Action and Institution: Towards a Paradoxical Understanding of Political Action

Abstract

The article describes several lines of interpretation with regard to a disensual understanding of the institution and the sense or perception produced by emancipatory political acts. With this in mind, the author proposes distancing himself from a predominant Benjaminian approach in contemporary political philosophy that aims to denounce the violence produced in sense or perception and in the institution itself. Although this approach recognizes the ultimate basis of institutions goes beyond the legal aspect, the German philosopher ultimately tries to draw a sharp contrast between the logic of institutions and the logic of interrupting them. Accordingly, from this distance and pursuant to several contributions from Arendt, Rancière, Butler and Tassin, the fundamental hypothesis challenging this article it is to show that action, by producing a particular kind of sense or perception, establishes relationships and also makes use previously existing perceptions and institutions to find its modes of expression. This dynamic of instituting relationships and making use of previously existing institutions introduces us to a disensual understanding of the institution which, although not intended to ensure action itself, does offer the conditions of possibility for action to take place.