전출처 : 숨은아이 > 뜀뛰는 쥐 이야기 (1)

 

지난번에 이안님께서 선물하신 영어 그림책을 서투르나마 우리말로 옮겨 보았습니다.
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뜀뛰는 쥐 이야기

아메리카 원주민 사이에 전해진 옛이야기를 존 스텝토(JOHN STEPTOE)가 다시 쓰고 그림.


(성이 steptoe라, 뭔가 의미심장하여 사전을 검색해 보니 이렇게 나온다.
steptoe[stptu]n. 용암러 싸여 고립언덕
발가락걸음이나 까치발 정도 되는 줄 알았는데.)








“높이 뛰는 쥐 이야기”는 Hymeyohsts Storm이 1972년에 낸 《일곱 화살(Seven Arrows)》에 실린 이야기인데, 존 스텝토가 어린이들을 위해 다시 쓰고 그림을 그려 1984년에 낸다.





큰 강가 숲에 어린 쥐 한 마리가 살았어요. 쥐들은 낮에는 내내 먹을 것을 찾아다니고, 밤에는 늙은 쥐들이 해주는 이야기를 들으려고 한데 모였지요. 어린 쥐는 강 건너편 황야에 관한 이야기를 즐겨 듣다가, 하늘에 사는 위험스런 그림자들 이야기를 들으면 흠칫 떨곤 했지요. 어린 쥐는 머나먼 나라 이야기를 가장 좋아했어요.


 



‘머나먼 나라’란 말이 매우 근사해서, 어린 쥐는 꿈까지 꾸기 시작했어요. 거기 가보기 전에는 성이 차지 않을 게 분명했어요. 어른 쥐들은 너무 멀고 험한 길이라며 말렸지만, 어린 쥐는 흔들리지 않았어요. 어느 날, 어린 쥐는 동이 트기 전 출발했지요.

 

 



숲의 가장자리에 다다를 때쯤 날이 저물었어요. 어린 쥐의 앞에 강이 나타났어요. 강 저편엔 황야가 있었지요. 어린 쥐는 깊은 물 속을 내려다보았어요. “여길 어떻게 건너지?” 어린 쥐는 난감해서 말했어요.




“헤엄칠 줄 모르니?” 써걱거리는 목소리가 말했어요.
어린 쥐가 둘러보니, 작은 초록색 개구리가 보였어요.
“안녕? 헤엄치는 게 뭐야?” 쥐가 말했어요.
“이게 헤엄치는 거야.” 개구리는 말하고 물 속으로 뛰어들었어요.
“오, 난 못할 것 같아.” 어린 쥐가 말했어요.
“너 왜 강을 건너야 하는데?” 개구리가 강둑으로 도로 뛰어오르며 물었어요.
“머나먼 나라에 가고 싶어. 매우매우 멋질 것 같아. 평생 못 보고 살 순 없어.”
“그럼, 내가 도와줘야겠구나. 난 마법개구리야. 넌 누구니?”
“난 쥐야.” 어린 쥐가 말했어요.

마법개구리는 푸하하 웃었어요. “그건 이름이 아냐. 여행하는 데 도움이 되도록 이름을 지어 줄게. 네 이름은 뜀뛰는쥐야.”

마법개구리가 이 이름을 말하자마자, 어린 쥐의 뒷다리가 움찔움찔거렸어요. 조금 뛰어올라 보았더니, 놀랍게도 전보다 두 배나 높게 뛰어올랐어요. “고마워.” 어린 쥐가 다리에 놀라운 힘이 생긴 데 감탄하면서 말했어요.

“뭘.” 마법개구리가 말했어요. “이제 이 잎을 딛고서 같이 강을 건너는 거야.”

안전하게 건너편 둑에 닿자, 마법개구리가 말했어요. “네 앞길엔 난관이 많을 거야. 하지만 걱정하지 마. 네 안에 희망이 살아 있다면 머나먼 나라에 갈 수 있어.”

(2편으로 이어짐)


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2005-02-10 15:16   URL
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 전출처 : 숨은아이 > 뜀뛰는 쥐 이야기(2)

 

뜀뛰는쥐는 바로 출발하여 숲과 숲 사이를 재게 건너뛰었어요. 저 위에서 그림자들이 휘돌 때면 눈에 안 띄게 숨었어요. 나무딸기가 나타나면 따먹고, 지쳐 떨어질 때만 잤어요. 나날이 흘러갔어요. 빨리빨리 나아가면서도, 뜀뛰는쥐는 과연 황야 저편에 다다를 수 있을지 의구심이 들기 시작했어요. 이윽고 마른 땅을 가로지르는 개울을 건너, 뜀뛰는쥐는 큰 딸기 덤불 아래에서 늙고 뚱뚱한 쥐를 만났어요.

 

 



“뒷다리 참 희한하구나.” 뚱뚱한 쥐가 말했어요.

“마법개구리가 제 이름을 지어 줄 때 받은 거예요.” 뜀뛰는쥐가 자랑스레 말했어요.

“흥.” 뚱뚱한 쥐가 콧방귀를 뀌었어요. “그게 그리 좋으냐?”

“이 뒷다리 덕분에 너른 황무지를 건너올 수 있었어요. 운이 좋다면 덕분에 머나먼 나라에도 가겠지요.” 뜀뛰는쥐가 말했어요. “하지만 지금은 너무 지쳤어요. 여기서 쉬어 가도 될까요?”

“그럼.” 뚱뚱한 쥐가 말했어요. “여기서 영영 살아도 돼.”

“고맙습니다. 하지만 기운 차릴 때까지만 머무를게요. 머나먼 나라를 보려는 꿈이 있어요. 할 수 있는 한 가야 해요.”

“꿈이라.” 뚱뚱한 쥐가 우습다는 듯이 말했어요. “나한테도 그런 꿈이 있었지. 하지만 내가 찾아낸 건 바로 황야였어. 필요한 게 여기 다 있는데 왜 황야를 지나쳐 가지?” 
뜀뛰는쥐는 무엇이 필요해서가 아니라, 그렇게 해야 한다고 스스로 느끼는 것임을 설명하려고 했어요. 하지만 뚱뚱한 쥐는 여전히 콧방귀만 뀌었어요. 마침내 뜀뛰는쥐는 굴을 파고 들어가 몸을 웅크리고 밤을 보냈지요.

이튿날 뚱뚱한 쥐는 개울 이편에 머무르라고 훈계했어요. “저쪽에는 뱀이 살아. 하지만 염려 마. 뱀은 물을 겁내거든. 그러니 개울을 건너오진 않을 거야.”

 

 



딸기 덤불 밑은 살기 좋은 곳이라, 뜀뛰는쥐는 곧 기운을 차리고 힘을 냈어요. 두 쥐는 먹고 자고 또 자고 먹었지요. 그러던 어느 날 아침, 뜀뛰는쥐가 물을 마시러 개울에 갔다가, 물에 비친 자기 그림자를 보았어요. 늙고 뚱뚱한 쥐와 거의 같을 만큼 뚱뚱했어요!

“떠날 때가 됐어.” 뜀뛰는쥐는 생각했어요. “딸기 덤불 아래 주저앉으려고 여기까지 오진 않았어.”


그때 개울의 폭이 좁은 곳에 나뭇가지 하나가 걸린 것이 보였어요. 그것은 마치 다리처럼 개울가 양편에 걸쳐졌으니-이제 거길 통해 뱀이 건너올 수 있었어요! 뜀뛰는쥐는 뚱뚱한 쥐에게 알리려고 서둘러 돌아갔어요. 하지만 굴은 텅 빈 채였고, 공기 중에 이상한 냄새가 돌았어요. 뱀이었어요. 뜀뛰는쥐가 너무 늦은 거예요. “불쌍한 아저씨.” 뜀뛰는쥐는 급히 도망치며 생각했어요. “꿈을 찾으려는 희망을 잃더니, 삶을 마치고 말았구나.”

 

 



뜀뛰는쥐는 밤새도록 달렸더니, 이튿날 아침 초원에 다다랐어요. 기진맥진한 쥐는 안전하게 쉴 곳을 찾아 크고 넓적한 바위로 뛰어갔어요. 그런데 가까이 가 보니, 그 바위는 엄청나게 크고 텁수룩한 들소가 초원에 누워 있는 것이었어요. 띄엄띄엄 끊이지 않고 끙끙거리면서요.

뜀뛰는쥐는 그 무서운 소리에 벌벌 떨었어요. “안녕하세요, 크신 분.” 용기를 내어 말했어요. “저는 뜀뛰는쥐예요. 머나먼 나라에 가려고 여행하고 있어요. 왜 여기서 죽은 듯이 누워 계신가요?”

“죽어 가니까.” 들소가 말했어요. “독을 푼 개울물은 마셔서 눈이 멀었기 때문에, 먹을 만한 부드러운 풀과 마실 만한 시원한 물을 찾을 수가 없어. 나는 곧 죽을 거야.”

 

 



뜀뛰는쥐는 그토록 놀라운 짐승이 도리 없이 죽어 가는 걸 보니 슬펐어요. “제가 떠나 올 때, 마법개구리가 제게 이름을 지어 주고 다리에 힘을 불어넣어서 제가 여기까지 올 수 있었어요. 제 마법은 그처럼 강력하진 않지만, 할 수 있는 만큼 해볼게요. 이제 당신 이름은 쥐의눈이에요.”


말이 떨어지기 무섭게, 뜀뛰는쥐는 들소가 기뻐서 내뿜는 콧김 소리를 들었어요. 쥐는 이제 들소에게 자신의 눈을 주었기 때문에 볼 수 없게 되었어요.

(여기서 서비스 컷. 들소가 눈뜬 표정을 좀더 가까이.)


 



“고마워.” 쥐의눈이 말했어요. “넌 작지만 아주 큰 일을 해냈어. 네가 내 몸 아래로 뛰어가면, 하늘에 뜬 그림자들도 널 보지 못할 거야. 내가 너를 산으로 데려갈게.”
뜀뛰는쥐는 그 말대로 했어요. 들소의 발걸음에 맞춰 폴짝폴짝 뛰었지요. 이렇게 해서 뜀뛰는쥐는 산기슭까지 왔어요.

“나는 들판에 사는 짐승이야. 여기서 이만 돌아가야 한단다.” 쥐의눈이 말했어요. “넌 앞이 보이지 않는데 어떻게 이 산을 넘지?”

“다 수가 있겠지요.” 뜀뛰는쥐가 말했어요. “희망은 항상 제 안에 살아 있어요.” 뜀뛰는쥐는 들소 친구에게 안녕 했어요. 그리고 굴을 파고 들어가 잤습니다.

 



이튿날 아침 뜀뛰는쥐는 산봉우리에서 불어 내려오는 찬 바람에 잠이 깼어요. 찬 기운이 불어오는 방향을 피해 조심스레 몸을 돌렸어요. 발 아래 털이 밟히기까지 그리 멀리 가지도 않았어요. 놀란 쥐는 펄쩍 뛰어 코를 공중에 대고 킁킁거렸어요. 이리? 무서워 몸이 얼어붙었어요. 하지만 아무 일도 일어나지 않자, 쥐는 용기를 끌어 모아 말을 꺼냈어요. “실례합니다. 저는 뜀뛰는쥐예요. 머나먼 나라로 여행하고 있어요. 길을 가르쳐 주실래요?”
“할 수 있으면 하겠지만.” 이리가 말했어요. “이리는 코로 길을 찾아. 그런데 내 코는 이제 아무 냄새도 맡지 못해.”
“무슨 일이 있었나요?” 뜀뛰는쥐가 물었어요.
“나는 게으르고 건방진 동물이었어.” 이리가 대답했어요. “냄새 맡는 재능을 마구 써 버려서, 결국 잃고 말았지. 나는 이제 건방지지 않아야 한다는 걸 배웠지만, 내가 어디 있는지, 어디로 가야 할지 알려주는 코가 없으면 살아나지 못해. 그래서 여기 누워 마지막을 기다리고 있어.”
뜀뛰는쥐는 이리의 이야기에 슬퍼졌어요. 쥐는 이리에게 마법개구리와 쥐의눈 이야기를 했지요. “전 대수롭지 않은 마법을 부릴 줄 알아요. 도울 수 있다면 기쁘겠어요. 이제 당신 이름은 쥐의코예요.”

 



이리는 기쁨에 차 부르짖었어요. 뜀뛰는쥐는 공중에 대고 코를 킁킁거려 산의 냄새를 찾아 보았어요. 하지만 이제 솔향 풍기는 바람 냄새를 맡을 수 없었어요. 뜀뛰는쥐의 눈과 코는 이제 아무런 쓸모가 없었어요. “넌 아주 작은 동물이지만.” 쥐의코가 말했어요. “내게 아주 큰 선물을 주었어. 고맙다는 인사를 받아 줘야 해. 자, 내 몸 아래로 뛰어가면 하늘의 그림자들도 널 보지 못할 거야. 너를 산 너머 머나먼 나라로 데려다줄게.”

(다시 이리와 뜀뛰는 쥐 모습 클로즈업)



그래서 뜀뛰는쥐는 터벅터벅 걷는 이리의 발걸음에 맞추어 폴짝폴짝 뛰었어요. 이렇게 해서 마나먼 나라에 다다랐어요.
“난 산에 사는 동물이야. 여기서 이만 돌아가야 해.” 쥐의코가 말했어요. “넌 보지도 듣지도 못하는데 이제 어떻게 길을 가지?”
“다 수가 있겠지요.” 뜀뛰는쥐가 말했어요. 그리고 이리 친구에게 안녕 하고는 굴을 파고 잠들었어요.

(3편으로 이어짐)


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 전출처 : 숨은아이 > 뜀뛰는 쥐 이야기(3)



이튿날 아침 뜀뛰는쥐는 잠에서 깨어 굴 밖으로 기어 나왔어요. “난 여기 있어.” 쥐가 말했어요. “나는 발 아래 대지를 느낄 수 있어. 나뭇잎을 살랑거리게 하는 바람 소리를 들을 수 있어. 해는 내 몸을 따뜻하게 해주지. 잃은 건 하나도 없어. 하지만 예전의 나는 결코 아니지. 이제 어떻게 하지?” 그리고 뜀뛰는쥐는 앙 울기 시작했어요.

“뜀뛰는쥐야.” 써걱거리는 목소리가 들렸어요.

“마법개구리, 너니?” 뜀뛰는쥐가 눈물을 삼키고 물었어요.


(눈물 흘리는 쥐의 귀여운 얼굴 클로즈업)


 

 



“그래.” 마법개구리가 말했어요. “울지 마, 뜀뛰는쥐야. 넌 남을 위하는 마음 때문에 몹시 어려운 일을 겪었지만, 희망과 연민을 잃지 않은 그 마음 때문에 머나먼 나라에 오게 되었어.”

 

 



“겁낼 거 하나도 없어, 뜀뛰는쥐야.”

 



“높이 뛰어, 뜀뛰는쥐야.” 마법개구리가 말했어요.

 



뜀뛰는쥐는 그 말대로 했어요. 할 수 있는 한 높이 뛰었어요. 그리고 자신의 몸을 하늘 더 높이 들어 올리는 바람을 느꼈어요. 쥐는 해를 향해 발을 쭉 뻗고, 강한 힘이 솟아오르는 걸 느꼈어요. 쥐는 기쁨에 차서 위, 아래 놀랍도록 아름다운 세상을 보고, 땅과 하늘과 생명들의 향기를 맡았어요.
“뜀뛰는쥐야.” 마법개구리가 부르는 소리가 들렸어요. “네게 새 이름을 줄게.”

 



“네 이름은 이제 독수리야.”




“넌 이제 머나먼 나라에서 영원히 살게 되었어.”

(마지막 장면의 독수리 클로즈업)





(끝.)


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2005-02-07 13:00   URL
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balmas 2005-02-07 16:07   좋아요 0 | 댓글달기 | URL
오호 예진양, 나야 영광이지. 뭐 내가 제대로 롤 모델이 될 수 있을지는 의심스럽지만(^^;;;) 예진양이 원하면 해줘야지. 알라딘 페이퍼 코멘트로 하든 이메일로 보내든 나는 상관 없으니까 언제든지 보내줘요.^^

2005-02-08 11:48   URL
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2005-02-08 13:34   URL
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* 또 한 편의 영문 텍스트를 올려서 미안합니다.^^

관심있는 분들이 계실 것 같아서 발리바르가 최근 발표한 영문 텍스트 한 편 올립니다.

발리바르가 요즘 이론 활동이 절정에 이른 느낌입니다. 몇년 일찍 정념 퇴임을 해서

무슨 일인가 궁금했는데, 자신이 구상하고 있는 이론 작업들에 전념하기 위해서 그런 것 같네요.

지난 번 세계 마르크스주의 대회에서 강연한 [레닌과 간디]는 체계화된 논문이라기보다는 일종의

문제제기에 가까운 것 같더군요. 앞으로의 작업을 위한 몇 가지 구상들을 간략하게 밝힌 듯합니다. 

이 글은 최근 주권 개념에 관한 작업도 관련이 있고, 발리바르의 철학적 인간학에 관한 작업과도

연결되어 있고,  또 [레닌과 간디]의 내용과도 얼마간 관련이 있네요.  

재미있게 읽으시고 독후감도 남기시길 ... ^^ 

 

The South Atlantic Quarterly 103.2/3 (2004) 311-322

The South Atlantic Quarterly 103.2/3 (2004) 311-322



Is a Philosophy of Human Civic Rights Possible?

New Reflections on Equaliberty


Étienne BalibarÉtienne Balibar



I would like to propose here some "new reflections" concerning the notion of equal liberty (aequa libertas), a notion that has persisted across the entire republican political tradition from antiquity (Cicero) to contemporary debates around the work of John Rawls and Amartya Sen, and that I have previously presented in the compressed form of the portmanteau word equaliberty (équalliberté, igualibertad, Gleiche Freiheit, or Gleichheit/Freiheit, etc.).1

These reflections are intended to contribute to the discussion of a classical problem in political philosophy, that of the democratic foundation of the rights of the citizen. In philosophy, foundation is to be understood as meaning the explanation of a principle, particularly a constitutive principle. If we presume that the "rights of the citizen" themselves form the heart and the goal of the constitutional order, whether written or unwritten, formal or material, normative or structural, then what we will be concerned with is something like a constitution of the constitution, following a philosophical-political wordplay deeply rooted in our history (but variably apparent in different languages: thus in French, constitution de la constitution, but in German, Konstitution der[End Page 311]Verfassung). Here I would like to treat this constitution of the constitution in the spirit of a "deconstruction," understood not as a destruction or pure and simple disqualification, but as an Ab-bau, a critical analysis of presuppositions. Deconstruction in this sense brings out problematic elements and negative, antinomical, or aporetic aspects and therefore helps us understand the necessity of recastings, displacements, or even reversals (as I will be led to suggest in conclusion, taking a free inspiration from certain considerations of Hannah Arendt).

In order to get a grasp on the problem we are working with, I would like briefly (and, I hope, in a noncontroversial way) to recall what constitutes the philosophical revolution inherent in modern citizenship that is democratic in essence, and why it raises a difficulty of principle. It is in fact not the invention of the democratic principle that distinguishes modern citizenship as progressively instituted by the political transformations that began in the classical age, moving through the popular insurrections and constitutional reforms of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, and that is widely acknowledged to constitute an infinite task, from the citizenship of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Aristotle and Cicero already had said that the principle of the politeia or civitas referred to an ius communis and a consensus populi that was essentially democratic. What is distinctly characteristic of modern citizenship, at least by right or in principle, is the universalization of the status of the citizen. In other words, this status ceases to be a privilege and instead comes to be conceived in terms of universal access, or a universal right to politics: a right not only to political rights (a "right to have rights," as Arendt said), but also to effective political participation.2

What is at stake in this conception, which for us represents both the incontestable and uncomfortable heritage of modernity, is in the first place an extensive universality—that is, a cosmopolitical horizon, approached in different degrees by various national or federal citizenships, or, better yet, by the articulation of national citizenship and international law. But even more important is what I would call an intensive universality, which gives as a support or "subject" for political participation common humanity, the Gattungswesen or "species-being" as Hegel and Feuerbach called it, the man without particular qualities (if not without properties). This intensive universality excludes exclusion, forbids the denial of citizenship in the name of determinations of condition, status, or nature. We should take note of the element of negativity or "negation of the negation" that is, of course, inherent in the conceptualization of the universal. [End Page 312]

Ideally (or normatively, if you prefer), modern citizenship thus institutes an equation, a reciprocity of perspectives, a coextensivity of the predicates of humanity and those of citizenship: Homo sive Civis, to parody a famous philosophical formulation. And this is precisely what is expressed, in a mode that is both constative and performative, by the great Declarations that found political modernity and whose trace is visible in most of our constitutional preambles. As I have argued elsewhere following other scholars, the heart and kernel of these declarations, as well as the Bills of Rights that preceded them and hold a similar place in the Anglo-American constitution tradition, turn out to be constituted by the proposition of equal liberty or "equaliberty." This proposition poses, in the characteristic form of a double or simultaneous negation, that equality is impossible without liberty and liberty impossible without equality, and therefore that liberty and equality stand in a relation of mutual implication. It thus equates in principle generic humanity and citizenship, implying a juridical adequation of the "rights of man" and the "rights of the citizen." It is thus, if you will, the principle of democratic constitution of the constitution in its typically modern universalist conception.

Whence then comes the difficulty—a persistent, probably unsolvable difficulty, that of course should not lead us to abandon or overturn democratic universalism, but to develop a critique of its constitution? It seems to me that we can identify at least three sources or sets of reasons whose concatenation I would like to sketch out in such a way as to allow us to put back into question or reformulate the constitutive proposition itself.

First (here I am of course making no claim to originality), these difficulties stem from the duality of interpretations of the idea of a democratic constitution of rights, expressed in the competition between the notions of fundamental rights (the Grundrechtsdemokratie evoked in the title of Gerald Stourzh's major work) and that of popular sovereignty or legislative and constituent "general will."3


Second, and I will attempt to show that this aspect is in fact not independent of the first, and even provides a more satisfactory interpretation of it than the opposition between an abstractly normative viewpoint and a historically and politically concrete viewpoint, the difficulty comes from the fact that the concept of man to which the universalist foundation refers is a fundamentally equivocal concept. We can express this by recalling the "metaphysical fact" that, in the historic substitution of an anthropological perspective for a cosmological or theological (or cosmotheological) perspective [End Page 313] —a substitution that is precisely characteristic of modernity—the term man that comes to occupy the position of ultimate reference previously figured by God or the world is immediately divided into two opposed significations or ways of being understood. Communitarian man is not identical to man as proprietor or, in the terminology I would like to introduce, man as "subject" is not identical to man as "individual," even though both of them are generic, and both are destined to coincide with the citizen and to determine the constitution of the citizen's rights from within. In reality, this duality has never ceased to be at work within the always-conflictual attempts and procedures of institutional realization of equal liberty or the effective democratization of politics.

Finally, third, the difficulty comes from the fact that not only the idea but also the very process of "foundation" is essentially and irreducibly antinomical—that is, destined to contradict itself, to turn around into the negation of the principle that it institutes. Here I am thinking in part of the classical antinomy of the notion of constituent power, whose theological roots are well known, which makes the ultimate point of institution of the law or order necessarily also represent a point of dissolution of all order and all legality, a point of exception with respect to its universality and of liberation with respect to its legal constraint (a problem to which I will return). But I also am thinking of the fact that universalization as such appears to be inseparable from procedures of exclusion and, I would even say, of inner exclusion. This represents something quite different from a simple empirical limitation or particularization of principles by historical circumstances and the contingent difficulties of their realization; it affects the idea of constitution or refoundation itself, from within.

We must now pose the question, which is obviously a paradoxical one, of the sort of "finitude" that is proper to the universal itself, the "finitude" proper to the infinite or unfinished character of the process of emancipation whose political name, in fact, is "democracy" or "citizenship." Allow me to return, schematically and partially, to each of the points I have just evoked. In each case my goal will be, always in a different perspective, to emphasize the aporetic elements inherent in the idea of a democratic constitution of rights that we take as our guiding principle.

The first difficulty I evoked concerns the duality of perspectives from which one can envisage, in a metajuridical discourse that we know is inseparably political and philosophical, how a continuous "foundation" and consequently a guarantee for the democratic constitutional order can be provided. [End Page 314]

For historical reasons of which everyone here is well aware, the formulation of this difficulty took on a particularly clear and explicit form in the German context after 1945. But we also know that the problems it raises are of a particular import today as we are faced with the question of the extension of the constitutional perspective and if possible the democratic constitution of powers, of public authority, to postnational or supranational spaces and in particular to the space of Europe. But, to tell the truth, the two aspects (the extensive aspect—passage to supranationality—and the intensive aspect—the democratization of public powers) are not separable.

I will borrow formulations from two contemporary German authors, the philosopher Jürgen Habermas and the jurist Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, who resolve the difficulty in different ways but do, at least to my thinking, pose it in fairly similar terms.

In a central chapter of his recent Between Facts and Norms, Habermas proposes that the "system of rights" that gives the political order its internal regulation can be "reconstruct[ed]" in one of two directions. He speaks of an "internal tension" at work within the process of mutual recognition of citizens who legitimately aim to "regulate their common life by means of positive law,"4

and philosophically refers this "ambivalent mode of legal validity" on the one hand to a Rousseauist and on the other to a Kantian descent—and thus (and this point is important) to two different ways of understanding the principle of autonomy. (While I cannot enter into such a debate here, this in fact means that for Habermas the discourses of Rousseau and Kant are not simply exterior to one another.) Habermas's entire discussion of the foundation of the system of rights, and thus of the intrinsic relation between a juridical aspect, a moral aspect (related to the idea of subjective self-determination and mutual recognition of subjectivities), and a properly political aspect, tends to bring forward what he calls a relation of "unacknowledged competition" between a perspective that sees the constitutional order as founded on the Rights of Man considered as fundamental rights (Grundrechte), and one that sees it as founded on the principle of popular sovereignty.5

Habermas calls these the "sole ideas that can justify modern law."6

Indeed they are the only two ideas by means of which it is possible to both produce and give a norm to, or regulate, consensus, or as Habermas puts it in a remarkable formulation, "the first-person plural" (us, nous, wir)7

presupposed by an effective process of self-determination or mutual recognition of rights.

But these two ideas are not so much complementary as competing, as [End Page 315] is shown in particular by the recurrent debate between "liberal" and "civic republican" conceptions of democracy, which can be schematically attached to a Kantian representation (although I personally would emphasize the Lockean element) and a Rousseauist one. The former tends to found consensus and the reciprocity of subjective rights, or the equal liberty that constitutes its essential content, upon the universality of a norm that is to be found "upstream" from the politico-juridical order properly speaking, that is, in the moral sphere where individuals ideally are capable of substituting for one another and thus of neutralizing their differences of opinion or conflicts of interests. The latter tends to incorporate the egalitarian norm, usually called the "general will," into the concrete (Habermas even calls it "existential"8

) political act that realizes the socialization of individuals—that is, incorporates individuals into the institutions of a historical society, with or without state coercion, even as it imposes on them—once again at least in an ideal fashion—the transcendence of private and particular interests in a general public interest.

As is well known, the solution Habermas poses in response to this dilemma, which he sees as coextensive with the entire modern constitutional tradition, takes a transcendental form in that he introduces a third notion that would allow one to remain precisely at the level of the constitution of rights, without displacing it in the direction of a moralization or a politicization. For Habermas this term is to be found in the "communicational" sphere or "sphere of communicative activity" in which "the illocutionary binding forces of a use of language oriented to mutual understanding serve to bring reason and will together," which means that "as participants in rational discourses, consociates under law must be able to examine whether a contested norm meets with, or could meet with, the agreement of all those possibly affected."9

Equal liberty would thus be neither simply imposed or postulated, nor instrumentalized by a body politic that sees it as the expression of its sovereignty. We might naturally wonder whether this "solution" is not in fact circular, since the communicative procedure is quite likely to be the effect rather than the source of "consensus" or mutual recognition. But above all we might have the feeling that Habermas's solution is in reality much closer to the Kantian moral perspective, and thus to foundation in terms of Grundrechte, or the universalization of individual guarantees of right, than to the republican, Rousseauist perspective of foundation in terms of popular sovereignty or autonomy of the collective.

Things are quite different, and for practical purposes the opposite, in [End Page 316] the perspective developed by Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde.10

I regret that I cannot enter into detail here, but I would like to recall that Böckenförde interrogates alternatively the difficulties of the idea of "constituent power" inherent in the democratic tradition (in fact properly belonging to it) and the problems posed by the idea of an immediate validity of Grundrechte or the fundamental liberties of the individual, which posttotalitarian constitutions have once again insisted on with great force in order to take into account and guard against the possibility—devastating for the universalism and rationalism of modernity—of an expression of popular sovereignty becoming exclusionary and even annihilating minorities.

Constituent power only has its full sense to the extent that it grounds sovereignty, not only in the "people" considered as a collective entity actively constituted by direct political participation, particularly in the properly constituent moments of liberating insurrection, but also in what Böckenförde calls the unorganized people, which always remains subjacent to its own incorporation in a system of guarantees and constitutional controls or, if you prefer, to its own transformation into a simple organ of the constitution (in the exercise of universal suffrage, for example).

On the other hand, the idea of an immediate validity of Grundrechte appears to be inseparable from that of a distribution of these rights among all citizens, and from an effective realization of this distribution. I personally would read in this idea a strong expression of the idea of equal liberty. Now, this question of distribution sets in motion, if not a tendency to identify political rights with social rights—a tendency explicitly rejected by Böckenförde even as he acknowledges that the question of their coincidence will inevitably be posed—at least an uncontrollable movement ("fuite en avant") of normative conceptions of fundamental rights toward an institutional or axiological theory or conception. Böckenförde calls this process "functional democracy," in which it is not abstract norms but the democratic process as such, a fundamentally political process, that governs the distribution of rights and duties.11


In the end it would seem that the way Böckenförde conceives the transcendence of the antithesis between the two foundations, whose existence he too recognizes, moves in the opposite direction of Habermas by emphasizing the political dimension over the moral dimension. But he conceives this political dimension as a process of self-regulation or self-limitation of the constituent power of the people. This allows him to pass from the stage of "power" (or "energy"12

) to the stage of the norm and normativity precisely to [End Page 317] the extent that he incorporates into his definition of the conditions or rules for the exercise of constituent power (and into its exercise itself) prescriptions and guarantees formulated in terms of "fundamental rights," which in the final analysis come from a universalist cultural tradition.13

We could thus here again speak of a quest for equilibrium between the two principles, or of a reciprocal limitation of the democratic idea of (popular) constituent power and of the democratic (in a different sense) idea of "fundamental rights." But in this reciprocal limitation the idea of constituent power or popular sovereignty retains primacy and continues to be determining, as is shown in particular by his considerations on the national character of citizenship,14

that is, on the difference between citizenship and humanity that must subsist in practice in order for the "people," even "unorganized," to remain a political subject, a community of belonging, and not be dissolved into a multitude of individualities who are simply bearers of a demand to be governed by authorities of their choice and under their control, as it could be formulated by an abstract individualism or cosmopolitanism.

I have dwelt upon these well-known positions in order to bring forward a double hypothesis. On the one hand, it seems that it remains impossible to provide an unequivocal foundation for the democratic order, or what I call equal liberty, at the properly juridical level, even though equal liberty is incontestably a juridical concept or idea, a "form of right." But in a sense this should not surprise us in the least since what is at stake is precisely the possibility of assigning the "metaphysical point" at which the juridical order might be able to found itself. In this sense, every autofoundation inevitably provokes the appearance, from within, of an alterity, an essential impurity of right, which must be backed up by a moral or historico-political origin, both of which are more or less inevitably idealized. The fact that we are considering a democratic order not only does not abolish the difficulty, but in fact brings it forth in its purity and makes a confrontation necessary. In this sense, it would be appropriate to say not only, with Böckenförde, that "constituent power" is a limit-concept, but also that "fundamental rights" are every bit as much a limit-concept, and therefore always in search of determinate content and formalization. The limit of these limits is precisely the coincidence or adequation of these two perspectives. But on the other hand, we also could say that if, considered as a question of principle, this adequation is properly speaking unavailable, or the object of an infinite quest, it appears as an immediate given when considered as a question of consequences, that is, as equaliberty itself. Equaliberty is nothing other than the [End Page 318] demand for a popular sovereignty and autonomy without exclusions, which implies that it occurs in conformity with the rules or principles of universal reciprocity.15

Equaliberty requires realizations of the fundamental rights of individuals to political participation and decision-making, whose concrete manifestations include precisely the rights of freedom of conscience and expression, juridical guarantees, even "social rights" to education and professional status. In this sense equal liberty is the name of a double bind: it names what makes it impossible to choose between different expressions of the democratic idea, or the idea of emancipation, but also what makes it illegitimate to choose without dissolving the political link between the individual and the community. It denotes both a universality of principles posed (and declared) within the horizon of humanity, and an autonomy of decision that is instituted as "popular sovereignty."

I will have to be much briefer, even telegraphic, in discussing the final two points I announced, and will therefore limit myself to programmatic formulations.

First (this was my second thesis), I believe that we can try to relate the irreducible duality of the two "foundational" discourses to a philosophical duality that is coextensive with the entire modern history of the problem of "man." At the least we can try to use the two dualities to illuminate one another. Each of the two discourses, or rather the two sides of democratic discourse, "liberal" and "republican," or "individualist" and "communitarian" if you prefer, in some sense implies its own anthropology. Rousseau once again, and Locke rather than Kant, can serve as reference points here, each of them being at the origin of a problem and a transition. On the one hand, we have a tendency toward an anthropology of the subject, whose horizon is the constitution of the community as "intersubjectivity" and whose central problem, blindingly clear in Rousseau's work, is the problem of the relation to the law, inseparably individual and collective, "particular" and "general." If, beyond all "secularizations," an indelible trace of the theologico-political concept of sovereignty remains at the very heart of modern anthropology, it is because the fundamental question lies in the seemingly impossible project of integrating the transcendence of the law within the immanence of politics, or making the "subject" cease to be the subjectus or subditus subordinated to an exterior, absolute, and sublime authority that itself is absolved from obedience, but rather become his or her own legislator and own constituent authority. As we know, Rousseau resolves this dilemma by means of the egalitarian, absolutely reciprocal construction of the general will or community [End Page 319] of rights. The citizen then is no longer, as he was in Aristotle's Politics, alternatively "ruling" and "obeying,"16

but always both ruling and obeying, a "reduction of verticality" brought about by the way the democratic conception of the law places the citizen in a constitutive "two-fold relation" to him- or herself.17

On the other hand, we have a tendency toward an anthropology of the individual or, better yet, an "individualist" anthropology of the agent and agency. The foundation of the individual's autonomy requires a simultaneous foundation of responsibility for one's actions, accountability. Locke, and a whole tradition following him, was able to accomplish this in a decisive way by renewing the old idea of oikeiosis, the "conservation" and "care of the self," in order to create the modern idea of "property in one's person" (later "translated" as self-ownership).18

The anthropological problematic inaugurated by Locke does not ignore the collective and communitarian dimension, but does view it as secondary, conceptualizing it essentially in terms of "commerce," the social bond of exchange and communication on the basis of the interests and autonomous enterprise of individuals.

Finally (and this was my third question), it would be worth asking whether each of these two anthropological foundations does not reproduce within itself what we must call the aporia or antinomy of "foundation" as such. I think that they do, and I believe that this could be demonstrated by working through the question of the negative dimensions of the democratic constitution. One such negative dimension is represented by the "necessary impossibility" of limit-concepts such as the "right to resistance" or "right to insurrection," which in a way inscribe within the juridical order of the state itself the moment of its own abolition or exception. Perhaps an even more important object of study at the current moment would be the forms of exclusion (exclusion from citizenship, even exclusion from the "human condition" itself) that are inherent in every procedure of definition of the intrinsically political import of the universalism of human rights. Something like this is happening in Rousseau through the idea of a "coercion to be free,"19

which clearly imposes a certain normality of the social body. In Locke the exclusion of the criminal outside of humanity in order to exclude him from citizenship and legislative power plays a similar role. Those who betray or forfeit their human nature, that is, their personality, are thus destined by their own deed to slavery or the status of a public enemy.20


And this is precisely why the perspective drawn by Arendt—not so much in The Human Condition as in The Origins of Totalitarianism—a perspective of illimitation of rights founded on the reversal of the historical and theoretical [End Page 320] relationship between "man" and "citizen," a perspective that dissolves the idea of foundation by explaining how man is made by citizenship and not citizenship by man, that intrinsically conjoins the problematic of equal liberty (or of the "universal right to politics" wherever one is "thrown" by history) with that of the inclusion of the excluded, or the exclusion of exclusion, seems to us in so many ways decisive and unavoidable.


Translated by James Swenson



Étienne Balibar teaches philosophy at the University of Paris X. His books include Reading Capital (with Louis Althusser); Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities; Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy before and after Marx; The Philosophy of Marx; Politics and the Other Scene; and We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship.


Endnotes


1. This essay was first presented at the colloquium "Droits de l'homme, Civil Rights, Grundrechte" at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, June 2002. [For Balibar's introduction of the term equaliberty, see Étienne Balibar, "'Rights of Man' and 'Rights of the Citizen,'" in Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy before and after Marx, trans. James Swenson (New York: Routledge, 1994), 39–59.]

2. See Hannah Arendt, Imperialism, book 2 in The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2nd ed. (San Diego: Harcourt, 1968), 294.

3. See Gerald Stourzh, Wege zur Grundrechtsdemokratie: Studien zur Begriffs- und Institutionengeschichte des liberalen Verfassungsstaates (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1989).

4. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996), 82.

5. Ibid., 94.

6. Ibid., 99.

7. Ibid., 97. This is reminiscent of Hegel's astonishing formula at the beginning of chapter 4 of the Phenomenology of Spirit: "'I,' that is 'We' and 'We' that is 'I'" [Ich, das Wir, und Wir, das Ich ist] (G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977], 110).

8. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 102.

9. Ibid., 103–4.

10. See Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Le Droit, l'État et la constitution d»mocratique: Essais de th»orie juridique, politique et constitutionnelle, ed. Olivier Jouanjan (Paris: Bruylant L.G.D.J., 2000).

11. Ibid., 268.

12. Ibid., 214.

13. Ibid., 222.

14. Ibid., 284–85.

15. This is exactly what Gerald Stourzh contests when he regrets the contempt for "fundamental rights" displayed by the French sovereigntist tradition in the name of equality.

16. Aristotle, The Politics and the Constitution of Athens, ed. Stephen Everson, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1277b.

17. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Of the Social Contract, book 1, chapter 7 in The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 51. See Étienne Balibar, "Apories rousseauistes: Subjectivité, [End Page 321] Communauté, Propriété," Les Cahiers philosophiques de Strasbourg 13 (Spring 2002): 13–36.

18. The expression self-ownership was introduced by Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), and subsequently taken up by G. A. Cohen in Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). On the contrary, in the work that launched the discussion on "possessive individualism," The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), C. B. Macpherson keeps Locke's original terminology: "Property in one's Person," "Proprietor of one's Person."

19. See Rousseau, Of the Social Contract, book 1, chapter 7: "Hence for the social compact not to be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the following engagement which alone can give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the entire body: which means nothing other than that he shall be forced to be free" (53).

20. In chapter 4 (paragraphs 22–24) of the Second Treatise on Civil Government, Locke justifies slavery—which would seem to contradict "property in one's person" as a fundamental human right—not by a specific "nature" of the slave, but by criminal behavior: "Indeed having, by his fault, forfeited his own Life, by some Act that deserves death; he, to who he has forfeited it, may (when he has him in his Power) delay to take it, and make use of him to his own Service, and he does him no injury by it" (John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988], 284).


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가을산 2004-11-08 07:53   좋아요 0 | 댓글달기 | URL
퍼갑니다.

collin21 2004-11-08 11:18   좋아요 0 | 댓글달기 | URL
저도 좀 퍼가렵니다. 감사합니다.

aporia 2004-11-08 13:04   좋아요 0 | 댓글달기 | URL
안녕하세요 선생님. 위에서 '독후감'을 말씀하시니 뭔가 읽은 것에 대한 책임감이 느껴지네요. ^^

요새의 발리바르에게서는, (사실 다른 철학자들은 제대로 읽어보지 못했지만 --;) 다른 철학자들에게서 흔하게 발견되지는 않는, '대화의 기예'가 느껴집니다. 심지어 자신에 대한 비판이라 하더라도, 그의 글을 읽고 나면 기분이 좋아질 것 같아요. 이 사람이 지금 나를 이기려 드는 게 아니라, 나의 논리를 충실하게(그리고 그런 한에서 '해체적으로') 사고하려 하는구나 하는 생각이 들 것 같거든요. 쟁점의 날카로움은 전혀 무뎌지지 않는데 말입니다(이번 글도 그렇고, [우리, 유럽의 인민?]에 실린 글도 그렇지만, 저는 거기서 그가 하버마스를 정말이지 '자근자근 밟는다'는 섬뜩함을 느끼지 않을 수 없었습니다...).

그러니까 그는 글쓰기 안에서 사고 실험을 실천할 뿐만 아니라, 시빌리테를 실험하고 있는 게 아닌가 합니다. 선생님께서 전에 말씀하신 '문체 상의 성취'가 이런 문제하고도 관련이 있지 않을까 하는 생각이 드네요...

balmas 2004-11-08 18:57   좋아요 0 | 댓글달기 | URL
퍼가는 분들이 여럿이군요. 보람이 있네요.^^

collin 21님은 처음 뵙는군요. 반갑습니다.^^

aporia님이 지적한 것처럼, 최근 발리바르의 글쓰기의 특징 중 하나는 갈등 속의 대화/소통의 노력이죠. 논쟁의 쟁점들을 잘 드러내주니까 우리에게는 그만큼 더 좋은 셈이구요.^^
 


 

 

 

http://www.spiked-online.com/

Article7 October 2004

It's mutual hatred, stupid
Both Democrats and Republicans are taking their disappointment with politics out on each other.

by George Blecher

서로 간의 어리석은 증오
민주당원들과 공화당원들 양측은 정치적 지배에 대한 실망을 서로의 탓으로 돌리고 있다.
by George Blecher


Pundits pouring over the latest election polls miss the point that the average American seems to get: polls or no polls, the popular vote is likely to be as close as it was four years ago. Though most American voters describe themselves as 'moderate', psychologically we've hardened into two armed camps of equal strength. In this climate, issues matter far less than allegiances. The Iraq war, the economy, the military records and personalities of the candidates, 9/11 - none of it matters as much as which side you're on.

최근 선거에 열성적인 전문가들은 보통의 미국인들이 가지고 있을 법한 생각, 즉 투표냐 아니냐 하는 점을 간과하고 있는데, 일반적인 투표는 4년 전과 비슷할 것이다. 대부분의 미국인들은 스스로를 '중도'라고 말함에도, 우리들은 심리적으로 같은 힘을 가진 두 무장 캠프로 굳어졌다. 이러한 분위기에서 헌신보다 이슈가 적잖이 중요하다. 이라크 전쟁, 경제, 군사기록과 입후보자들의 인품, 9/11-이 중에 어느 것도 당신이 어느 편인가 하는 것만큼 많이 중요하지는 않다.

Seeing ourselves as liberal or conservative has become more central to our identities than our religions or where we live. In a time of virtual rather than actual community, we feel safe with those on our side, threatened by and furious at those on the other side. Actually, we don't even see the other side. At best, they're certifiably insane; at worst, monstrously inhuman.

우리 스스로를 자유(개혁) 혹은 보수로 보는 것은 종교나 거주지보다 우리의 정체성에 더 관련된 것이다. 현실 공동체보다 오히려 가상 공동체의 시간에 우리는 그러한 정체성으로 인해 우리편에 대해서는 안전을, 상대편에 대해서는 두려움과 분노를 느낀다. 실제 우리는 다른 편을 보지도 않는다. 잘 봐줘야 그들은 비정상적으로 미쳤거나, 나쁘게 말하면 소름끼치도록 비인간적이다.

Two personal examples: four years ago, I heard a well-known conservative intellectual, a speechwriter for President George Bush senior, speak at a university club in New York. She was relaxed and charming, felt that she was among friends and shared not only opinions, but feelings as well. 'At the beginning of the campaign', she said, 'my colleagues and I felt pretty good about [Democratic nominee Al] Gore. We didn't agree with most of what he said, but we could live with that. He seemed like somebody you could talk to. But now we realize that he's just like Clinton - crazy!'. When I told the incident to a friend on the Left, she said: 'Well, I'm not surprised. But I disagree with you on one point: there are no intellectuals on the Right.'

두 사람의 예를 들어 보겠다. 4년 전 나는 유명한 보수 지식인이자, 조지 부시 전 대통령의 어느 연설문 작성자가 뉴욕의 한 대학 클럽에서 말하는 것을 들었다. 그녀는 관대했고 매력적이었으며, 친구들 사이에서 여러 의견들뿐만 아니라, 감정도 공유하고 있다고 느꼈다. 그녀가 말했다. '선거 초기에, 내 동료들과 나는 [민주당 후보자 엘] 고어에 대해 아주 좋은 느낌을 가졌다. 그가 한 말 대부분에 우리가 동의하지는 않지만, 그래도 우리는 살아갈 수 있다. 그는 여러분들 중 누군가와 얘기할 수 있기를 희망하는 것 같다. 그러나 이제 우리는 그가 단지 미치광이 클린턴과 같을 뿐이라는 것을 안다'. 내가 좌파인 한 친구에게 그 일을 말했을 때 그녀는, '글쎄, 난 놀랍지 않은데. 하지만 한 가지 네게 동의하지 않는 게 있어. 우파엔 지식인이 없다구.' 라고 말했다.

A few months later, I was crossing a snowy Manhattan street with my young son. A van with Jersey plates made a tight turn and missed my son by a couple of inches. I ran after the van and started bawling out the driver, who took one look at my fur hat and designer glasses, rolled down his window and sputtered: 'You, you, you…liberal!'.

몇 달 후 나는 내 어린 아들과 함께 맨하탄街를 걷고 있었다. 밴 한 대가 저지Jersey 구역으로 바짝 붙어 돌더니 2 인치 옆에서 내 아들을 비켜 가는 것이었다. 나는 그 밴을 뒤따라가 운전자에게 소리치기 시작했다. 그는 내 모피 모자와 고급 안경을 한 번 보더니, 차창을 내리고는 지껄였다. '당신, 당신, 당신은...자유(개혁)주의자!'.

We don't merely disagree with each other; we hate and fear each other. What do Republicans hate about Democrats? They're sneaky, compromising, ready to barter away hard-earned money and freedom to win the approval of decadent Europeans and perverse fringe groups. They're effeminate cowards, unwilling to stand up and fight for their beliefs. One of the more popular Republican labels for people on the left - latte-drinking, Volvo-driving liberals - isn't frivolous in the least. A fondness for lattes and Volvos is a nod to the inherently foreign and devious - a latte's very name is Euro-pretentious, to say nothing of its price; and driving a Volvo suggests that one values safety over design, power and speed. Worst of all, Democrats are hypocrites, professing to help the poor and spread the wealth around while making sure that their kids go to the right schools and avoid military service.

우리는 그저 서로에 동의하지 않는 것이 아니라, 서로를 증오하고 두려워한다. 공화당원들이 민주당원들에 대해 두려워하는 것을 무엇일까? 그들은 비열하고 의심스러우며, 퇴폐적인 유럽인들과 괴팍한 극단적 부류의 동의를 얻기 위해 힘들게 번 돈과 자유를 맞바꾸려 한다. 그들은 신념을 위해 일어서서 싸우려고도 하지 않는 나약한 겁쟁이들이다. 좌파 진영의 사람들에 대해 좀 더 흔한 공화당의 구호 중 하나인 '라떼Latte를 마시고 볼보를 모는 자유(개혁)주의자들'은 최소한 천박하지는 않다. 라떼와 볼보에 대한 선호는 본래 외제이고 솔직하지 않은 것에 대한 동의인데, 라떼라는 바로 그 이름은 그 가격에 대해서는 말하지 않고 젠체하는 유럽인에 대한 동의이고, 볼보를 모는 것은 디자인, 힘 그리고 속도 상에 있어서 안전이라는 가치를 암시한다. 그중 최악은 민주당원들이 그들의 아이들을 제대로 된(엘리트 코스?) 학교를 다니게 하고 병역을 피하게 하는 동안, 부를 축적하면서도 빈민을 구제한다고 공언하는 위선자들이라는 것이다.

All this may be obvious, but what is more subtle is what Republicans fear about Democrats. The look in that van driver's eye was fear, and not just that I might turn him in. He feared that I was of a higher class - which I suppose I was - and therefore had powers that he couldn't imagine. To a great number of Republicans, Democrats have come to represent privilege - the kind of self-righteous, impersonal, abstract pseudo-generosity ready to give away rights that less privileged people have fought hard for.

이 모든 게 분명하겠지만, 더 교활한 것은 공화당원들이 민주당원들을 두려워한다는 것이다. 그 밴 운전자의 눈이 두려워하는 시선, 한데 나는 괜히 그를 몰아세운 것이 아니다. 그는 내가 보다 높은 계층-내 생각이지만-이고 그래서 그가 상상도 못할 힘을 가진 것을 두려워했다. 대다수 공화당원들에게 민주당원들은 덜 특권적인 사람들이 어렵게 싸워 얻은 권리를 양보할 준비가 된, 독선적이고 비인간적이며 관념적인 거짓 관용과 같은 특권을 의미한다.

What do Democrats hate about Republicans? Their stupidity and love of violence, their selfishness, aggressiveness, ruthlessness. Republicans are bullies and cheaters, who'll use any tactic, dirty or not, to get what they want. They're isolationists full of hate and prejudice. You can't reason with them because they regard reasoning as a sign of weakness. They're Mr Hyde to the Democrats' dedicated, humanistic Doctor Jekyll; Id to the Democratic Ego, but not a healthy, sexualised Id. On the contrary, their macho swagger masks grave insecurities about their potency. At heart no Republican has any sense of morality or decency; they're ruled either by greed or fanaticism.

민주당원들은 공화당원들에 대해 무엇을 증오할까? 그들의 폭력적인 어리석음과 사랑, 그들의 이기심, 공격성, 무정함(그들의 폭력, 이기심, 공격성, 무정함에 대한 어리석음과 사랑). 공화당원들은 추잡하든 그렇지 않든 그들이 원하는 것을 얻기 위해서라면, 어떠한 전략도 사용할 뚜쟁이들이고 사기꾼들이다. 그들은 증오와 편견으로 가득 찬 분리주의자들이다. 그들은 추론을 나약함의 상징으로 여기기 때문에 당신은 그들을 설득할 수 없다. 그들은 헌신적이고 인간적인 지킬 박사인 민주당원들에게 하이드인 것이다. 다시 말해 민주적인 에고Ego에 대한 이드Id이지만, 건강하고 섹슈얼한 이드는 아닌 것이다. 이에 반해, 그들의 남성적인 허풍은 그들 권력의 심각한 불안을 감춘다. 실제로는 어떤 공화당원들도 도덕이나 품위에 대한 감각을 지니고 있지 않다. 즉 그들은 서로 탐욕이나 광신에 지배받고 있다.

Democrats fear Republicans for much the same reason that their counterparts fear them: they fear their enemy's superior power. High in their corporate offices, Republicans pull the strings of the country. The plebs of the radical right are merely a convenience that the party elite need to get themselves elected and then redirect to hopeless causes, like overturning the Roe vs. Wade decision on abortion, or passing a Constitutional amendment against same sex marriage.

민주당원들은 그들의 짝이 그들을 두려워하는 것과 같은 이유로 공화당원들을 많이 두려워한다. 그들은 적의 강력한 힘을 두려워하는 것이다. 그들 단체의 높은 관직에 있는 공화당원들은 국가의 줄을 당긴다(국가를 심하게 뒤흔든다). 극우 평당원들은 단지 당 간부가 그들에게 선출되고, 그런 후 낙태에 대해 로 대 웨이드Roe vs. Wade 판결(낙태에 관한 판결문은 http://chunma.yu.ac.kr/%7Ej9516088/case_02.htm에서 보실 수 있습니다)을 제안하거나 동성결혼에 대한 헌법 개정 통과와 같은 절망적인 결과에 대해 재심할 때나 필요로 하는 편익인 것이다.

Underneath the hate and fear, however, I think there's an even more basic - and shared - emotion: disappointment. Disappointment in one's public and private life, and disappointment in the democratic process. Judging by the diminishing number of voters in European elections, it would appear that this disappointment isn't limited to the USA.

하지만 나는 증오와 두려움 이면에 실망이라는 보다 기본적인-그리고 공통의- 감정도 있다고 생각한다. 누군가의 공적이고 사적인 삶에서의 실망, 그리고 민주화 과정에서의 실망. 유럽의 여러 선거에서 투표자 수가 줄어드는 것을 고려해 보면, 이러한 실망이 미국에 국한된 것이 아니라는 것을 알 수 있다.

Over the past 50 years, the Republican/conservative vision of self-reliance and upward mobility through hard work has been clouded by everything from the complexities of foreign trade to unionism to regulatory agencies to perceived inequities in the educational and welfare systems. The Democratic vision of benevolent centralised government working for equal opportunity has likewise been compromised - by corporate arrogance, lobbyists, and a sense that the gap between rich and poor has grown to unprecedented proportions. Because the solutions to these problems aren't within our grasp - and because to a great extent we have lost faith that the democratic process can work to solve the problems - we've chosen to take it out on each other. Winning has become everything. If we can't live a good life, at least we can make sure that the others don't either.

과거 50년 이상, 열심히 일하는 것을 통한 자립과 지위 향상에 대한 공화당/보수적 비전은 대외 무역의 복잡함에서부터 교육과 복지 제도에서 감지되는 불평등을 감시하는 기관을 위한 노조에까지 모든 것에 의해 어두워졌다. 똑 같은 기회로 일하는 인정 많은 중앙 정부의 민주적 비전 역시 집합적 오만, 로비스트들, 그리고 부자와 빈자의 간격이 유례가 없을 만큼 벌어졌다는 느낌 때문에 위태로워졌다. 왜냐하면 이러한 문제들의 해결책은 우리의 통제 내에 있지 않기 때문인데, 우리는 민주화 과정이 우리가 서로 취사 선택해온 그 문제들을 해결할 수 있다는 믿음을 잃어버렸다. 승리가 모든 것이다. 만약 우리가 좋은 삶을 살 수 없다면, 최소한 우리는 다른 사람들 역시 그러지 못하게 할 수 있다.

In November's presidential elections we won't vote for any issue or candidate; we'll vote against those on the other side. As Walt Kelly's cartoon character Pogo put it many years ago: 'We have met the enemy, and he is us.'

11월 대통령 선거에서 우리는 어떤 이슈나 후보에 대해 투표하지는 않을 것이다. 다시 말해 우리는 다른 편의 그러한 것들에 대항해 투표할 것이다. 수년 전 월트 켈리Walt Kelly의 만화 캐릭터 Pogo가 말한 것처럼 '우리는 우리라는 적을 만났다.'

George Blecher is based in New York, and reports for a number of European publications about American politics and culture.

George Blecher는 뉴욕에 거주하면서, 미국의 정치와 문화에 대해 유럽의 여러 출판사에 기고하고 있다.

 

- 분량상 얼마 안 되는 번역임에도 게으름과 피곤으로 시일이 좀 늦었다. 자처한 과제임에도 늘 이렇게 나를 드러내는 일에 아직도 나는 자신이 없나 보다. 사실 번역은 벌써 다 끝냈다. 그러나 몇 가지 번역상 애매한 부분 때문에 여지껏 늑장을 부렸던 것이다. 끝내 스스로도 결정하지 못한 번역은 위에 보듯 괄호()로 처리했으니, 판단해보시길 바란다. 덧붙여 원문에 이탤릭체로 표기된 것은 볼드로 처리했다. 허접한 번역에 눈살 찌푸리시게 되더라도 아량을 베풀어 주시길, 내 능력은 여기까지.

발마스님, 데리다 인터뷰는...으...시일이 더 걸릴 듯...ㅜ.ㅜ 전 데리다 전공이 아닌 것은 말할 것도 없고,철학 전공도 아니니 그 부분은 이해해주시길 바랍니다. 그냥 심심해서 하는 것이니...그래도 재미있을 것 같다는 ^^ 


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2004-10-30 00:24   URL
비밀 댓글입니다.

하루(春) 2005-06-11 03:29   좋아요 0 | 댓글달기 | URL
보실진 모르겠지만, 퍼갑니다. ^^ 노파님이 번역하신 거군요.