국내 대중교양서 전담번역의 풍경

직접 쓰는 기분으로…

학술서에 비해서 대중서들은 번역자가 누구인지 큰 관심을 끌지 못한다. 그렇지만 문학이나 인문학적 에세이의 경우는 사정이 다르다. 해외 저자의 문체와 삶을 잘 이해하는 전담번역가가 그 사람을 화젯거리로 만들기도 하기 때문이다. 훌륭한 작가의 매력에 빠져서 그 사람을 속속들이 소개하고 싶어하는 전담번역가들이 국내에도 꽤 여럿 있다.


소설 ‘개미’를 비롯해 ‘나무’, ‘뇌’ 등으로 국내 독자들을 사로잡았던 베르나르 베르베르의 책들은 모두 이세욱 씨가 번역했다. 우연히 베르베르의 책을 접하게 됐던 그는 “우리나라에서 보기 드문 문학이며 문학시장과 문학에 대한 사유를 넓히는 데 많이 기여할 것”이란 생각에 출판사를 의뢰해서 번역을 시작했다. 첫 번역 때부터 그는 베르베르를 만나러 갈 정도로 열성적이었고, 책에 나오는 거리, 무대, 인물 등 작가가 느끼는 것은 모두 느끼기 위해 여행도 많이 하고 책도 많이 읽었다. “마치 내가 쓴다는 기분으로” 그는 베르베르가 되어 번역하는 데 몰두해 한 권도 빠지지 않고 모조리 소개했다. 지금은 올 10월 출간된 ‘우리는 신’이란 3부작 번역에 착수했으며, 앞으로 3년간 이 작업을 할 예정이다. ‘하와이의 자식들’ 등 베르베르의 만화도 소설로 개작되고 있는데, 물론 이것도 이세욱 씨 몫이다.


시오노 나나미 만큼 관심을 모은 여류문필가도 없다. ‘로마인 이야기’를 위시해 수십권이 번역돼 나왔는데, 시오노 나나미의 전담번역가는 세 명이다. 한길사에서 먼저 시오노 나나미를 발굴했고, 이를 故 정도영 씨, 김석희 씨, 오정환 씨 세 번역가에게 맡긴 것. 정 씨는 ‘바다도시 이야기’를, 김 씨는 ‘로마인 이야기’를, 오 씨는 ‘나의 친구마키아벨리’ 등을 각각 맡게 됐다. 세 번역가 모두 시오노 나나미에게 완전히 매료됐다. 김 씨와 오 씨는 모두 “너무나 탁월한 작가다”라고 입을 모으면서, 앞으로 기회가 주어진다면 계속해서 시오노 나나미의 책을 번역할 것이라 말한다. 김씨는 여태껏 ‘로마인 이야기’ 12권을 번역했는데, 향후 3년간은 나머지 3권 번역에 몰두할 것이라고 한다.


독일문학의 거장 슈테판 츠바이크도 많은 번역가들을 거느리지만 특히 안인희 씨를 첫손에 꼽을 만하다. 안 씨는 1995년 독일유학에서 우연히 츠바이크의 ‘광기와 우연의 역사’를 집어 들었는데 지식인들의 광기어린 내면을 너무나 완벽하게 재현하고 있는 이 탁월한 복음술사에게 반해버렸다. “이미 여러권의 책을 번역해봤지만, 이 책을 옮기면서 처음으로 번역의 독특한 즐거움을 느꼈다”라는 게 그의 말이다. “베토벤의 전기를 쓴 로맹 롤랑의 전기를 쓴 츠바이크”는 매력덩어리였다. 그에게 숨가쁘게 말려들어간 안 씨는 그 외에도 ‘스코틀랜드의 여왕’, ‘츠바이크의 발자크 평전’ 등을 번역했다.


이것 말고도 모리스 르블랑 등 프랑스 추리 소설 분야에서 성귀수 씨가 전담번역가로 명성을 날리고 있으며, 요시모토 바나나는 일본문학의 전문번역가로 명성을 굳힌 김난주 씨가 10여권을 독점하다시피 번역하고 있다. 무라카미 류는 양억관 씨가 주로 번역했는데, 김난주와 양억관은 일본문학을 맛깔스럽게 옮기는 양대 번역자로 명성을 누린다. 스페인의 마술적 리얼리즘의 대가 마르케스를 비롯해 주요 작가들을 번역해온 송병선 울산대 교수는 작가들을 현지에서 작가들을 만나서 교유하고 수시로 메일을 주고받는 ‘마술적 리얼리즘’의 전담번역가로 충분한 조명이 필요한 번역자다. 최근 돌풍을 일으킨 파울로 코엘료의 책은 불어 전문 번역가인 이상해 씨가 주목을 끈다.
 이은혜 기자 thirteen@kyosu.net


©2004 Kyosu.net


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공유하기 북마크하기찜하기
 
 
딸기 2004-11-09 01:15   좋아요 0 | 댓글달기 | URL
저는 번역자를 유심히 보는 편인데, 주로 과학서적 쪽 번역자들한테 관심이 많아요. 박병철 교수님(만나뵌 적은 없지만) 번역은 물리학 쪽에선 최고봉이라는 얘기를 들었고, 제가 개인적으로 존경하고 있는 김희봉 선생님도 아주 탁월하시거든요. '물리가 물렁물렁' 시리즈를 번역하신 이충호선생님도 끝내주는 번역가이시고... 반면에 생명과학 쪽 주로 번역하는 이한음씨 번역은, 관련분야 전문가다운 솜씨는 인정하지만 문장이 가끔 목에 걸려요.

일본어 소설 쪽에선 김난주씨가 워낙 탁월하니깐... 자기책 외국어번역본에 까다롭다는 요시모토 바나나도 만족스러워하고 있다더군요. 김난주씨랑 양억관씨는 부부 번역가로 유명하지만, 아무래도 김난주씨 쪽의 명성이 더 높지 않을까요.



얼마전 마루야마 마사오 '현대정치의 사상과 행동'이랑, 일본의 비판적 지성으로 꼽히는 후지따 쇼오조오의 '전체주의의 시대경험'을 읽었는데요. 우리나라에서는 '영어체 일어체 번역체'라고들 하지만 실제로 일본의 저런 학자들이 쓴 책을 번역한 책에서는, 일본어의 독특한 표현을 제외하면, 목에 걸리는 어색한 문장들이 없다는 점입니다. 어쩌면 이것은 전반적인 우리나라와 일본의 학문 수준의 차이점을 보여주는 것 같기도 해요. 마루야마 마사오도 그렇고 가라타니 고진도 그렇고, 이 사람들이 서양 학자들 글 인용해서 말하는 걸 보면 아주 자연스럽고 무슨 말인지 쉽게 이해가 가거든요. '완전히 소화해서' 얘기하기 때문에 그런 것 아닌가 싶습니다. 반면에 우리나라에서 번역돼 나오는 서양 책들은, 도저히 무슨 말인지 알아들을 수가 없어요. 책 내용이 독창적이어서라기보다는 우리말로 적절한 개념을 찾지 못해서 이상하게 꼬아놨기 때문인 듯합니다. 저명한 과학자인 모씨가 그랬다죠. "전문용어를 써야만 말할 수 있다는 것은 이해를 못하고 있다는 증거"라고요.



그것과 조금 다른 맥락에서 번역에 아쉬움을 느꼈던 적도 있었습니다. 이윤기선생이 번역한 조셉 캠벨의 '신화의 힘'을 읽을 때였어요. 이윤기 선생은 누가 뭐래도 훌륭한 번역자입니다만, 본인이 내용을 잘 안다고 자신했던 터인지, 글에서 캠벨보다 번역자가 더 부각이 되는 거예요. 설명하기 좀 애매하긴 하지만... 어떤 느낌이냐면, 번역자의 독특한 글투가 너무 많이 묻어난다는 것. 책은 굉장히 훌륭했고 번역도 그정도면 100점에 가깝지만 캠벨에 앞서 이윤기 냄새가 난다는 것은 좀 아쉬웠어요.



번역 얘기가 나와서 본의 아니게 주절거리게 되었네요.

릴케 현상 2004-11-09 02:18   좋아요 0 | 댓글달기 | URL
'잔혹한 글읽기'를 보니 이윤기님의 번역서에 유난히 잔혹하던데요

balmas 2004-11-09 02:31   좋아요 0 | 댓글달기 | URL
어허, 스트롱베리님, 이런 좋은 정보를 그냥 댓글에다 풀어버리시면 어떻게 해요???

마이 페이퍼라도 하나 쓰시지 ...



'잔혹한 글읽기'??

아하! 그 책이요 ...

저는 아직 읽어보지 않았는데, 그 분야의 전공자가 한 이야기이니, 전혀 근거가 없는 이야기는 아니겠죠. 이윤기님이 좀 오버하는 건 있죠.^^

딸기 2004-11-09 14:02   좋아요 0 | 댓글달기 | URL
그래야겠어요. 페이퍼에 정리해봐야겠네요.
 

해외사례: 日本, 하이데거 전담번역자만 10명 넘어

2004년 11월 08일   이은혜 기자 이메일 보내기

국내와 달리, 해외학계에선 한 학자에 대한 ‘전담번역자’가 넘쳐날 정도로 많다. 하이데거의 주저 ‘존재와 시간’이 일본에는 무려 14종이 나와 있다. 미국에서는 2종에 그치고 있는데 이는 독일철학에 대한 양국의 ‘대접차이’ 때문이다. 미국에서 주로 활동해 명성을 얻은 프랑스 철학자인 데리다의 저서가 영미권에서 무려 70~80권이나 넘게 번역돼 있다는 점을 보면 그렇다. 데리다에 달려들어서 꾸준히 번역업적을 내놓는 학자들도 10여명이 넘어간다. 번역은 반역이고, 역자들 사이에서는 해석학적인 경쟁이다. 이런 문화 위에서 학문적 개념에 대한 토론이 일어날 수 있고 방향성도 생길 수 있는 것이다.


하지만 우리의 경우 우선 각 분야의 전문가들이 많지 않다. 프랑스철학이든, 독일실존주의 철학이든 국내에 그 분야 권위자들은 몇 손가락 안에 꼽히기 때문이다. 그나마 전공자들 대부분이 근대 이전에 꽁꽁 묶여 있어서, 근대 이후의 철학자들은 번역조차 되지 못하고 있다. 그러나 한국의 ‘독특한 문화’도 한 몫 한다. 구연상 한국외대 강사(현상학)는 “선배교수가 번역한 것에 대해 후배교수들은 재번역하는 것을 꺼린다”라고 말한다. 다시 말해, 좀 오역이 있다 해도 그걸 굳이 지적하지 않는다는 게 한국의 관행이라는 것이다. 저작권 문제도 있다. 국내의 몇몇 특정 출판사들이 외국 유명출판사에서 나온 유명저자의 책을 수십권씩 독점계약을 해버리기 때문에 번역을 하고 싶어도 할 수 없는 경우가 많다. ‘동문선’이 대표적인 사례라 할 수 있는데, 동문선 출판사의 출판예정도서목록을 한번 살펴본 사람이라면 로열티 선점의 정도를 파악할 수 있을 것이다. 중소출판사 사장들은 민음사, 한길사 등 대형출판사들이 로열티 선점을 해놓고 몇 년이 지나도록 책을 안낸다면서 불만의 목소리를 높인다. 학자들은 기껏 혼자서 번역했다가 인쇄불가의 판정을 받으니, 안 그래도 번역에 돈 한푼 못받는 마당에 의욕이 떨어질 수밖에 없다.


그러나 번역의 질이 문제가 될 수 있지만 독점계약 자체가 심각한 문제가 될 정도는 아니다. 하지만 무엇보다 번역지원 시스템이 동종번역 문화를 가로막는다는 지적들이 많다. 진태원 서울대 강사(철학)는 “일본과 미국은 연구소나 국가기관을 통한 번역지원활동이 활발하다. 하지만 국내에서는 학술진흥재단과 대우학술재단에서 지원하고 있는 것이 전부”라며, 지원제도의 대폭 확충이 절실함을 지적한다.


©2004 Kyosu.net

국내와 달리, 해외학계에선 한 학자에 대한 ‘전담번역자’가 넘쳐날 정도로 많다. 하이데거의 주저 ‘존재와 시간’이 일본에는 무려 14종이 나와 있다. 미국에서는 2종에 그치고 있는데 이는 독일철학에 대한 양국의 ‘대접차이’ 때문이다. 미국에서 주로 활동해 명성을 얻은 프랑스 철학자인 데리다의 저서가 영미권에서 무려 70~80권이나 넘게 번역돼 있다는 점을 보면 그렇다. 데리다에 달려들어서 꾸준히 번역업적을 내놓는 학자들도 10여명이 넘어간다. 번역은 반역이고, 역자들 사이에서는 해석학적인 경쟁이다. 이런 문화 위에서 학문적 개념에 대한 토론이 일어날 수 있고 방향성도 생길 수 있는 것이다.


하지만 우리의 경우 우선 각 분야의 전문가들이 많지 않다. 프랑스철학이든, 독일실존주의 철학이든 국내에 그 분야 권위자들은 몇 손가락 안에 꼽히기 때문이다. 그나마 전공자들 대부분이 근대 이전에 꽁꽁 묶여 있어서, 근대 이후의 철학자들은 번역조차 되지 못하고 있다. 그러나 한국의 ‘독특한 문화’도 한 몫 한다. 구연상 한국외대 강사(현상학)는 “선배교수가 번역한 것에 대해 후배교수들은 재번역하는 것을 꺼린다”라고 말한다. 다시 말해, 좀 오역이 있다 해도 그걸 굳이 지적하지 않는다는 게 한국의 관행이라는 것이다. 저작권 문제도 있다. 국내의 몇몇 특정 출판사들이 외국 유명출판사에서 나온 유명저자의 책을 수십권씩 독점계약을 해버리기 때문에 번역을 하고 싶어도 할 수 없는 경우가 많다. ‘동문선’이 대표적인 사례라 할 수 있는데, 동문선 출판사의 출판예정도서목록을 한번 살펴본 사람이라면 로열티 선점의 정도를 파악할 수 있을 것이다. 중소출판사 사장들은 민음사, 한길사 등 대형출판사들이 로열티 선점을 해놓고 몇 년이 지나도록 책을 안낸다면서 불만의 목소리를 높인다. 학자들은 기껏 혼자서 번역했다가 인쇄불가의 판정을 받으니, 안 그래도 번역에 돈 한푼 못받는 마당에 의욕이 떨어질 수밖에 없다.


그러나 번역의 질이 문제가 될 수 있지만 독점계약 자체가 심각한 문제가 될 정도는 아니다. 하지만 무엇보다 번역지원 시스템이 동종번역 문화를 가로막는다는 지적들이 많다. 진태원 서울대 강사(철학)는 “일본과 미국은 연구소나 국가기관을 통한 번역지원활동이 활발하다. 하지만 국내에서는 학술진흥재단과 대우학술재단에서 지원하고 있는 것이 전부”라며, 지원제도의 대폭 확충이 절실함을 지적한다.


©2004 Kyosu.net

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릴케 현상 2004-11-09 02:08   좋아요 0 | 댓글달기 | URL
요즘 정세를 따라가며 이해하는 일이 질려버렸어요 누가 제 대신 판단 해 주면 좋겠어요-_-머리는 빌리면 된다던데

balmas 2004-11-09 02:32   좋아요 0 | 댓글달기 | URL
한 마디로 사건이 너무 많죠 ...
 

미국 대선 이후의 한반도 정세와 대응방안

2004년 11월 10일
오전 10시/ 국가인권위원회 배움터

부시의 재선 성공 이후, 한반도 정세에 대한 여러 전망이 나오고 있습니다.

부시 당선 직후의 여러 흥분을 넘어 이제 논의는

그 전망에 따른 우리, 한국 시민사회의 역할이 무엇인가에 모아지고 있습니다.


이에 평화네트워크에서는 11월 월례포럼의 주제를 '미국 대선 이후 한반도 정세와

대응방안'으로 잡고,

미국의 대북정책 전망과 이에 따른 북한의 대응 전망, 이에 따른 한국 정부와 시민사회

의 과제까지 전문가들과 함께 집중적으로 논의해보고자 합니다.


여러분의 많은 관심과 참석 부탁드립니다.

일시 : 11월 10일(수) 오전 10시-오후 1시

장소 :
국가인권위원회 배움터

주최 :
평화네트워크

프로그램

사회 : 함택영(경남대 북한대학원 교수)

토론자 :

전재성 (서울대 외교학과 교수) - 미국의 대북정책 전망

피터 벡 (국제위기감시기구 소장) - 6자회담 평가와 과제

고유환 (동국대 북한학과 교수) - 북한의 대응 전망

정욱식 (평화네트워크 대표) - 한국 정부의 과제


그 밖의 다른 자료들도 평화네트워크 홈페이지(http://www.peacekorea.org/)에서 보실 수 있습니다.

일시 : 11월 10일(수) 오전 10시-오후 1시

장소 :
국가인권위원회 배움터

주최 :
평화네트워크

프로그램

사회 : 함택영(경남대 북한대학원 교수)

토론자 :

전재성 (서울대 외교학과 교수) - 미국의 대북정책 전망

피터 벡 (국제위기감시기구 소장) - 6자회담 평가와 과제

고유환 (동국대 북한학과 교수) - 북한의 대응 전망

정욱식 (평화네트워크 대표) - 한국 정부의 과제


그 밖의 다른 자료들도 평화네트워크 홈페이지(http://www.peacekorea.org/)에서 보실 수 있습니다.


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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.^^