaro’, retrieved from https://veja.abril.com.br/politica/espertalhao-e-oportunista-as-opinioessobre-a-ausencia-de-bolsonaro/ (accessed 8 July 2019). Vommaro, Gabriel (2017) La larga marcha de Cambiemos. La construcción silenciosa de un proyecto de poder, Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores. Wren, J. Thomas (2007) Inventing Leadership: The Challenge of Democracy, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

8

Political leadership in contemporary France The case of Emmanuel Macron Helen Drake

Introduction Constitutionally and institutionally, the French president has significant power and powers at his disposal (there has yet to be a female French president). In addition, the presidency comes wrapped in symbolic resources that are derived from a rich repertoire of history, precedent and myth. French history abounds with Thomas Carlyle’s ‘great men’ and their ‘heroics’ in the form of kings, emperors, presidents and dictators. Today’s presidents, furthermore, still operate in the shadow of Charles de Gaulle, the so-called ‘republican monarch’ who founded the current Fifth French Republic, and was its first President from 1959 to 1968 (see Bell and Gaffney 2010, 2013). The French president is the country’s top diplomat, and its commander-in-chief. He is directly elected – a ‘plebiscitarian leader’ (Kazi 2017: 172) – and the role of prime minister is in his gift. He can preside without a parliamentary majority, although since a constitutional change in 2000 he is virtually guaranteed one in the sequence of elections that bring him and his party (and allies) to power. He has the physical and symbolic trappings of power of a US president at his disposal – the gilded office, the cavalcade, the presidential jet – and until very recently, a media primed to protect and defend the reputation of the president, rather than expose or investigate. In de Gaulle’s days, the bond between president and nation rested as much on de Gaulle’s personal authority as on the Constitution: he was initially elected by electoral college so, not directly, yet still held paternalistic sway over the nation. In the present day, by contrast, many of the foundations of presidential authority, including the challenging of the patriarchy itself, appear to be if not crumbling, then undergoing transformation. Indeed, times are changing, and France is far from immune. Each recent president has watched his public support tumble away after the initial months in office. The fact that President Macron’s opinion poll ratings of around 30% at the midterm point are deemed ‘not disastrous’ (Lichfield 2020) is telling. French politics in general is in 2019 as haunted by political populism, abstentionism and violence as its less presidential neighbours. The physical person of the French president is no longer sacrosanct (if it ever was), viz the gilets jaunes’ attempted breach of the presidential holiday retreat in

158 Helen Drake December 2018, and the symbolic destruction of effigies of the President. The shine came off the office itself some time ago, aided and abetted by President François Hollande’s (2012–2017) deliberate attempt to reduce the president to a ‘normal’ mortal; and moved along by charges of corruption laid against former presidents Jacques Chirac (1995–2007) and Nicolas Sarkozy (2007–2012). Neither Sarkozy nor Hollande, moreover, were able to stretch their authority into a second term in office, the latter even declining to stand for re-election, in an unprecedently defeatist move. Surrounding all this, today’s French media landscape – traditional and social – combines the sensationalism, the theatrics, the mundane and the investigative familiar to the Anglo-Saxon world, although the interlocking, co-dependent socio-educational worlds of French political and press elites still afford the French president some vestiges of respect, if not admiration. In this context, the election of Emmanuel Macron to the presidency in May 2017 was likely only to perpetuate the law of diminishing returns whereby the gap between expectations of the presidency and president on the one hand, and the reality of their achievements on the other, threatens to widen with every 5-year electoral cycle. With each new French president who loses his footing early into his term, the prospect of a France (or more precisely, the Fifth French Republic) tested to its limits by apathy, contestation and conflict comes ever closer. Macron himself is just as likely as not to meet the fate of his immediate predecessors (one-term presidents ending their term in ignominy) because of a mix of ongoing trends and developments both endogenous and exogenous to France; and despite a curious mix of human characteristics that he has brought to his role, to some disruptive effect. The overall aim of this chapter is to draw on the case of Emmanuel Macron (who, at the time of writing in January 2020 was still only at the mid-term point of his presidency) for lessons in and about political leadership in contemporary democratic politics; and thus to contribute to multi-disciplinary scholarship on the subject. Many minds (including past leaders themselves; see McChrystal et al. 2018; Kearns Goodwin 2018; Burns 1978) have turned to the task of identifying and classifying the specific factors that are deemed to constitute leadership in the political domain, to weigh them against each other and to measure them. Methodologies abound, therefore, as diverse as academic ontologies and epistemologies themselves. For some in political science, the object of study will forever evade capture by our scientific tools in the sense that: ‘research on political leadership has not brought about reliable tools to make generalizable conjectures regarding the compatibility of individual leadership traits’ (Schoeller 2018, p. 1022), and we therefore should simply stay away: too risky! From such perspectives, it can never reach the ne plus ultra standards of parsimonious, causal theory to which many of us cleave, with good reason – providing within reason. Capturing and understanding political leadership across the ages, including our own, is an endeavour, thus, that has cried out for and been matched by insights from numerous academic disciplines, from political science to business management and in this present

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volume, political anthropology. There is arguably a terra firma of agreement around a number of elements. First, all approaches self-evidently explore the role of individual humans in complex societies, organisations and systems: what the editors of this volume have referred to as the ‘human element of politics’, with its ‘concreteness of beings’ (Horvath and Szakolczai 2018: 189, 192). Personality traits and preferences are, indeed, the stock-in-trade of much analysis of political leadership and clearly there is a human dimension, which is what makes it hard to capture, by definition. The concepts at the heart of this book – charisma and the trickster – will be explored and tested in this specific regard below. Second, and explicitly or not, scholars also tend to concur that political leadership is in its essence a social relationship characterised just as much by ‘followership’ as leadership (Burns 1978: 15–23): without followers, the act of leading is devoid of meaning. The precise nature of the relationship itself – such as the extent to which followers have a choice of leader, and the ability to dislodge them; and the nature of its mediation, where such exists (such as the press; intermediary bodies; representative organisations and so on) – is infinitely variable across cultures, societies, organisations, nations, and so on, and across time in each of these units themselves. Some have argued that at the very core, even today, of the leader-follower relationship is the notion of the sacred with its rituals of sacrifice, distancing and silencing: according to Grint (2010: 117), the sacred is ‘is less the elephant in the room – the thing which dare not be mentioned – and more the room itself – the space within which leadership works’. For others, the bond between leader and follower is better expressed in terms of charisma – a term imagined in and for far less secular or democratic times than the present, and much weakened in its popular usage, but which in its essence refers to the legitimation of a leader’s authority via qualities ascribed, rationally or otherwise, by followers to the leader, often in the context of ‘out-of-ordinary … situations’ (Horvath and Szakolczai 2018: 195). Third, and with regards to the system and environment in which a leader is embedded, we know there are formal constitutions, institutions, roles and repertoires (Jabko 2019) as well as the stocks of informal power such as precedent, symbolism and myth which leaders can possess (and of which, be dispossessed). We acknowledge too the constraints and opportunities of the conjunctural, immediate context and circumstances, and in these regards we also recognise the essentially dynamic, iterative nature of political leadership based on human learning (or failure to learn). Finally, at the heart of political leadership is the essential vocation to act to change the status quo (even if under the cover of promises to ultimately preserve or restore what has been deemed lost; see Grint 2010: 95, with regard to the Nazis); again, by definition therefore, political leadership is an exercise in uncertainty (and its management). Accordingly and in what follows, I, first, return to the specific context in 2017 from which Macron emerged into the glare of the world’s attention as France’s youngest ever president. What was the nature of the ‘outrageous fortune’ (Lichfield 2020) that enabled a relatively untested politician to pull off

160 Helen Drake the coup of presidential election? We see that an unforeseen combination of circumstance, context and persona opened up a liminal space in time for the emergence of a new type of player, Macron. As argued by the editors of this volume, and interpreting Max Weber through the lens of the anthropologically based term ‘liminality’, ‘liminal moments are out-of-the-ordinary … situations’ that ‘can be resolved through the emergence of charismatic leaders’ (Horvath and Szakolczai 2018: 195) – or tricksters. What then of Macron’s response to this opportunity? Second, I review key developments of Macron’s mandate to the mid-term point of late 2019, with a particular emphasis on his responses to certain ‘wicked’ or complex problems (Grint 2010:15; Dignan 2019: 205): those which defy easy or ready solutions, and which thereby pit the realities of leadership against the unreality of high expectation. I focus here on his reaction to resistance (the gilets jaunes in 2018–19), since this constituted a serious crisis for the President, the presidency and potentially the regime itself. As the editors to this volume state in their Introduction above: ‘crises open a space for the emergence of models to mimic, which can be either beneficial or fatal for a society’. We explore accordingly whether, to return to Lichfield’s incisive observations, Macron is indeed a ‘revolutionary in a suit, not a politician’. On the basis of the above I, third, reflect critically on the lessons from the Macron case for our understanding of leadership in contemporary politics. With specific regard to the concepts explored throughout this volume, we ask why Macron has failed to embody or enact the charisma routinely expected of the French presidency; why he is yet something more authentic than a trickster seeking to exploit liminal circumstances for ill gain; and how the concept of disruption – seeking a resetting rather than a disintegration of the ‘operating system’ (Dignan 2019; Drake 2018b) – helps us to grasp the meaning of Emmanuel Macron, particularly in the light of our understanding of the challenge of ‘wicked’ problems for contemporary political leaders. Finally, in my Conclusions, I summarise the contribution this case can make to the practice and scholarship of political leadership, with reference to its potential for further study, as well as its limitations.

Becoming leader: the 2017 election of Emmanuel Macron If political leadership, then, is best understood as a relationship between a leader and followers that occurs and evolves in a specific context and set of circumstances, then the election of Macron as French president in May 2017 is rich in its learning potential. Followership takes a very explicit form of expression in democracies that have elections as the sine qua non of the democratic process: they are both necessary yet insufficient, it would appear – and as the case of Macron below will demonstrate emphatically – for sustainable, legitimate leadership authority during an entire term of office. Grint, moreover, reminds us of Karl Popper’s dictum that democracy is ‘an institutional mechanism for deselecting leaders’ (2010: 101, my emphasis). Also

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by definition, a presidential election (here, in France) represents a transition between one leader (his ideas, supporters, etc.) and the next, and we know that the idea of ‘[l]iminality helps to capture and analyse, with a degree of analytical precision, what happens under ephemeral and fluid conditions of transition’ (Horvath and Szakolczai 2018: 193). What then, of the nature of the 2017 election that brought Macron to power when only a year earlier he had not even been in contention? Macron’s election signified a number of ‘firsts’, and beyond that, a constellation of contextual factors that favoured his star. In combination, these factors indeed opened a liminal space par excellence for, potentially, the emergence of something – someone – new and different. And in matter of fact the new president, in his person, was unprecedently young and in a number of other ways too, arguably transgressed dominant norms, be they sexual and familial (childless, married to a woman 26 years his senior and part of a blended family group); political (no previous experience of executive office; no manifest party or other political loyalties; unafraid to start a new movement using Barack Obama-style methods of grassroots mobilisation and digital knowhow, and bearing his initials, from scratch: En Marche!1); social and cultural (not only a fluent English-speaker but publicly and proudly so; unashamed of his short stint as an investment banker). Macron, it seemed, was not only peerless among his contemporaries, but fearless in the face of convention. Outside of France, Macron was much lauded with the usual hyperbole and unreal expectations: he showed that the centre ground in Europe could still win elections! He would save the EU (at that time in the throes of Brexit)! He would bolster Germany’s Chancellor Merkel in the closing years of her leadership; he would handle Trump, and so on (see BBC 2017). The truth of Macron’s electoral support was far more prosaic and nuanced: his support (66.10% of the vote) was a vote cast in large part in fear of the alternative – the threat of the radical far right figure and party, Marine le Pen and the Front national (since renamed the Rassemblement national): ‘The first choice of 48% of French voters was an extremist or an anti-European candidate’ (Pedder 2019: xvii). Although le Pen and her party had by 2017 become largely normalised in the French political system, having won significant vote shares and some representation in local and regional councils over the previous decades, and thus having access to public funds and, crucially, the national media; and although le Pen herself had altered the party’s image since becoming leader in 2011 in an attempt to appeal, for example, to women voters, public opinion still distrusted her or at least her party’s ability to run the country. In a head-to-head TV debate with Macron on 3 May 2017, le Pen was trounced by her adversary on the very matter of her economic competence, and this helped sway the final vote that won him the presidency decisively in his favour (66.10% to 33.90%). But Macron had been fortunate to reach that head-to-head (the second round of the presidential election) at all. His luck came in the form of developments in the two mainstream parties (the centre-right Républicains and on the left, the Parti Socialiste), neither of which had, unprecedentedly, managed to see their

162 Helen Drake candidate safely into the second round. Both parties had held primaries, each of which returned more extreme candidates than the expected business-as-usual ‘favourites’, thus opening ground in the centre, to Macron’s advantage. On the left, the Socialists had also suffered from President Hollande’s unpopularity and from their deep, public divisions over core policy issues while in power. They were all but wiped out from the French political scene following their failure to field a presidential candidate in the 2017 second round, and then their haemorrhaging of seats at the June 2017 parliamentary elections (losing over 200 seats and suffering a vote share loss of nearly 35%). In the case of the Républicains, their candidate, François Fillon, was fatally weakened during the campaign not so much by the revelations themselves, of scandal surrounding his employment of his wife for fake parliamentary duties (so-called ‘Penelopegate’); but by the way, in response, his mask of moral rectitude gradually slipped as time went on. This was an election fought in unusual circumstances, then, and at a time when the French electorate were showing themselves gradually less motivated to vote at all (this election had the highest ever abstention rate (25.44%) for a presidential election; and the June 2017 parliamentary elections followed suit, with more than half the voters (57.36%) declining to participate). Not only that, but the mainstream parties’ dominance of the party political system had been waning for some time. In these circumstances, Macron’s victory cannot be read as the outpouring of passionate support or devotion, to use the language of charisma, for a new player, other than from within the very core of his electorate, but rather as a weary expression of marginal preference for a candidate who was not le Pen (see Mondon in Demossier et al. 2020), and in the absence of other choices. Once duly installed in office in May 2017 and from June of that year, supported by an absolute majority of deputies in the National Assembly; and under the weight of expectation and promise, how would President Macron enact and perform the role of French president? Which, to draw on Kazi (2017: 153), ‘practices of subject formation’ would Macron adopt, understanding these practices ‘as a process distinct from leadership in the common sense context of already individuated subjects’ (ibid.)? What sort of leader and leadership would emerge from the somewhat unreal circumstances of the 2017 elections?

Being leader: realism meets resistance Macron came to power on a programme that he himself styled as a Révolution (Macron 2017), although Cole argues that Macron in fact was more comfortable with the notion of ‘transformation’, rather than any revolutionary connotation of ‘a utopian vision removed from reality and producing dystopian outcomes’ (2019: 104); perhaps mindful of MacGregor Burns’ description of the ‘revolutionary impulse’ in the French Revolution to have ‘succumbed to a derangement of leadership’ (1978: 215). In any case, ‘Macronism’ spelt constitutional and institutional reform; an overhaul of the ethics of political

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conduct; a recasting of ‘sovereignty’ to lend strategic strength to the continent of Europe; ambitions to position France out in front in matters of advanced technology and ecological transition; and a socio-economic programme of transformation (of the labour market and the pensions regimes among others) (Cole 2019; Pedder 2019). Macron’s approach defied easy classification by any known system: was he right, left or centre? Was he ‘un-French’ (Lichfield 2020), a French Thatcher or perhaps Blair; at any rate, an ‘Anglo-Saxon’? Was he like former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, youthful, apparently Atlanticist leanings, modern? What and who was he (and who did he think he was anyway)? Above all, his approach oozed optimism and positivity, despite or perhaps because of the scale of the domestic and international challenges that he saw, and somehow relished: he recognised ‘wicked problems’ for what they were. ‘Wicked’ or complex problems can not necessarily be solved, as such, and yet they are the daily staple of today’s democratic political leaders. Populist leaders who come to power in democratic systems typically succeed in exploiting a natural human urge for simple solutions by promising quick, decisive action and certainty. But complex problems by definition require ‘the ability to remain comfortable with uncertainty, and wicked problems are inherently uncertain and ambiguous, so the real skill is not in removing the uncertainty but in managing to remain effective despite it’ (Grint 2010, 28–29). Or as Fieschi argues, populism expresses the idea that ‘decision-makers should deliver solutions or resolve problems … instantaneously. In other words, the very opposite of what complexity might require, and in some respects a denial of the very existence of complexity’ (2019: 38). Within this tension resides much of ‘the reality deficit of contemporary politics’ (Horvath and Szakolczai 2018: 191). Yet Macron has been described as a ‘hyper-realist’ (Araud 2019), and so his approach to his problems are of particular interest to us here. In his case, the problems included policy to combat climate change and prepare France for a fossil-free future, in the face of large-scale domestic resistance; and the risk of challenging conventional wisdom in face of the threat of serious geopolitical tensions in Europe and the wider world. Macron moved quickly and won some early successes. He used executive orders (decrees) in the early months, and drew on his parliamentary majority to pass bills. There were some setbacks (the Benalla affair), some resistance, and some opposition from within the government itself (such as the deliberately dramatised on-air, live resignation of Macron’s high-profile minister of state for an Ecological and Fair Transition, Nicolas Hulot, in August 2018). Macron’s ratings were showing a downward trend. On the international stage he was omnipresent and unafraid to act as the EU’s de facto national leader. But in the summer of 2018 his government moved to enact planned increases to fuel tax as part of the planned ‘ecological transition’ away from fossil fuels. This was a trigger for protest of a new type – the yellow vest movement, or gilets jaunes, named after the hi-vis vests worn by the participants. France’s political culture is no stranger to popular and violent protest, but in its form and scale, the gilets

164 Helen Drake jaunes action was unprecedented. It escalated quickly from November 2018 in weekly ‘Acts’ across the country, and into 2019, and included extreme violence on the part of both the protesters (and/or opportunists on the margins) and the police, especially in Paris and other large cities. Activity was nationwide and not organised under the usual banner of the trades unions. Communication and coordination was largely virtual – internet-facilitated. The symbols of the motorist – the yellow vests, compulsorily carried in French cars; the roundabouts as the preferred sites for roadblocks and participation – signified the ordinariness of the stakes: people going about their daily lives, many obliged to use their cars to do so, in the absence of suitable public services or transportation. The movement failed to date to cohere into an electorally viable political movement, but this is not to say that it was without impact on Macron’s leadership, and in particular his relation with his ‘followers’: far from it. Fieschi has suggested that the policy adjustments made in response to the Yellow Vests (including the dropping, for the time being, of the hated ‘eco-tax’ on fuel) were less significant in addressing and defusing the Yellow Vest protest (Fieschi 2019: 162) than the more strategic element of Macron’s response, which was to call for a nation-wide ‘great national debate’ (see https://grandde bat.fr). Indeed, in calling for and personally investing time and legitimacy into this exercise in public consultation, Macron sought to walk a perilous tightrope between, on the one hand, keeping the ‘distance’ or at least ‘difference’ between the leader and the led that we understand to justify the (usually) patent inequality between leader and led, since it harks back to the sacred and thus unquestionable distance between divine leaders and their followers in the past; and on the other hand, avoiding the ‘silencing’ of his critics by inviting them into the national conversation. Nor was such an exercise a flash in the pan; at the time of writing, a ‘Citizens’ Convention for the Climate’ (150 citizens drawn by lots) was under way (see www.conventioncitoyennepourleclimat.fr), with the aim of generating proposals to reduce greenhouse gases in France by at least 40% by 2030, and the promise that the proposals to emerge from the exercise would find their way into the legislative process, ‘unfiltered’. Such developments suggest a leader aware of the power of humility (admitting one’s mistakes and vulnerability), the value of trial and error, and the imperative of continuous learning (changing tack and course, policy-wise). But politics is inimical to trial and error (because of the search for simplicity) and as Sophie Pedder admits in the foreword to the second edition of her analysis of Macron, post-gilets jaunes, she did not (when she wrote her first edition in 2017–2018) foresee ‘the stupefying degree of loathing for the president, and the violence that this unleashed’ (2019, xviii, my emphasis). Her explanation lies in precisely the distance and, crucially, inequality (of revenue, of life chances) that does still demarcate Macron from his would-be followers: he is one of ‘them’, still, not ‘us’. It also suggests that Macron has found himself a scapegoat for complex problems that lie beyond the reach of any single leader: as we have said above, the high expectations of leadership are

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part of the unreal quality of contemporary politics. In his discussion of scholarship on the sacred, Grint recalls that sacrifice – here, scapegoating – is part and parcel of human societies and, significantly, is associated with cycles of ‘mimetic rivalry and violent contagion [that] require the next scapegoat’ Grint (2010: 121–122). Grint here was discussing the work of a range of scholars who have theorised ‘the sacred’, foremost of whom is René Girard, a prominent figure in political anthropology. In contrast to such a downward spiral of diminishing returns, as one after another leader is removed, yet progress does not emerge, Grint also points us to the ‘the truth of the collective’ and the ‘significance of the collective’ (ibid.: 210) in solving wicked problems which ‘require the transfer of authority from individual to collective because only collective engagement can hope to address the problem’. If correct, this implies that ‘leadership … is not a science but an art – the art of engaging a community in facing up to complex collective problems’ (17–18, my emphasis); and encouraging or more precisely requiring the community to share responsibility. The fact itself of the gilets jaunes movement; the uneasiness of the truce that brought it to an apparent end; and its substitution, at the end of 2019, by weeks and weeks of transport and general strikes (still ongoing at the time of writing), and all this despite the ongoing listening exercise on the part of the president and government, would suggest that in France, Macron has yet to harness the collective to his project. We turn below to consider in closer detail this failure.

Macron the disrupter? On the basis of the above, we return to the organising concepts of this volume – charisma and the trickster – to help us classify the case of Emmanuel Macron and the apparent inevitability of his failure to deliver his project for France. In the situations of crisis in which he found himself, whereby ‘any crisis is a void situation, a spread of weariness: the slow infiltration of perplexity, even despair, produced by a previous destruction of social and cultural ties and stabilities’, which usually ‘drastically changes the personality and identity of those undergoing it’ (Introduction, this volume), how far do we see, for example, on much on his part as on the part of his followers, ‘rational thinking, an intensive activity of the mind’ (ibid.), as opposed to an alternative path of imitation, where suggestions that seem to offer a way out could be suddenly followed, setting off a ‘spiral’ movement, by ever increasing numbers, who are thus led into the ‘voided insecurity’ (see Chapter 1, this volume)? To what extent could Macron draw on the mystery of charisma in his leadership? To what extent, if any, did he exploit the opportunities presented by crisis to a ‘trickster’? With regards to charisma, we recall that Max Weber understood it as one ‘ideal-type’ of legitimate authority, whereby in the relationship between leader and followers resides a belief by the latter in the former’s calling, or vocation,

166 Helen Drake and on the part of the latter, a devotion to that belief (Drake 2000). In Kazi’s words (2017: 157): as an ideal type, charisma is a personal sense of the presence of extraordinary qualities in another person and in the leader’s revelations about the order of their world. This sense is accompanied by a feeling of being called by, and of feeling devotion to, the leader. Devotion here is a passionate commitment and is infinitely variable and divisible and even revocable on the part of those called. Kazi continues his argument with specific regard to Weber’s understanding of charisma in the ‘plebiscitarian leader’ (172–3) who must have great convictions that are unconventional to society yet have an ethic of responsibility to uphold society’s conventions. He must guard society and yet bring in the new. … The problem with this stance is that it asks too much of the plebiscitarian politician, who is expected to respect conventions … and yet be devoted to change. (172–3, my emphasis) Such a contradiction is borne out by Macron’s present-day experience: his vision for radical reform has been countered not so much by his opponents’ taste for the status quo, but for their desire for change that is more to their taste. As a collective, moreover, they are not united in what this change would look like. Does this mean Macron has also failed as a trickster? With reference to this notion, we know that ‘there is a reluctance to accept the legitimacy of its application for contemporary politics’ (Horvath and Szakolczai 2018: 195). For our purposes here, accordingly, we understand the trickster in a more literal sense than can be found in much scholarship (Horvath 2013; Horvath and Szakolczai 2018) to denote an individual leader who in his (or her, but the scholarship mentioned above largely associates the trickster with male characteristics) person, in his or her interpretation of the nature of their support from followers, and in their construction (interpretation) of the context evidences any number of inclinations including bad faith (irresponsibility), the systematic recourse to untruths and lies, the intent to mislead; and ignorance – wilful or otherwise. The editors of this volume also point to contexts ripe for the trickster, and in particular: ‘[c]osmopolitanism and globalization’ which they argue ‘are elements of a genuine political alchemy, with concrete beings, whether individuals or communities, being dissected and then reintegrated in a new depersonalized entity’ (Horvath and Szakolczai 2018: 199). Macron’s unashamed belief in the imperative for Europe to exist as a geopolitical subject in its own strategic right, alongside his socio-economic programme of reform, has led to claims of his being ‘un-French’ (Lichfield 2020); a Trojan horse for rampant Anglo-Saxon neoliberal free trade.

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The evidence for now points us away from such an assessment of President Macron as trickster incarnate. On the contrary, Macron is far more likely to be one-of-a-kind than a model or type to be imitated; on the contrary, he is routinely cast as an outsider (see Demossier et al. 2020: 1; on the trickster as outsider, see Horvath and Szakolczai 2018: 196), too strange for clones or emulation. While this may seem at odds with scholarship that defines the trickster as a ‘particular mode of behaving … which can become infectious in political life’, and, precisely, whose ‘most important feature is that it is a paradoxical figure outside any social or human ties’ (Horvath and Szakolczai 2018: 195), the case of Macron suggests more a revulsion, far less desire for imitation, on the part of others. As we saw above, Macron has not been ascribed any measure of charismatic authority either. French politics, it would appear, is awaiting/due a non-Macron rather than more of the same; perhaps a ‘revolutionary in a suit’ (Lichfield 2020) is too much for a conservative country which may yet, disturbingly, call forth the sort of ‘conservative revolutionaries, intent on “reclaiming the past from the present during moments of distress”’ that Weber himself had warned of (Grint 2010: 95), and which bring the UK’s most ardent Brexiteers to mind. We can compare Macron here with his 2017 electoral rival Marine le Pen, or his USA opposite number Donald Trump, who evidence inclinations listed above and who do lend themselves to copies (copycats); le Pen (and her father before her) made much of being ‘the original’, and the mainstream parties aping their policies, the copy. In the UK, the emphatic election of Boris Johnson as prime minister in December 2019 for its part raised the very real prospect of mimetic processes within the political and policy-making spheres henceforth shoring up his authority to carry him, at the very least, across the Brexit date of 31 January 2020. In contrast, Macron is far more likely to be replaced by a trickster of the populist kind for his failings to overturn the impossibility of delivering simple solutions to complex problems. If in 2022 (assuming he completes his full term) his term ends in failure, objectively-defined, (compared to his promises and claims) then his leadership will have increased the chances thereafter of a trickster, and perhaps a succession of tricksters, who ‘thrive[s[in particular under a chaotic, uncertain, liminal situation’ and who bring forth ‘imitative processes’ (Horvath and Szakolczai 2018: 198). We note in passing, moreover, that any such process of France bringing forth a trickster in Macron’s wake points to the danger, for France, of entering the state knows as schismogenesis, whereby ‘a charismatic leader does not emerge in a situation of crisis. Far from necessary collapse, such societies might survive for a long time in a lasting state of conflict; a version of permanent liminality’ (Horvath and Szakolczai 2018: 200). If compared with US President Donald Trump in particular, Macron can be seen to have by and large eschewed the kind of leadership by subversion which is basing its authority on the supposed impossibility of gaining true knowledge. On the contrary, we saw above his openness to methods of discerning the truth ‘at large’ in the population, and to incorporating them into his recipes for change. In addition and in passing here, we can also point to what has become Macron’s

168 Helen Drake trademark international diplomacy: a form of very public truth-telling at odds with the norms of diplomatic tradition that favour ambiguity if not the rhetorical silencing of dissent. In what became a notorious interview with the Economist (2019) and with regards to in particular Europe’s strategic vulnerability and void, Macron proclaimed his commitment to staring reality in the face, to honesty, and to the value of telling uncomfortable truths to one’s friends and foes alike. Kazi in his discussion of Weber’s charisma, and Michel Foucault’s analysis of parrhesia (bold speaking), makes an interesting contrast between the two ideas, namely: ‘[f]or Foucault, the qualifying criterion for being extraordinary is the presentation of a dangerous truth, while for Weber it is an exceptionally heroic act or form of life’ (Kazi 2017: 61, my emphasis). Furthermore, for Kazi, in his understanding of Foucault, ‘[f]alsification of myth is the calling of the parrhesiast, a calling not to guard conventions but a call to arms against convention’ (165). Applied to the case of Emmanuel Macron, such practices bring to mind leadership as and by disruption, rather than charisma or trickster-ness. The categories of disruptor and the trickster may well overlap, but we can understand a disruptor as a trickster without the desire for chaos and disintegration; more akin to the transformative leadership style popularised as a concept by James MacGregor Burns (1978) and revisited by Cole (2019: 104) in the case of Macron. Popularised in the study and practice of contemporary business leadership (see Dignan 2019), disruption is a means of changing ‘legacy’ (read historical or traditional) organisations that present complex not complicated (i.e. human, not mechanical) problems. The key to successful disruption is to change not simply the product (read, for politics, the leader), but the very ‘operating system’ or business model of the enterprise. Dignan identifies evidence outside the corporate world of failures to change, including ‘nationalism’ and ‘hacked democracy’, ‘all of it’, he argues, ‘the result of our mindless adherence to the ways of the past – to an operating system that fundamentally misunderstands complexity and human nature’ (243). In tone if not in precise content, Macron’s Economist (2019) interview on the geopolitical state of the world and the responsibility of the European collective, as he saw it, to reset its strategic thinking, is strongly reminiscent of Dignan’s insight into the potential of disruption for living in and with contemporary reality.

Conclusions In this chapter I sought to contribute to the existing, multi-disciplinary scholarship of political leadership, with specific relevance to the ideas of charisma and the trickster. How relevant would these concepts be for a case study of contemporary political leadership, namely, the French presidency of Emmanuel Macron? Accordingly, I first reviewed the circumstances in which Macron came to power; and, second, examples of how he then embodied and enacted that power once in office. We saw that while France was not in overt crisis in 2017, it was certainly in a situation of liminality par excellence, since the very nature of democratic election is to bring about a transition from one

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leader to the next. In 2017 in France, the legitimacy of the presidential office had also been weakened by a succession of incumbents who in one way or another had failed to imbue the office with its historic, symbolic authority. In that context, Macron benefited from luck with regards to the weaknesses of his mainstream rivals in the first round of the presidential election; and from the perception of the threat posed to France itself by his opponent in the second round of the election: Marine le Pen, leader of France’s far-right party, the (then named) Front national (now, Rassemblement national or National Rally). Macron was comfortably elected with two-thirds of the vote, but the nature of that electoral backing was largely tentative and conditional. In power, we saw that Macron, by the mid-term point of his mandate (December 2019) had experienced both policy success, and serious, protracted, social crises in the form, principally, of the gilets jaunes revolt which erupted in late November 2018. He also demonstrated a willingness, on the international stage, to disrupt understandings of the status quo, in a manner that broke with traditional diplomatic norms of ambiguity and concealment. In response to the gilets jaunes challenge, Macron adjusted policy, but also adopted a strategy of listening and truth-telling, as he saw it, vis-à-vis the French population at large. In subsequent social challenges (the pensions strikes of winter 2019–20) he delegated much authority for resolving the crisis to his prime minister (Philippe Edouard) and government, and for his own part remained largely silent, or at least laconic, and publicly so, on the matter (viz his televised New Year wishes for 2020: Macron 2019). We saw here an example of how Macron sought to navigate the difficult terrain of the ‘sacred’ bond that is deemed to tie leaders and followers in the act of leadership, even in democratic, secular societies such as France. Such a bond forms part of the charismatic authority that is so often associated – loosely, conceptuallyspeaking – with modern-day leaders perceived as strong or decisive and in this respect, we concluded that Macron’s authority is void of much if not all charismatic foundation, such is the extent of negative feeling and opinion expressed towards him, and absence of widespread belief not only in his convictions, but in his right to have convictions: just who does he think he is? Despite this attribution of ‘outsiderness’ to Macron, we argue nonetheless, that he showed fewer signs of the classic ‘trickster’ than, for example, his populist opponent Marine le Pen. Macron, we argued, is more likely to be replaced by a trickster than imitated or mimicked for his own characteristics in this respect. For his own part, we suggested that the language of disruption, in the sense of up-ending or at least rhetorically challenging, a ‘business model’, or ‘operating system’, chimed with our understanding of Macron’s leadership on both the domestic and international stages. It may still well be that France – and not only France – is engaged in a downward spiral of diminishing returns from their presidents – deprived and devoid of charisma – calling into question the sustainability of the current leadership provisions in the Fifth Republic. Such a dynamic is associated with the figure of the trickster, but we argue that nuance and degree is relevant to understanding the case of Macron.

170 Helen Drake It is also the case that taking one leader and one snapshot of time significantly limits the findings that we can claim for our analysis, not to mention the challenges of researching a moving target in the shape of a President whose term is yet incomplete. The local (municipal) elections to take place in March 2020 across the whole of France will, for example, provide further indications of the nature of the President’s legitimacy – or lack of it. We should also recognise that to focus on an individual leader without matching attention to ‘the collective’ is perhaps to make a category error from the start; we mentioned the social context of leadership and the place of followers, and perhaps leadership studies will progress when we challenge the unreal expectations of individual achievements in a collective endeavour. In the French case, the gilets jaunes movement included calls for a rewriting of the democratic contract that currently places the French president at the pinnacle of power, devolving instead more power to the citizens, individually and collectively. The French president and government have taken some steps towards involving citizens more directly in the formulation of questions on urgent matters of the day, including climate change, but within the confines as yet of today’s Constitution. It is also the case that perhaps, when we move our gaze to see beyond the human altogether, we will see that today’s tricksters the populist politicians, will soon be overtaken by tomorrow’s tricksters, the advanced technologies that will harness unhuman forces, alongside but not inferior to humans themselves. I have written elsewhere (Drake 2018a) that Macron’s messages on the need for deep change in order to meet the future ‘rips aside any number of comfort blankets, making people inevitably feel very small and very exposed, whereas previously they may “only” have felt neglected and aggrieved’. Stephens (2019) echoes this in noting how Macron ‘was lifting an increasingly flimsy veil’ when in his notorious Economist interview he ‘asked, hypothetically, if other NATO members would rush to defend Turkey against an attack from, say, Syria’ (Stephens 2019). Our final analysis for now points to Macron less as charismatic leader or trickster, and more as a present-day Cassandra who tells the future but is unable to change its course.

Note 1 Since renamed LRM (La République en Marche). In France the notion of ‘movement’ and ‘rally’ centred on a single individual is commonplace, alongside ‘party’.

References Araud, G. (2019) ‘Invité de Léa Salamé, le 7/9’, France Inter, 30 September. Retrieved 21 October 2019 from www.franceinter.fr/emissions/le-7-9/le-7-9-30-septembre-2019 BBC. (2017) ‘Emmanuel Macron Defeats le Pen to Become French President’, Retrieved January 2020 from www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39839349 Bell, D. and J. Gaffney (eds.). (2010) Political Leadership in France: From Charles de Gaulle to Nicolas Sarkozy (Basingstoke: Palgrave). Bell, D. and J. Gaffney (eds.) (2013) The Presidents of the Fifth French Republic (Palgrave Macmillan).

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Burns, J. M. (1978) Leadership (New York: Harper). Cole, A. (2019) Emmanuel Macron and the Two Years that Changed France (New York: MUP). Demossier, M. et al. (eds.) (2020) The Routledge Handbook of French Politics and Culture (Routledge). Dignan, A. (2019) Brave New Work (New York: Penguin Random House). Drake, H. (2000) Jacques Delors: Perspectives on a European Leader (Routledge). Drake, H. (2018a) ‘What If It’s Not All about Macron?’, Loughborough University London blog. Retrieved January 2020 from https://blog.lboro.ac.uk/london/diplomatic-studies/ what-if-its-not-all-about-macron Drake, H. (2018b) ‘Is France Having a Moment? Emmanuel Macron and the Politics of Disruption’, Political Quarterly, 14 September. Retrieved January 2020 from https://poli ticalquarterly.blog/2018/09/14/is-france-having-a-moment-emmanuel-macron-and-thepolitics-of-disruption/ Economist (7 November 2019), ‘The Future of Europe’, The Economist, 14 September, pp. 9, 19–21. Fieschi, C. (2019) Populocracy (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Agenda). Goodwin, D. K. (2018) Leadership: Lessons from the Presidents for Turbulent Times (New York: Penguin Viking). Grint, K. (2010) Leadership: A Very Short Introduction (New York: OUP). Horvath, A. (2013) Modernism and Charisma (London: Palgrave). Horvath, A. and A. Szakolczai. (2018) ‘Political Anthropology’, in S. Turner and W. Outhwaite (eds.) Sage Handbook of Political Sociology (London: Sage). Jabko, N. (2019) ‘Contested Governance. The New Repertoire of the Eurozone Crisis’, Governance 32, 2: 493–509. Kazi, T. (2017) ‘Foucault and Weber on Leadership and the Modern Subject’, Foucault Studies 22, 1: 153–176. Lichfield, J. (2020) ‘Macron was the Great Hope for Centrists: Despite His Struggles, the Hope is Not Lost’, The Guardian, 5 January. Macron, E. (2017) Révolution. C’est notre combat pour la France (Paris: XO éditions). Macron, E. (2019) ‘Les vœux du Président de la République aux Français pour l’année 2020’, Retrieved 17 January 2020 from www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2019/12/31/ voeux-2020-aux-francais McChrystal, S., J. Eggers and J. Mangone. (2018) Leaders: Myth and Reality (New York: Portfolio Penguin). Mondon, A. (2020) ‘From Despair, to Hope, to Limbo: The French Elections and the Future of the Republic’, in Demossier, M. et al (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of French Politics and Culture (New York: Routledge): 11–22. Pedder, S. (2019, 2nd) Revolution française. Emmanuel Macron and the Quest to Reinvent a Nation (London: Bloomsbury). Schoeller, M. G. (2018) ‘The Rise and Fall of Merkozy: Franco-German Bilateralism as a Negotiation Strategy in Eurozone Crisis Management’, JCMS 56, 5: 1019–1035. Stephens, P. (2019) ‘The Rights and Wrongs of Emmanuel Macron’s Vision for Europe’, The Financial Times, 21 November.

9

The failure of democracy in Italy From Berlusconi to Salvini Daniel Gati

This surrender, however, is typical of the charismatic leadership relationship. The followers abdicate choice and judgement to the leader. Belief and obedience are almost automatic. Followers accept and believe that the past was as the leader portrays it, and the present is as he depicts it, and the future will be as he predicts it. And they follow without hesitation his prescriptions for action. Ruth Ann Willner, The Spellbinders (1984: 7)

Introduction Italy has been the political incubator of some very peculiar mechanism developed for maintaining power; most famously in Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513) (see also Zoltán Balázs, Chapter 10, this volume), in the Papal intrigues, or in the ideology of Mussolini’s Fascism. These mechanisms are usually justified by the surrender of the followers to the charisma of the leader, as in the quote above by Willner; however, with more careful scrutiny, we can distinguish between different levels of real or faked charisma. To this purpose we will analyse the charismatic qualifications of three Italian leaders: Benito Mussolini, Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini. With the increasing symbiosis of democracy with technology, and because of its temporal nature, the act of gaining power has risen in importance over the keeping of it. Due to the characteristics of the democratic process, in order to secure the initial support necessary for the election into office, to acquire power and attain leadership, the would-be leader is required to display some sort of charismatic characteristics in the quasi-Weberian sense. For Weber, charisma was an outside power, a (randomly) received gift (Weber 1968), and not the inner strength of the pre-Christian era: The term ‘charisma’ will be applied to a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is considered extraordinary and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary. (Weber 1968: 241)

The failure of democracy in Italy 173 But Weber also contrasted charisma and bureaucracy: ‘charisma rejects as undignified all methodical rational acquisition, in fact, all rational economic conduct’ (Weber 1968: 1113), thus, bureaucracy as rational machinery applied to society through discipline for the taxation and redistribution of money. While bureaucracy can exist without money as it did in ancient Egypt (Waters 2018: 24), and its corruption lead to shifts in leadership and power (bureaucrats could and did become kings and even pharaohs), it is only with ancient Greece that corrupt bureaucracy and money, and by extension democracy, brought to end a civilisation which is foundational not only to Christianity, and from which Weber drew his idea of charisma, but also of the Roman Empire which has provided our law system (i.e. of the Western world). The peculiarity of the Italian peninsula, mentioned in the first line of this introduction, is that it rebooted the world through the Renaissance concern for grace or beauty. Again a Greek notion, grace (charis) was widely adopted by Christianity, and allowed for the cultural (re)flourishing of the Western world. Granted, it was based on the imitation of Greek sculptures (and their Roman copies) from the 1460s (i.e. the beginning of archaeological excavations in Rome), but this was transformed into painting and architecture in the most fortunate way, until science and rational thinking, freedom and equality, end of religion and technology, triggered what we call modernity. This is the sense in which Horvath (Horvath 2013) describes (re)evolutions as a violent return to something we have already witnessed over and over, for example in the already mentioned fall of Athens or Rome. Within these processes, Italy has successfully applied media technology to the ‘production’ of charisma. We can speak of ‘production’ because again, it is not at all a new concept: already in his 1872 lectures on the Greek civilisation, Burckhardt, the mentor of Nietzsche, spoke of the sophistry of ‘eloquence’, which tended to weaken spontaneity of expression. In public life, it became, like the press today, the instrument of very little good and three quarters of everything bad […] [and] which develops a power of its own and becomes a weapon in the hands of the mediocre and of those whose talents and situation allow them to exploit it. Even the highly gifted and highly privileged are then obliged to make use of this medium to obtain a hearing of any kind. (Burckhardt 1998: 267–268) Foundational to Weber’s thought was the idea that charisma could be passed on by the charismatic leader through imitation or mimesis, as in Tarde (1903: ch. 1, but see also Szakolczai and Thomassen 2011). Mimesis is fundamental to politics, in that, to embolden others with his charismatic speeches, the would-be leader hopes to inspire his followers, supporters and his ‘fan club’, and their friends and family, through mimetic behaviour. Even if we do accept the original Paulinian meaning of charisma as a graceful extraordinary ‘gift’ to humanity (Corinthians 1:4–9), and as a consequence, the Weberian approach, it is

174 Daniel Gati more difficult to imagine charisma within politics in the modern world, considering that at a closer scrutiny, and despite the overabundance of the term in academia and the media, defining it seems tricky (see also Horvath 2013: 10). The reason for this elusiveness is partially to be found in the very fabric of modernity envisioned as a mechanical world governed by ‘rational interest’. As such, technology can help to propagate lies or fakes, by multiplying images (see more in Horvath 2013). I argue that whatever is lacking from the required charismatic charge can be substituted, even completely, by constructing fake charisma. This faked charisma is not a godly gift, instead, it’s a stratagem, based on the multiplication of images in the media through technological innovations. What I mean by this is that several technological products of the past century rely on the exponential multiplication of images. This is a practice which started earlier than Mussolini’s Istituto Luce, ‘The Educational Film Union’ founded in 1924 which made cinema ‘the strongest of weapons’.1 To be sure, one of the major historical turning points was the Gutenberg press which allowed, in time, an increasing amount of books and pamphlets to be printed, and newspapers followed. To get an insight of the exponential increase of the multiplication of images consider that in 1822 ‘It was hard work for two men to print 75 copies [of a newspaper or pamphlet] on one side in an hour’ but by 1879 the new cylinder ‘machine [was] capable of printing, folding, pasting the backs and cutting the ends of 30,000 eight-page papers in one hour’ (from John Clyde Oswald, Printing in the Americas, 1937, as in Trow 1981: 8). The possibility for such multiplication is definitely on the rise, as within the past hundred years, technology has been multiplying opportunities for the communication of the would-be leader, through gramophones, billboards, newspapers, cinemas, radios, television, internet, and finally mobile phones and social apps. As if ubiquity and instantaneousness, the magic gifts in the monopoly of heroes in children’s tales, were transposed to the faces we see on the screens, giving a sense of familiarity with leaders simply because we recognise them; this in turn, provides a misplaced feeling of ‘knowing them’ (Augé 2014: 54). A substitution has occurred but the epigraph of ‘hero’ hardly comes to mind in connection with the present Western political leaders. Italy has been at the forefront of many innovations, not only political but also technological and even in terms of lifestyle. Unfortunately, some of the teachings of the Italian political laboratory have had negative effects also outside of its borders. Fascism notably influenced Francisco Franco and Adolf Hitler, while the years of Berlusconi might have inspired figures such as Donald Trump. ‘What Berlusconi did – and Trump follows the same path – is create a kind of ongoing reality show whose ratings depended on him continuing to do and say outrageous things’ (Stille 2016).2 Thus, if charisma has a fundamental role in attaining leadership, in this chapter I argue that this charisma can be faked through the media, following a trickster logic and the social power of mimesis. Charisma can be forged by an outsider, which is one of the characteristics of the trickster (Horvath 2013: 65–74), by repeating a certain image in an endless mechanical process. This unending

The failure of democracy in Italy 175 performance is set on a theatrical stage which has overtaken public space with particular ease because of its newfound technology-driven ‘scalability’. In business, scalability means the particularly blessed goal of the entrepreneur, whereby further sales don’t incur extra production costs and money simply multiples exponentially ‘as if by magic’ (an example of this process would be the computer software or the stock market). The Italian political leaders chosen for this chapter are sometimes described as possessing charisma, often in a mistaken attempt to account for their sudden rise. But this is by no means an Italian phenomenon only: in the past decades, several world leaders have been described as ‘charismatic’ not only in the press but also in academic publications on the subject (Lindholm 1990; Willner 1984; Glassman 1986; Bernhard 1999; Hansen 2001). By evoking the figure of Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), we can better grasp the historical context of the rise of the leaders Silvio Berlusconi (1936–) and Matteo Salvini (1973–). I will introduce Mussolini (the Duce), Berlusconi (the Cavaliere) and Salvini (the Capitano) separately, in order to analyse the role that presumed charisma and the use of trickster techniques have played in their gaining of power. The nicknames of each were appointed by close followers, as is customary in Italy as a sign of reverence, and they are matched by new nicknames as their political star declines. As stated in the first paragraph of this introduction, it seems that the keeping of power is what proves difficult without charisma. To this necessity Mussolini has responded with ‘permanent revolution’ (Cossiga 2007: 114), Berlusconi with ‘permanent scandal’ (Ceri 2011: 112) and Salvini who combines both, with attempting permanent elections in perpetual emergency. The state of ‘permanent liminality’ (Szakolczai 2000: 214), explains why such a suspended and artificial temporality is sought in order to render impossible any rational calculation of achievement. In short, in this chapter I argue that the experiments created in the Italian political incubator of the past hundred years have an echo in other Western countries because the trickster techniques, including the actions which lead to the faking of charisma to attain leadership, have mimetic effects on the supposedly democratic electorate, whom at the same time have a mistaken belief of being in control, but in fact, are experiencing an evolution upon Tocqueville’s concept of ‘tyranny of the majority’ (Tocqueville 2000: 254–258) for the reason that trickster politicians worldwide can, and do, imitate such methods with the help of a small group of media experts. Thus, media allows for the imitation of imitation, a self-feeding frenzy fuelled by likes manoeuvred by professional spin doctors, as a result of media having turned digital, with the consequence of allowing for the multiplication of images through the above mentioned logic of business scalability.

The charismatic leader For St Paul, the original meaning of charisma was to be ‘touched’ by the hand of God, a ‘spiritual gift’ of speaking and knowledge (Corinthians 1:4–9). This

176 Daniel Gati is the basis of the re-enchantment of the world which Max Weber hopes for against the ‘iron cage’ or ‘iron vest’, that modernity was erecting around the human soul. As part of his effort to offer a foundational narrative to sociology, Weber connected the rise of the major world religions to certain highly specific religious-psychological experiences. He looked at the work of Christian theologians on ‘charismatic leaders’ whom, in liminal crisis periods, would take advantage of their ‘divinely received gift’ to lead their troubled people out of a deep civilisational crisis. In developing these foundational characteristics further, Weber lists the inherent dangers facing such a (modern) leader, whose political party might attempt the ‘castration of charisma’ but also mentions how the ‘power of money’ and ‘charisma as rhetoric’ allow the masses to be convinced of the ‘leader’s charismatic qualification’ (Weber 1968: 1129). Weber’s description of the charismatic leader does suit the rise of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist party to a degree, albeit the Duce failed on the long run as ‘pure charisma does not recognize any legitimacy other than one which flows from personal strength proven time and again’ (Weber 1968: 1114), and Mussolini couldn’t deliver on his promise of ‘an alternative modernity’ (Griffin 2007: 361), nor did he manage to suspend time in ‘permanent liminality’. Instead, he slowly but perceptibly lost contact with his stated objectives, passing his legacy to Adolf Hitler, his early admirer, together with numerous European and international leaders, who made well-rounded tactical use of it. In 1932 Adolf Hitler distributed 50,000 gramophone records during his electoral campaign and managed to visit 20 cities a week by plane, a first in political campaigning, speaking to 250,000 people a day (Mak 2008: 236). According to Walter Benjamin, ‘Under both Mussolini and Hitler, therefore, culture was exploited as a tool of social engineering and state aesthetics so as to become a form of political anesthetic’ (in Griffin 2007: 24). While the theatrical rites of power used all the technology at their disposal to create the cultic politics necessary for the lasting rule of Fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, their role was apparently not to ‘dupe the exploited masses into passivity’, but to transform them into reality (Griffin 2007: 73). What this reality means is that the masses willingly take upon themselves a way of acting (working and spending) called by Sorel as ‘capillary capitalism’, which is a peculiar acquired condition whereby even those without capital think like capitalists, ‘having already a capitalist mind while yet poor’ (Sorel 1950: 75). As we shall see later, Silvio Berlusconi was also offering an image to be imitated. He had no charismatic claims but he substituted them with charm – a word which is today related to charisma and grace, but is in fact more correctly connected to sorcery, incantation, bewitching, spells and talismans. Furthermore, the Italian ‘furbo’, which translates into ‘smart’, is considered a characteristic of Italians (the best description of this particular state of mind being given by Prezzolini in his Codice della vita italiana of 1921; in short, the ‘furbo’ travels first class without paying for it, those still ‘learning’ pay a discounted price in second class, and only the poor pay the full fare of their lousy third class ticket). Weberian ‘power of money’ also plays an important part through the constant marketing of half-truths and the permanent scandal of his private life. Berlusconi

The failure of democracy in Italy 177 did, however, influence the ‘outsider’ persona of Donald Trump (Jebreal 2015), a TV personality and businessman of a particular kind, both being originally from the real estate world, who also resorts to the double distraction of a perpetual scandal provoked by outrageous actions, while offering to restore political balance through the promise of managerial administration and the sacrifice of scapegoats in the form of illegal immigrants, or even members of their own staff. Thomas Mann described the victimisation of Mussolini’s Fascism, where the magician Cavaliere Cipolla presents himself as the victim: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are barking up the wrong tree. Sono io il poveretto. I am the person who is suffering, I am the one to be pitied’ (Mann 1954: 374). The same victimisation was also one of the trickery trademarks of Berlusconi who, for example, during a 2003 rally declared: ‘I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone.’ Matteo Salvini is a further turn of the screw, as he does share victimisation and ‘catch-all’ politics, but in the sense that he is seeking voters from any sort of political background, not through shared values and plans, rather through active participation through descending the stage. As such, one of the many connections of Salvini to Mussolini is the parallel with the magician Cipolla in Mario and the Magician (Graves 1929), who is also bridging the gap between the stage and the audience: ‘[Cipolla] went on to eliminate the gap between stage and audience [ … ] and himself descended the wooden steps to seek personal contact with his public’ (Mann 1954: 342). And just like the old-type charlatan and mountebank, he offers the panacea, one potion to cure all. If Mussolini failed to deliver on his promises, and thus to prove his charisma ‘again and again’, as Weber postulated, then Berlusconi can be said to have managed to uphold fake charisma by trickery, while Salvini is truly without precedents, as he is just a mirror of his electors (many of whom are, just like in the case of Berlusconi, pensioners with a naturally limited interest in the future politics of a country). If charisma can be faked to gain initial support, victimisation is one of the trickster tools for keeping it, or at least to suspend reality in liminality to account for their failures. While victimisation cannot be explored further in this chapter, it should be dully noted as an important element of the maintaining of power together with the aforementioned permanent liminality. The faking of charisma becomes increasingly possible because of two elements: the emergence of a certain type of crowd mentality, often described as populism and the profusion of images through technology which is first multiplied and then imitated.

Populism and imitated images Luigi Einaudi (1874–1961) and Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941) were two academics who were roughly contemporary to Mussolini and were his outspoken opponents, but even they were against the tyranny of the majority and certain types of democracy: ‘I keep coming back to it: the government of the majority is a monstrosity. For those who think about it, worse than a totalitarian

178 Daniel Gati government’ (Einaudi 2019). Not in the sense of the conflict between majority and minority but because they thought that a necessarily unprofessional majority could be more easily corrupted or tricked by demagogues: ‘it is thus probable that the consensus of the majority is gained by the demagogues to procure power, honors and riches to themselves, at the same time damaging both the majority and the minority’ (Einaudi 1945). Mosca states that political rule is hereditary, if not in law, at least in fact, as ruling classes are formed through ‘positions déjà prises’, which create a status de facto which then becomes a status de jure. This age-old system is now subverted as ‘populism’, and is a sort of a posteriori rejection of the ruling classes which are paradoxically replaced by a new ruling class of demagogues, seemingly unconnected to the previous one. This rejection of the professional politicians who are substituted by non-professionals has created new rules of engagement. Berlusconi has been champion of different, albeit parallel, disciplines (fame and wealth), giving them a semblance of democracy while having a totalitarian approach: ‘men who started with nothing and have attained fame and wealth are still frequent – all of which helps to foster in the people of that country the illusion that democracy is a fact’ (Mosca 1961: 602). In the simplistic language of contemporary media politics, Berlusconi’s populist stance can be summed up in: ‘you can trust me as I have made money, so I have no need to steal from you’ and ‘through my guidance and imitation you will also become as rich as me’. The populism of Salvini is seemingly similar and this makes such term particularly unclear and useless. What he means by it is: ‘I am not interested in money, this is my vocation’, but ‘the mystery of the plan will be unveiled only after you have granted me full powers’. Needless to say, this is a particularly tricky proposal, not unlike that of Mussolini who asked the same from the Italian King and parliament, and yet, given the media space Salvini is provided on all possible media platforms, he is gaining coverage, and thus power, day by day. The emergence of the crowd changed public imagination in several ways. One of these, the capillary capitalist mind of the poor, as described by Sorel, is made possible by two factors. Using Tocqueville, the first is described as ‘towards 1780, everybody believed in the dogma of the indefinite progress of mankind’ (Sorel 1950: 95). Second, this feeling has gotten stronger with the development of what he calls little science: ‘Their conception of science presupposes that everything can be expresses by some mathematical law. … This so called science is simply chatter’ (Sorel 1950: 141); or, ‘[t]he little science has engendered a fabulous number of sophistries which we continually come across’ (Sorel 1950: 147). Politicians and police forces are seen as concoctors of levies and taxes at the expense of workers and property owners alike. As for the Church, according to Francesco Cossiga (1928–2010), from St. Peter onwards, there is no history of Italian civilisation without the Church of Rome, and vice versa, as one is product of the other. The division of the two and the prohibition of Catholics to partake in politics (both as electors and politicians) by the Non expedited, right from the unification of Italy, created a divide which was never properly healed

The failure of democracy in Italy 179 (Cossiga 2007: 12). In this sense, the corruption scandals investigated by Mani Pulite ended not only the influence of the Church, but the two-partite division of the country, following the superpowers and the arrival of an era of hypnotic daily information feed, which is a mixture of fake scoops and irrelevant news snippets, blended with truly valuable knowledge in an inseparable concoction and delivered directly to the screens now literally in the hands of the electorate. It was Joseph Goebbels who apparently summarised it thus: ‘Repeat a lie a hundred, a thousand, a million times, and it will become the truth’ (Filippi 2019: 3).

The leader, the knight and the captain Benito Mussolini, the Duce, from Latin ducere ‘to lead’, meant to show the road out of a crisis. This crisis was that of modernity to which he proposed an alternative, taking back Italians to their former ‘Roman Empire glory days’. As we all know, things soon went very wrong, in many ways, which we still struggle to explain. If I were to point out a single cause, it would be that Mussolini’s ‘alternative modernity’ was not so much an alternative as the following of much the same road of technological modernity with striking new tools and old symbols which caught the imagination of the masses. Silvio Berlusconi, the Cavaliere, Italian for ‘knight’, had little to do with the medieval romanticism of honour, as the title of ‘Cavaliere del Lavoro’ or ‘Knight of Labour’, was assigned to Berlusconi in 1977 and he held the title until 2014 when an appeals court upheld his two-year ban from public office. His appointment is attributed to his mentor, Craxi, later the main target of the Mani Pulite anticorruption operation of the 1990s (he escaped to Tunisia, where he died in exile). Yet the title stuck and the idea was that he represented the best of what modern Italy, this time industrious Milan and not imperial Rome, had to offer for the common good: 4000 apartments on a former swamp outside of Milan, called ‘Milano 2’, as a gated community housing built with all amenities such as restaurants, gyms and even a closed-circuit television network. The knight errant winning over evil, represented by the windmills of the incomprehensible Italian bureaucratic State, the jovial Italian rascal, promised nothing more and nothing less than to elevate, through imitation of his joie de vivre and dodging of rules, the other inhabitants of the peninsula. Matteo Salvini, nicknamed by supporters and media alike as the Capitano, captain at the helm of a sinking ship, at first the Lega Nord, a party which had the totally unattainable objective of dividing Italy into two halves: the laborious North and the thieving South, and later at the de facto helm of Italy. Presently, he asks trust and absolute obedience in steering the country following stars only he can see. He promises to be the last to abandon the sinking ship but has no plans except to navigate through the straits and perils of the confusing sirens of modernity: the barbarian migrant armies at the door, and the ‘straitjacket’ of the European Union.

180 Daniel Gati All three characters rose to power in liminal times, have used or use technology to multiply images of themselves to trigger a mimetic effect by offering a seemingly rational model to be imitated, have counted on victimisation to account for their failures, and have been described as charismatic.

Mussolini (Il Duce) Benito Mussolini’s Fascist ideology is a prime example of what was widely felt as charismatic leadership; he received broad international approval from Churchill, Roosevelt, Gandhi, Lenin, Edison, Pius XI, Shaw, Kipling, Strauss, to name a few (Gregor 1979: 222–236). Actually, some even had positive things to say about him after the war and he still has a strong following. He had clearly inspired these figures and in a way rightly so, as the ‘charismatic leadership’ envisioned by Mussolini and his intellectual supporters had the goal to provide ‘mimetic models for the masses’ (ibid.). Mussolini’s proposal for an alternative modernity bore fruit in often fascinating and imposing works and institutions: he ‘instituted a programme of public works hitherto unrivalled in modern Europe. Bridges, canals and roads were built, hospitals and schools, railway stations and orphanages; swamps were drained and land reclaimed, forests were planted and universities were endowed’ (Hibbert 1962: 56). Gregor also states that ‘the regime did embark upon an elaborate program of social welfare’ that included food assistance, infant care, maternity assistance, general healthcare, wage supplements, paid vacations, unemployment benefits, illness insurance, occupational disease insurance, general family assistance, public housing, old age and disability insurance, and so on (Gregor 1979: 259). As with the French Revolution in Alexis de Tocqueville analysis, many reforms were already planned, so what was remarkable was the speed of execution and his well-known dedication to bringing plans to closure. Il Duce gained power through a military unit which was itself suspended in liminality: the Arditi, ‘the daring ones’ (Pirocchi 2004: 56). The Arditi were the Italian special forces created during the Great War with the specific purpose of infiltrating enemy trenches armed with knives and hand grenades. They were volunteers compensated for the dangers they faced with higher pay, better equipment and other distinctions, including their black uniforms with symbols of flames or skulls with knives between their teeth, representing the death they were bringing while sneaking into enemy trenches at night. Right after the war, and not even two years into their existence, these special units became a perceived danger for the higher military commands, and were either sent as police force to the new colonies or simply disbanded. However, some tens of thousands of elite soldiers failed to break up and conquered Fiume with D’Annunzio or formed themselves in paramilitary associations. Marinetti’s Milanese home was one of their own headquarters, but they also served as guards to the newly formed Fascist headquarters (Pirocchi 2004: 58). Mussolini was able to place many of them at the core of his black shirt units in Milan. As for ideology, he turned to Florence and Marinetti’s Futurist art, for

The failure of democracy in Italy 181 a ‘society permeated with modernist metanarratives of cultural renewal’, and ‘the belief that history itself was at a turning point’ (Cossiga 2007: 6, 23). As it is known to everyone, Mussolini was successful in using Rome and the Empire for most of his symbols. Mussolini was obsessed with the media machinery of images: photographs for publication needed his signature for approval, an activity which took up half of his working days (Cossiga 2007: 113). The pictures were often taken in warrior poses, in different costumes, shirtless in the countryside, on airplanes and other vehicles or with children in his arms (Cossiga 2007: 103). He also used billboards, cinema, newspapers, the radio and newsreels. In the image shown at https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mussolini_cinema.jpg, the giant billboard declares that ‘cinematography is the strongest weapon’ – signed Mussolini, and shows the leader behind a movie camera. In the image at https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File: Palazzo_braschi_1934.jpg we see the Fascist headquarters with his virile, stonesculpted face surrounded with the repetitive instructions on how to vote, with the word ‘YES’ repeated across the entire billboard. In the case of such well-known figures, it is useful to take a look at their closest collaborator and their legacy. In the case of Mussolini, Giuseppe Bottai (1895–1959) was the remarkable figure who at nineteen volunteered in the Great War, then enrolled in the Arditi, met Mussolini at a Futurist convention, graduated in law and joined the freemasons, before becoming an editor, university professor, and Minister of Education. Bottai’s idea of ‘permanent revolution’ was similar to the Marxist (1844) and later Trotsky-ite ideas for a suspended liminal, crisis state, which was never to end. The idea of permanent revolution was not the only similarity between the heirs of communism and Mussolini as he was a socialist newspaper editor (Avanti!) for many years, and thus the similarities of Fascism and Communism (first recognised by Franz Borkenau; see Szakolczai 2000: 28) should be even clearer. Just as Fascism, Communism extolled a cult of the leader who acquired power through trickery over the masses. As we will discuss below, Silvio Berlusconi’s political career met a similarly abrupt end with the sex with minors prostitution scandal, which crossed the imaginary line of Italian morality, but he was never able to spellbind, let alone show charisma to international leaders and intellectuals.

Berlusconi (Il Cavaliere) The figure of Silvio Berlusconi is among the most interesting political leaders of recent decades. He has been a great mystery to many political analysts and even world leaders for almost thirty years by now, and his international public performances and ‘gaffes’ are well known. Indeed, there is such an overabundance of outrageous claims and grey areas in his ascent that summing them up is quite difficult. Almost every piece of information regarding him uncovers a further layer which is manifold and more scandalous than the previous.

182 Daniel Gati Berlusconi thrives on being an outsider and makes masterful use of the multiplication of images, the alchemical magic of scalability. By Italian standards, Berlusconi can be rightly called a very charming person, a great salesman with a jovial personality and jokes that work well with the average Italian. However, his jokes never worked abroad, and most certainly he was not charismatic in the Weberian sense. Paolo Ceri (2011) explains this lack of charisma by the well-known fact among his closest entourage that he entered politics in order to gain immunity from his many legal proceedings, and that this fact didn’t allow charisma to develop in his inner circle and as a consequence, in the more general public. Overall, we can say that he had the possibility to do so much more for Italy, but he remained, willingly, an outsider to its dynamics, just like a true trickster who is never engaged emotionally (Szakolczai 2018: 25), an adventurer and ‘imitator of ancient tyrants’ (Mauss in Thomassen 2018: 169), content to pursue his own agenda of ad personam laws. His first move towards power was the construction of ‘Milano 2’, possibly funded by Mafia money. And with the profits from this he created the publicity company Publitalia ‘80 and began his ascent into television and media under the protection of the politician Bettino Craxi. The next step, and an obligatory one, as his friend Giuliano Ferrara has put it, was the following: Berlusconi, as a very successful TV businessman, was very well connected politically, and also a friend of Craxi. When Craxi was made the great scapegoat, Berlusconi felt he would be the next. And that is initially why he got into power. He had to do it to save himself. (Carlin 2004) Or, as Berlusconi himself declared: ‘I am in legal trouble because I have no more political patrons left’. He then identified the solution: ‘The only thing for me is to become my own political patron’, and he then set about with extraordinary vigour and single-mindedness to found a political party, lead it and, in just a few months, became prime minister of Italy (Carlin 2004). In the preceding decades Berlusconi came to be known as one of the richest men in Italy, with a large and happy family, owner of the most watched private television channels which presented to Italians their new favourite American shows, such as Dallas and Beautiful, Japanese and American cartoons for the children, or talk shows and programs by much beloved and trusted presenters, such as Mike Buongiorno, acquired at astronomical prices, (as if they were modern soccer players) from RAI, the Italian public Television. Mike Buongiorno was actually born in New York, where he worked before returning to Turin, hometown of his mother. Umberto Eco, who analysed him in a short essay of 1961, describes the presenter’s appeal in his ‘absolute mediocrity’ through which ‘the viewer sees the portrait of his own limits glorified and accepted by a national authority’ while Mike ‘has no shame in being ignorant’ and ‘showing firmly his intention to learn nothing’ (Eco 1963: 45–46).

The failure of democracy in Italy 183 But the most interesting aspect of Berlusconi’s Publitalia ’80 is that it grew into an international company selling publicity by considering television programmes as a simple interlude between publicity spots (Colombo in Carlin 2004). This was the exact opposite of the ethos of public television where publicity was grouped in a single informative programme. He was also the owner of a popular soccer team, AC Milan, and his political party Forza Italia, a blunt soccer reference, as this slogan is shouted by the fans at international matches, was created by turning the gigantic publicity company, Publitalia ’80 into a well-oiled political machine in just a few months. His publicity campaigns, using larger-than-life billboards with his full-teethed smile so similar to the American soap operas shown on his TV channels, promised ‘one million jobs’ or ‘less taxes for all’. They were difficult to believe and promised nothing concrete, but they worked. And it worked again and again: perseverare autem diabolicum. The same sort of diabolical multiplication by technology can be seen already in the intoxicating Leni Riefenstahl movie, Triumph of the Will, with hundreds of thousands of SA and SS soldiers featured from all possible angles. It is indeed human to err, it becomes diabolical when one uses marketing through the multiplication of images to create apparent consent where there shouldn’t possibly be any. There were some elements in the rise of Italian television programming which cast a shadow over what was going to happen later. Once the previously advertisement-free public networks (RAI) entered the war over publicity revenues, not only was the face of Italian television changed forever, but also the more ‘cultural’ or ‘educative’ state programming started to lose its audience.3 TV games became ‘for everyone, with no need to be learned or even to think’ (Gozzini 2011: 139). The hated politics returned as a ‘show’ for the theatre or the colosseum (Balassone, in Gozzini 2011: 141). Those who wanted a new face after the Democrazia Christiana party (DC) which had steered Italy for 50 years from Mussolini to the end of the Cold War, could now easily find it everywhere, reassuringly smiling at them. While an outsider to the political community, thus not a professional politician, Berlusconi, by some trickster logic was considered well suited to political leadership, and he willingly made his private life the centre of his political performance. There is something extraordinary about this fact, as many laws attempt to prevent the information of private lives from being exposed publicly. He was blunt and open about his trickery, even declaring on national television that it is morally acceptable to evade taxes when they are too high. His 17 years at the centre of power have not completely ended, as at age 83 (in 2020) he is still in politics as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP). As Mosca had put it, politics should be an organic/natural process whereby responsibilities and rewards grow coherently in time and geography, step by step, so the natural process would bring an 83-year-old gentleman to be president of the republic with the reassuring overseeing and vetoing powers in the firm hand of wisdom and experience, however, Berlusconi is simply keeping a foot in the door.

184 Daniel Gati His closest collaborator, his right hand, Marcello dell’Utri, president of Publitalia ’80 from 1983 to 1995, founder of Forza Italia with Berlusconi (1994), Senator of Italy and former MEP, served seven years in prison for Complicity with the Mafia, this time after escaping to Lebanon before being extradited, and he was in prison as of December 2019. Tragicomic is his previous declaration to a journalist of RAI, the Italian public television, that ‘the Mafia does not exist’.4

Salvini (Il Capitano) Unlike Berlusconi, Matteo Salvini was passionate about politics since his teenage years. At age twenty, he came to represent the Lega Nord in Milan’s City Council after testing his wits in (Berlusconi’s) TV game shows. His real apprenticeship came in 1999 when he was elected as a presenter for Radio Padania Libera, from which he learned to fight ‘the rapid-fire give-and-take of a press conference or a television debate’ (Donadio 2019). Salvini came to power right after Berlusconi, when the strongest party in Italy was the movement founded by the (real) comedian-turned-politician Beppe Grillo who in 2008 had the most visited ‘blog’ in Italy and 9th in the world, founded the Five Star political party in 2009 (also the name of a popular Italian ice cream) and managed to gather 30% of votes at general elections for several years (Bulman 2016). Salvini was basically unknown until then: he never managed to finish university, has a complicated personal life, and was known for a weakness for dressing up in all sorts of uniforms such as police, firefighters and other governmental bodies. He later formed a government with the party of the comedian Beppe Grillo, and became the de facto ruler of Italy until managing to lose it all through a mistaken call for early elections in the hot summer of August 2019, when he was ousted of power by his former allies joining his enemies. Nevertheless, he is still clearly present on the political scene, working from the backstage and waiting for a comeback that is widely expected, partially because he is still very present on the media. Salvini uses much the same rhetoric of legitimisation and victimisation in an imagined ‘permanent crisis’ as Berlusconi, in this case the ‘migrant crisis’, but instead of opinion polls he profits from the current technological ubiquity of smartphones and of images on the social media. Salvini became a tireless ‘sponsor’ of himself, and became omnipresent all of a sudden. One particular aspect of his campaigns, which were daily during his time in office, makes him unique, and that is the taking of selfies with his supporters. This is because these onlookers, the curious become supporters not because of shared plans out of a crisis, but because of a TV petty-celebrity/talent-show logic which promotes a character which has no ‘gift’ other than being on the screen and being talked about. The selfies are expressions of belonging by mobile phone users: when pictures are uploaded to a shared web space, a digital community, which responds with some sort of reaction and approval, we achieve a sense of belonging. Taking a selfie with a politician can turn it into a lifetime voter allegiance even if one was

The failure of democracy in Italy 185 there by chance, just meeting a celebrity. Salvini famously spent only a couple of days in his office during his first term, and had a presence of 1.73% in Parliament compared to an average of 85.13% (Gabanelli and Antonio 2019), because he campaigned almost every day – itself a modality of permanent liminality (politics as permanent campaigning). Each speech appearance in the campaign was followed by up to two hours of selfie taking. Following the well-known dynamics of gift exchange (see Hyde 1983), a politician descending among the spectators to take selfie photographs in the crowd can be considered as the first act of a gift-giving triangle. It gives two possible outcomes: the reciprocation with a vote at the next elections, or talking in a positive way about the persona of such generous leader to other possible voters. In both ways, it is a way to gain publicity and it generates multiplication of the image through multiple social networks. Naturally, the question arises if this need for continuous campaigning and public sharing of private sphere trivia (like pictures of kittens), alternated by racist rampages (against immigrants), is really necessary once a proper leadership position is acquired. Conventionally, one would have expected that once elected into a major public office, a political leader’s subsequent efforts ought to be directed towards the maintenance and improvement of the state. The name of Salvini’s alternative technique, which is ‘one photo, one vote’, seems very appropriate, except of course that social media will multiply the image over and over, saturating the internet with multiplying Salvini’s in different guises. Differently from previous TV technology, there is an exponential multiplication of an image through smartphones, part of the internet logic structure which rewards ubiquity because it equals it to quality. An indication on how the multiplication of images specifically works on social media, and thus, how fake charisma can be built in a lab, it is enough to read the interview of Salvini’s main ‘spin doctor’, Luca Morisi. Salvini’s team of spin doctors can illustrate how an image can be spun from one to many. Their favourite program is nicknamed ‘The Beast’, and it helps them with their control of the social media scene. Morisi describes the backstage workings of a Facebook group dedicated to ‘Salvini leader’: When we announce an event or initiative, through the [Facebook] group we can mobilize up to 65,000 people, with very high engagement levels. If we ask the group to go and write on a certain page or to change their profile pic, these people just do it. And it’s something self-feeding, and needs no bot or automation. These are real people, they didn’t just appear: they form a fan club that we have been feeding for years. (Luca Morisi, in Pregliasco and Diamanti 2018) As we can see from the quote above, the followers of this specific Facebook group dedicated to Salvini allow for a ‘self-feeding’ ‘fan club’ which will act on social media with 65,000 reactions to a single post by the ‘spin doctors’, directed by Luca Morisi. How an electronic impulse can trigger real-life action in tens of thousands

186 Daniel Gati of people is in itself staggering, while the alchemic recipe is interesting because instructions come from a machine and not the leader himself. Nevertheless, what seems to worry Italians the most is not the actual origin of the leader’s declarations, nor the 49 million euros which disappeared under the watch of his former boss, Umberto Bossi, nor even the recent scandal of talks about illegal campaign funds from Russia, but instead, a veiled streak of violence in his attitude. The bullying always contains a wink, a half joke, an exaggeration or the trick of self-victimisation, as sign of not to be taken fully seriously. This is how he could promise in 2016, with microphone in hand and wearing a real police T-shirt that ‘When we are in power, the police will have a free hand to clean up the cities’, and continues with Italians being victims of ‘financed and controlled ethnic cleansing’ (Pucciarelli 2016). Or to threaten the journalist Roberto Saviano, living under police protection since the publishing of his book Gomorrah about the Mafia, to take away his police escort in order to ‘save money for the Italians’ (Kirchgaessner 2018). Never before has the boy next door achieved such political power in Italy without qualifications or a plan, except that of gaining more and more power.

Private lives on public stages: concluding comparative comments Both Berlusconi and Salvini have been unashamed to make references to Mussolini, such as Berlusconi’s famous declaration to the editor of The Spectator in 2003 that ‘Mussolini never killed anyone’ (Squires 2010). That the editor in question was Boris Johnson, now prime minister of the United Kingdom, is an interesting coincidence, but it can also be seen as mimesis in action. However, Salvini is again a further twist of the screw: he has asked for ‘total powers’, has paraphrased Mussolini on the dictator’s birthday with the sentence ‘Lots of enemies, lots of honour’ and has given a speech on a balcony in Forlì used in the past by the fascist leader not just for speechifying but as a vantage point for watching the execution of opponents. As mentioned earlier, Mussolini was a careful crafter of his own image and its multiplication but the public and the private persona were meant to be one and the same. In fact, up until Silvio Berlusconi, the public and the private persona of the Italian politician were not only one, but the less visible had to be coherent and responsible to the public political figure. This changed radically with the election of Berlusconi, the outsider, who used money through technology and marketing to acquire power and hold on to it, while making his private life the arena of spectacle and debate. Both Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini appeared from behind the scenes onto the highest political stage, with the thrust of Weberian ‘power of money’, they have both used a theatricalised public media to their own ends with the multiplication of images, or in other words, by ‘charisma as rhetoric’, to fake the ‘leader’s charismatic qualification’ (Weber 1968: 1129). Why would somebody offer up for scrutiny his private life, especially if it is increasingly at odds with the public office held by his political persona? In the

The failure of democracy in Italy 187 case of Berlusconi, he might have been inspired by his experience as a salesman, or ‘his’ soap operas, or his fortune made with publicity. Either way, the answer can only be found in the final outcome of his actions which is the confusion of the spectators but also a long career spanning twenty years which is indeed similar in length to that of Mussolini, Putin or Orbán. In order to have a reason for exposing a private life on the public stage, the leader must claim to be ‘victim’ of some sort of conspiracy which is shared, or imagined to be shared by the larger body of the electorate. Berlusconi repeatedly declared to be the victim of persecution by the Italian magistrates, who were, at least in the collective imagination, connected to the Mani Pulite corruption scandals; and the ‘communist’ international press, which was obstructing his political efforts out of pure ideological stance. In 2013, he declared that he was victim of a ‘judicial harassment that is unmatched in the civilized world’ (Sullivan 2019). The favourable historical moment for such trickeries was when ubiquity and contemporaneity of a person through television, and later through other screens became reality. Such invasion of the public space, as social mimesis, into the private lives, the family values, had arrived only in the past decades. Once in power, the public stage was made as ample as possible with key figures being placed in the administration of public television; then it was saturated with media information about the leader which was opportunely packaged, leaving the voices of opposition, but only between his own propaganda. Finally, the mechanical multiplication of images would bring the stage performance to the already mentioned mimetic connection to the leader. The result of this performance is to create confusion, which is not a permanent state of men. It is normally a temporary situation in which one might find itself if there is too much information, things have happened too quickly or there are too many options. Thus, making confusion permanent means forcing the spectators to a very unkind mimesis: imitation of the most diffused images. The emergence of the populist crowd in a liminal moment, later maintained artificially, allows such trickster figures to appear and remain in power if they have mastered the technological faking of charisma through their teams of spin doctors and algorithms. Salvini also places his private life on the stage in detail, including his daily meals and drinks, his profusion of haphazard and violent claims against the EU and the euro, repatriation of migrants, chemical castration of rapists and so on. But Salvini represents a further development on Berlusconi because his opinions on any major political question are impossible to pin down. He plays on emotions which run deep in an Italy increasingly confused and dependent on media through big and small screens. Salvini and his team of spin doctors have found a way to harness the technological multiplication of images in an organic way, in the sense that they can make news or fake news spiral out of control and ‘go viral’. Thus, a technological trick can not only substitute charisma in a political leader but it can create momentum based on false premises. Both Berlusconi and Salvini are completely devoid of charisma in the Weberian sense, but have

188 Daniel Gati found a set of tricks to attain power. Among the two, Salvini represents an evolution in the Italian political incubator as he, possibly more than ever before, is a chameleon who thrives on ambiguity, violence and confusion.

Notes 1 See ‘Cinematography is the strongest weapon’ – Signed ‘Mussolini’, https://it.wikipe dia.org/wiki/File:Mussolini_cinema.jpg; and the fascist headquarters in Milan before elections of 1934, see https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Palazzo_braschi_1934.jpg. 2 The 11–17 June 2011 issue of the The Economist had a 14-page special report on ‘Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy’, with its cover page carrying the title ‘The man who screwed an entire country’. 3 As example for the ultimately meaningless struggle of the cultural elite, Federico Fellini for long prohibited the showing of his films with commercial breaks inside. 4 https://archive.org/details/marcello_dell_utri_dice_la_mafia_non_esiste (1:04 in Italian).

References Augé, Marc (2014) L’antropologo e il mondo globale. Milan: Raffaello Cortina Editore. Bernhard, Michael (1999) ‘Charismatic Leadership and Democratization: A Weberian Perspective’, in Melvin Kohn, Kazimierz Słomczynski, and Aleksandra Jasinska-Kania (eds.) Power and Social Structure: Essays in Honor of Włodzimierz Wesołowski. Warsaw: Warsaw University Press: 170–184. Bulman, May (2016) ‘Who is Beppe Grillo and what is Five Star Movement? All You Need to Know about the Biggest Threat to Italy’s Status Quo’, Independent, 5 December, available at www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/who-is-beppe-grillo-fivestar-movement-italy-referendum-party-matteo-renzi-resigns-a7456106.html (accessed 15 December 2019). Burckhardt, Jacob (1998 [1872 lectures]) The Greeks and Greek Civilization. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. Carlin, John (2004) ‘All Hail Berlusconi’, The Observer, 18 January, available at www.the guardian.com/world/2004/jan/18/italy.features (accessed 14 October 2019). Ceri, Paolo (2011) Gli italiani spiegati da Berlusconi. Bari: Laterza. Cossiga, Francesco (2007) Italiani sono Sempre gli Altri. Milan: Mondadori. Donadio, Rachel (2019) ‘The New Populist Playbook’, The Atlantic, 5 September, available at www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/09/matteo-salvini-italy-populistplaybook/597298/ (accessed 27 September 2019). Eco, Umberto (1963) ‘Fenomenologia di Mike Bongiorno’, in Diario Minimo. Milan: Mondadori. Einaudi, Luigi (1945) ‘Maior et sanior pars’, Idea, January 5–14, available at www. luigieinaudi.it/percorsi-di-lettura/lib/percorso-1/maior-et-sanior-pars.html (accessed 27 November 2019). Einaudi, Luigi (2019) ‘Quotes from the Corriere della Sera Archive Landing Page’, Corriere della Sera, (1) available at http://archivio.corriere.it/Archivio/interface/landing. html, (2) available at archive website: https://web.archive.org/web/20191101123827/ http://archivio.corriere.it/Archivio/interface/landing.html (accessed 27 November 2019). Filippi, Francesco (2019) Mussolini ha Fatto Anche Cose Buone. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.

The failure of democracy in Italy 189 Gabanelli, Milena and Stella, G. Antonio (2019) ‘Matteo Salvini è ovunque (ma poco al Viminale)’, Corriere della Sera. 12 March, available at www.corriere.it/dataroommilena-gabanelli/salvini-viminale-ministro-interni-campagna-elettorale-parlamento-pre senza/3b72100a-44ea-11e9-b3b0-2162e8762643-va.shtml (accessed 20 October 2019). Glassman, M. Ronald (1986) ‘Manufactured Charisma and Legitimacy’, in Glassman, M. Ronald and William H. Swatos (eds.) Charisma, History, and Social Structure. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press: 115–128. Gozzini, Giovanni (2011) La Mutazione Individualisti. Bari: Laterza. Graves, Robert (1929) Goodbye to All That. London: Penguin Books. Gregor, A. James (1979) Italian Fascism and Developmental Dictatorship. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Griffin, Roger (2007) Modernism and Fascism, the Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Hansen, George P. (2001) The Trickster and the Paranormal. Philadelphia, PA: Xlibris. Hibbert, Christopher (1962) Benito Mussolini: A Biography. Geneva, Switzerland: Heron Books. Horvath, Agnes (2013) Modernism and Charisma. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hyde, Lewis (1983) The Gift. New York: Vintage. Jebreal, Rula (2015) ‘Donald Trump is America’s Silvio Berlusconi’. Washington Post, 21 September, available at www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/09/21/ donald-trump-is-americas-silvio-berlusconi/ (accessed 10 November 2019). Kirchgaessner, Stephanie (2018) ‘Matteo Salvini Threatens to Remove Gomorrah Author’s Police Protection’. The Guardian, 21 June, available at www.theguardian.com/world/ 2018/jun/21/matteo-salvini-threatens-to-remove-gomorrah-roberto-saviano-police-protec tion (accessed 10 September 2019). Lindholm, Charles (1990) Charisma. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell. Mak, Geert (2008) In Europe: Travels through the Twentieth Century. New York: Vintage Books. Mann, Thomas (1954 [1931]) Mario and the Magician. New York: Vintage Books: 297–401. Mosca, Gaetano (1961) ‘On the Ruling Class’, in Talcott Parsons, Edward Shils, Kaspar D. Naegele, and Jasse R. Pitts (eds.) Theories of Society; Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory, Vol. I, Part Two. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe: 598–602. Pirocchi, Angelo (2004) Italian Arditi: Elite Assault Troops 1917–20. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. Pregliasco, Lorenzo and Giovanni Diamanti (2018) ‘In Conversation with the Spin Doctor: Luca Morisi’, YouTrend, 17 October, available at www.youtrend.it/2018/10/17/in-conver sation-with-the-spin-doctor-luca-morisi-interview/ (accessed 14 October 2019). Pucciarelli, Matteo (2016) ‘Salvini incita la platea leghista: “Ripuliamo le città dagli immigrati”’, La Repubblica, 15 August, available at www.repubblica.it/politica/2016/08/15/ news/salvini_incita_la_platea_leghista_ripuliamo_le_citta_dagli_immigrati_ -146054272/ (accessed 10 September 2019). Sorel, Georges (1950 [1908]) Reflections on Violence. New York: Collier Books. Squires, Nick (2010) ‘Silvio Berlusconi Compares Himself to Mussolini’, The Telegraph, 28 May, available at www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/7777933/ Silvio-Berlusconi-compares-himself-to-Mussolini.html (accessed 27 November 2019). Stille, Alexander (2016) ‘Donald Trump, America’s Own Silvio Berlusconi’, The Intercept, 7 March, available at https://theintercept.com/2016/03/07/what-the-past-of-silvio-berlus coni-tells-us-about-the-future-of-donald-trump (accessed 7 October 2019).

190 Daniel Gati Sullivan, Kevin (2019) ‘Forget the Tax Fraud and Sex Scandals. Italy’s Berlusconi is Back’, The Washington Post, 28 June, available at www.washingtonpost.com/world/ europe/never-mind-the-tax-fraud-and-bunga-bunga-scandals-these-italians-wont-giveup-on-berlusconi/2019/06/28/3ae64e40-8ef4-11e9-b6f4-033356502dce_story.html (accessed 7 November 2019). Szakolczai, Arpad (2000) Reflexive Historical Sociology. London: Routledge. Szakolczai, Arpad (2018) ‘Recovering the Classical Foundations of Political Anthropology’, in Harald Wydra and Bjørn Thomassen (eds.) Handbook of Political Anthropology. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar: 19–36. Szakolczai, Arpad and Bjørn Thomassen (2011) ‘Gabriel Tarde as Political Anthropologist: The Role of Imitation for Sociality, Crowds and Publics within a Context of Globalization’, International Political Anthropology, 4, 1: 43–62. Tarde, Gabriel (1903) The Laws of Imitation. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Thomassen, Bjørn (2018) ‘The Anthropology of Political Revolutions’, in Harald Wydra and Bjørn Thomassen (eds.) Handbook of Political Anthropology. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar: 160–176. Tocqueville, Alexis de (2000) Democracy in America. New York: Bantam Books. Trow, W.S. George (1981) Within the Context of No Context. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Waters, Tony (2018) Max Weber and the Modern Problem of Discipline. Maryland: Hamilton Books. Weber, Max (1968) Economy and Society. Berkeley, CA: Bedminster Press. Willner, R. Ann (1984) The Spellbinders. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

10 Viktor Orbán’s leadership The prince, the political father, and the doomed trickster Zoltán Balázs

Viktor Orbán is doubtlessly one of the most successful democratically elected politicians not only in post-Communist Hungary but also in the post-Soviet European countries, if success is measured by the time spent in the most influential posts of the political structure, including government and opposition. This chapter aims at exploring the causes of this success. It briefly overviews the method of inquiry, then it offers a three-dimensional approach, discussed in three sections. In the first, Machiavelli’s apparently hyper-rationalist and calculative model-politician is used to highlight how Orbán changed his former strategy of skilful adaptation to the changing ‘needs of times’ to the risk-taking, adventurous, virtù-based strategy of ruling Fortuna. In the second section, the ‘political father’ as a role model of political leadership will be discussed. Patriarchalism and paternalism are received concepts is political theory, however, neither seems to be well-suited to the needs of studying the political father-model. In the third section, it will be argued that there is another archetype of the political leader, one which has strong links to transcendent dimensions. It will be claimed that Orbán was able to transform himself into the source of luck, the genitor of all politics in Hungary, a figure who understands well that unpredictability, if deftly applied and pursued, has a magnetic force which is especially useful for gluing together his or her followers. Arguably, we are dealing here with a version of charisma: not of a wholly idiosyncratic and personal type but something that is inherent to politics and hence can be realized, acquired and practised. However, even opponents may come under its spell, inasmuch as they must adjust and adapt their behaviour to this figure. Behind his Protean flexibility and volatility that has frustrated his opponents’ efforts to catch him for some many years, there hides the hard political personality of the trickster. In view of his spectacular career in politics, Orbán has merited considerable attention, critical and acclamatory alike, among political analysts and journalists.1 Based on the mainstream leadership literature, some Hungarian political analysts have already published papers on Orbán and his regime.2 My approach is partly an amendment to them insofar as it is meant to explore other, rarely featured causes of his success. Partly, however, it is also meant to contribute to understanding political leadership in modern democracies by applying certain concepts of political theory, anthropology, and culture studies.

192 Zoltán Balázs

Machiavelli’s disciple In the concluding chapter of The Prince, Machiavelli summarizes his main thesis. This is that the prince should be capable of utmost adaptation to the changing circumstances if, as is often the case, changing them is beyond his power: [One can see] a certain prince today fortunate and tomorrow ruined, without seeing that he has changed in character or otherwise. I believe this arises in the first place from the causes that we have already discussed at length; that is to say, because the prince who bases himself entirely on fortune is ruined when fortune changes. I also believe that he is happy whose mode of procedure accords with the needs of the times, and similarly he is unfortunate whose mode of procedure is opposed to the times. For one sees that men in those things which lead them to the aim that each one has in view, namely, glory and riches, proceed in various ways: one with circumspection, another with impetuosity, one by violence, another by cunning, one with patience, another with the reverse … One sees also two cautious men, one of whom succeeds in his designs, and the other not, and in the same way two men succeed equally by different methods … which arises from the nature of times, which does or does not conform to their method of procedure. (Machiavelli 1950: 92) However, being able to adapt one’s behaviour to the changing circumstances, to the ‘needs of the times’ (in the original: qualità de’ tempi) is not an easily acquirable skill. Although the homo sapiens is well-equipped with various physical and mental capabilities that has helped it to become a highly successful species, some individuals are more talented than others and hence can get advantage over others. On this general level, the lesson is valid for most human endeavours, not only in politics. Being attentive to the qualità de’ tempi is always and everywhere wise advice, though its precise meaning is very vague. Thus, Borja (2016) for instance argues that the Machiavellian concept of virtù means basically a skill to increase one’s autonomy at the expense of others. Thus, the ‘changing circumstances’ and the ‘needs of times’ refer to the actions and beliefs of other individuals. A logical conclusion would be for Machiavelli to advise the prince to develop and practise this skill as much as he can. However, he continues with another observation. He contends that the adaptation to the (changing) ‘needs of the times’ is very difficult. The reason he gives is not because changes can be too quick or unexpected, or because others are more talented in discerning them. The main problem is that [n]o man is found so prudent as to able to adapt himself to [the change of times], either because he cannot deviate from that to which his nature disposes him, or else because having always prospered by walking in one path, he cannot persuade himself that it is well to leave it … (Machiavelli 1950: 93)

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In other words, whereas humans are capable of adaptation, discerning the signs of times, they are apt to rely on their usual methods, on what they know and about what their experiences have taught them. It seems that Machiavelli turns sceptical here about the possibility of a generalizable and appropriable skill or virtue of adaptation. However, he does not conclude with complete surrender. His argumentation changes course as he begins to talk about the famous metaphor of Fortuna, the precise meaning of which remains no less obscure than the ‘needs of times’ (see Airaksinen 2009 for various interpretations). Fortuna is a goddess whose power is greater than the sum (adverse, resisting) of the power of all subjects and enemies of the prince. She is literally incalculable. Machiavelli’s final and positive advice is strongly tied to this metaphor. To overcome fortune, the prince (or anyone striving for power over others) is better advised to maintain and foster a brave and daring character because Fortuna prefers such characters to the cowards. Machiavelli’s position is thus that adaptation is the best way to preserve power, but since this is very difficult, constancy in one’s character is the second best option provided that the character is a daring one. His tone is, however, sceptical and stands in a peculiar contrast to the content of his advice. To be brave and adventurous for want of a better alternative is hardly a convincing and far from an inspiring counsel. Machiavelli continues with citing two really daring and adventurous politicians but he does not praise them. He predicts that the bold, even reckless, politics of Pope Julius II is doomed to fail. (Of course, recklessness and braveness are different qualities – the latter being a virtue, the former a vice – yet Machiavelli was anything but a follower of Aristotle and his conception of the via media.) Further, in Machiavelli’s presentation (to which historians have objections) Cesare Borgia figured as a daring and truly adventurous politician who, however, failed to calculate the hatred of his enemies correctly, possibly for being overconfident in himself, and Fortuna punished him severely. However inconclusive and incoherent Machiavelli’s final remarks are or appear to be, however vague his concepts and points of reference may be (i.e. it is not entirely clear whether his advices are applicable only to politicians or to anybody who aspires to power), they have fascinated political theorists ever since. Even if brave temper and manliness vis-à-vis Fortuna are much-needed virtues for a politician, could not the skill of adaptation be somehow added to or implanted into such a character? Notwithstanding the natural impossibility of combining the characters of the fox and of the lion, there may emerge exceptional political talents capable simultaneously of adaptation and perseverance in their endeavours and views. Adaptation – being able to read the signs and listen to the spirit of time – is a peculiar skill. To possess it means to be able to anticipate the changes, identify oneself with them, being able to remain always on the first wave wherever the tide brings the waters. Adaptation is different from comfortable conformity, from excessive flexibility, from the chameleon-like strategy of not being indistinguishable from the environment. As a political strategy, it must be that of an identifiable and visible leader. Woody Allen’s figure Zelig is a world

194 Zoltán Balázs champion of adaptation, but figures like him are, in the end, invisible. Such people cannot be leaders, not at least in the ordinary sense. What we must also think of is a character that is able not only of adaptation to the changing circumstances in Machiavelli’s sense but retains and preserves the power and strength that resists change, shines forth as a standing star, unflinching and unmoving. We need a character that unifies both the forceful-dynamic and the authoritative-static aspects of power. It seems that, after all, Machiavelli’s ideal is not an incoherent one. As such, the lion’s nature and the fox’s nature cannot be combined, yet lions can certainly develop and follow the strategy of the fox, and foxes can be as aggressive and daring animals as any other predator. Even more to the point, changing one’s behaviour and customs according to the spirit of times needs courage; to be able to revise one’s principles and ideals drastically and adopting new ones needs psychological strength;3 hence adaptation does not preclude braveness and adventurousness, on the contrary, it may even demand it. There is, so it seems, a virtual via media in Machiavelli, after all: one needs the strength and force to adapt oneself to the needs of times, yet an overly flexible and conformity-seeking character becomes indistinguishable from a feeble and insignificant one. I wish to argue that Viktor Orbán, the current prime minister of Hungary, has been shown to be a textbook example of courageous adaptation developing into a strength that Fortuna herself cannot resist. His professional career can be easily divided into two parts: in the first, his skills of adaptation dominate his political character but without losing his face (visibility). In the second, he becomes the point of reference for everyone else, the star around whom political actors revolve like planets, yet which is also able to move, listen to the times and read the signs better than anyone else. And in the form of the economic recovery and boom that began in 2012, Fortuna rewarded him lavishly.4 The first biography about Orbán, a politician who was not even forty then was published by J. Debreczeni (2002).5 In Hungary, such a voluminous (570 pages) biography is rather exceptional. Especially remarkable is the first sentence Debreczeni begins his book with. Actually, it is a quotation: ‘I consider myself a protégé of Fortuna because she spared me of changing any of my views since my childhood’ (11). This is not Orbán speaking: these are the words of József Antall, the first prime minister of free Hungary (elected by the Parliament in 1990). Debreczeni continues quoting Antall: ‘I am saying this not to praise myself because this has been not my merit; since I owe this to my birth and education’ (ibid.). Debreczeni adds that he does not begin his book to anticipate the greatest difference between whom he considers the two towering figures of the Hungarian regime change, namely, the unchanging principles and stature of Antall standing in a contrast to Orbán’s ever-changing views but to point out the simple truth that Orbán lacked the cultural and political background Antall possessed. He came from relative poverty, had to work early on, but visited a good secondary school and made friends with children of the local intelligentsia. All these facts may interest political sociologists and

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psychologists, but my point is that a decade after the regime change, Debreczeni thought it important to start with a contrast that unconsciously reflects on Machiavelli’s old problem. Is it better, or rather, fortuitous, for a politician to be unchanging in terms of principles and fundamental views or is it a disadvantage once Fortuna turns?6 Such turns are really surprising, as was the collapse of the Soviet empire, opening the room for various leaders. It is interesting to observe that Havel and especially Wałęsa were widely regarded as charismatic, popular leaders, whereas Antall had a very reserved personality, not exactly a tribune type. Was his charisma his formidable knowledge of history (appreciated only by a few) or his organizational skills? Or some ‘natural authority’? But what does that mean? Each political leader was successful, winning the first elections by convincing margins. But then is not the concept of charisma a rather vacuous one? Whatever the case was with Antall, his premature death makes all further speculations obsolete. Orbán’s career provides us with an unparalleled case in post-Soviet Europe. He has experienced the highest peaks of a politician’s career and profession, as well as the greatest failures and falls. Fortuna has been very much involved in his career. At an age of 26 he was a major figure at the opposition roundtable, often representing the toughest position vis-à-vis the Communist party officials. His party managed to jump the five percent threshold to the new Parliament but the results remained behind the expectations. His party’s popularity rose rapidly in 1992–1993. However, the party ended up with yet another election disaster in 1994. Then came another rise, this time crowned with success, and Orbán became prime minister for the first time in 1998, at the age of 35. In 2002 he lost again, under dramatic circumstances, after a relatively successful four years of governing. His authority was seriously challenged in his party. However, he survived, recovered and crushed his internal enemies: never again has his internal position been shaken. Though losing again in 2006, it became nonetheless clear that the winning Socialists are approaching a catastrophe. Orbán won again in 2010 by a two-thirds majority and did not hesitate to consolidate his and his party’s power position by changing the constitution, the electoral law, the media law, and countless other fundamental or cardinal laws that transformed Hungary into a semi-autocratic country.7 As I suggested, Orbán’s political career is dividable into two phases. The first is dominated by his seeking the graces of Fortuna by trying to adapt himself and his party to the quickly changing circumstances (see above: the spectacular fall, rise, and next fall of the post-Communist left). Doubtlessly, his relatively free-floating ideological position was an important precondition to this strategy as it made him a ‘possible figure’ on the Right after the death of Antall. His ideologically non-committed position was, however, effectively counterbalanced by his fervent anti-Communism. This was it that made him very visible, granting to him the image of a principled politician.8 Since there was a general consensus about Hungary’s optimal development, namely, that she should and could return to a Western development path, Orbán accommodated

196 Zoltán Balázs himself to this programme. Part of this package was the defence of human rights and civil society, as well as the promotion of market economy and constitutional pluralism. He followed this programme more or less consistently throughout the first decade after the regime change, though he grew distrustful of the liberals (both inside and outside of his party). It had become increasingly clear, however, that he was very consciously and devotedly playing the power game, and ready to adapt himself to the changing circumstances. He abandoned his former liberal allies, earned himself the hatred of the liberal press, and could hardly manage to jump the five percent electoral hurdle. But it turned out to be a calculated loss because, after 1994, he successfully won over the Right side of the political spectrum for himself, after the collapse of the first, Conservative-Populist-Christian Democratic government. He realized and caught the chance. He did everything to adapt himself to the whims and whirls of Fortuna, but with a clear intention of conquering it. He was more and more pragmatic and flexible, yet constantly visible and determined. And Fortuna rewarded him with his first premiership in 1998. A striking rupture on this path became discernible around 2002, after his losing the elections.9 It was then that Orbán seems to have resolved to put aside the last remnants of a classical liberal position, opened up his party or his camp to everyone who rejected post-Communism (for whatever reason), and went into battle for the exclusive possession of power. He decided not to tolerate any formal coalition on his side (i.e. cooperation with autonomous partners), he wanted and managed to integrate all forces on the right into a ‘political community’. Further, he reached out to the left as well, especially to voters who were (and are) dependent on state subsidies and transfers, which entailed the abandonment of the idea of a small state or government. He also dropped his former advisors and has increasingly got rid of right-leaning but independent intellectuals. We can observe no hesitation about his decisions. He has entirely given up the strategy of adaptation in the former sense, namely, of changing sides, allies, political principles and views, according to the needs of the day. He himself disparaged the former era, including his own previous self, as chaotic, unruly, without a clear direction. What was needed was a clear break with that period, a firm resolution to take the nation’s interest first, and put the state back in its central role.10 It is needless to say that for the accomplishment of these heroic tasks, overcoming the crisis and bring the nation to new victories, he was presented as the only capable and trustworthy leader. Thus, after 2002, Orbán emerges as an almost entirely new politician. In this respect, that is, in making this new beginning credible, it was both politically and symbolically significant that despite his having a seat in the 2006–2010 Parliament, he practically did not participate in the legislative work, avoided any direct political discourse with the socialist prime minister, leaving this work to his whips. He distanced himself from his own ‘parliamentary’ past and politics, returning to the ‘people’ and re-emerging from their lowest ranks triumphantly. Ever since, his rhetoric and thoughts has been shaped and formulated in a way that they appear to be naturally

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flowing from the nation’s or the democratic majority’s will, suggesting irresistible strength and force. And it has indeed swept away his enemies. His last real adversary, Prime Minister Gyurcsány, had to resign amid a crisis in 2009, humiliated and mocked, and Orbán’s march to the Parliament could not have been more triumphant and glorious. The economic crisis was still heavily harming the country, but Orbán showed his now-characteristic power of will and mercilessly taxed banks, foreign companies, nationalized public utility services. The economic boom that began in 2012 has been his great reward as it made him appear a Messianic leader who has saved his country. This salvation-aspect is, I believe, truly unique in contemporary European politics. When the migration crisis broke in (in 2015), Orbán could already build on this image and make use of this theological dimension of his rule, and from that time on, his prophetic and Messianic authority also in the West (especially on the Far Right but also in the middle) has begun to grow. Whether we consider this in Machiavelli’s fictional terms (Fortuna’s submission to him was complete) or in a more modern political theological conception (Messianism in politics) is of secondary importance here. Thus, it seems safe to conclude that Orbán’s change of strategy, from adaptation (but never conformity) to a straightforward and unflinching (but never stubborn and ideologically closed) line of politics seems to have followed the Machiavellian counsels. He realized that against Fortuna he needed a firm political background as well. He founded therefore a new political community, pacified and secured it as his exclusive political province from which he could start the war for the whole country. But beyond the success of following the Machiavellian recipe, a deeper truth also appears to be emerging. We may want to call it a special skill, maybe a charisma to be able to transgress the border between the readiness to compromise, on many occasions, to change one’s views according the needs of the day and the undaunted and uncompromised stature of a principled politician. But Orbán’s special capability is not only to transgress this border but to do so with an ease, and with such a frequency that his opponents are usually at a loss when trying to capture him. He is always at the border: it is almost an uncanny coincidence that his most world-famous achievement is the ‘fence’ that is purportedly defending Hungary and whole Europe. He is known mostly for his defence of the borders, and at the same time he is the politician within the EU who is always at the border, always almost, but never entirely, over it. His party’s membership in the European People’s Party has been suspended; he is always being chased by his critics but never really captured: this hide-and-seek politics has been going on for years. It is possible that his incredible skill of sensing the borders, the limits is a reward of having learned from Machiavelli that the best strategy is being the mover who himself moves eternally.

The political father However, as commentators have repeatedly pointed out, Machiavelli himself warns the readers of The Prince that his primary focus is on the methods of

198 Zoltán Balázs establishing a new rule. He is aware of the importance of the existing customs and laws of a conquered country, ruling against which can be a great challenge. Crucially, a republic or any other constitution based on freedom and/or a widescale active participation of the citizens, is highly difficult to rule by one man. If the people are accustomed to a certain type of domination, then the new prince is best advised to keep it. In contemporary language, the political culture is one of the major, and fortunately slowly changing, circumstances that the leader should take into account and rule accordingly. Ideally, a political culture based traditionally on a one-person rule is especially prone to welcome any leader who is able to represent and identify himself with the preferences of such a political culture. A convenient label is the dictator. In view of Orbán’s dominance in Hungarian politics, his likening to a dictator suggests itself. Not everyone agrees, of course: the truth is that Orbán’s political character cannot be understood apart from the logic of competitive electoral politics. Unlike many authoritarian leaders, Orbán does not aspire to be the ‘father of the nation’. His goal is to polarize and divide the electorate while retaining the support of the biggest and best-organized group within it. His means are often nondemocratic, but the logic of his behavior is quintessentially competitive. (Krekó and Enyedi 2018: 45) Of course, electoral politics matters a lot, and of course, the strategy cited is well-known and in fact working. However, the argument is one-sided. First, it reduces the focus on the second phase of Orbán’s career. Second, Orbán’s competitive style and policies may not exclude some important marks and symbols of inclusiveness and some policies of non-competitiveness, either. Politicians, much as other leaders, frequently use mixed strategies. The Machiavellian analytical and conceptual framework allows the theorist to observe, explain, and evaluate such strategies jointly; a preoccupation with a single aspect of a regime may be overly simplifying and hence misleading. And third, the reference to the ‘father of the nation’ is too perfunctory and dismissive. It touches upon an important aspect of the Hungarian political culture that deserves serious attention. This is what I aim to do now. The political culture of a country usually treasures a selection of political characters that serve as models or paragons for each generation. Some models may even become institutions. A good example is Julius Caesar and his heirs: being (or bearing the name of) Caesar had gradually transformed into being the Caesar, both a rank within the imperial hierarchy (it was not the highest in the Byzantine Empire) and, both in the West and in the East, eventually the highest office in both in Latin and Greek Christendom, that is, the Kaiser and the Tsar. Other models do not undergo this institutionalization but exist in virtue of their informal influence over the imagination of the members of the political commonwealth, or the nation, as well as over the ways of domination.

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We are perhaps inclined to think, however, that modern, rationally designed liberal and democratic constitutions are incompatible with such transformations and institutionalized personal models. References to, for instance, the ‘Founding Fathers’ put the emphasis on ‘founding’ and take the noun ‘fathers’ as a mere metaphor without any further political significance. To purge even the last reminiscences of such a rule, the reference to the Fathers has lately been being replaced by calling them ‘Framers’. However, democracies are not at all incompatible with institutionalized personalities. Monarchical constitutions have an easy time with reconciling the unabashed enthusiasm for royal personalities with the solemn and cool image of the sovereign people as the sole law-maker, partly because this latter image is itself an imprint of a greater, more powerful, and intimidating figure, commonly known as the Leviathan among political theorists. (Perhaps looking at the merciless image of the Leviathan as the mirror picture of the sovereign people is difficult to endure; a very human monarch is so much easier to sympathize with.) Tocqueville famously coined the modern welfare state as a benevolent and paternal authority, but this state lacks the strong emotional, instinctive and personal elements of political leadership. Comparative political culture research has indeed been using the term paternalism extensively, yet in these researches it also denotes a type of an impersonal state-citizen relationship, rather than the more personal aspects of politics and political leadership. Foucault’s concept of pastoral power is another key metaphor that combines certain personal and impersonal aspects of power, yet it is also faceless. However, to remain in France, the quintessentially secular and rationalist republic, Bonapartism and Gaullism take their names after the two greatest French statesmen of modern France, without which – or whom – the current French constitutional system would hardly have emerged and get institutionalized. Now political systems, including those with impeccably democratic constitutions, that allow a leader to rule without time limits, make the political culture to be sui generis more receptive to fatherly/motherly figures. In emerging democracies that have a strong feudal-monarchical tradition, the receptivity and inclination to embrace such roles may be even higher. By a ‘fatherly/motherly’ figure I do not mean either a republican sort of a pater patriae role, or a benevolent, patriarchal, pater familias figure. The first is a typically dictatorial-saviour type of political leader. He must act and serve his fatherland in an exceptional way, but basically with a restoring purpose and character. The ideal pater patriae is a republican political role, to be invoked in crises (like Lincoln or de Gaulle). The second type of a ‘political father’ exploits the emotional, and highly Romanticized image of the benevolent pater familias or the patriarch who tends to the needs of his family, embraces each member of it, forgives his prodigal sons and daughters, and protects all of them. Such a role is difficult to reconcile with the realities of politics, but it may be one of the reasons why certain democracies have preserved the monarchical constitution: to alleviate the harsh and adverse effects of politics by exempting at least one special person and his or her family who can be an

200 Zoltán Balázs object of unreserved love and respect. But this just highlights the unpolitical character of the pater or mater familias. The political father is a character distinct from both the pater patriae and pater familias or patriarch A political father is a centre of political emotions, thoughts and actions. He is a gravitational centre, with strong protective abilities, not always or necessarily with a reference to war and violent conflicts (as the pater patriae) but in a more instinctive, even animal, sense of providing to the political community its identity, existential safety, a protection against the unnameable and mystical forces of the outside world. A political father may not be fervently loved or hated, he may not elicit strong emotions. He does not need to be particularly benevolent or even sympathetic. He has a resemblance to Providence, which works invisibly and indirectly, without telling us what to do or not do, yet whose presence is felt everywhere. Even his political opponents act and think with him in mind, and the inevitable resistance against his rule takes a form of adolescent revolt, rather than an ideology-driven or politically organized alternative movement. Typically, his voters are usually among the less educated and the elderly. A political father does not usually have a consistent or sharp ideological profile. Nor does he run the country like a businessman. He is mainly the embodiment of the country or the nation, including everything that is good and bad about it. Of course, local political cultures vary greatly. Such ideal types are rarely instantiated in any of them in a pure form. I suggest, however, that Hungarian political history has made it particularly easy for such a political father-role to emerge and solidify.11 Here are the reasons. First, the patriarchal traditions had been relatively strong until the abolishment of feudalism in 1848.12 The leader of the radical-liberal-nationalist forces and later of the independence war, Lajos Kossuth, the Hungarian version of Garibaldi, soon became such a figure. He laid down the foundations of Hungarian political public rhetoric, was an unquestionable centre of politics, could master the first modern mass political emotions in Hungary, and left a strong mark on Hungarian political imagination (he was commonly referred to as ‘Kossuth, our father’). It is very telling that after he had stepped down as Governor and transferred all his powers to General Artúr Görgei, his most successful and respected military commander, who then used them to negotiate the inevitable surrender of the Hungarian troops to the Russian army, Kossuth cursed and damned him as the traitor of the nation, with the consequence that Görgei was never able to vindicate himself and his decision until his death – in 1916. Such is the type of power of a political father: his curse is both personal and has an emotional impact on the nation’s fantasies that lasts longer than any other of his speeches. After the Ausgleich in 1867, two political fathers emerged, with an almost uncanny symbolic addendum: Count Kálmán Tisza ruled as Prime Minister for 15 years, and his son, Count István Tisza, in various roles, was the centre of Hungarian politics for yet another 15 years between 1903 and 1918. It must also be added, however, that the King, Francis Joseph, is another strong candidate for this role. Though he never was a political centre

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in Hungary, his conception and practice of ruling, and the extraordinarily long span of time over which he presided over his empire have contributed a lot to the solidification of the political father-model.13 Admiral Miklós Horthy unified the two roles, the active and the passive aspects of political centrism (his system was, nevertheless, a semi-presidential one, with a prime minister responsible both to him and the Parliament). Again, Horthy was also popularly referred to as ‘our father’.14 Unsurprisingly, the Communist leader János Kádár’s success, his undeniable and exceptional popularity in Soviet Hungary, flowed partly from his understanding of the importance of living up to this model. On the one hand, the dictatorial nature of the regime made it easier to him to consolidate his personal power, on the other hand, the ideological nature of the regime made it more difficult to uphold it. The legendary solution – ‘he who is not against us, is with us’ – was embraced by the society with relief. His protective powers (especially against the Soviets) were widely trusted. His opportunist leftism (the toleration of the second economy, even the supposed endorsement of market reforms, the small scale enrichissez-vous policy), plus his conservative, petty bourgeois, even philistine taste was met with support and satisfaction. No Communist leader was closer to the essential value orientation and preferences of the society as was he. His success in finding, fulfilling, even perfecting the political father-role has turned out to be one of the most formative and decisive preconditions of the post-Communist political life in Hungary. After the regime change, anti-Communism was the democratic consensus. Kádár’s heritage was rejected en masse within and by the new political elite. The return of the post-Communist party to power in 1994 was therefore a serious blow to this elite. Orbán, however, continued to steer clear of the Communists, thereby fixing his visibility and leadership. After 2002, the new return of the Socialist Party (still packed with politicians of the old regime) made him proclaim himself the sole and last hope to put down the ‘Communists’. As was explained, Orbán began to forge a political community. Contrary to many analysts’ view, it was ideologically very open. He abandoned his former catchword ‘polgár’ (which, in Hungarian, captures the meanings of bourgeois and citoyen, Besitz- and Bildungbürger) because, it appears, he found it insufficiently inclusive. He began to speak about the ‘little people’, or simply the ‘people’, on behalf of whom he declared and waged his wars against the banks, the IMF, the multinational companies, and, eventually, against the EU. He even embraced former Communists. His most loyal and frantic postCommunist journalists were recruited in these years. Arguably, his disposition and rhetoric of representing the men-in-the-street corresponds to a popular definition of populism. However, political scientists are usually puzzled by Orbán’s so-called ‘populism’ remaining effective during his years heading the government. Populists are generally considered to be antielitists and anti-governmentalists. Once they are in power, like in Greece or Spain, they quickly lose their popularity, notwithstanding their continued

202 Zoltán Balázs rhetoric against other elites (media, Brussels, Berlin, global forces, etc.). The reason for Orbán’s success that goes beyond the commonplaces of populismresearch is that he has apparently found out that the role Hungarians are especially sensitive to is that of the political father. There are at least three arguments for this that I shall briefly discuss, but there may be more. First, Orbán abandoned all strong ideological commitments. Famously, in 2014 he declared that he was building an illiberal democracy. This announcement provoked an uproar both in the European political elite as well as among his opponents in Hungary. But this statement is, or at least it was meant to be, basically nothing more but an expression of anti-ideologism, with a particular emphasis on liberalism as the mainstream ideology of the day. Orbán had come to think that liberal democracy amounted to a democracy dominated by a post-modernist-secularist-liberal ideology, whose genesis was in 1968, against which ‘traditional’ and ‘normal’ values and forms of life had to be protected. This is the sort of a relatively conservative (four years later, in 2018, he said that he was (in fact, he used to talk in first person plural: thus, ‘we are’) – following an old-style Christian democratic politics, yet by no means totalitarian or openly and aggressively oppressive attitude that has ever been so familiar to most Hungarians. ‘Normalcy’ is a watchword here (though it is used with even more emphasis by Orbán’s close ally, László Kövér, the Speaker of the House). He spoke about his political line being the natural centre of the electorate’s preferences. This is the ideological attitude of the familial leader who does not bother about the ideas and philosophical views of the family members provided that, and as long as, they all respect the core values and standards of the family and observe its traditions and manners. Secondly, a political father has a special relationship to his country. Orbán often tours the country, arriving in various provincial cities as someone who combines the gestures and attitudes of two iconic figures. On the one hand, he appears as a rich uncle, who draws the check-book out of his pocket, making grandiose promises to his local and loyal deputies and trustees (mayors, local Fidesz bosses) if they ‘cooperate’ with him to build up this country. On the other hand, and at the same time, or perhaps more markedly on more elevated occasions, Orbán takes on manners and makes gestures of a great statesman who has been sent to rebuild and re-found Hungary, again, conjuring up old icons of Hungarian history, from St Stephen, the founding king, to Béla IV who rebuilt the country after the Mongol invasion, to Governor Horthy who presided over the reconstruction of the post-Trianon Hungary, and, yes, even János Kádár under whose rule modern-style Hungary evolved and took shape. These and other historical images, profusely employed not only in rhetoric but in symbolic and constructive action, make for instance the argument of E. P. Soós (2015) hard to maintain: she compares Orbán’s and de Gaulle’s roles very usefully, and finds a lot of similarities but argues mistakenly that whereas the French president-general had an inclusive historical vision (a certain idea) of France, Orbán’s historical views are exclusivists and divisive. I think that the contrary is true: notwithstanding his divisive speeches and references to traitors

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and un-national political forces, the role he aims to fill is that of the unifier of the nation on the basis of a historical consensus as much as it is possible. Thirdly, it is very important to remember that a political father – being a father – is not expected to be perfect. Indeed, an advantage of a fatherly or motherly figure over a moralist politician is that he or she is thought of and accepted as a faulty human being who may have odd customs, personal tastes, hobbies, the satisfaction of which is partly of public interest. (Here, again, monarchies seem have the advantage over republics insofar as the human face of public life is mostly represented by the royal persons who often act as lightning-rods to attract and absorb a great amount of strong passions and emotions, including envy, resentment, curiosity and the like that most people reserve for public figures.) Orbán’s passion for sports, especially soccer, is widely known and pardoned. It may be considered as a weakness, but a familiar one, and this makes him more human and closer to normal human beings. He is almost permitted to have a direct and personal access to the public purse. As long as everyone is better off today than was yesterday, corruption is tolerated and forgiven.

From Proteus to the trickster One of the reasons why The Prince is and remains a controversial, even enigmatic work is that we do not exactly know the reason why Machiavelli wrote it. Political science and academic career being non-existent those times, and in view of his own career, including many personal and political vicissitudes, the book could have been written for various political purposes or with political intentions. Not matter how ‘modern’ or ‘rational/rationalist’ or ‘scientific’ the text may strike the reader, its bluntness, openness, even cruelty and shamelessness may be even more striking. There is something devilish and sacrilegious about it, notwithstanding the cool and plain style. But if we sense the devil and sacrilege, it is not necessarily our pious and moral sensibilities being provoked but sometimes something truly abnormal or peculiar. Being beyond good and evil conjures up images of non-human proportions. Nederman (1999) reads The Prince as a text written within a theological tradition. Fortuna may be a Roman goddess but in Chapter 25 we read this: [n]evertheless, that our free will may not be altogether extinguished, I think it may be true believe that fortune is the ruler of half of our actions, but that she allows the other half or thereabouts to be governed by us. (Nederman 1999: 91) Nederman argues that the phrase ‘free will’ is the liberum arbitrium of the Scholastic tradition and that aligning it with ‘fortune’ is much the same argument as the traditional one about free will and grace being co-necessary for achieving salvation. In this respect, another reference Nederman thinks is important in The Prince is the one repeatedly made to Moses whom

204 Zoltán Balázs Machiavelli holds in high regard for his superhuman leadership qualities. A prince should aspire for being the Prince. For as Nederman observes, the Prince is not simply a good leader but also a God-chosen person. Beyond fortune and virtù, the consent and blessing of Providence is necessary for political success.15 Therefore, Machiavelli’s prince truly possesses, in the words of Silvia Ruffo Fiore, a ‘sacral nature’: ‘As a leader the new prince embodies the biblical character of the prophet-king who has received a special divine call, a covenant from God to guide the destiny of the nation toward an appointed goal’. (Nederman 1999: 636) To this we must add, however, that Providence has been traditionally considered to be no less inscrutable. Despite the theological thesis about the inherent goodness or goodwill of Providence, fear, anxiety, and awe have been regarded as proper reactions to its inscrutability, crushing power and sovereign will. Now these are the qualities that make a political leader similar to Providence. As long as a prince remains a disciple, he must govern and rule according to the strategies recommended by Machiavelli: adaptation and virtù, serving and ruling Fortuna. However, and this is the final secret of power that Machiavelli does not reveal, not even perhaps to himself, the Prince may himself become the source of good and bad luck, of change and immobility, essentially, Fortuna. The inscrutability of Fortuna entails that she is unpredictable, capable of gentleness and cruelty, kindness and crudeness, indifference and pity. Such a vast range of possible actions and reactions are somehow beyond the framework of a normal character, at least as most people probably think of it. Such a character is suggestive of a superhuman power and prowess. A figure like the Prince can easily disarm and dumbfound his or her enemies, appearing on and disappearing from the stage at his or her pleasure, never seriously engaging with them. There are, I argue, many aspects of Orbán’s leadership that support a case for his transformation into a figure of this kind and stature. Let me review and discuss some of them. It is an old technique of power to change one’s aides regularly and to let them compete for the graces of the boss. Orbán has perfected this technique to the point where the rivalry and competition produces figures – journalists, minor and major politicians, mayors and local captains, professors and gurus, intimates and straw men – who do their jobs with a passion often raised to paroxysm.16 The whirls and whims of the power world he has created includes the unexpected rise of average politicians to the highest levels and their falling no less unexpectedly. Cabinet ministers are sent to the backbench (if they are members of the Parliament, which is not a requirement in Hungarian political system), never again having the opportunity to speak to him privately, in public humiliation, without ever making the reason for their disgraced state in public. This power technique has created a political culture in which people experience the realities of luck in relation to the actions and inactions of the supreme leader.

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Orbán’s views have changed regularly. His opponents lament this and criticize what they consider his infinite ideological opportunism. I have already referred to this both as a necessary tool in any politician’s weaponry to remain capable of adaptation; as well as a character trait of a political father who represents the unity and ‘wholeness’ of the nation, including all of its best ideas and traditions. What needs to be added here is, however, not the changing nature of Orbán’s views but the stress on the fact that he does not appear to be an opportunist at all: he always has very strong views on issues related to ideology.17 His famous ‘illiberalism’ is, as I pointed out, an anti-ideological slogan; however, by means of naming the other as an ideologue, one is also committed to do ideology of some sorts. This is a commonplace in conservatism studies: conservatism as a distinct political philosophy owes a lot to its opponents, including socialism and liberalism, notwithstanding its selfimage as a non-ideological ideology. Orbán is, however, not a conservative. That would be too strong a commitment for such a Protean character. Proteus, we should remember, was a Greek god who could change his figure at will, symbolizing the ever-flowing and moving waters of seas and rivers. The point here is that Proteus could, after all, be captured by Menelaus, in a particular form he has taken on. He is not invisible. Likewise, Orbán is capable of changing his views abruptly, yet always appearing as an oracle or prophet, who is in touch with the deepest and most essential processes about world politics. Orbán is able to dumbfound his opponents with an irresistible force. On 12 December 2017, after he had been questioned and attacked severely by various oppositional leaders in Parliament, one after the other, he was given the word by the Vice Speaker of the House. He stood up and as everyone was prepared to listen to his response, he said ‘Thank you, Mr Speaker. Ladies and gentlemen – merry Christmas!’ – and he sat down. There was laughter in the government benches, but laughter of the sort Hobbes had in mind when he wrote that laughter is a sudden glory, an exercise in superiority: ultimately, only the powerful can laugh truly. This sort of laughter humiliates the other – in this case, the whole opposition. Their insignificance, powerlessness and misery was condensed into two words, the words of peace and love, of reconciliation and benevolence. This was not just an insolent and offensive reaction but, and this is the deeper truth, a reaction that literally silenced the other with a light yet sovereign blow. It was the way of speaking that Machiavelli would have admired and in which he would have discovered the irresistible and unpredictable feminine force of Fortuna. But this laughter was partly an embarrassed one: even Orbán’s men did not laugh with relief but under some palpable compulsion. There was something abnormal about such a sovereign transgression of all political norms (which prescribes that the prime minister takes this hour of questions seriously), covered with humour. That is most probably the moment where the trickster appears. It is difficult to tell how a Protean god or political figure is related to the trickster.18 They are certainly similar in many respects, especially in virtue of their flexibility and volatility, the manifoldness of the masks they can use, from

206 Zoltán Balázs the intellectual and wise man (Orbán has a reputation of being a well-versed and educated man) to the most vulgar soccer fan (Orbán is often depicted as such). Further, their ability of escaping and evasion, of some ironic stance toward their own admirers/adorers may be another similarity. A Protean character or Fortuna herself does not really need followers or admirers, whereas a real politician must have such, and Orbán surely has and needs them. This relationship, however strongly it is dominated by the leader, is binding in both ways. A trickster needs audience, must be visible, perform spectacula. As Horvath and Szakolczai (2020) explain, he is a communicator between worlds, having knowledge of and from each yet never fully identifying himself with either, hence his role is not providing wisdom or initiation into any sort of knowledge (unlike Proteus) but to cause surprise, to embarrass, to puzzle as in the anecdote I told above, even his ‘followers’. Notwithstanding these miraculous and wonder-ful ways of acting, he is not himself an invisible force part of the game, of the drama. Games and dramas must have end, however. Unlike Fortuna and Proteus, tricksters are also mortals, and their audience waits for their end. One may play a chess game with Death or delay it with various tricks (as in many folktales), yet death is inevitable. Politicians are mortals, and the more they pretend not to be, the more interest people show in their ends. And that is the only but always effective trick of Death, the old and unwise trickster.

Conclusion No politician can usurp the role of Fortuna forever. There is no fatalism or determinism, nor omnipotence or omnicompetence implied in either the political father role or the model of the political Proteus, or the trickster. A political father has his own specific challenges and challengers, a sort of generational revolt is an obvious threat to his – by definition, personal – rule. A Protean figure can be captured by courageous and cunning Menelauses, as Homer tells us (Odyssey, ch. 4), and they sometimes turn out to be weak or empty agents. Turning into a trickster is a strong option, but it obliges the politician to stay on stage where there is always an end.

Notes 1 Besides his Hungarian biographies, the Polish journalist Igor Janke has written a non-scientific monograph about him (2015). I myself published an analysis of Orbán’s political views (Balazs 2015, the book contains further useful analyses related to the post 2010-Orbán Governments). Comparative analyses are also available, see for instance Thomas (2018) who compares him with Trump, Erdogan, Putin and Modi (of India). 2 Körösényi and Patkós (2017) have recently compared him and Silvio Berlusconi, using the categories developed by Mumford (2006). Their conclusion is that ‘Berlusconi and Orbán have been not just incumbents with striking similarities to each other, but they can be regarded as outstanding political leaders …:

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they have a manifest impact on our lives. In fact, Berlusconi and Orbán have changed the nature of democratic politics in their countries, even if the direction and quality of these changes are controversial and highly debated’ (613). Further analyses of his leadership include Körösényi et al. (2016) who argue that Orbán has been particularly successful in creating and solving crises, and Körösényi (2018) who studies his leadership within the plebiscitary tradition, with a particular emphasis on Weber. Soós (2015) proposed to compare Orbán to Charles de Gaulle. I deliberately avoid to cite and evaluate the exponentially growing literature on the nature of the new transition from ‘liberal’ democracies to authoritarian, illiberal, leader democracies, hybrid regimes, and so on. On the Hungarian case in particular, however, the reader may consult Bozóki (2015), Csillag and Szelenyi (2015), Enyedi (2016), Buzogány (2017), Bogaards (2018). Saulus turns into Paulus: conversions of this type require an extraordinary character. The fervency and zeal remains the same, though the cause is the opposite, and there is no question of credibility. But this is possible. The point is not that Orbán did nothing to recover the economy from the crisis, on the contrary (though his predecessor, PM Gordon Bajnai, did also not hesitate to take some harsh measures). Rather, it is that the global boom has favored him (and other Central European countries) in an unprecedented manner and extent. This is the luck factor. Debreczeni, a self-professed liberal conservative and a sworn enemy of the Orbán-regime, published a new version of his book in 2009 in which he predicted that Orbán would dismantle the whole system because it made it possible for him to lose the elections in 2002. His prophecies were generally held to be overstated, today, he is widely considered to be a Cassandra. Antall died in 1993 while in office. His party’s popularity was falling and there was little doubt that it would lose the upcoming elections. Nonetheless, Antall is reported to have considered his administration a sort of kamikaze government. His principles remained firm and he acted with courage and composure, though he was ready to make compromises. History made it impossible to tell whether he could have been able to re-strengthen the Right after 1994. There is a whole industry emerging and busy with explaining the nature of the new populist regimes all over the world, including Hungary. My interest is not political ontology here, and I am indifferent to the problem of how to label them properly. What is undeniable is that the new regime is, as it has itself aimed to be, different from the previous (pre-2010) one, and in view of the direction of its legislative and executive policies, it has curtailed various liberties, has extended the power of the central government, made the Prime Minister’s role and discretion greater than ever, and shunned liberal democracy, trying to establish a non-liberal (populist? elitist? Christian?) democracy. On the Hungarian ‘transition’ in particular, however, the reader may consult Bozóki (2015), Csillag and Szelényi (2015), Enyedi (2016), Buzogány (2017), Bogaards (2018). His biographers – Debreczeni included – usually cite Orbán’s army service (one year prior to the university studies, as was mandatory in Hungary) as a decisive impact on his political development. The ‘system’ revealed its utter corruption, stupidity, violence and nihilism to him and others. The year was 1981 when an invasion of Poland by the ‘brotherly and friendly’ Warsaw Pact countries was a not entirely impossible option. The electoral system was different from the one in force today. In individual districts without a majority winner (50% plus one vote), a second round was held. Orbán rallied all ‘battlefield’ districts and almost changed the outcome. His campaign has become legendary, and it was these two weeks that his charisma began to radiate. Tens of thousands came under his spell, and this explains why he was able to defend himself against his intra-party critics. Despite the loss, his authority became stronger than ever.

208 Zoltán Balázs 10 Gabor Illés (2016) usefully compares Orbán’s rhetoric with his predecessor’s, Gordon Bajnai’s approach, providing ample evidence for the striking change in Orbán’s whole attitude toward politics as such, too. 11 In his taboo-breaking book, the sociologist Elemer Hankiss devoted a whole essay to the inverse phenomenon of paternalism which he named infantilism. He cited various social and social psychological phenomena to illustrate the pervasiveness and prevalence of this infantilism in Hungarian society, and placed into historical context. He even realized that infantilism is not reducible to mere dependence: it also involves pathological gestures of revolt and rejection. And he also referred to the image of the ‘political father’ but did not analyse it in depth: the political overtones would have been too strong. See Hankiss (1983). 12 The patriarchalism that has contributed to the model of the political father in Hungary has probably a lot to with the curious fact that Hungarian politics is one, if not the most, masculine political culture in the EU, including the post-Communist countries. Not a single woman was ever a Prime Minister or President of the Republic or the Chairman of the Constitutional Court or the Curia (Supreme Court). Only once did the Parliament have a female speaker. Orbán’s cabinets included at most one or two, usually insignificant, female ministers. On this issue see Ilonszki and Vajda (2019). 13 It is also telling that Francis Joseph could have figured as a perfect pater familias as well, especially in view of his particularly tragic family life, in which violent death was the rule, rather than the exception. But his political fatherhood eclipsed this role: hence the two roles are distinct. 14 In the Austro-Hungarian army, new Hungarian recruits usually called their seniors ‘our fathers’. Needless to say that this did not involve a familial-trusting relationship. ‘Fathers’ had to be served. Even during the compulsory military service of this author in 1984–1985, referring to various commanders as ‘your/our father’ or even ‘daddy’ was not exceptional. But it was never a reference to an amiable character, either. 15 Of course, it is abundantly clear that Machiavelli was very serious about religion and its tremendous effects for human beings and their communities. That is not the point. The interesting issue is whether Machiavelli did hold some religious beliefs regarding Providence, for instance. 16 There is no objective proof for this, of course. However, it is highly unusual, for instance, for a municipal assembly to declare its support for the government on, say, issues of migration policy. Orbán’s journalists have founded the Civil Cooperation Forum that serves as the largest umbrella organization in charge of arranging grotesque demonstrations against Brussels (with slogans such as ‘We shall not be a colony!’). These demonstrations go under the head ‘Peace March’. The anti-Soros campaign featured news (in the state television) about George Soros having expressed his will to kill his mother. Cases of such paroxysm are abundant. 17 He could always find and hire smart household ideologues who could explain and discuss his ever-changing views with great astuteness and enthusiasm. Some analysts and commentators surmise that these ideologues can also exert some formative influence on his views. For instance, Enyedi (2016) though that Gyula Tellér was such a figure. 18 See on this Agnes Horvath and Arpad Szakolczai’s books and papers, the most recent one being a summarizing monograph (2020).

References Airaksinen, Timo. (2009) ‘Fortune Is a Woman. Machiavelli on Luck and Virtue. Essays in Honor of Hannu Nurmi.’ Homo Oeconomicus, 26(3/4): 551–568.

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Balazs, Zoltan. (2015) ‘Conservative Reflections: Plebeianism Instead of Conservatism.’ In The Second Term of Viktor OrbánBeyond Prejudice and Enthusiasm, eds. Johhn O’Sullivan, Kalman Pocza. Budapest: BL Nonprofit Kft. and Social Affairs Unit in association with the Danube Institute. Bogaards, Matthijs. (2018) ‘De-democratization in Hungary: Diffusely Defective Democracy.’ Democratization. 10.1080/13510347.2018.1485015. Borja, Anthony Lawrence A. (2016) ‘Virtù, Fortuna and Statecraft: A Dialectical Analysis of Machiavelli.’ Kritike 1: 192–212. Bozóki, András. (2015) ‘Broken Democracy, Predatory State, Selective Nationalism.’ In The Hungarian Patient, eds. Péter Krasztev and Jon Van Til. Budapest: Central European University Press, 3–36. Buzogány, Aron. (2017) ‘Illiberal Democracy in Hungary: Authoritarian Diffusion or Domestic Causation?’ Democratization. 10.1080/13510347.2017.1328676. Csillag, Tamás and Szelényi, Iván. (2015) ‘Drifting from Liberal Democracy: Traditionalist/Neoconservative Ideology of Managed Illiberal Democratic Capitalism in Post-communist Europe.’ Intersections East European Journal of Society and Politics 1: 4–6. 10.17356/ieejsp.v1i1.28. Debreczeni, József. (2002) Orbán Viktor. Budapest: Osiris. Debreczeni, József. (2009) Arcmás. Budapest: Nolan-Libro. Enyedi, Zsolt. (2016) ‘Paternalist Populism and Illiberal Elitism in Central Europe.’ Journal of Political Ideologies 1: 9–25. Hankiss, Elemér. (1983) Társadalmi csapdák. Diagnózisok. Budapest: Magvető. Herman, Lise Esther. (2016) ‘Re-evaluating the Post-communist Success Story: Party Elite Loyalty, Citizen Mobilization and the Erosion of Hungarian Democracy.’ European Political Science Review 2: 251–284. Horvath, Agnes and Szakolczai, Arpad. (2020) The Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil: Tricksterology. Abingdon: Routledge. Illés, Gábor. (2016) ‘Válságkonstrukciók. Orbán Viktor És Bajnai Gordon Válságértelmezésének Összehasonlítása.’ Replika 3(98): 47–65. Ilonszki, Gabriella and Vajda, Adrien. (2019) ‘Women’s Substantive Representation in Decline: The Case of Democratic Failure in Hungary.’ Gender and Politics 2: 240–260. Janke, Igor. (2015) Forward! - The story of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Budapest: Aeramentum. Körösényi, András. (2018) ‘The Theory and Practice of Plebiscitary Leadership: Weber and the Orbán Regime.’ East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 2: 280–301. Körösényi, András, Illés, Gábor and Metz, Rudolf. (2016) ‘Contingency and Political Action: The Role of Leadership in Endogenously Created Crises.’ Politics and Governance 2: 91–103. Körösényi, András and Patkós, Veronika. (2017) ‘Variations for Inspirational Leadership: The Incumbency of Berlusconi and Orbán.’ Parliamentary Affairs 3: 611–632. Krekó, Péter and Enyedi, Zsolt. (2018) ‘Orbán’s Laboratory of Illiberalism.’ Journal of Democracy 3: 39–51. Machiavelli, Niccolo. (1950) The Prince and the Discourses. New York: The Modern Library. Mumford, Michael D. (2006) Pathways to Outstanding Leadership: A Comparative Analysis of Charismatic, Ideological, and Pragmatic Leaders. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

210 Zoltán Balázs Nederman, Cary J. (1999) ‘Amazing Grace: Fortune, God, and Free Will in Machiavelli’s Thought.’ Journal of the History of Ideas 4: 617–638. Soós, Eszter Petronella. (2015) ‘Comparing Orbánism and Gaullism: The Gaullist Physiognomy of Orbán’s Post-2010 Hungary.’ Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review 1: 91–108. Thomas, Casper. (2018) De autoritaire verleiding. The Netherlands: Atlas Contact.

11 Duplicity, corruption, and exceptionalism in the Romanian experience of modernity Marius Ion Bența

Introduction This chapter addresses the problem of trickster leadership in an attempt at understanding the schismogenic mechanism of the Post-Byzantine world and its long-lasting effects, with a particular focus on the Romanian experience of modernity. The problems of power and leadership lie at the foundation of the political dimension of society. In liminal situations, political power is among the most important things that are being turned upside down, and such an inversion can be a symptom of liminality to the anthropologist. But what happens to leadership in situations of permanent liminality, such as the case of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe? The political discourse produced in Western liberal democracies usually looked at these societies as either immature or diseased regimes in need of proper training or care (Ioan et al. 2005; Johnston 2005; Mungiu-Pippidi 2015). However, once one sees Western capitalism as just another ‘ism’, just another type of political religion (Voegelin 1999: 19–73) or just another world sunk in permanent liminality (Szakolczai 2016b, 2017b: 231–248; Wydra 2000), one realises how much similarity and symmetry there exists between the two worlds. Indeed, all along the Cold War, the ideological doctrine prevalent in Communist countries kept seeing the West as a highly corrupt, decadent, immature and diseased bourgeois society, following up on the Western avant-garde. Before stepping into the question stated above, let us circumscribe the sphere of the political and the problem of leadership in its generality. From a wide perspective of political anthropology, reflexive sociology and philosophical anthropology, which I assume here, the political needs to be understood not merely as the set of phenomena we typically refer to as the world of politics, governance and policies, but as a wider sphere of human experience that has to do with power. The political is concerned mainly with relations of power and domination, yet it is also related to the life of the polis (i.e. the stock of behaviour shared with, and visible to, the others). To start with the second dimension of the political, one can say that this is the one that has transformed it, in modernity, into a set of practices of derision and comedy (Alexander et al. 2006; Bohn and Wilharm 2015; Szakolczai

212 Marius Ion Bența 2013a), that is, a type of experience that is eminently deceitful, insincere, tricky and corrupt. But do political experience and political action belong invariably to the world of the trickster and the sophist? Is there a genuine political sphere prior to corruption? The existence of a charismatic and wise Statesman cannot be possible outside such a sphere, in which the life of the polis takes place in harmony with the order of the world – as Plato or Voegelin would put it – in plain sight, under the light of the Sun and under the scrutiny of the ‘third actor’: the witness or the community, which in its corrupt version, is the modern ‘public’ of ‘public sphere’ (Szakolczai 2013a: 1–40). As the first dimension of the political, power naturally involves a transfer or delegation of attributes, resources, glory and freedom of action to a leader, setting up distinctions, as Georg Simmel had formulated it (Simmel 1950) between masters and servants, superior and inferior, dominators and dominated etc. Yet, genuine leadership involves something more: as the epitome of the leader, the king is called not only to be honoured as superior, but to provide for his people and to lead the way. To Ancient Israel, YHWH, the only legitimate King of the people, does just that (Taubes 2009: 19); in the long journey of the Exodus, God leads the people through the wilderness and feeds them with mana. A leader is supposed to be on the side of his or her people both in ordinary times (symbolised here by meal time) and in extraordinary times (symbolised here by the time of walking through the wilderness). While trickster leadership is amoral, disconnected from transcendence, uprooted from truth and akin to chaos, genuine political leadership (whether such a thing may be more than just a Platonic ideality or not) is rooted in truth and lives in harmony with the cosmos. For this reason, parrhēsia or truth-telling, which is essentially a genuine political practice (Foucault 2011: 57–69), is not an attribute of modern politics and governance, as these have become disconnected from truth and morality and have become subordinated to reason via secular liberalism and rationalist philosophy (Morgenthau 1946: 19), thus making all political action ‘potentially immoral’. All Communist regimes share not a complete lack of concern for truth but an unrestrained liberty to do whatever it takes to attain the interests of the regime. The Romanian experience of Communism, which has lasted for over four decades until December 1989, bore the mark of duplicity, as the official discourse couldn’t be farther away from the reality experienced by the people, and, by the terrible history of torture that took place in its first decades in numerous prisons and ‘reeducation centres’, the regime proved that it could make use methodically and effectively of its unrestrained liberty (see, for example, Cesereanu 2001; Ierunca 1990). Can then one say with certainty that Romania’s Communist leaders Gheorghe GheorghiuDej and Nicolae Ceaușescu can be seen as good examples of what a trickster leader means? Many people in Romania today would not hesitate to say ‘yes’. However, calling a certain political leader a trickster always involves a risk of hasty labelling. Gheorghiu-Dej, who had ruled the country between 1947 and 1965, did not impose a personality cult in the manner of his successor, Ceaușescu, and much of the worship in his time was oriented towards the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who was

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the main moral author of Romania’s terror regime, which included a large network of prisons that was used to eliminate political dissent. Ceaușescu, on the other hand, enjoyed initially a certain support from the population and from the Western powers due to his clear resistance to Soviet influence, yet ended up by migrating his country to what was arguably the harshest dictatorship in Eastern Europe. If one looks at the longer row of political leaders of Romania before and after the Communist regime, the problem becomes even more difficult, as most of them have enjoyed both credit and discredit from one camp or another. The problem cannot be understood if considered in terms of individual ‘trickster case studies’ but rather in terms of ‘trickster political experience’ and from a genealogical perspective. My argument is that the peculiar type of trickster leadership of Ceaușescu’s type of National-Communism was the resultant of an intersection – or a clash – of two opposite drives: a domestic type of corruption and a global type of corruption. The drive of civilisation is a permanent quarrel between two tricksters (i.e. two equally corrupt avatars of the Byzantine hubris), because the main engine of modernity, ‘civilisation’, is constituted as an agonistic drive following this schismogenic mechanism. This mechanism is significant for understanding the problem of corruption in modernity from a genealogical perspective: first, because corruption and trickster leadership was not an isolated phenomenon of Romania’s Communist past, but had resilient manifestations in the post-Communist era as a hysteresis effect (Neumann and Pouliot 2011: 105–137; Sakwa 2016: 1–26); second, because it had its own roots in the Byzantine experience, which was equally important to the genesis of political modernity at large. Corruption – in the contemporary sense of the word – may be quasiuniversal, from Asian countries to South America, southern Europe, eastern Europe or Africa. In Europe, it may be an indexical feature of the east–west and north–south divides. As of 2019, the perception of corruption in Romania was among the highest in the European Union (Transparency International 2018). Keeping in mind that such measures of corruption are highly subjective – given that the phenomenon belongs by definition to the underground, grey strata of society and is virtually impossible to be grasped objectively – one could say that Romanians see their country as an exemplary dossier in the Modernity vs. Corruption case. Romanians tend to believe their country to be exceptionally corrupt in virtually every sphere where some form of leadership is involved – from Government and Parliament to the management of state companies, public institutions, police, Justice, education, health, etc. Bribery, nepotism and clientelism are believed to dominate economic, social and political relations. The anti-corruption war was exceptionally spectacular in Romania in the past 15 years, having attracted national and international acclaim. The Communist dictatorship was exceptionally harsh in Romania, with high restrictions in the quality of life, food supply, freedom of speech, freedom of movement etc. The fall of Romania’s Communist regime was exceptionally violent and bloody in December 1989, unlike any other country in the Eastern European block. One

214 Marius Ion Bența is then compelled to ask oneself, what is the meaning of this type of exceptionalism or, rather, negative type of exceptionalism? To Romanians, it is rather commonplace to see the problem of corruption related to the post-Byzantine era and the Phanariote rulers. Corruption is typically associated with such dimensions as Balcanism, Orientalism, anachronism, barbarism and dumb resistance to the ‘graces’ of modernisation. However, the idea that modern politics might itself be a peculiar form of ‘corruption’ equally rooted in the Byzantium – as the book of Szakolczai (2013a) shows it – leads one to a puzzling self-contradiction. The genesis of modernity, understood as a long-term process, not just as early or late modernity, owes a lot to the Byzantine experience in the manifestations of politics, the market, or cultural life, and the Byzantium ‘has contributed in a permanent and positive way to the history of humanity’ (Meyendorff 2010: 8). In this light, the fight between the two antagonistic drives on the political arena, which quarrel over the best path for the ‘Romanian spirit’, very much resembles the quarrel between two characters in Commédia dell’Arte, as explained by Szakolczai (2013a: 207–209). The peculiarity of the Arlecchino–Pierrot quarrel is that it never ends if one remains caught in the drama and is unable to remove the actors’ masks. Indeed, the tension is just as vivid and painful in contemporary Romania as it was in her early days of a modern state.

The trickster in post-Byzantium The space of the Romanian identity is highly liminal in many respects: historically, culturally, socially, geographically and politically. Historically, the formation of the Romanian state took place in two liminal moments when several empires have disintegrated.1 Culturally and socially, this position implied a situation of permanent awareness, suspicion and ambivalence towards the other while being subject to a diverse set of influences from other groups and cultures. Geographically and politically, Romanians are aware that they are a people at the confluence of large tectonic imperial areas, which translated, even to this day, in a general feeling of living at the margin of the political realm, of living in ‘a remote borderland’ (e.g. Transylvania was a remote borderland of Austro-Hungary; Moldova was a remote borderland of the Russian or the Soviet empires; Wallachia was a remote borderland of the Ottoman Empire). In this sense, Romanians have inherited a peculiar complex of marginality and a feeling that important things always take place ‘elsewhere,’ not ‘here’, which translates into a peculiar form of ‘negative exceptionalism.’ Living at the margins of ‘civilisation’, Romanians have constantly struggled with a high sense of corruption, which says that their world is corrupt and that there isn’t much to do about it.2 Significant for this mind-set are the words of the French political leader Raymond Poincaré, which have been used by the writer Mateiu Caragiale as a motto for one of his novels: ‘What do you want, here we are at the gates of the Orient, where all things are

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being taken lightly …’. The notion of living in a corrupt, decadent and awry world is pervasive in Romanian culture and the condition of ‘Byzantinism’ was widely portrayed in Romanian works of fiction, drama and film. In 1868, the historian and political leader Titu Maiorescu published a paper where he coined an expression that was to become famous and indicative for what was seen as a peculiarity of Romanian modernity: ‘forms without substance’,4 which could be explained as a particular tendency to formally embrace the ‘modern’ at an institutional level while preserving more or less unaltered the ‘local’ and ancient specificities (Maiorescu 1874: 321–372). As he was a man of letters, Maiorescu applied a metaphor that was related to the literary skills of authors in a time when Romanians were encouraged to produce more works of value in literature and to compensate for the marginal character of the Romanian spirit, which was seen in competition for the grand European fountains of intellect. The antinomy form vs. substance points to Plato’s conception of form (eidos)5 and may correspond to the antinomy syntagmatic expression vs. semantic content; the expression accounts for a writer’s craft of saying things in a beautiful and polished way, yet without communicating much, that is, without ‘substance’; in contemporary media, the distinction refers to the separation of form (e.g. visual appearance) and content (i.e. text). Maiorescu published his paper nearly a decade after the birth of the first Romanian state and 50 years before the creation of the largest Romanian state in terms of territory. His conception of culture and civilisation was in line with the ideals en vogue at the time in Europe and among Romanian intellectuals:6 progress was as a necessary and inextricable drive of society, and Europe played an essential role in bringing light to uncivilised peoples. Romania, too, needed to be drawn out of her ‘oriental barbarism’ – a scar of her having lived for centuries in the sphere of the post-Byzantine world – by adopting modern institutions, laws and forms of culture. Maiorescu noted that Western forms of rationality, precision, efficiency and time management, as they found their expression in economy, jurisprudence or political organisation, were met in Romania with duplicity-loaded resistance. He argued that, given this strong conspicuous tension, progress was not to be imposed and grafted artificially upon Romanian society, but rather nurtured and cultivated organically. Beginning with the Herderian perspective, modern anthropology gives little credit to Eurocentrism and the domination of the West, and would qualify Maiorescu’s progressivist vision of culture as rather idealistic. However, the tension concerning the peculiarity of the Romanian exceptionalism, in which Romanians tend to see themselves as either exceptionally great or exceptionally corrupt and failed as a nation (Alexe 2015; Mihăilescu 2017: 43–71) is as strong today as it was in Maiorescu’s time in the form of contrasting views on progress, tradition, globalisation, EU integration, corruption, etc. Maiorescu’s syntagm, which today one could understand as a duplicity-based mode of resisting modernity, was a clear formulation of the principle of negative exceptionalism of the Romanian people,7 which is perceived today as 3

216 Marius Ion Bența an acute pain caused by a unique and profound inability to embracing the values of civilisation and to finding the syntony and synergy necessary for the collective engagement in a common project.

The ‘politics of duplicity’ Duplicity is a classical deception technique that involves a double side of speech in the form of incongruence between words and actions or between what is being spoken and what is really meant. Duplicity means doublespeak, half-truth or the partial hiding of a truth within the multiple meanings created by jokes, ridicule or sweet lies. Duplicity is a device of the trickster and the double-faced god Janus. In Victor Turner’s anthropological terminology (Turner 1975: 37), it is a symptom of a certain lack of meaning or a ‘disharmonic’ process. Such an attitude may stem out of a situation of perpetual exile; it is like a rite of passage that was never concluded, a failed conversion, a fake transformation, a state of not being in order, or a constant state of waiting. In times of exile, duplicity and cheating can be effective survival stratagems (Scott 1985). In all Communist regimes, artists made use widely of duplicity to evade censorship. The abundance of eclectic forms of expression in modern literature or the arts cannot be explained if one does not admit that modernity, too, is metaphorically a type of exilic period. Maiorescu’s syntagm implies not only a presumable inability of Romanians to adapt to a truly Western set of values and institutions, but a whole attitude when confronted with the persuasion of progressivist forces as well. Romanians did not show direct resistance to the novel forms of social, political and economic life, but proved an inclination towards embracing their vocabulary and shallow structures while refraining from adopting their substantive structures. This attitude of political duplicity, compromise and ambivalence is peculiar to someone confronted with an inacceptable, yet unavoidable, situation. It is somehow the opposite of the duplicity as dramatic performance of a political actor in front of the public: rather, it is the duplicity that a vassal, subaltern or subordinate community chooses to adopt as a survival strategy when confronted with an authority whose legitimacy they don’t fully recognise. This translates to a constant ambivalence at the level of the exilé: your leader is both your provider and your enemy, a stranger to you and your protector at the same time. It is the typical exilic condition of Christians living the times of persecution in the Roman Empire, when they were forced to hide their faith and communicate religious stories through eclectic icons, the condition of Jews living in perpetual exile while hiding their faith within eclectic practices or the condition of those living for some reasons in the underground strata of society and hiding their discourse under carefully chosen words. Living in the post-Byzantine world meant for Romanians – as for other Christian nations – a constant fight to preserving their Christian faith under Ottoman rule. The country became independent in 1859, but could Romanians

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get rid of their feeling of living in ‘exile’ and of their deep duplicity practices? The main pressure for them was to become ‘Westerners’, to modernise and to progress, and it is likely that they took this pressure as just another form of exile. In fact, all the periods that followed – the Interbellum, the Communist regime and the post-Communist era – showed the presence of this exilic, duplicity-based condition in various avatars of the conflict between ‘global’ and domestic forces. As mentioned above, duplicity is an essential feature of modernity, too. The West is torn between dichotomies and paradoxical drives, such as the permanent fight between global and local tendencies at various levels of the social life: governance policies, culture, habits and everyday life. The march towards globalisation appears to be quasi-universal, and, at the same time, the forms of resisting globalisation and promoting localism tend to spread, too, in the form of social movements or cultural trends. The paradoxical nature of the problem is conspicuous here, given that those forms of localism that have been imported from a cultural space into another defy the very essence of ‘localism’ and appear as just another avatar of globalisation. As a drive, an impetus, a revolutionary force or ‘spirit’ of modernity, globalisation exhibits features common to what Voegelin called ‘secular religions’. Szakolczai has linked the spread of this wave of changes with the ascetic practices of traditional monasticism (Szakolczai 2013b: 1–17), seeing the West as moving towards a ‘global monastery’. He argued that the contemporary phenomenon of globalisation can be understood as the expansion of a set of inner-worldly ascetic practices, in Weberian sense, which have originated in the Western monastic tradition. The ‘global monastery’ is a world plunged in permanent liminality, and the forty years of communism constitute the best case study for understanding its mechanism. While colonialism was legitimated as a distorted emanation of the Gospel’s missionary project, modern globalisation was an emanation of the secular religion of neoliberal democracy. One of the striking facts about this phenomenon is, apart from the apparent tendency towards a hegemony of the global, a dialectics of the global/local interplay and an agonism-based kit for ‘doing modernity business’. Wherever it became manifest to a higher or a lesser extent, globalisation appeared not so much as a uniformisation of the secular forms of cultic expression, but rather as a ‘polytheistic’ playground where a plurality of secular cults and novel structures of collective worship – such as nationalisms, leftist ideologies, right-wing ideologies, consumerism, brand cults, music cults, film cults, economic cults etc. – coexist in agonistic dialogue, negotiation, competition, trade, mutual tolerance or conflict. As a framework for the ‘flourishing’ of a series of secular religions – or, to paraphrase Szakolczai, a series of monastic orders –, this playground finds itself in denial of its Jewish and Christian roots (see Kelsen 2012) in spite of its inheriting massively from these roots, such as the linear conception of time, the celebration of a future eschaton and the steady cultivation of divinisation in many spheres of human experience (Horvath et al. 2019).

218 Marius Ion Bența The ‘global monastery’ did not appear overnight. In the centennial history of the Romanian society’s existence, the dynamics of the global/domestic antinomy can be highlighted across a number of specific time periods.

Romania in the ‘global monastery’ The first period refers to the process of modernisation of Romania during the first decades of the young Romanian state. The global/domestic antinomy translates here into a clash between two ‘monastic movements’: the urge for modernisation and the ‘resistance’ of traditionalist forces – mostly Orthodox Christianity at the time. Soon, the new spirit of the nation – which had been crystallised following the German model and the Herderian conception of the Volksgeist – acquired the attributes of a political religion inspired by both Russian phyletism and German National-Socialism. The Iron Guard, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu’s far-right movement, was the result of a schismogenic mechanism. Nationalism – itself an emanation of the French Revolution – gave birth in Romania, on the one hand, to a West-oriented, progressivist type of love for one’s nation supported by such intellectuals as Eugen Lovinescu (1924) and, on the other hand, to an Oriental, conservative type of worship of the nation supported by such scholars as the historian Nicolae Iorga or the writer Nichifor Crainic. A particular niche of the latter was dominated by the figure of the philosopher Nae Ionescu, the mentor of a young generation of intellectuals, such as Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran and Constantin Noica. The group showed a certain affinity with the ideals of the Iron Guard, even though they were not members of Codreanu’s movement. The Guard was heavily loaded with a specific form of this-worldly asceticism. A controversial article that lists the ideals of the Guard had the name of Eliade as author (yet Eliade denied having written it) explicitly invokes the ideal of a monastic-ascetic life elevated at the scale of the whole nation: ‘For never before has a whole nation lived a Christian revolution with its whole being, … never before has a whole people chosen as their life ideal monasticism and as their bride – death.’8 The motto chanted by Iron Guard followers, ‘Let the Captain make a country like the holy sun in the sky’ (Tismaneanu 1998: 47), strikingly reminds one of the Messianic appeal to Tsar Ivan III by the Monk Philotheos of Pskov in sixteenth-century Russia: ‘Of all kingdoms in the world, it is in thy royal domain that the holy Apostolic Church shines more brightly than the sun’ (Berdyaev 1972: 10). To desire for one’s country to be as shiny ‘as the sun in the sky’ is common to patriotism everywhere, and may be just an innocent use of a poetic device; yet, at the same time, it may be symptomatic of the worshipping of a nation in the process of self-divinisation (see Horvath et al. 2019): the glory of a country, a state or a nation is meant to inspire feelings of awe, fear and gratefulness similar to the numinous experience. The source of this schismogenic mechanism has been theorised by Hobbes and Rousseau, as Wydra explains:

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Hobbes refers to a sacred oath as the expression of the fear of that invisible power, which is the worship of God … Rousseau’s solution for taming the self-destructive force of self-love (amour propre) resorts to patriotism by the worship of the collective god of the nation … (Wydra 2008: 7) The second period, that of the first Communist regime in Romania, was marked by a massive attempt to imposing the Soviet-style socialism in all the dimensions of social life. The ‘cosmopolite’ (i.e. internationalist) version of Romanian Communism, which was dominated by the figure of the Prime Minister Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, can be seen as a mode of imposing the global over the domestic, and the consequences of this era upon the Romanian society are difficult to assess, given that the credibility of social research at the time was greatly affected by the ideology and the practices of the regime. As a particular type of global monasticism, cosmopolite socialism launched a war against all the movements that existed in the country and were not in line with Soviet ideology. A vast network of prisons and forced labour camps was developed throughout the country on the model of the Soviet Gulag meant to destroy the elites of the country and to create a nation-wide carceral society metaphorically ‘centred around its prisons’ in a paradoxical situation in which the centre and the wall had their meanings turned upside down, as I have argued elsewhere (Benţa 2018: 68). This ‘total city’, as Constantin Dumitresco (1980) called it hinting with irony at St Augustine’s ‘City of God’, is a place where values have been turned upside down, human bonds have been broken, the spirit of community has been perverted and the natural order of the world has been disrupted in its most intimate tissue. By making use of brute force and electoral frauds, the new power imposed itself as a regime that could not be trusted by the people who were forced to live under the authority of a despotic rule in a corrupt universe and to develop duplicity skills as survival strategies. Unlike Russia, which had experienced the Bolshevik Revolution as a genuine movement (Berdyaev 1972), in Romania as elsewhere in Eastern Europe socialism was brought as an imported revolution which was congruent with hypocrisy and duplicity. The official Messianic narrative of the liberating proletariat could only meet the contrasting reality of an oppressed proletariat and a frustrated peasantry, stirring up hope for a true liberation that would come, obviously, from the West or America. It was a general feeling of having been left behind and of constant waiting, for the return of the saviours proved to be forever delayed, a feeling similar to that of Christians waiting for the parousia of Christ, which paralleled the eschatological waiting of the official narrative, which claimed that Socialism would be followed inevitably by a New Era of happiness and welfare called Communism. The third period, posthumously labelled as ‘National-Communism’, started with the tendency of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej to distance himself from USSR after the death of Stalin – a drive that was common to the whole Socialist bloc – and continued with the policies of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime. This

220 Marius Ion Bența could be seen as a return to a cultural framework based on nationhood and tradition, yet the means and practices of the regime showed that the new ‘monastic life’ was imported from alien cultural spaces of the socialist bloc, such as China. The artificial character of the ‘localism’ that was promoted or tolerated during the second era of the Romanian Communism was obvious in the enthusiasm with which of the post-Communist Romanian society rushed to give up much of its domestic specificity during the post-1989 ‘transition’ period. The population at large generally distrusted the Communist ideology, a fact noted by American anthropologists Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery, who realised that Romanians developed a set of skills to help them maintain an effective façade and duplicity (Kligman 1998; Kligman and Verdery 2011; Verdery 1991). The name of Nicolae Ceaușescu is today associated with the harshest of the Communist dictatorships that has plagued Eastern Europe. The author of a long-term program of governance that spanned over 24 years and produced huge changes in the Romanian society, economy and culture, Ceaușescu was also, in the second part of his regime, the object of a self-imposed personality cult. The Romanian dictator was undoubtedly devoid of personal charisma, as opposed to other dictators who possessed genuine abilities to captivating the masses. However, as it is generally risky to label a particular political leader as a clear trickster or a purely charismatic personality, Romania’s last dictator is no exception. The level of frustration and hatred that the population had accumulated against him was immense (for a while, after the fall of his regime, his name was written uncapitalised in Romanian newspapers), and yet, decades after the 1989 events, the level of genuine nostalgia for his regime is surprisingly high (INSCOP 2015). Ceaușescu’s era was different from the previous one not only in what the national element was concerned. Among other changes, it marked the end of the Romanian Gulag and brought a wave of fresh economic development, massive industrialisation, deep changes at social level as well as a certain cultural ‘flourishing’, which, in spite of an effective censorship, was facilitated partly due to a limited openness of the regime towards the West. During this era, ‘the global’ was ambivalently synonymous with either the desired Communist future – as there was an irresistible desire of Socialism to acquire global hegemony spreading like a viral infection (Horvath 2008: 28) – or with the corrupt, bourgeois, and imperialist West, which was no less desiring of revolutionary expansion. If one tried to make a short inventory of the ascetic-monastic practices of the regime, the first that would come to one’s mind were food scarcity, shortage of basic goods, obsession with hard work and frugal life and a very limited freedom of movement. Like a Medieval monastery, Communist Romania was a walled-in country. But the Ceaușescu era brought inner-worldly asceticism to a new level. Just as the life of a monastery involves an exercise at collective synchronisation of emotions and states of mind by praying together at the same

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time, the penetration of radio and television in the country in the 1960s and 1970s has created the situation where virtually a whole nation received the news at the same time, was sad at the same time, laughed at the same time and listened to odes and songs at the same time. In this line, perhaps it should not come as a surprise the fact that the 1989 Revolution against the Ceaușescu regime was the first media-driven revolution. Yet, the Romanian Revolution did not kill its monsters. The truth about the sacrificial event that took place in December 1989 is still in the dark. As it tends to happen with most revolutions, the monster just turned around in its nest. If there exists any certainty about the Romanian 1989 Revolution three decades after the events, it is the fact that the new structures of power have emerged using trickster stratagems out of the old ones. The problem with the 1989 events – the passage from a Communist dictatorship to a democratic regime – was that it meant the switch of a political regime floating in permanent liminality (socialism) with another political regime floating in another sea of permanent liminality (secular neo-liberal democracy): Ciomoş (2017: 7–14) noted that the 1989 moment was the replacement of a revolution with another, which risked placing Romania into a permanent ‘state’ of exception. In the fourth period, the ‘global’ began being synonymous with such desirable adjectives as ‘European’, ‘Western’ or ‘modern.’ In the post-1989 era, ‘Europa’ was a powerful keyword carrier of salvation-related meanings all over Eastern Europe (Drakulić 2001). Citizens of these countries, who had experienced Communism, shared a quasi-unanimous desire of turning into ‘Europeans,’ which translated ambivalently into their country joining the European Union, their country becoming more European in terms of values, policies or life-style, getting a chance to emigrate or simply getting a chance to embrace Western customs, culture and fashion. The ‘European dream’ seemed to come true for Romanians in 2007, when their country became a member of the EU; by that time, a large population exodus had already taken place; the Western life-style was adopted particularly in large cities, which deepened the contrast between large cities on the one hand and small cities and rural areas on the other hand. In this period, one could see the professionalisation of many spheres of activity along with the commodification of a higher realm of human experience. The media (Pro TV in particular in the 1990s), were an important carrier of the new consumerism-oriented values, which included its self-subversive stratagems. A whole new elite started coming to life and a whole new underground was invented to subvert the values of the new elite. For example, the first hip-hop band in Romania to enjoy wide success was BUG Mafia, who promoted a culture that was completely new in the country: for the first time, a Romanian band shouted lines that were full of obscenity, violence and subversive anti-system ideas. But BUG Mafia were successful in their antisystem enterprise precisely because they performed as a very well-organised business, making use of the very system they were overtly subverting and adopting a purely ‘capitalist spirit’: in an interview to Agerpress, a member of the band said that they succeeded because they adopted a professional way of

222 Marius Ion Bența working by delivering a high quality product following the rules of modern business (Ghiţă 2016). This is a truly paradoxical situation, when anti-system and subversive discourse is being developed in the very register of the capitalist system: subversion itself is being professionalised, corporatised, bureaucratised and packed into clear procedures and recipes. The meaning of this paradox is the fact that export of the liberal democracy from the West to such countries as Romania involved an export of both the values and the anti-values of the system in the form of a ‘performative tandem’. In other words, when the global monastery exports its model to new realms, it does not export a world or a set of rules and values; it exports the front line of a war zone. The post-1989 era brought a devaluing of truth and righteousness (political lustration never took place and little was done to heal the injustice of the Communist past) along with an explosion of the media industry and a generalised state of confusion and never-ending scandals, which can point to one direction: an acute crisis of parrhēsia. During the 1990s, the publications that enjoyed the highest credibility were not mainstream newspapers, but marginal magazines specialised in humour, cartoons, derision, parody, satire and laughter, such as Cațavencu and, later, Plai cu boi. Such publications included sections of investigation journalism. Later, in the 2000s, Romanian media would reach its climax as a stage of trickster figures dancing in perpetual movements of ridicule, grotesque and unreality. The fifth period is one in which the global-local antinomy turned even more ambiguous given the massive emigration, EU integration, increasing cosmopolitism; the quasi-universal access to the technologies of communication have led to a situation where the local is easily ‘transportable’ (thus, delocalisable) – as it is the case, for instance, of the Romanian communities in Spain or Italy – and the ‘local’ collective identity is floating and dependent of the discursive pole in the sense of Zygmunt Bauman’s ‘liquid modernity’. This era, which started when Romania joined NATO in 2004 and later the EU, was marked by massive migration, the adoption of US-inspired practices in politics and governance, the adoption of EU regulations, a long-term mediacentred, dramatised ‘war against corruption’ modelled to America’s ‘war on terror’, controversial secret protocols between institutions of the state and a series of long-term guerrilla wars at the top level of governance (involving the President, the Government, the Parliament or the Constitutional Court). Being now officially part of a supra-national entity was a good reason for Romanians to revisit their nationalist conceptions, to try and get rid of the nation’s luggage of mythology and idolatry, as it was seen by such historians as Lucian Boia (1997, 2013), Sorin Mitu (1997) and others and to discuss the forms and ‘avatars of Romanian exceptionalism’ (Mihăilescu 2017: 43–71). In the context of the sheer disregard for historical or factual truth in the time of the Communist regime, the enterprise of cleansing history books from inaccuracies and exaggerations may be a legitimate step in the realisation of a meaningful order of communal life. However, such an enterprise, which focuses on factuality and

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knowledge, may overlook more profound dimensions of life, such as verticality and healing.

Carnival, Dada and the absurd reality Every era of modern Romania had its own frontline between friends and foes, its monastery walls and its ascetic methods. Every time there was a schismogenic mechanism at work or perhaps it was the same mechanism that propagated itself across history. The problem with the conflict between the two trickster-driven attitudes that have propagated throughout the Romanian modernity is that it hindered every attempt at restoring the meaning and harmony of life by a constant flux of confusion, meaninglessness, despair, nostalgia, faithlessness and powerlessness. The result was a series of movements of artists and writers9 who were concerned with the world’s lack of meaning, coherence, harmony and love. Liminal events of communities, such as wars, revolutions or catastrophes come unexpectedly. Once they are over and the community returns to a state of equilibrium and order is restored, liminality is transformed into sacred history, and the life of the community starts going on again as orderly time. Liminal periods are essential for transformative experiences of individuals or communities. However, they are not always experienced as fully meaningful. The experience of death, disease, revolution or war can inflict deep wounds, which may remain unhealed, incomprehensible, absurd or incoherent to the experiencing self. Life cannot follow a graceful and flourishing path from one generation to the other without a proper labour of understanding, acceptance, forgiveness and amnesty. This is why debt, rancour and unforgivenness needs to be settled over large generational cycles, as it used to be prescribed by the 50 years jubilees in ancient Mesopotamian civilisations or with the ancient Israelites (see Bergsma 2007). When meaninglessness becomes permanent, society faces outbursts of an absurdist, Kafkaesque or Dadaesque atmosphere (Kafka or Tzara), and slowly turns into a grand carnival (Bulgakov, Hamvas, Caragiale or Szakolczai), a world of rhinoceros (Ionesco) or a nonsensical universe where the rules of society have become illogical and incongruent (Beckett, Urmuz or Adamov). Not surprisingly, Romanian culture proved to be a sadly fertile ground for such artistic creations (four of the names mentioned above are Romanian). An atmosphere imbued with the carnivalesque and the absurd dominates the writings of Romanian playwright Ion Luca Caragiale – notably Carnival,10 which had its premiere in Bucharest in 1885, and still dominates the post-1989 society in Romania; this ‘spirit’ has reappeared incredibly untouched after 40 years of dictatorship and grew grotesquely in spiralling fashion due to the amplifying power of the media which exacerbates the use of ridicule and satire, and is widely recognised today as pervasive in the country’s political life. Romanian modernity knew its own moments of trauma that have remained more or less in a state of meaning-dissonance. Such moments are the opposite of grace, charisma and flourishing; they constitute the liminality that has not been accounted for. If one wanted to make an inventory of those events, one

224 Marius Ion Bența would probably start by mentioning the 1907 peasant revolt where nearly ten thousand people have been killed; the First World War, which has involved meaningless sacrifices and has led absurd situations, such as Transylvanian Romanians fighting against Romanians from the Kingdom of Romania; the sacrifices of Second World War and the ambivalent feelings of Romanians for the Iron Guard or Marshal Ion Antonescu; the Communist repression of the Romanian Gulag; the crimes of the Securitate, the crimes against the elite and the generalised distrust instilled by the practice of denouncing one’s neighbour; the 1989 Revolution, with the ambivalent mingling of two sacrifices: one performed by the Ceaușescu regime, the other by the new power through a staged terrorist invasion and the scapegoating of the dictator; the ‘mineriades’ of the 1990s. As traumatic collective events are not healed by the mere passage of time and by the birth of new generations, their presence may keep manifesting itself in the form of a certain prevalence of the absurd, an inability to coexist in syntony and synergy, an inability to engage in common projects and an inefficiency in reaching true peace. Peace can be reached only by coming to peace, apology, forgiveness, truth, acceptance and by applying collective therapy in terms of justice and political memory (Máté-Tóth 2019: 101–162). Romanians need an account of the history of their meaningless and disharmonic experiences, which are pure emanations of trickster leadership. This may pave the ground for the emergence of charismatic leadership, which was arguably absent in the post-1989 political life of the country. Corruption cannot be eliminated using recipes of governance and policy change strategies, as think-tank experts based in Brussels or in Washington, DC suggest. It cannot be eliminated using anti-corruption wars, because the idea of an institutional framework built from the ground up for this purpose – as the Romanian National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA) was – carries the utopian presumption of the possibility of a group of unblemished bureaucrats who will investigate the rest of the country’s bureaucrats and can only lead to a ‘witch hunt’ similar to the Inquisition of the Middle Ages.

Conclusion We saw that self-contradiction and duplicity lies at the heart of political leadership’s schismogenesis; the march of modernity cannot take place in the absence of an agonistic fight between opposing trickster forces. In the case of Romania, the schismogenic mechanism manifests itself in the fight between two Post-Byzantine exilic stages: the post-Byzantine exile of Romania and the PostByzantine global exile of the modern world. In a way, as Romania finds itself in a constant struggle to escape being at ‘the margins of Europe’ and become modern, the whole modernity finds itself ‘at the margins of Europe’. Both drives have to do with trickster leadership and both are caught in a vicious circle; it is no wonder that Romania is today at the same place it was 100 or 150 years ago in terms of her absurd and carnivalesque atmosphere if

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not worse. All her revolutions – just like any revolution (Horvath 2013) – were mere carousels of history, merry-go-round experiences in the grand carnival of modernity. Global modernity does not teach forgiveness. The assumption of a human being thrown into an amoral universe, whose actions have no consequence farther than the event where it took place, makes forgiveness a meaningless effort: what is the point of wasting my energy in trying to be sorry for my mistakes as long as I can live just as happily and prosperously without the hassle? Modern rationalism encourages me to apologise only if this is the algorithmic optimal solution offered to me by rational choice in the logic of trade-off. Globalist modernity is still mesmerised by the Cartesian cogito, where the existence of the other is bracketed under the spell of doubt. Truth, healing, meaningfulness and verticality are only possible in a retributive universe and require one to perform the exact opposite act: to bracket oneself in order to leave room for the other, for the world and for transcendence.

Acknowledgements I wish to thank Arpad Szakolczai, Agnes Horvath, and József Lőrincz for their precious comments and suggestions on this chapter, Silviu Totelecan for having ignited and encouraged the writing of this text, Marius Emil Rusu for his helpful insights and fruitful conversations, as well as Andrei Sabin Faur for having helped me clarify much of the historical perspective on the problems addressed here.

Notes 1 The formation of modern Romania took place roughly in two stages following the crisis and disintegration of the large empires that had dominated the area for centuries, the Russian Empire, the Habsburg (later, Austro-Hungarian) Empire, and the Ottoman Empire: the first in 1859, with the unification of Moldavia and Wallachia and the second in 1918, when Transylvania became part of Romania. 2 The feeling of hopelessness is very deeply imbued in the Romanian spirit, as portrayed in the ballad ‘Mioritza’. 3 In French original: ‘Que voulez-vous, nous sommes ici aux portes de l’Orient, où tout est pris à la légère …’ (Caragiale 1929). 4 ‘Forme fără fond’, in Romanian. 5 For an extensive discussion of Plato’s political ideas and their relevance to the modern world, see Chapters 3 and 4 of this book. 6 The Transylvanian historian George Bariţ (1887: 39–41), in a time when Transylvania was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, expressed the need for more studies to describe and understand the culture and life-style of Romanians living in the villages of the empire and advocated for clear policies to reducing their ‘civilisational backwardness’ (‘înapoierea’, in Romanian). 7 In an 1934 essay, Mircea Eliade commented on the peculiar world-rejection attitude of Romanians: ‘I don’t think there is another European country where so many intellectuals feel ashamed of their own people, frantically counting its weaknesses, deriding its past and admitting loudly that they would prefer to belong, by birth, to a different country’ (Eliade 1934: 194–195, my translation; in Romanian original:

226 Marius Ion Bența ‘Nu cred că se află ţară europeană în care să existe atâţia intelectuali cărora să le fie ruşine de neamul lor, să-i caute cu atâta frenezie defectele, să-şi bată joc de trecutul lui şi să ·mărturisească, în gura mare, că ar prefera să aparţină, prin naştere, altei ţări.’) 8 In Romanian original: ‘Dar niciodată un neam întreg n-a trăit o revoluţie creştină cu toată fiinţa sa, [ … ] niciodată un neam întreg nu şi-a ales ca ideal de viaţă călugăria şi ca mireasă – moartea’ (Eliade 1937: 1–2). 9 For a thorough investigation of the way modernity’s permanent liminality is reflected in novels, see Szakolczai (2016a, 2017a). 10 The title of the play was translated in English in various versions, such as Carnival Adventures, What’s on, Only during a carnival, Carnival stuff and Carnival scenes.

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Horvath, Agnes (2013) Modernism and charisma, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Horvath, Agnes, Camil Francisc Roman and Gilbert Germain (2019) ‘Introduction: Divinisation and technology – the political anthropology of subversion’, in Agnes Horvath, Camil Francisc Roman and Gilbert Germain (eds.) Divinization and technology: The political anthropology of subversion, New York: Routledge. Ierunca, Virgil (1990) Fenomenul Piteşti, Bucharest: Humanitas. INSCOP (2015) ‘Barometrul despre românia: Atunci vs. Acum’, Bucharest: https://bit.ly/ 2MQKt5p, accessed 25 October 2019. Ioan, Dorinica, Dan Banciu and Sorin M. Rădulescu (2005) Corupţia în România. Actualitate şi percepţie socială, Bucharest: Lumina Lex. Johnston, Michael (2005) Syndromes of corruption: Wealth, power, and democracy, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kelsen, Hans (2012) Secular religion: A polemic against the misinterpretation of modern social philosophy, science and politics as ‘new religions’, New York: Springer. Kligman, Gail (1998) The politics of duplicity: Controlling reproduction in Ceausescu’s Romania, Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Kligman, Gail and Katherine Verdery (2011) Peasants under siege: The collectivization of Romanian agriculture, 1949–1962, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lovinescu, Eugen (1924) Istoria civilizaţiei române moderne, Bucharest: Ancora. Maiorescu, Titu (1874) ‘În contra direcției de astăzi în cultura română (1868)’, in Critice, Bucharest: Editura Librăriei Socecu & Comp., 321–372. Máté-Tóth, András (2019) Freiheit und Populismus: Verwundete Identitäten in Ostmitteleuropa, Wiesbaden: Springer. Meyendorff, Jean (2010) Initiation à la théologie byzantine, Paris: Cerf. Mihăilescu, Vintilă (2017) ‘Despre excepţionalism şi ipostazele sale româneşti’, in Vintilă Mihăilescu (ed.) De ce este România astfel? Avatarurile excepţionalismului românesc, Iaşi: Polirom, 43–71. Mitu, Sorin (1997) Geneza identității naționale la românii ardeleni, Bucharest: Humanitas. Morgenthau, Hans J. (1946) Scientific man versus power politics, London: Latimer House. Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina (2015) The Quest for good governance: How societies develop control of corruption, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Neumann, Iver B. and Vincent Pouliot (2011) ‘Untimely Russia: Hysteresis in Russian-Western relations over the past Millennium’, Security Studies, (20): 105–137. Sakwa, Richard (2016) ‘Back to the wall: Myths and mistakes that once again divide Europe’, Russian Politics, (1): 1–26. Scott, James C. (1985) Weapons of the weak, New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Simmel, Georg (1950) The sociology of Georg Simmel, Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Szakolczai, Arpad (2013a) Comedy and the public sphere: The rebirth of theatre as comedy and the genealogy of the modern public arena, New York and London: Routledge. Szakolczai, Arpad (2013b) ‘The global monastery’, World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research, (53): 1–17. Szakolczai, Arpad (2016a) Novels and the sociology of the contemporary, New York: Routledge. Szakolczai, Arpad (2016b) ‘Processes of social flourishing and their liminal collapse: elements to a genealogy of globalization’, The British Journal of Sociology, (67): 435–455. Szakolczai, Arpad (2017a) Permanent liminality and modernity: Analysing the sacrificial carnival through novels, New York: Routledge.

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Concluding comments Agnes Horvath, Arpad Szakolczai, and Manussos Marangudakis

The chapters of this volume are quite varied, concerning both theoretical perspectives and the empirical cases. We cannot possibly summarise them, creating the false impression of a definite understanding in a united front. But we can summarise the themes that run through the volume in the relationship between Platonic charis and Weberian charisma. For starters, both Plato and Weber lived in critical, indeed liminal, periods of their respective Politeiae: democratic Athens and post-Imperial democratic Germany. Both were in dire straits due to ill-fated warfare, turning an intellectual quest (the essence of sound politics) to an urgent matter of (city-)state survival. Plato sought out a solution in restructuring tyrannical rule by the epistemic rule of a genuine philosopher; Weber sought out a solution by a charismatic leader of the masses – a ruler driven by both conviction and responsibility. Both of them took as a given the populist political realities of their time, and both of them were well aware of the evils that these realities nourished and encouraged: for Plato it was the sophists, politicians and spin doctors who would distort reality for the sake of popular vote; for Weber it was the vain politician, a person lacking objectivity and driven by irresponsibility, concerned only with the ‘effect’ and ‘impression’ he makes. Considering the social, cultural, and intellectual distances that separate the two thinkers, it is remarkable how close are the ‘conclusions’ they draw from their respective problematisation of the issue. First, in both schemes a true leader needs to be driven by a moral vision which is beyond the world of opinion or belief based on suppositions and appearance; second, in both schemes (and deriving from the prior) the leader needs to distance themselves from the subject of their rule, the electorate, a distance necessitated by their commitment to episteme (a total comprehension of truth achieved by divine reason) or by his deep moral convictions and commitment to truth (Weber’s ‘substantive rationality’); third, the charismatic leader is connected to his followers by transcendental feelings of grace or charis which cement the personal devotion and personal confidence in revelation; fourth, the presence of the charismatic leader necessitates a passive flock, or as Weber describes it, their ‘intellectual proletariarisation’; and last but not least, the leader feels absolutely personal responsibility

230 Agnes Horvath et al. for his actions and his commitment to truth, and thus he is above laws or bureaucratic, detrimental, procedures. Though neither Plato nor Weber paid particular attention to the flipside of the leader, our ‘tricksters’ capture such (missing) qualities, in both the Platonic and the Weberian terms, quite accurately: they are driven by vanity and irresponsibility; manipulate the public sphere for their own egoistic benefit; they lack inner conviction; they lack personality, identifying themselves with their public image; and they thrive on disunion and eris, rather than on mutual trust, homothymia and homonoia. The crucial point Plato and Weber depart is on the essence of charisma. For Plato, charis is absolutely objective and by definition divine, ‘charismatic’ politics is by definition a reflection of Ideas, and any deviation from this unmediated connection is by definition a violation of episteme and Truth. For Weber, charisma is absolutely subjective, a ‘feeling’ of the group to the leader, and (perhaps) of the leader about his own person. And then, charisma needs always to be ‘watered down’ by mundane considerations of political rewards and the satisfaction of the political machine that brought him to power. Weber takes for granted plebiscitary democracy and its own inner logic. Plato does not need to; Plato’s perspective is singular, and the Platonic soul-care is essentially vertical: as Jan Patočka (2002) reasons, in Plato the concrete world of politics is always measured against a standard of integrity embodied. Plato’s perspective derives from the transcendental downwards, while Weber’s perspective both derives from and remains embedded in the mundane – in mass democracy. For Weber (1948: 128), mass democracy could be a viable political regime only when driven and guided by a special type of man, someone who though above the masses does not scorn them, nor abandons them: a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word […] with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes […]. Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say “In spite of all!” has the calling for politics. This problematic informs our wider reflections and lead us to two concluding claims. First, we argue that political anthropology, a perspective that some of us are exploring by now since well over a decade, around the journal International Political Anthropology and a series of flagship publications, offers helpful tools of understanding. The set of key concepts developed by anthropologists who were close to become founding figures in the new discipline of anthropology, but who came to be marginalised exactly due to the surprisingly innovative character of their ideas, like liminality, trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, and also gift relations and participation, taken together offer an approach that lies outside the dominant approaches and beaten tracks of modern social and

Concluding comments

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political theorising (Szakolczai and Thomassen 2019). As they were based on comparative surveys of anthropological studies, thus the broadest possible range of human experiences, they are not limited to the standard, taken for granted perspectives of modern self-understanding. We believe that the collection demonstrates the helpfulness of these tools in offering an insightful and innovative understanding of our contemporary political reality – an entrapment, closely recalling Max Weber’s ‘iron cage’ or ‘steel-hard casing’ (stahlhartes Gehäuse). Second, a crucial aspect of this entrapment is mental, or even spiritual, recalling again Max Weber’s perspective that the modern economy, or capitalism, is not an inevitable historical development, rather driven by a specific ‘spirit’. In particular, we seem to be entrapped by three major idols: that technological development is inherently beneficial; that a generalised exchange economy will bring unlimited growth and well-being to all; and finally, closer to the specific concerns of this book, that democracy, understood as the selection of political leaders by voting campaigns in which any adult citizen of a country has an equal right to participate is an unsurpassable form of political government, securing the promotion of the public good; or at least, in a weaker formulation – that however already indicates the fundamental problems with the underlying perspective, replacing the searching for good by avoiding evil, or a politics of suffering driven by double negation – that it is the least bad form of government. The current situation suggests that a reckoning should be in place, including a rethinking of some of the most taken-for-granted and even cherished aspects of that specific modality of government we call ‘democracy’, and for which most modern states – themselves peculiar institutions – by now require an almost unreserved adherence of their citizens. We argue that this mode of political arrangement to select leaders, involving a presumed empty space, or void, the ‘public arena’ (Szakolczai 2013), in which certain people are supposed to enter freely on their own right, but also deprived of any background support, as part of an anonymous flux, and from among whom then we, all of us, freely and without taking into account any background affiliations and commitments are supposed to select the ‘best’, has reached its limits, even feasibility. After long decades, even centuries of playing the game, we arrived at a point where it could be stated, without the benefit of a doubt, that not the best are selected, even though the rules of the game are fully maintained. To claim that Trump, Boris Johnson, Bolsonaro, Berlusconi or Tsipras are not, or were not, democratically elected is meaningless. Yet, as the chapters demonstrated, and as felt by most competent and responsible people, they have unprecedented limitations. What then is wrong with our understanding and even practising of democracy? Helped by the perspective of political anthropology and its set of interrelated concepts we discuss and further develop since decades, like liminality, trickster, imitativity, schismogenesis, but also the void we argue that the problem is, arguably, unlimited freedom understood as generalised limitlessness, the severing of any historical, cultural and social ties in the technically liminal moment of elections, and through the similarly liminal concern with leadership. Freedom itself is empty, a void, as it has been realised among others in the

232 Agnes Horvath et al. famous distinction between positive and negative freedom; a terminology that goes back to Aristotle’s steresis, and can be perceived particularly well in the double meaning of French pouvoir: the verb stands both for power, but also potentiality. The ideology of modern democracy assumes that the best way to select political leaders is to generate a void, as a kind of incubator, in which the ‘best’, most ‘charismatic’ political leader will just spring forward, as if by magic. Contemporary political developments seem to have conclusively demonstrated that this game is approaching its end, running out of steam. Just as in the case of the coming environmental disaster, and arguably closely connected to it, we reached the endgame – not so far from the way Samuel Beckett foresaw it quite a while ago, as proponent of the theatre of absurd, or of the unrealness of our reality: Beckett, coming from Ireland, the northwestern extremity of Europe into Paris, its then intellectual centre and also locus of the French revolution, having as his closest friend and associate Eugenio Ionesco, coming from Romania, the southeastern extremity of Europe, and also having as its closest predecessor Kafka, embodying the absurdities of the Austro-‘Hungarian’ monarchy. Or, evoking systematically the void might indeed lead into the void: nothingness, nihilism, unreality. We cannot afford to pursue this road further. If modern politics wants to get out of this hole it has dug for itself, it must return to reality: first of all, the reality of concrete human qualities, formed and transmitted from generation to generation; the golden quality of charis, Menschentum, and the value of human personality, returning again to Max Weber, now through the reading of Wilhelm Hennis (1988), a political scientist. The more perfectly we play the democratic voiding game, the more exactly we get what we indeed bargained for: these ‘nullities’ [dies Nichts], the ‘last men [letzten Menschen]’, taken again from the strongly Nietzschean concluding pages of Weber’s Protestant Ethic (Weber 1988: 204). We cannot offer a blueprint for achieving such ends; it is not, it cannot be our task. We can only call attention to the need for it.

References Hennis, Wilhelm (1988) Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction, London: Allen & Unwin. Patočka, Jan (2002) Plato and Europe, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Szakolczai, Arpad (2013) Comedy and the Public Sphere: The Re-birth of Theatre as Comedy and the Genealogy of the Modern Public Arena, London: Routledge. Szakolczai, Arpad and Bjørn Thomassen (2019) From Anthropology to Social Theory: Rethinking the Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weber, Max (1948) ‘Politics as a Vocation’, in Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, London: Routledge. Weber, Max (1988) Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie I, Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr.

Index

absurd(ities) 44, 63, 146, 232 abyss 51, 84–85, 141 Acheron 21, 28 adaptation 109, 191–94, 196–97, 204–5 Agamben, Giorgio 32 agape 26; see also Christianity alchemical method see alchemy alchemy 18, 23, 50; political 34, 55, 166 algorithms 88, 95–96, 187 alteration 19, 25–26, 32 anarchy 76, 83 Ancient Israel(ites) 57, 212, 223 Ancient Judaism see Ancient Israel(ites) angel 61 Anglo-Saxon 163; world 158 annihilation 22, 25, 30–31, 35, 49 anomie 123, 129 anthropology, political x, 10, 34, 56, 211, 226–27, 230–231 anti-capitalist 109 anti-Communism 195, 201 anticorruption 179 anti-establishment 109, 111 anti-globalization 113 anti-governmentalists 201; see also antipolitics anti-imperialism 122 anti-politics 140 anti-system 109; see also anti-politics Antonescu, Ioan 224 Apology (Plato) 29, 95, 224 Arditi 180–181 Argentina 10, 133–37, 141, 147–48, 151–52; crisis 152 Ariès, Philippe 29, 33 Aristotle 10, 54, 69, 74, 76, 84, 87, 90, 93, 103; metalepsis 38; steresis 232 asceticism 43, 218, 220 Athenians 88, 99, 101; see also Athens

Athenian spirit 101; see also Athens Athens 80–82, 97, 100–101, 115–16, 130, 132, 173, 229 Austro-Hungary 208, 214; see also Empire, Habsburg authority 76–77, 79–82, 84–85, 90–92, 122, 125, 150, 165, 167, 169; absolute 79; central 44; legitimate 2, 37, 41, 160, 165; national 182; paternal 199; personalist 121; political 75–76; presidential 157; statesman’s 87; symbolic 169; traditional 47, 122 avant-garde 6, 111 Barba, Jaime Durán 136, 155 Baudelaire, Charles 30, 32 Bauman, Zygmunt 4 beauty 18, 27, 36, 49, 72, 91 Beckett, Samuel 223, 232; see also absurd(ities) beehives 67–68, 73 beggar(s) 31 Benalla affair 163 Benjamin, Walter 176 Berlusconi, Silvio 172, 174, 176, 179, 181, 186, 188–89, 206 Blair, Tony 163 Boas, Franz 4 Bolsena 33; miracle 28, 33 Bolsonaro, Carlos 149, 154 Bolsonaro, Flavio 154 Bolsonaro, Jair Messias 1, 133–34, 141–43, 145–46, 149, 152–54, 156, 231 Bonald, Louis de 31 Bonapartism 199 borders 26, 28, 83, 174, 197 boredom 27, 32, 101 Borkenau, Franz 28, 32–33, 181 Bourdieu, Pierre 4, 41, 54, 56, 89, 103

234 Index Brazil(ian) 10, 133–37, 141–44, 149, 151–56; Army 141–42; justice 153; Supreme Court 153 Brexit 161, 167 Brexiteers 167 Bunuel, Luis 31 bureaucracy 56, 173; corrupt 173 bureaucratic 42, 52, 179, 230 burials 27, 29; traditional 21 business 9, 136, 168–69, 175, 217, 221; management 158 businessman 177, 200 carnival 223, 225–27 carnivalesque 223 Cassandra 170, 207 Castelli, Enrico 24, 33 catacomb(ing) 17, 21, 23, 25–26, 28–29, 32; sensual governance 15; technique 31 catacombs see catacomb(ing) centaurs 68, 70, 73, 93 centrism 201 centrist 1, 171 CEOcracy 141 chaos 5, 89, 92, 96–97, 100–101, 103–4, 108, 116, 145, 147 chaotic 102, 167, 196; flux 97; variability 79 character 20, 23–24, 61–64, 89, 91, 97–99, 148–49, 151, 192–94, 199–200; alchemic 32; collective 149; communist 111; political 194, 198; problematic 3, 24; trait 205 charis 3, 8, 13, 16–20, 22, 30, 36, 61, 229–30, 232 charisma 2–3, 15–17, 21–25, 27–31, 33–55, 107–9, 122–23, 125, 165–66, 171–77; concept 16, 35, 41, 61, 109, 168, 173; early Christianity 21; fake 151, 174, 177, 185; faked 108, 172, 174–75, 177; see also trickery; genuine 19, 43, 52; liminal 45–47; personal 220; political 126; pure 43; sterilizing 45, 53; technology 23; transforming 20, 41; trickery and 107, 109, 111, 113, 115, 117, 119, 121–23, 125, 127–29; true see charisma, genuine charismata 125, 128 charismatic (see also charisma) 23, 25, 47–48, 108, 123, 125, 128, 180, 182, 209; aristocracy 55; authority 45, 122, 167, 169; domination 35, 37, 40–41, 47, 91, 104; fake see charisma,

faked; familiarity 117; figures 88; leader(ship) 2–4, 15–17, 29, 44, 46, 49–53, 122–23, 172–73, 175–76, 229; legitimation 122; liminality 45–47; party 107, 122; person(ality) 36, 41, 48, 220; see also charismatic, leader(ship); politicians 126; see also charismatic, leader(ship); politics 230; power 2–3, 10, 15, 17, 42, 108; rulership see charismatic, power charlatan(ry) 68, 177; see also trickster Chirac, Jacques 158 choice(s) 7–9, 39, 147, 159, 161–62, 172; political 133; rational 225 Christ, Jesus 16, 31, 33, 177, 219 Christian(ity): and Platonism 57; theology 15–16, 37, 53, 176; universalism 30 Christians 16, 24, 28–29, 36, 45, 54, 124–25, 207, 216, 219; catacombed 28; early 17, 21, 26 Citizens Convention for the Climate 164 climate change 170; combat 163 climates 30, 164 codes 88–89, 93–96, 100, 102–4; dress 117; executable 94; legal 80–81, 103; moral 94 codification 94–95, 102; formal 2 common good 54 commonwealth 198 communication 104; see also communicator communicator 206 Communism 26, 34, 57, 124, 181, 212, 213, 217, 219–221, 226 communist: army 112; countries 211; goatpriest 112; ideology 220; leader 201; movement 124 Communist Party 111, 114–15; see also communism concrete 16–18, 22–25, 49, 51–52, 64–65, 68, 123, 126, 230, 232 concreteness 28 confusion 4–5, 26, 39, 41, 45–46, 50, 82, 139, 187–88, 222–23 consensus 94, 121, 178; democratic 201; general 195; historical 203; see also consent consent 32, 75, 82, 89, 94, 98, 140, 204; apparent 183 Conservatism 86, 196, 205, 209

Index constitution(al) 54, 56, 157, 170, 196, 208, 222 corruption 101, 107, 203, 207, 211–15, 217, 219, 221, 223–25, 227; global vs domestic 213; war against 222 cosmology 95–97, 99 cosmopolitanism 6, 222 cosmopolite 219 Craxi, Bettino 179, 182 critics 56, 99, 164, 197, 207 cultural trauma 128 death 16–17, 19, 23, 27–28, 30–31, 33, 38, 206, 218–19, 223; premature 36, 195; violent 208 dedication, voluntary 43 de-differentiation 120–121 De Gaulle, Charles 157, 170, 199, 202, 207 democracy 6, 52, 54–57, 85, 117, 172–73, 177–79, 189–90, 226–28, 231; Athenian 67, 85, 117; Athenian; see also Athens; contemporary 133; crisis of 80; emerging 199; hacked 168; illiberal 202; modern 6–7, 35–36, 41, 50–54, 150–151, 191, 232; neoliberal 217, 221; participatory 133; political 10; radical 45; social 131 democratic: order 144; period 146, 153, 159; politics 6, 45, 158, 202, 207 democratic times see democratic, period democratization 44, 188, 209 demonization 135 demons 24, 31–33 despair 2, 4, 39, 108, 165, 223 destruction 1, 4, 17, 19, 24–25, 29, 107, 123; creative 18–19, 24, 32; of Nature 19; sacrificial 49; symbolic 158; technological 30 devil 31, 203; see also demons diairesis 95–96 diaisthanomai 65 dictators 157, 198, 220, 224 dictatorship 44, 117, 141, 143–44, 152, 199, 213, 223; civil-military 136, 141–44, 153 diplomacy 168 disenchantment 17, 34, 39; see also enchantment disposition 49, 88–90, 93, 95, 98–100, 201; emotional 93; political 37 disrupt(or) 168–69 disruption(s) 4, 160, 168–69, 171 divination 19, 21 divinatory category 20

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divine: flesh 24; gift 3, 16, 35–37, 40, 48, 52–53, 64; love 19; reason 229; revelation 80; rulers 64, 72, 75, 80; shepherd 64; source 69, 124 divinisation 17, 21, 23, 29, 56, 217, 227 domination 44, 46, 56, 77, 81, 198, 211, 215; legal 91, 94; legal-rational 39, 51; legitimate 91; traditional 91 duplicity 211–13, 215–17, 219–21, 223–25, 227; politics of 216, 227; practices 217; skills 219 Durkheim, Émile 4, 25, 92, 123 earth-born race (gegenes, Plato) 64, 68, 73 economic(s) 1, 30, 33, 92, 137–38, 141, 161, 217, 220; behavioural 92; experimental 92; neoclassical 26; policies 8, 134 economy 34, 36, 53, 57, 141, 147, 201, 207, 215, 220; modern 29, 32–33, 231 Edouard, Philippe 169 effervescence (Durkheim) 23, 25, 27 egalitarian(ism) 6, 109–10, 122 eidos 92, 215 Einaudi, Luigi 177–78, 188 Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 4, 10, 15, 55, 127, 131 elected(ness) 61, 116, 136 election(s) 17, 52, 129–30, 138, 147, 153–54, 157–58, 160–162, 169–70, 185–86; campaigns 136, 138; democratic 168; direct 67–68; general 109, 122, 128, 130, 148, 184; parliamentary 136, 162; presidential 160–162, 169 Eliade, Mircea 53–54, 218, 225–26 Elias, Norbert 10, 89, 92, 103–4 elite(s) 9, 33, 180, 201–2, 219, 224; cultural 6, 114, 188; institutional 129; new 201, 221; politico-economic 121, 152 elitism 9; see also elite(s) emotions 4–5, 17, 21–22, 25, 75–76, 81, 83–84, 138, 147–48, 151; political 200 Empire 21, 181, 201, 214, 225, 229; Habsburg 225; Ottoman 225; Roman 21, 18; Russian 225 emptiness 44, 141, 144–45, 147; inner 151 enchantment 11, 17, 31, 38, 148; technological 19 energy, charismatic vs. demonic 23 Enlightenment 45, 54, 57, 91–92, 100 En Marche! 161, 170 entrapment 56, 231

236 Index entropy 91–92, 104 Entzauberung see disenchantment Erasmus 73 eros/erotic 26, 83–84, 118 Eucharist(ic) 17, 24, 28, 32; Miracle 28, 33 Europe 54, 56, 161, 163, 166, 171, 213, 215, 227, 232; civilization 45; countries 191, 225; modern 180; periphery 132, 224; political elite 202; Post-Communist 209, 228; post-Soviet 195; southern 213; tradition 47 European Central Bank (ECB) 129 European Community (EC) 129; see also European Union European Union 121, 179, 213, 221 exceptionalism 211, 213–15, 217, 219, 221–23, 225, 227; negative 214–15 exhaust 64 exilic stage, Post-Byzantine 224 experience 37–38, 40, 42, 53, 57, 62, 65, 67, 141, 144; mystical 82; numinous 218; Plato’s vision 61–62, 75, 80, 83, 85, 95; political 212 exploitation 103, 145 extreme(s)/extremism 162, 164 Facebook 185 fake 25, 68, 108, 127, 162, 174, 179, 186–87; news 114, 120, 187; personalities 151 faking see fake fantasy 18 fascism 44, 189 Faust(ian) 18, 32–33 Fifth French Republic 157–58, 169–70 Fillon, François 162 flux(ing) 24, 81, 97, 99, 231 forgery 18; see also fake forms: of government 68–70, 87, 103, 150; without substance 215 Fortuna 193–97, 203–6, 209 Forza Italia 184 Foucault, Michel x, 10, 31, 33, 37, 56, 73, 168, 199 France 1, 3, 10, 153, 157–59, 161, 163–65, 167–71, 199, 202; modern 199 Franco, Francisco 174 freedom 7–8, 23, 26, 51, 72, 173, 198, 212–13, 220, 231; negative 232; unlimited 231 French 164; constitutional system 199; elections 162, 171; history 157; media 158; political scene 162; politics 157,

161, 167, 170–171; population 169; presidency 157–58, 160, 162, 168, 170; see also France French Revolution 29, 33, 133, 162, 180, 218, 232 Freud, Sigmund 99, 104 Friedman, Milton 7, 23 friendship 8, 49, 72 Front National 161, 169; see also French, politics Gaullism 199, 210; see also de Gaulle, Charles Gell, Alfred 3, 11, 25, 33 genealogy 10, 22, 34, 48, 52, 55–56, 104, 113, 227, 232 Gennep, Arnold van 3, 5, 32–33, 46, 55 Germany 2–3, 29, 51, 54, 103, 117, 119, 218; democratic 229; National-Socialism 51, 218; occupation 112, 117; politics 56, 128 Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe 212, 219 Gibbon, Edward 20–21, 33 Giesen, Bernhard 175, 188, 226 gift 36–38, 48, 52, 56, 74, 78, 150, 172–74, 184, 189; divine 69, 176; exchange 49, 185; logic 7; relations 35, 230 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry 163 global(isation): exile 207, 224; hegemony 220; monastery 217–19, 222, 227; neoliberal 111, 135; resisting 217 Gnosticism 15, 25 God 51, 54, 70, 74, 82–84, 124–25, 150, 153, 210, 212; false 51 Godot 3; see also absurd(ities) gods, Roman 28, 203 Goebbels, Joseph 179 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 18, 32 goodness 18–20, 23, 25, 30, 36, 47, 52, 74, 204 Gorgias (Plato) 45 governance 18, 121, 123, 128, 171, 209, 211–12, 220, 222, 224; good 227 governance policies 217 government 68–71, 75–76, 78–79, 81–82, 84–85, 103, 119–20, 134, 136–38, 147–48; centre-left 134, 136; centre-right 134; conservative 114; democratic 32, 85; political 6, 231; progressive 134–35; representative 50; right-wing 134–35; technical 81; unlawful 70 governmentality 153

Index grace 17–18, 36, 38, 73–74, 173, 176, 195, 203–4, 223, 229; divine 2, 16–17, 36, 38, 150 Great National Debate 164 Greece 10, 107–8, 111–12, 114, 117, 119, 121, 123–24, 128–29, 131; Ancient 173; economy 107, 116, 119, 128; postauthoritarian 131 Greek: Christendom 198; cities 123; civilisation 173, 188; crisis 129, 131; see also Greece, economy; culture 97; society 107, 109, 129 Greeks 3, 61, 74, 80, 113, 116–17, 121, 127, 129, 132; classical 35, 37 Gulag 219–20, 224; see also totalitarian(ism) Habermas, Jürgen 9, 44, 55, 101 habitus 88–90, 103 Hadot, Pierre 68 Hankiss, Elemér 208–9 harmony 19, 50, 90, 101, 212, 223; musical 73 Hayek, Friedrich von 29, 33 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 23, 31, 46 hell 31–32 Hennis, Wilhelm 39, 55, 232 Hermes Trismegistus 31 Hitler, Adolf 29, 41, 51, 176, 189 Hobbes, Thomas 22, 33, 218–19 Hollande, François 158 Holy Mary 61, 73 Homer 33, 67, 206 Horthy, Miklós 201 Horvath, Agnes 1–2, 10, 15–16, 32, 55, 159–61, 166–67, 173–75, 225 Hulot, Nicolas 163 human rights 196 humanity 51, 53, 82, 84, 91, 98, 170, 173, 193, 199; action 40, 44, 92; affairs 93–94, 99; beings 63–65, 70, 75–76, 78–80, 82, 84, 86, 139, 203, 208 Hungarian language 8; see also Hungary Hungary 8, 10–11, 131, 191, 194–95, 197–98, 200–202, 204, 207–9, 232; history 202; politics 194, 198, 200, 208–9; post-Communist 191; postTrianon 202; society 208 hybrid(ity) 68, 111, 207; see also metamorphoses hypocrisy 219 hypocrites 117

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hypocritical 31 hysteresis 227 ideologues 125, 205, 208 ideology 110, 116, 137–38, 172, 180, 202, 205, 219, 232; democratic 50; leftist 217; mainstream 202; right-wing 217 image-magic 156; see also magic(al) images 17–18, 20, 24, 66–67, 76, 138–39, 145–49, 174–77, 180–181, 184–87; magical 139, 148; multiplying 174–75, 182–83, 185–86; public 140, 230; sensual 24; imitation; (see also mimesis/ mimetic) 47–48, 69, 84, 92, 165, 167, 173, 175, 177–79, 190 imitator(s) 70, 85, 182 impersonal 9, 199 in-between(ness) 4, 28, 37–38, 57, 108, 132 incantation 1, 21, 176 incommensurable 2, 4, 18, 20–30, 35, 50–52, 69; see also void individualism, anarchic 129 inequality 75, 82, 134–35, 143, 151, 164 inhibition 5, 21, 27 insecurity 2, 15, 108, 112, 120, 123, 165; permanent 123; voided 2, 165 integrity 30, 89, 230 interdependencies 91 Ion (Plato) 73 Ionesco, Eugène 223, 232 Iorga, Nicolae 218 iron cage 39, 51, 176, 231 Iron Guard 218, 224 irrationality 44–45, 57, 84, 124 Italian(s) 176, 179, 182, 186, 188; civilisation 178; leaders 172, 175, 178, 186; peninsula 173 Italy x, 8–10, 34, 100, 116, 172–75, 178–79, 182–84, 186–88, 190; democracy 172–73, 175, 177, 179, 181, 183, 185, 187, 189; modern 179 Jaspers, Karl 15 Jepson School of Leadership Studies 5 Jesuits 43 Jesus see Christ, Jesus Johnson, Boris 1, 10, 167, 186, 231 jokes 5, 66–67, 83, 182, 216; ambivalent 141; half 186 joy 3, 36, 48–49, 52, 82, 140 Kádár, János 201–2 Kafka, Franz x, 223, 232

238 Index kairos 64, 71 Kant, Immanuel 22, 34, 56, 63, 95, 152 Keynes, John M. 29, 33–34, 152 Kierkegaard, Søren 56 Kirchheimer, Otto 1, 11 kleros 67–68; hieros 67 Kligman, Gail 220, 227 La République en Marche (LRM) 170 Latin America 133–35; trickster logic in 133, 135, 137, 139, 141, 143, 145, 147, 149, 151 laughter 5, 205, 222 laws 69, 71–72, 75–77, 79–85, 87–89, 91, 93–97, 100, 102–3, 181; divine 81, 83, 86; electoral 154, 195; iron 10; procedural 81; rule of 104, 121; universal 84 Laws (Plato) 62, 82–83, 96 leader(ship) 5–6, 10–11, 88–91, 114–16, 150–151, 158–62, 164–76, 198–201, 211–13, 229–31; absolute/totalitarian 29, 119; authoritarian 198; contemporary 10, 168; crisis 52; democratic 6; divine 164; fascist 186; genuine/virtuous 76, 95, 103, 212; international 176, 181; liminal 149; military 16, 71; plebiscitarian 157, 166; popular/populist 41, 56, 153, 163, 195; studies 5, 170; supreme 204; unofficial 114, 130 leader-shop, democratic 35, 50 Le Bon, Gustave 22, 34 Lefort, Claude 37, 46–47, 50, 55 legal domination 91, 94 Lega Nord 179, 184 legitimacy 35, 52, 90–91, 147, 164, 166, 169, 176, 189, 216 legitimate authority, types of 2, 37, 41, 165 legitimation 1, 43, 54, 129, 141, 159 legitimizing see legitimacy Lenin, Vladimir Ilych Ulianov 29, 41, 111, 180 Leonardo 154 Le Pen, Marine 161–62, 167, 169–70 Leviathan 33, 199 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 4 liberal(ism) 131, 202, 205; constitutionalism 56; democracy 129, 202, 207, 209, 222 liminal(ity); (see also in-between) 2–4 10–11, 45–46, 52–53, 55, 57, 131–33, 143–45, 223, 226–31; conditions 1, 5, 8, 46–47, 127, 135, 168; confusion 5;

incommensurability; see also void; institutional 108; space 160–161; suspended 7–8, 150, 180–181 limitlessness 231 liquidity/liquidizing 31, 33 living 21, 23, 27–30, 32, 36, 46, 53, 85, 135; saints 113, 122, 124 love (see also divine, love) 19, 24, 26, 31, 118, 124–25, 200, 205, 218–19, 223 Löwith, Karl 53, 55 Machiavelli, Niccolò 86, 172, 191–95, 197, 198, 203–5, 208–9 Macron, Emmanuel 1, 157–71 Macronism 162 Maduro, Nicolás 108, 121–22 mafia 184, 186, 188 magic(al): rituals 17; tropes 22 magical images 139, 148 Maiorescu, Titu 215–16, 227 Maistre, Joseph de 31 management 91, 93–94, 110–111, 138, 140, 159, 213 managerial(ism) 26, 136, 177 Mann, Thomas 177, 189 Mao, Tse Dung 41 Marx, Karl 23, 53, 55, 111, 154, 181 Mary see Holy Mary mask(s) 5, 52, 101, 147, 162, 205, 214 mass(es) 22, 41, 93, 110, 176, 179, 181, 200–201, 220, 229–30; critical 27; exploited 176 master 3, 20, 62, 75, 77, 90, 98, 200, 212; of ceremony 4, 91; of simulation 93; and slave 77 matrix 25, 49, 73, 134 matrixing 18, 21, 28 Mauss, Marcel 7, 36, 56, 182 meaning 7, 32, 42, 67, 71–73, 82–84, 102–3, 159–60, 192–93, 222–23; dissonance 223 meaningfulness 225 meaninglessness 28, 223 measure 20, 96, 108–9; just/right 78, 82 media 135, 137, 139–40, 147–49, 151–52, 174–75, 182, 184, 187, 193–94; contemporary 215; industry/outlets 1, 142, 146, 222; law 148, 195; national 161; social 41, 114, 149, 184–85; technologised/machinery 3, 7, 181; traditional 135 mediatisation 26 memory 49, 53, 91, 113, 153; political 224

Index Menem, Carlos 136, 152 Meno (Plato) 3, 11, 22, 48, 69, 74, 86 Menschentum (Max Weber) 232 Merkel, Angela (Chancellor) 161 Messianic 218–19; authority/leader 197 Messianism 197 metamorphosis 19, 55, 68, 125; see also transformation metaphor 31, 40, 70, 73, 76, 78–79, 83, 96–97, 102, 193 metaphysics 34, 43, 155 metaxy (Voegelin) 35, 37 methexis and metaxou (Plato) 38 Michels, Roberto 9 mindfulness 30–31; see also phronēsis minorities 50, 111, 141–42, 178 model(s) 2, 84–86, 88–89, 92–93, 95–96, 102–3, 198, 201, 206, 208; computer 94; economic 138; erroneous 92; rational 180; tripartite 36 modernity 18, 30–32, 34, 53–54, 174, 179–80, 211, 213, 216–17, 224–28; genesis of 74, 104, 214; global 225; late 124, 214; liquid 222; political 51, 213; rational 27; resisting 215; technological 179 Moldavia 214, 225 Moldova see Moldavia Mommsen, Matthias Theodor 44, 56 monarchy 70, 87, 103, 203, 232 monastic orders 217; see also asceticism money 7, 33–34, 114, 150, 173, 175, 178, 186 monism 42, 53 Mosca, Gaetano 9, 178, 183, 189 Moses 203 multiplication 21, 26, 144, 174, 185–86; diabolical 183; exponential 174, 185; never-ending 26; senseless 48 multiplicity 83 multitude 20, 33, 81, 83, 86; see also multiplication Mumford, Lewis 206, 209 Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina 211, 227 Mussolini, Benito 8–9, 172, 174–81, 183, 186–89 mystery 3, 27, 165, 178, 181 mystic(ism) 84, 97, 124–25, 128 myth 34, 64, 78–79, 127, 136, 157, 159, 168, 171, 226–28; constructive 95; of Cronus 75, 78, 80 mythology 5, 34, 70, 97, 126, 222, 226; see also myth

239

nation 157, 159, 171, 196–98, 200, 203–5, 215, 218–19, 221–22; father of the 198 national(ism) 65, 117, 168, 217–18, 220, 222, 228 National-Communism 213, 219; see also communism Nature 17–19, 23 Nazism 128, 159, 176 necromancy 17, 19, 29; enchanting 25 necromantic: processuality 21; sensualisation 17 necrotic 21, 27, 30 Neo-Kantianism 56, 63; see also Kant, Immanuel neoliberalism 26, 108, 127, 133 New Left 109, 111, 127 Nietzsche, Friedrich xii, 15, 25, 73, 84, 173, 232 nihilism 15, 207, 232 Noica, Constantin 218 non-being/not being 65–66, 88, 92–93 nothingness 20, 39, 51, 145–46, 232; see also void Obama, Barack 161 ontology 42–43, 45, 92, 207; participatory 42–43, 45 operators 20–21, 67; of sensuals 21 Orbán, Viktor 187, 191, 194–98, 201–10 outcast 5, 34, 112, 126, 128; see also outsider Outhwaite, William 11, 34, 55, 155, 171 outsider 1, 4–5, 42–43, 113–14, 117, 119, 167, 169, 174, 177, 182–83; see also trickster parasites/parasitic 26, 43, 53, 56, 127 Pareto, Vilfredo 9 parrhēsia(st) 73, 101, 168, 212, 222 Parsons, Talcott 57, 189 Parti Socialiste 161 pater: familias 199–200, 208; patriae 199–200 paternalism 191, 208 Patočka, Jan 73–74, 230, 232 Penelopegate 162 permanent liminality; (see also in-between) x, 123–24, 126, 167, 175–77, 185, 211, 217, 221, 226–27 Perón, Juan 134, 137, 152 Peronism 152; see also Perón, Juan personality 2, 6, 148, 165, 230; collective 133, 147–51; collective trickster 149;

240 Index cult 212, 220; individual 172; manipulative 152; traits 159 Pessoa, Fernando x Phaedo (Plato) 80, 86, 99 Philebus (Plato) 69 phronēsis 76–77, 81–86, 88–89, 95, 97–99, 102–4 Pinheiro-Machado, José Gomes 145–46, 156 Pizzorno, Alessandro 32, 49, 56 Plato 10–11, 18–20, 22, 27–29, 34, 53, 61–88, 91–96, 99, 101–4, 229–30; metaxy 38; soul-care 230 pleasantness see pleasure pleasure 18, 61, 66, 70–72 poison 20, 27, 31; secret 20 polarization, social 135, 151–52 police 120, 146, 164, 178, 180, 184, 186, 213 polis 48, 68, 75, 77, 81, 211–12 politeia 63, 71, 79 political: action 7, 44, 76, 80–81, 84, 86, 153, 209, 212; actors 194; centrism 201; class (Gaetano Mosca) 9; community 9, 52, 71, 120, 127, 183, 196–97, 200–201; culture 163, 198–200, 204, 208; discourse 196, 211; domination 39; father 191, 197, 199–203, 205–6, 208; father; see also paternalism; figure 1, 7, 154, 205; figure; see also political leaders; leaders 15–16, 160, 163, 181, 185, 187, 204, 206, 212–13, 231–32; leadership 3, 6, 51–52, 157–61, 163, 165, 167–71, 183, 191, 199; life 1, 23, 35, 49–50, 52, 89, 133, 151, 167, 223–24; order 37, 78, 88, 133; regimes 47, 49, 51, 107, 221, 230; science 5–6, 15–16, 23, 47, 53, 55, 76–77, 85–86, 158, 191; scientist 136, 148, 201, 232; sociology 2–3, 10–11, 15–16, 34, 47, 55, 155, 171; system 76, 79, 85, 87, 134, 144, 153, 162, 199, 204 politicians 7, 9, 145, 148, 178, 193–95, 197–98, 201, 204, 206; adventurous 193; elected 70, 191; false 68; ordinary 126; plebiscitarian 166; professional 178, 183 ‘Politics as a Vocation’ (Max Weber) 34, 91, 104, 126, 132, 232 politics-of-disruption 171 polity 6, 55, 57, 71, 104 Popper, Karl 160

populism 1, 9, 111, 131, 134–35, 140–141, 147, 156–57, 177–78, 201–2; left-wing 132, 137; movements 134; right-wing 134 populist: crowd 187; democracies 108, 131; politicians 52, 170; regimes 207; resentment 117 positivist 35, 40–43, 45; discourse 40; methodology 41; reductionism 42 possession 28, 75, 78, 89, 96 post-Byzantine world 211, 214–16, 224 post-communist 131, 195, 201; Romanian society 220 post-democracy 121 post-Imperial 229 post-politics 140 power 78–80, 91, 127–30, 139–40, 168–70, 172–73, 175–78, 182–84, 186–88, 192–94; cultural 6; divine 30; electoral 124; media 3, 22; political 6, 44, 50, 111, 186, 211; social 174; symbolic 140; total 186; transformative 20 praying 17, 220 presence 18, 118, 121, 142, 146, 166, 185, 200, 217; divine 37 presidency 136, 142–43, 157–58, 160–161 president 136–39, 143, 147–48, 153, 157–60, 164–65, 169–70, 183–84, 208, 222; elected 141; one-term 158 pre-Socratics 96 priests/clergy 33, 66–67 principle, pleasure 61, 66, 70, 72; see also pleasure prisons 142, 184, 212–13, 219 progress 66, 87, 92, 111, 115, 165, 170, 215, 217; indefinite 178; multiplicative 30; natural 30; permanent 138 progressivism 101, 218 prophecy, ethical (Hebrew) 16–17 Protestant Ethic (Max Weber) 232 Protestantism 2, 17 Protestant theology see Protestantism protests 116, 131, 144–45, 153–54, 156, 163; anti-austerity 131; antimemorandum 127; violent 163 psychology of crowds 22, 34 public: discourse 120, 122; humiliation 204; media 186; see also theatre; opinion 119, 140, 161; outcry 112; persona 128; personalities 149; political figure 186; rituals 120; sphere 101, 104, 107, 110, 114, 120–122, 129, 135, 227, 230–232 public arena see public sphere

Index publicity 182–83, 185, 187; campaigns 183; revenues 183; selling 183 Pulcinella 34, 73, 145, 155 puppet 73–74, 83 Puritan 35, 51–52, 54; heroism 52 purity 126, 128 Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich 187, 206 Pythagorean thought 28 qualities, personal 16, 125, 127 radiation, necrotic 27, 30 radicalism 107, 110–111, 117, 119, 122–23, 129 Radin, Paul 4–5, 126, 131 Rassemblement national 161, 169 ratio 19, 24 rationalisation 16, 22, 42, 94, 126 rationalism 22, 56, 93, 97, 99 rationality 30, 54, 72, 91–93, 99, 215, 229; instrumental 44–45, 100; modern 19, 30; political 46 rational/rationalist 124, 127, 173, 203 reality 18–20, 40, 42, 48–49, 79, 81–82, 89, 138–39, 146–48, 232; absurd 223; changing 81; illusory 85; individual 85 receptivity 199 receptor 25, 28 recognition 3, 5, 8, 43, 49, 52, 55, 92, 95, 99; academic 138; intellectual 68 Reformation 17, 73; see also Protestantism religions, secular 217, 227 Renaissance, x 74, 173 replication see replicator replicator 20, 22, 32; facsimile 20; matrixing 18 Republic (Plato) 61–63, 68–69, 75, 81–82, 84–85, 88, 90, 93, 99–101 resentment 93, 112, 138, 145–46, 203 restlessness 20 resurrection 17, 24–25 rites 3, 7, 33, 45, 55, 145–46, 216; of passage 3, 7, 33, 55, 216; religious 33; theatrical 176 rituals 24, 159, 226; burial 27, 32; see also rites rod, measuring 66; see also measure Romania 10, 212–13, 215, 218–25, 227, 232; contemporary/modern 214, 223, 225; Kingdom of 224 Russia(n) 10, 29, 34, 108, 123, 186, 214, 219, 226, 228; army 200; communism 226; phyletism 218

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sacred: number 31; oath 219 sacrifice(s) 67, 159, 165, 177, 224 sacrificial 227; see also sacrifices sacrilegious 203 sacrosanct 102, 157 saints 17, 39 Saint-Simon, Henri de 31 salvation 16–21, 23–24, 26–29, 32, 124, 197, 203, 228; final 2; individualised 16, 32; secular 26 salvationism 17; universal 29 Salvini, Matteo 1, 172, 175, 177–79, 184–89 Sarkozy, Nicolas 158, 170 Sartre, Jean-Paul 23 satire 222–23 satyrs 68, 70, 73, 93 scapegoat(ing) 164–65, 177, 182, 224 scenes 73, 186; political 2, 184; social 101 Scheler, Max 22, 34 schismogenesis 10, 56, 133, 135, 151, 167, 224, 230–231 schismogenic 72, 224; see also schismogenesis Schmitt, Carl 55–56 Schumpeter, Joseph 19, 29, 34 secret 20, 112, 204; see also poison, secret secular 18, 25, 32, 45, 159, 199, 221; cults 217; see also religions, secular secularisation 16–17, 19; brutal 17; technological 19 self 74, 85, 90, 103, 115, 196, 223, 226; derivative 56; social 123; technique of 62 self-divinisation 218 self-government 76, 85 self-image 101, 205 semi-liminal(ity) 113–14, 129; see also in-between sensual(s) xi, 17–18, 20–32; catacombing 21; conditioning 18; deceitful 25; dreamy 20; imperialism 17; impulsive 19; remembering 27; remorse 31 Serres, Michel 26, 34, 53, 56; see also parasites/parasitic Shakespeare, William 39, 65, 68, 73, 156 sin 31 sinful existence 24 slavery 72, 143 slaves 77, 82; see also slavery social: action 44, 108, 125; actors 135, 145; constructivism 40, 42; flourishing 227; groups 110–111, 114, 129, 151; media

242 Index 41, 114, 149, 184–85; pathologies 89; reality 54, 79–80, 87; theory x, 11, 30, 41, 46, 56–57, 89, 104, 132, 232 socialism, cosmopolite 219 social order 36, 56, 111, 126, 129, 133 Socrates 61–62, 68–69, 73, 81, 84–85, 97–101, 103; see also Plato solidification 201 solidity 18, 26 Sophist (Plato) 22, 61–63, 65, 70, 72–73, 88, 92–93 sophistry 92, 100, 173, 178 sophists 61–63, 65, 68, 70, 72–73, 78, 88–89, 91–93, 97, 101–2 Soros, George 208 Soviet: empires 195, 214; Hungary 201; ideology 219; influence 213; leader 212; regime 113 square movement 109 Stalin, Joseph Vissarionivich 41, 109, 124, 129, 176, 212, 219 Stalinism 109, 176 St Anthony 24 Statesman (Plato) 10, 59–104, 212 steresis 232 St Ignatius 27–28, 32–34 St Paul 36, 175 substitute 25, 32, 165, 174, 176, 178, 187 substituting reality 25 substitution 165, 174; see also substitute subversion 18, 26–27, 56, 117, 128, 140, 167, 221–22, 227 sustainability 30, 169 symbolic: action 226; interactionist 41; representation 89, 108, 113, 127; trappings 157; types 46, 55 symbolisation(s) 48, 57, 89–92 symbolism(s) 38, 159 symbol(s) 35, 38, 40, 43, 52, 54, 57, 101, 127, 180–181; communicable 93; cultural 107; metaxological 48 SYRIZA 107–13, 115–16, 119, 121–25, 128–30, 132 Szakolczai, Arpad 10–11, 37, 56–57, 73, 159–61, 166–67, 211–12, 226, 231 Szelényi, Iván 30, 207 Tarde, Gabriel 92, 104, 190 technē 76–77, 79–81, 83, 86 techniques: mechanical 63; multiplicative 29; transformative 32 technique-trick 29

technology 11, 23, 27, 170, 172–74, 176–77, 180, 183, 186, 227; enchantment of 3; media 173; modern 19, 25; scientific 23 techno-utopians 94 testing/trial 7–8, 68, 71, 73 Thatcher, Margaret 163 Theaetetus (Plato) 20, 61, 72, 88, 97–98 theatre 34, 101, 104, 148, 155, 183, 227, 232 theology 78, 227 theory: critical 44; rational choice 92; sociological x, 55, 84 Tiepolo, Giandomenico 73 Timaeus (Plato) 18–19, 96 Tocqueville, Alexis de 40, 52, 54, 57, 175, 178, 180, 190, 199 totalitarian(ism) 50, 55, 57, 92, 114, 118–19, 155, 177–78, 202 transformation 18–19, 21, 23, 26–30, 46, 50–51, 85–86, 107, 109, 162–63; enchanting 22, 26; fake 216; permanent 24; radical 122; rational 125; subversive 19; unlimited 24; see also metamorphosis transition 4, 46, 52, 133, 144, 146, 161, 163, 168, 207; democratic 144; permanent 228 transubstantiation 22–25, 27, 29 Transylvania 214, 224–25 trick(ing)/tricks, technological 187 trickery; see also trickster) 107, 109, 111, 113–15, 117, 119, 121–23, 125, 127–29, 177 trickster 3–5, 125–28, 133, 141, 148, 159–60, 165–70, 205–6, 212–14, 230–231; as a collective personality 133, 147–51; corruption 10; figures 5, 29, 88, 128, 151, 187, 222; forces 224; leader(ship) 143, 147–49, 211–13, 224; see also leader(ship); logic 133, 135, 137, 139, 141, 143, 145, 147–49, 151, 153; mythological 126–27; perpetual liminality 126; political 175, 213; strategy/stratagems 142, 175, 221 Tricksterology x, 34, 209; see also trickster Trump, Donald 1, 10, 128, 134, 149, 161, 174, 177, 189, 206 Tsipras, Alexis 107–8, 113–16, 118–21, 123–25, 127–28, 130, 132, 231 unburied 21, 23, 28, 32; see also death universalism 30

Index universe 78, 94, 96–97; amoral 225; corrupt 219; nonsensical 223; retributive 225; social 97 unreality 141, 147, 151, 160, 222, 232; see also reality USSR 219; see also Russia(n) vacuous 65, 195; see also void value-free(dom) 40–43, 45 Verdery, Katherine 220 vibration, emotional 17, 22; see also emotions violence (see also violent) 24, 26, 30, 93, 95, 144–46, 153, 186, 188–89, 192; anarchist 121, 123; escalating 15; extreme 164; left-wing 120; systemic 111; technologised 1 violent 135, 213; contagion 165; intrusion 18 viral infection 220; see also virology virology 32 virtue(s) 61, 63, 65, 67, 69–73, 86, 88–91, 93–95, 97–99, 193; of leadership 61, 63, 65, 67, 69, 71, 73 virtuoso 125 virtuous 28, 117, 125; circle 103; disposition 90, 99–100; underdogs 108 virus infection 20; see also virology

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vocation 9, 16–17, 39, 44, 53, 91, 126, 159, 165, 178 Voegelin, Eric 10, 15, 37–38, 43, 45, 53, 56–57, 68, 73–74, 211–12 void 2, 4, 20, 22, 24–26, 30, 82–83, 165, 168–69, 231–32; liminal 2, 52 voters 108, 112, 138, 140, 143, 147, 177, 185, 196, 200 votes 6–7, 103, 109, 116, 128–30, 136–37, 148, 161–62, 181, 184–85 voting 70, 72, 153; campaigns 231 weaving (Plato) 65–66, 71, 75–76, 78–79, 81–83, 87, 90–91 Weber, Max x, 2, 39, 44, 54–57, 91, 94, 107–8, 231–32 Weberian 10, 35–36, 43–44, 47, 54, 56, 173, 176, 182, 186–88; charisma 5, 15, 20, 36, 52, 124, 168, 229; charismatic authority 20 welfare 219; social 180; see also wellbeing wellbeing 16–18, 23; economic 17; individualised 23 World War(s): First 1, 224; Second 23, 224 Wren, J. Thomas 6, 11, 150 Zelensky, Volodymyr 1