Giesen, Bernhard, Seyfert Robert Collective Identities, empty signifiers, solvable secrets
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Transcript of Giesen, Bernhard, Seyfert Robert Collective Identities, empty signifiers, solvable secrets
The persistent debate over the nature of the social and society has led some theorists
to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Thus, for instance, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal
Mouffe, and Bruno Latour in various places have declared the end of the social and the
end of society (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001; Latour, 2002). Those who argue most force-
fully against the idea of social whole have thus far failed to explain, not just the sub-
stance or content of these debates, but the forces that drive such debates in the first
place. Why do people compulsively, actively and intensively engage in debates about
collective identity in the first place? Instead of simply denouncing the idea of a collective
whole and treating every debate about it as an analytical error, we try to explain the
mechanisms through which collective identity is created and perpetuated.
First, we have to make it clear that ours is not a representational theory of collective
identity where the existence of collectives depends on representation through a leading
associate; such theories have been rightly criticized (Latour, 2002). Instead of represen-
tatives, we discuss illustrative figures such as imaginary heroes, so-called achievers, and
other exemplary persons. Collective identity is kept latent through the imaginaries gen-
erated by such non-representational figures. Second, ours is not the discourse ethics of
collective identity that can be found in Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment thinkers
such as Jurgen Habermas (1990). Even as we are interested in how collective identity is
stabilized in conditions of fuzziness and vagueness, factual observation shows that this is
certainly not accomplished through the balancing of agonistic opinions in discourse
ethics. Such debates are neither ideally nor practically geared towards a public consensus
(about the definition of collective identity). Not only do controversies and contestations
remain factually unresolved, these disagreements are the de facto motors of collective
identity. Instead of being a problem for collective identity formation, controversies and
contestations are in fact the main mechanisms of its maintenance; one might even say
collective identity, for its preservation and generation, logically requires these agonistic
practices. These quarrels and clashes of opinion may go so far as to conclude with the
rejection of a particular collective identity. Yet – mostly unbeknown to its proponents –
this rejection may be most effective in stabilizing the collective identity. Thus we are
advocating a different idea of integration in contrast to the commonly accepted paradigm
of modernity that relates social integration to discursive enlightenment. The following
remarks are more in the vein of Reinhart Koselleck, and less along the lines of Jurgen
Habermas’ idea of the public sphere.
Finally, we would like to note – contra the antagonistic approaches adopted by
authors such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe – that even the most wildly contested
of these debates do not lead to temporal hegemonic interpretations. As we will show,
they are in fact all driven by the need to solve the mystery of collective identity. This
mystery is by its very logic unsolvable, precisely because it is only created amid the
debates about what it is, what stuff it is made of, where it was born. But it is treated
as if it were solvable, it is treated as a solvable secret. And this is decisive.
As we said in the beginning, collective identity is not a theoretical assumption but an
empirical dimension. Why are we willing to extend the right to vote to citizens, but not to
foreigners? Why are we ready to help other people in our country with taxpayers’ money
and private donations when catastrophe befalls them, but hesitate to help strangers in dis-
tant lands? Why do we trust our neighbor and mistrust strangers?
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These questions cannot be resolved by pointing to personal experiences or in the
hopes of a quid pro quo between beneficiaries, rendered by all in the event that any
single one of them should need to be rescued from distress. Nor can the questions be
answered by pointing to coercion and the anticipation of punishment if help is with-
held. This is not a question of relations of security, nor of systems of sanctions, which
motivate us as to act rationally as egoistic individuals to attain the benefits of
solidarity.
The attempt to explain collectivity and identity through actions guided by individ-
ual interests (Hechter, 1987) fails to recognize that identity cannot serve as a means to
a superior end but is itself the highest-ranking end of all actions (Pizzorno, 1986).
Identity defines interests, not the other way around. Furthermore, the reference to the
interests of rulers, to those who delude the people into a particular notion of collec-
tivity (the so-called ‘theory of deception by priests’) simply alters the problem; the
question then becomes why the ‘deceived’ audience accepts certain interpretative sug-
gestions but not others. Finally, referring to an explicit consensus of shared values
does not get us any further. Every attempt to formulate an explicit consensus of values
and norms inevitably creates controversies. The ambivalence and ambiguity involved
in formulating a consensus of values indicate the vague and precarious character of
collective identity. Something similar can be found in the controversies surrounding
the Iraq War in the United States, where the American identity was strongly tied to
supporting the troops, which could be taken to mean both support for the invasion and
the suppression of all critique, as well as advocating keeping the troops home, and
thereby safe.
Identity as a vague and ambiguous certainty
In the following, we will answer the question of collective identity within the framework
of a new paradigm. This paradigm does not focus on consensus, coercion or egoistic
means, but refers first and foremost to the social boundaries that straddle the inside and
outside of a community, a paradigm that focuses on belonging, collectivity and collec-
tive identity. Collective identity is usually defined as a certain culturally rooted similar-
ity among the fellows of a community, in distinction to outsiders. This raises, of course,
questions about what these boundaries are based on, and the conditions under which they
can be crossed.
However, all claims about collective identity are contentious (Brubaker, 2006). Even
though as individual persons we might possess an identity that is rooted in our body, one
that traverses our entire life, the case of collective identity is more complicated: one can
simultaneously identify with diverse communities, one can cross social boundaries, and
one can adhere to the public representations of a collective identity as ideology. This
ambiguity has led some authors (e.g. Brubaker) to question the scientific use of this con-
cept. However, despite significant differences, both the individual identity of a person
and the collective identity of a community exhibit a similar structure: they connect abso-
lute self-assurance with the greatest possible non-transparency. We are absolutely cer-
tain that we exist, but we are unable to give an exhaustive account of our identity as a
person, nation, family or ethnic group. Every attempt at such a description will
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invariably be incomplete and distorted. This fundamental incompleteness of every image
of identity is due to the pragmatic situation in which those notions are formulated and to
which they are adapted. The expression of identity changes depending on the particular
person to whom this expression is addressed, it depends on the common memory
invoked and on the particular aim of its representation.
Secretive signifiers
These pragmatically generated variances alone make collective identity an irresolvable
ambiguous and vague matter. By this we do not simply mean that how precisely the
identity of a particular collective should be defined is always unclear. Rather, we
argue that cultures are opaque to themselves (Koschorke, 2012), that the center of
a society and of collective identity is an empty or ‘floating signifier’ (Levi-Strauss,
1987: 63) – something that does not refer to something concrete, and to which almost
every possible meaning can be ascribed precisely because of its indeterminacy. Exam-
ples of such empty signifiers are ‘God’, ‘Nature’ or ‘Reason’. Typically such ‘empty
signifiers’ are constructed as placeless and timeless. They can always be signified in
deficient representations, but each concrete manifestation misses its essential transcen-
dence. In some cases this otherworldliness is strengthened by bans and taboos: the
name of ‘God’ must not be mentioned, He must not be represented, and all talking
about Him is restricted. By virtue of these bans, the divine and the sacred will remain
an unsolvable mystery; they elude every attempt to solve their secrets.1 By contrast,
modernity is marked by its treatment of divine mystery as a secret that can be
revealed: ‘From the outset, Enlightenment and secret appeared as historical twins’
(Koselleck, 1973: 49 [our translation]).2 However, even after the passing of personi-
fied ideas of God, mysteries cannot be entirely dispensed with. Contemporary dis-
courses of negativity have, instead, replaced these former religious traditions of
meaning and sense (negative theology, etc.). They turn the uncertainty and inexpres-
sibility of the social center into their theoretical program. We may take, for example,
Derrida’s deconstructivism (Rentsch, 2000: 24), theories of cultural trauma (Caruth,
1996; Alexander et al., 2004; Giesen, 2004), and the theory of hegemony of Ernesto
Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, who, along with Claude Lefort, are the most prominent
theorists of the empty signifier in Political Theory.
In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau and Mouffe discuss the restructuring of
individual identity out of difference, ‘the precarious character of every identity and the
impossibility of fixing the sense of the ‘‘elements’’ in any ultimate literality’ (Laclau and
Mouffe, 1985: 96). Above all, they criticize every kind of totalizing representation of
society that suppresses all disintegrative and deconstructive mechanisms. They use
Louis Althusser’s concept of ‘over-determination’ (1969: 101) to refer to the fact that
cultural phenomena always have intersecting and overlapping significances. At the same
time, this explains why cultures never manage conclusively to generate an identity for
themselves: something different from what was anticipated can happen – yet, from
another point of view, this happens also because it has always also become something
else altogether. Laclau and Mouffe emphasize not only the fact that the totality of society
is impossible to imagine, but also the fact that the heterogeneous and conflicting
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elements of a culture can be held together only through an empty signifier. Only an
empty signifier allows the attachment of diverse elements, including the conflicting and
apparently irreconcilable ones. The more complex a culture or society, the more pressing
the need or demand for empty signifiers.
However, approaches such as the theory of hegemony by Laclau and Mouffe and
the Actor Network Theory by Bruno Latour exhibit a curious bias towards individ-
ual parts, and against a societal whole (Latour, 2002). The individual level is con-
sidered to be more real, whereas the societal whole is deemed a fictitious object of
delusion, an invention that has to be deconstructed. Society, according to Latour, is
a false totality. One has to ‘follow the actor’, and all ‘macro observations can and
should be replaced by micro interactions’. Thus, Latour claims that ‘there is no
macro society in a human group, there is none anywhere’ and that society is simply
a ‘vague notion’ (2002: 122, 127). Yet, the individual or actor itself is a totality,
albeit on a smaller scale, and neither individual nor society is more or less imagin-
ary or vague then the other. Even if we accept that this emphasis on the imaginary
character of society and collective identity is plausible in contemporary everyday
life, the main objection remains: the partial determinability of what we call society,
culture, and nation also applies to individual identities and their interactions, i.e.
individual identities, which appear partial and particular from a societal perspective,
are no less real and imaginary than the whole and the totality. The individual iden-
tity of a person is an invention that depends on specific circumstances; it integrates
the incompatible and creates a consistent picture out of completely different phe-
nomena. It remains unclear why the societal totality should be much less real and
much less significant than the individual particular. Once we abandon this bias, and
understand the difference between part and whole as an analytical differentiation,
then we will see that indeterminacy holds for all levels of social reality (be it sub-
ject, family, or society and state, etc.); conversely, even an individual person can
understand herself as a totality.3 The difference between totality and particularity
does not denote ontologically different spheres (here is the individual, and there
is society), but traverses them. Even at the level of the personal and subjective par-
tiality, characteristics of the Total or totality can be found: on the one hand, we can
identify ourselves as autonomous subjects with judgmental reason, or we can per-
form ourselves as manifold split multiplicities with various, contradictory aspects.
The question of the reality of the Total does not refer to the level of society alone;
nor is there any reason to deem this level any less real than the role of the particular.
However, if the concept of the collective as well as the concept of an individual
are imaginary and precarious, and if those concepts can only be held together by
means of an empty signifier, then we are facing not simply Laclau and Mouffe’s
‘deconstructive effects’ (2001: 193), but rather the question of how cultures institute
themselves as something that goes beyond a mere unity or a deconstructive moment
(Seyfert, 2011).
In this context, we assume a significant emptiness on the part of the individual and on
the part of the collective, but we take this significant emptiness as the main reason and
necessity for the continuous inventions, imaginations and fables that can fill this empti-
ness (Bogue, 2006).
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The drive for collective fabulations
The non-transparency of the imaginary precisely attracts and motivates representation
and imagination. The ban on imagination and expression that we described in the context
of concepts of God does not apply to all empty signifiers. In the case of collective iden-
tity, it does not refer to something placeless and timeless. Collective identity has a begin-
ning, which is represented in foundational myths and narratives. Distinct from concepts
that refer to the unity of the world (God, Nature, etc.), collective identity is not without
any connection to locations and landscapes. Collectives normally claim a homeland, and
this claim is spatially and temporally represented. Allegories, ritual remembrance, icons,
emblems, anthems, parades and memorial visits represent that which is not representable
in itself (Giesen, 1999).
Bans on names and images imply doubts over the existence of that to which the empty
signifiers refer. Collective identity thereby proves to be a particular articulation of the
sacred of a society (Durkheim, 2001). Like the invocation of the sacred, it serves to con-
struct latency and lack of doubt. We believe, even though we are not eyewitnesses and
though we have no independent proof (Castoriadis, 1987); nor have we ever encountered
the majority of the collective (the people, the nation, the community of faith) (Anderson,
1991). Thus, significant emptiness does not prevent the construction of a collective iden-
tity – as if the latter were merely misbelief or the opium of the masses. Cultural myths are
not simply phantasms that can be confronted with the images of how things really are.
Every social description is based on imaginary inventions. Nonetheless, this does not
mean that they are a fantasy and therefore not real. Collective identity has become our
perennial task and challenge, precisely because it is barred to us. Emptiness compels
incessant retelling, and the individual interpretation of cultural myths makes all of us
fabulating subjects.
Thus, myths underlying collective identity are not only based on the history of living
people, but are also represented and consolidated in imaginary figures. Particular atten-
tion has to be paid to the figure of the hero, who sets out into the unknown, living through
many adventures, eventually returning in triumph and taking up a position of authority
(Campbell, 1949). The figure of the hero works particularly well for the imagination of
identity: incomparable and very often of divine origin, not knowing fear, despising the
rules of reason, and the demand for caution, doing what is dangerous and risky, the hero
is the exception to the ordinary. The hero breaks traditional customs, sets new rules, s/he
is the creative founder of collectives.
The hero’s counterpart is the traumatized victim who has no name, no face and no
space within the group and who – even though innocent – can be killed, solely due to
the fact that it bears a certain characteristic (Agamben, 1998). The victim is no longer
a sovereign person; it can no longer make decisions about itself, it is merely a case of
. . . (Giesen, 2004). In remembrance of the victims of the past, the community tries to
return their names and faces to them and relates this gesture to the historical motive
of Never again!Both the narratives of the hero and that of the victims can be found at the core of many
ethnic and national myths. They are exemplified either in the histories of slavery, colo-
nialism, expulsion and genocide (as in the case of the Holocaust and the Armenian
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genocide), or in various myths of foundation and capture; they are also exemplified in the
histories of revolutions and uprisings, in which a people breaks the chains of its oppres-
sors, lapsing into a pre-contractual state of nature from whence it violently seizes power
(Giesen, 2004). In the idea of revolutions and national uprisings, the myth of the hero,
originally and individually, is turned into a collective mode. The myth transmutes the
suffering of Job in the Old Testament (who was still able to talk to God) into the modern
genocides, in which the victim loses its individual identity, becoming a victim only
because it accidentally bears a certain characteristic.
In the past few decades, a new mythical figure has appeared in western constructions
of identity: the perpetrator. In contrast to the triumphant hero whose acts of violence
attract the admiration of the community, perpetrators inspire contempt and hatred. The
most important forms of coping with the past include the punishment of perpetrators who
are still alive, memorials, commemoration days for the victims, a peace education, and
representational confessions of guilt for the collective to which the perpetrators belong.
The genuflection of the German Chancellor Willy Brandt at the memorial honoring the
Ghetto Uprising (Schneider, 2006) in Warsaw became a model for the latter. In this ges-
ture there appears a split or schism between the individual and collective identity. Brandt
representationally acts for the German nation, even though he himself was persecuted by
the Nazis. He performed a Christian gesture, even though he was not a Christian.
The fact that collective as well as personal identity needs to be continuously read-
justed to changing communicational circumstances also affects the mythical figures
upon which these representations are based: work on collective identity is always also
work on myth (Blumenberg, 1979). On the one hand, there are references to formative
events in the past – civil wars, revolutions, defeats, constitutional acts, etc. – and, on the
other hand, there are attempts to adjust these narratives to the events of the present. For
example, in the past, German national identity was based on events that ranged from
heroic triumphs (the Battle of the Teutoburg Wood), to high cultural accomplishments
(German Classicism and Romanticism), to a collective sororicide and fratricide (the
Holocaust). Even though collective myths cannot explain all future eventualities, they
are abstract enough to serve as the basis for the explanation and narration of the present.
Contestations over collective signifiers
Thus, abstraction solves the problem of ambivalence and non-transparency of collective
identity that is often related to myths. The actual content of the myth, on which collective
identity is based, is situated in a position of in-betweenness: it is abstract enough in order
to serve as a reference for all participants, but at the same time it is so vague that it does
not permit consensus on particular claims, thus consistently leading to completely con-
tradictory conclusions, misunderstandings and debates. In contrast to the common
assumption that every society is based on a minimum of shared values and norms, we
claim that at the center of every culture are found the ambiguous (Giesen, 2010) and the
vague (Giesen et al., 2013).
However, these attempts to arrive at a conclusive definition of a collective identity
lead to endless controversies that criticize and throw in doubt particular interpretations
and narrations, and therefore continuously empty the signifiers of a culture. Thus,
Giesen and Seyfert 7
collective identity is not entirely homogenizing, and not all members of a society share
the same sense of the sacred. On the contrary, not only are there necessarily divergent
opinions within a group, but almost everybody has a different opinion. Such various
voices are necessary in order to keep the debate going – without those critical voices,
collective identity would cease to be a secret that is yet to be revealed.
Indeed, the attempts to define collective identity, the arguments over its defining
power and the critiques on all sides, are precisely at the center of collective identity.
It is a field rather than an object. Since it is precisely such contention that powers collec-
tive identity, even someone who rejects a certain iteration of a particular collective iden-
tity can still be considered a part of the group. Conversely, somebody who might seem to
be an outsider can become constitutive of a collective identity if s/he voices an opinion
that drives the debate forward.
At the same time, the narratives and representations of collective identity are in no
way undermined by these public debates. Instead, the debates reinforce the notion that
one day it will indeed be possible to conclusively narrate collective identity, to finally
attain the right notion of it. This public discourse is so far-reaching that we are almost
unable to escape the subject, and are ceaselessly lured and forced into committing our-
selves to a stance. Thus, we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation: we can neither con-
clusively define identity, nor can we deem this topic irrelevant. We know that identity
belongs in quotation marks, that it is an empty signifier; we also know that both our own
identity and the identity of our culture are mostly a matter of imagination. Yet that does
not free us from the obligation and motivation to repeatedly refill this emptiness with
myths and fables. It is precisely the non-transparency of identity – the identity of the
individual and the collective – that forces us to continuously invent it. Just as magic
continuously creates new gods, spirits and impersonal forces, to which it assigns
agency and responsibility, we create the notion of collective identity and represent
it through images and emblems (flags, coats of arms), rituals and memorials, mythical
narrations and songs.
Thus, public communication through empty signifiers runs counter to the structure of
traumatic memory. If traumas are (at first) barred from public communication but are
over-represented in individual consciousness, then the opposite is true for empty signif-
iers: there is a ceaseless public communication about the empty space, but individuals
are simply incapable of enacting the imagining of this empty identity on their own.
In fact, public communication does not operate according to Habermas’ model of
deliberation. It is distorted through the permanent public imagining of the non-
representable, through the projection into emptiness, through the laborious attempt to
make the whole visible. But it is also distorted by a past that is known to everybody, but
that is enshrouded in silence, a past that must not be mentioned. (We have covered trau-
matic communication in detail elsewhere; see Giesen, 2004.) Traumatic memories are
related to events in which mortality or finiteness of one’s own consciousness becomes
the center of attention. Unable to integrate the perception of one’s own finiteness into
a familiar narrative pattern, this experience will be deferred to the sphere of that which
is known but cannot be mentioned. This process applies not only to the sphere of indi-
vidual, but also to collective traumas. In collective traumas public communication
assumes the function or role that the consciousness plays in the individual. Here we also
8 European Journal of Social Theory
find the typical omissions, insinuations and gaps to which all participants adhere, and
which can be traced back to collectively committed crimes or experiences of victimiza-
tion rooted in the community. Only later, from the distance of a new generation, can the
trauma be articulated and institutionally worked through. Here we also find surprising
similarities in the traumatic sequences of individual and collective memory.
The transition from the collectively silenced signifier to one that can be publicly
debated is often performed through scandalization by outsiders and later generations.
Such a process usually involves clear and unambiguous distinctions between victims and
perpetrators, a process that does not admit of zones of in-betweenness. Such strict dis-
tinctions necessarily lead to unintended side effects, for example, when those who were
responsible escape punishment, when innocents are scapegoated, and when people ini-
tially claim a victim status that they are later no longer able to disavow.
Scandalization is not confined to the transition from traumatic silence to public atten-
tion. Rather, it constitutes a decisive mechanism that keeps the empty space of society
latent.
The example of the democratic sovereign provides a particularly apt illustration of the
relation between empty space, on the one hand, and public projection and imagination,
on the other. In a democracy, it is said that all power comes from the people. In contrast
to the princely ruler who can be identified by his face, name, and body, the democratic
sovereign, who replaces him after the great revolutions on the threshold to modernity,
remains an empty signifier. The latter is mainly imaginary: nobody has ever seen the
people, the nation and the demos in their entirety, and their boundaries cannot easily
be identified. The boundaries of citizenry are notorious causes of conflicts and debates.
The political theorist, Claude Lefort claims that democracy’s space of power is inten-
tionally left empty, and that this is democracy’s defining characteristic (Lefort, 1988). In
this sense, the constitutional articulation that all power comes from the people, in fact,
means, strictly speaking, its exact opposite – the people are always missing and the space
of power is empty. Precisely because power no longer comes from a monarchical sover-
eign but from the people, power becomes impersonal, and those who exercise it are
always immediately replaceable.
Secrets, not mysteries
What this Enlightenment theory misses, however, is the fact that the public conscious-
ness addresses this emptiness of power in a very particular manner. The empty space
of power and the provisional assumption of power in the name of the people in fact
do not lead to a common belief (in individuals) that nobody at all possesses the power.
On the contrary, it turns the space of power into a secretive space of fascination and
attraction. If in monarchical societies the king is a transcendent figure who has to be kept
separate from the people, for instance, by lineage and rituals of distance and separation,
then the space of power is mysterious, but, in a bodily sense, beyond reach. In turn, the
democratic emptying of this space, and the replacement of the king by everybody, give
the empty signifier a dramatic twist: from now on, everybody in principle has access to
power, but nobody knows exactly where it is, who exactly wields it, and, most impor-
tantly, how to gain it.
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The mythical and competing narratives that claim to fill the empty signifiers in the
center of collective identity simultaneously bestow upon it an aura of the secretive. In
this context, we do not – unlike Georg Simmel – primarily distinguish the secret from
that which is commonly known (Simmel, 1908), but argue that both our own identity
as well as the identity of the other are always concealed from us. In the center of collec-
tive identity is not only an empty but also a secret signifier whose content we deem – and
this is crucial – solvable in principle; its solution seems merely a question of effort, time,
and access to those who presumably possess inside knowledge. It is precisely this
assumption and suspicion that bestow the character of the secretive upon modern cul-
tures of identity. If we considered social facts as opaque but at the same time unsolvable,
‘unfathomable, inscrutable, eluding every comprehension’, then they would no longer be
secrets but ‘mysteries’ (Hahn, 1997: 25). For instance, Koselleck has shown that, in order
to shield themselves from control in an absolutistic state, the Freemasons surrounded
themselves with an aura of mystery (1973: 56). Modernity, however, abolishes all mys-
teries: ‘everything is sucked into the maelstrom of the public gaze. There is nothing that
would escape this public sphere.’ But at the same time, ‘this public sphere is dialectical,
i.e. as everything becomes public, everything also becomes ideological’ (1973: 97).
Thus, the shift to modernity has two consequences. First, collective identities become
the subject of perpetual critique (of ideology) and endless debates. Second, collective
identities and their empty significations are transformed from mysteries into secrets that
are deemed in principle solvable.
This is the reason why the space of power is at the same time the space of narrative
and imagination. It is deemed to be the backstage of society from where invisible hands
organize society. The assumption that it is possible to get there, to name the instigators
and to find out how power works, bestows upon politics the character of the secretive and
the scandalous. Thus, democratic politics very often turns into continuous efforts to
uncover scandals and to speculate about private interests behind the public facade. Scan-
dalization constitutes the decisive mechanism for the construction of the empty signifiers
as the place of secrets. Not only does the scandal construct the hidden content, it also
presupposes the notion that this hidden content can one day be unveiled, that it is solva-
ble in principle. At the same time, it mobilizes the affective energies that bring a partic-
ular issue into the realm of public communication, energies that ensure the issue’s
continued salience (Seyfert, 2012).
Latency and the role of experts
It is not only the imagination of the observers that plays an important role, but also
the experts who – from the perspective of the common audience – supposedly know
all about the game being played, and the players involved. Thus experts help sustain
the conviction that things not only are mysterious, but also that the contents of the
secrets of power are accessible in principle, even though the experts are themselves
mostly entangled in seemingly interminable processes of the impersonal legitimation
of power (Luhmann, 1983).
The secret at the center of cultural identity is a form of non-knowledge. Examples of
social secrets are not just the afore-mentioned questions of political power, but also
10 European Journal of Social Theory
questions of economic wealth, personal happiness and health – all highly contingent
states that are mostly beyond individual planning and execution. Even though the ways
of achieving power, health and wealth are vague and opaque, we nonetheless are always
able to point to a concrete individual case in which a person appears to have found the
solution to the riddles of power, wealth and happiness: Barack Obama, Warren Buffet,
the Dalai Lama. Here we have another reason for the secretive character of these topics:
if there were no exemplary carriers of this secret knowledge, those who might be able to
guide our search, then there would be no secrets.
In this process, both the secret and its transmission need to be staged; this staging pre-
sents its own problems. For instance, in order for former top-ranking athletes to become
plausibly credible as carriers of knowledge in social spheres other than sports, not only
must they successfully manage a believable costume change (for management seminars
or presentations, for instance), they must, above all, also demonstrate how individual
success in sport is bound to success in economics and power in politics (e.g. ‘Success
starts in the head’). And if the mathematical models of financial investors are not much
more profitable than the amateur decisions of monkeys (Malkiel, 2012), then the exis-
tence of the specialized access to the secrets of the stock market has to be made plausible
with the help of an appropriately complex sophistry. The fact that behind every success
story is an unequal greater number of failed (but invisible) carriers of knowledge is
something that has to be hidden when it comes to questions of happiness and financial
success as well as for questions regarding power. As we mentioned earlier, this problem
is not limited to the ways of power, but concerns every element of society that wants to
define something worth attaining or worth striving for, e.g. individual wealth, health and
happiness. To the extent that certain issues and desired objects become accessible to all,
they become increasingly significant as the subject matter of cultural identity.
In the very center of society and in the center of cultural identity lies the work on
secrets. In pre-modern societies these secrets were protected from trespass by privileges
and bans on curiosity (Montaigne, 1993: 91).
These secrets emerge in modern societies in various, mostly individualized, forms, for
example, as the quest for personal happiness, health and individual wealth. A secret pre-
supposes – as we have also pointed out – the notion of the principle of solvability; it is
based on the fundamental distinction between those who supposedly know it and those
who don’t; it is based on the unquestioned summons to erase this difference.
Those who know or pretend to have access to this knowledge are not just the figures
who inhabit the imagined backrooms of power, but also the experts of an extensive array
of guidebooks for a happy life, as well as the stock market gurus who dispense advice on
investments in the financial markets. In particular, the function of the experts and intel-
lectuals is to interpret the secret and to assure that the secret will be solved in the future;
but it is not their function to resolve the secret or to provide its eventual resolution. This
is especially true in the realm of culture and identity (Giesen, 1993: 69). Even though
their primary claim is the (re)solution of the secret(s), the real function of experts is
rather the preservation of the latency (and thereby the potency) of the key issues of cul-
tural identity. This indicates the individual and partial character of mythical interpreta-
tion, and simultaneously points to the fact that an individual’s distinct interpretation
might always be perceived as a distortion or a misinterpretation by other members of the
Giesen and Seyfert 11
group. For the students, pupils, amateurs and consumers – i.e. the advisees – the actual
accessibility of the gist of the secret does not play the decisive role; they can relate to the
secret in various ways, e.g. by huddling and nestling with those who supposedly have
access to power, wealth and happiness; by independently debunking relations of power
in science and academia; through political activism; through various guidebooks.
Beyond that, these matters are continuously debated at kitchen tables and in bars, and
experiences of exclusion (from power, wealth, happiness, etc.) are compensated for in
conspiracy theories or through resentments (Nietzsche, 1999). Nevertheless, the gaze
that exposes, enlightens, conspires or resents always in fact constructs the center of the
secret, and thereby keeps it latent: thus, what is criticized is always only a particular
interpretation of cultural identity, but never the notion of its existence itself.
Conclusion
To conclude, we will systematically arrange the public modes of dealing with empty sig-
nifiers. To this end we use the classification of two axes, Silence–Debates and Public–
Private respectively. The overlap of those axes creates an ideal-typical differentiation in
four fields that represent the various logics of dealing with empty signifiers (Figure 1).
As we have seen, the secretive signifier in the center of collective identity can be dealt
with by a traumatic ban on speaking, e.g. if it is related to a collective violent crime or an
experience of victimization. In the beginning, traumatic memories result in a ban on pub-
lic speech (with regard to that experience). However, this experience remains enclosed in
the individual. It is of a private nature and receives its certainty from the past alone.
In contrast, public debates about empty signifiers are difficult for the individual par-
ticipant to imagine. Here, too, the public plane can be sharply differentiated from the pri-
vate. While traumatic experience is banned in public debates but over-emphasized in
private memory, empty signifiers are expressed in continuous public communication
about something that appears completely ambiguous and blurred to each individual par-
ticipant (in this public communication). Everybody refers to these empty signifiers (God,
the people, Nature, freedom, justice, etc.) and nobody questions their existence but
nobody can precisely or conclusively define them. Empty signifiers are created only
through and in public communication – by insinuations, by reference to something else
and by repetition, all of which hold together the various and contradictory articulations.
Silence/Concealment Debates
Public � Trauma� Repression
� Enlightenment� Critique� Universal discourse ethic
Private � Resentment� Cynicism� Irony
� Individual interpretation� Inventions/fables� Speaking about the unknown
Figure 1. Ideal typical differentiation representing the various logics of dealing with emptysignifiers.
12 European Journal of Social Theory
Precisely because they are empty signifiers, there is ample room for individual fabula-
tions, shifting contextualizations and colorful inventions. Everybody imagines some-
thing different when speaking of justice, but no one ever questions the fictionality of,
and individual variations in, the references to justice. We pretend that our counterpart
(pre)supposes the same thing as we do, even though we know that this is most likely not
the case. The opposite of utmost certainty about the existence of the referent (God, the
people, justice) and the complete non-transparency of its qualities, however, emerges
only when the perspective of an outside observer is adopted. For the members of the
community, this paradox is as unproblematic as the indexical reference of here and we.
With the third ideal-typically differentiated field, we are moving into the territory of
what Habermas and many others have identified as the actual logic of public communi-
cation. Here, what matters is no longer the overcoming of the past, or the communicative
filling of a void, but only an enlightened and enlightening communication that is strictly
committed to reasonable arguments and discursive rules. Neither the past nor the
inequality of the participants, neither the scarcity of resources nor the shortness of time,
neither private concerns nor historical preferences, are allowed to play a role in this
discourse. The approved motives for discourse are solely the enlightenment of truth
and the uncovering of private secrets. In opposition to the logic of trauma, here com-
munication moves completely into public discourse; individual motives and interests
are suppressed – everybody is of equal rank, likewise without individual interests and
memories. This enlightenment ethics assumes that, if the rules of discourse are prop-
erly applied, it is only a matter of time until seemingly endless debates will unveil the
secret. As noble as the contours of this enlightenment discourse appear, its assumptions
are unrealistic: the exclusion of the past and of inequality is impossible in all actual
discourse. As an ideal, this enlightenment discourse might be useful in detecting social
distortions and imbalances; however, as a description of the reality of public commu-
nication, it is of no use.
Finally, we will touch on the last field of the logic of empty signifiers. Here, a distance
from the public realm of communication intersects with skepticism about grand narra-
tives, a skepticism that is expressed only in private communication. The grand narratives
are considered to be implausible if not downright ludicrous. The suspicion surrounding
the meaninglessness of empty signifiers – the suspicion that must remain unspoken in
public communication – is spoken in private. By using contemptuous expressions such
as empty words, one tries to distance oneself from empty signifiers. Empty signifiers can
always be turned into a subject of discussion or criticism, but this is entirely different
from the private, retrograde movement into the modes of resentment, sarcasm and irony.
If resentment enters public communication, the former would be perceived as cynicism
and ultimately be attacked. Resentment can persist only in modes of private expression
concealed from public discourse.
Our outline of the public handling of empty signifiers is meant to resolve certain prob-
lems in the concepts of contemporary cultural and social theory. On the one hand, we
introduce collective phenomena such as society, nation and the people as constructs
(pace deconstructivism) not based on grand closures and narratives: identity is a vague
thing, non-transparent to all participants. However, we seriously doubt the claim that
after the end of all grand narratives, all collective terms such as society and the people
Giesen and Seyfert 13
will consistently be replaced by deconstructive plural terms such as networks and the
particular, and furthermore that this fragmented reality without a center is in fact present
in the beliefs and imaginaries of the various actors. By contrast, we continue to assume
that not only are participants in public debates absolutely certain about the empty signif-
iers in the center of culture, but also that these empty signifiers are constructed precisely
and primarily in public speech and open debate. At the same time, the doubts surround-
ing their precise nature and reality are kept latent in public debates. The decisive ques-
tion is not whether a certain society, nation or people possesses a definable or
determinable substrate, or whether a consensus on their nature is possible. Instead, the
more pressing question concerns the mechanisms of constitution on which they are
based, and the ways and means through which empty signifiers are filled out – and again
emptied. In this context, we have pointed to the secretive character of empty signifiers in
modern societies. From the perspective of modernity, empty signifiers are presented as
an opportunity for illumination, as a task of elucidation and enlightenment that is always
solvable in principle. Thus, modernity is dominated by the pathos of enlightenment of
Habermas’ notion of the public sphere: everything is suspected of bearing a secret that
demands urgent elucidation (1991: 4). The fact that this secret consists only in a self-
supporting empty space, created precisely within discourse, is what completely escapes
these proponents of enlightenment. They tend to treat everything as a secret to be eluci-
dated, and miss the point that the apparent secret remains an unsolvable mystery, and that
no society can exist without this mysterious center – without the sacred.
Notes
1. On secrets in religion, see Assmann and Assman (1999, 1997).
2. The English translation (Koselleck, 1988) uses ‘mystery’ for the German word Geheimnis,
which is particularly misleading for our analysis. Koselleck’s entire book can be read as an
analysis of the socially constitutive role of secrets.
3. On the problem of order beyond the micro and macro level, see Seyfert (2014).
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Author biographies
Bernhard Giesen is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Universitat Konstanz, Germany. His pub
lications include: Zwischenlagen: Das Außerordentliche als Grund der sozialen Wirklichkeit
(2011), Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics and Ritual (ed. with J.
Alexander and J. Mast, 2006) and Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (with J. Alexander,
R. Eyerman, N. J. Smelser and P. Sztompka).
Robert Seyfert is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Cultural Foundations of Social
Integration’, Universitat Konstanz, Germany. His research interests are social theory, cultural
sociology and the sociology of the financial markets. His dissertation was published in 2011 as
Das Leben der Institutionen (Velbruck). Other publications include: ‘Beyond personal feelings and
collective emotions: a theory of social affect’, Theory, Culture & Society 29/6 (2012): 27 46.
16 European Journal of Social Theory