A Queer Politics of the Democratic Miscount

Samuel A. Chambers

Abstract

This paper uses Jacques Rancière’s thinking of politics – particularly his distinction between la police and la politique — in order to insist upon the difference between lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identity politics, on the one hand, and a queer politics of relationality, on the other. I argue that Rancière’s conception of the democratic ‘miscount’ can be understood as a queering of democracy precisely because Rancière’s refusal to reduce le compte des incomptés to the marginalized or excluded produces a queer politics. The essay opens with a reading of the well-known Queer Nation chant, links this to Rancière’s understanding of the wrong, and then combines both with a discussion of the parallels between Judith Butler’s understanding of unintelligibility and Rancière’s conception of the democratic miscount. I therefore conclude that Rancière’s democratic miscount is a queer form of counting and a queer form of politics.

The full article is available as a PDF document: click here.

© borderlands ejournal 2009