Left and right: two halves of one operation
Left and right experience themselves as rivals while they operate as the two halves of one operation: one articulates without operating, the other operates without articulating. "Opposites are inverses that have forgotten each other"; together they would carry what each carries only by half.
The rule of reading
The reading neither defends nor attacks either camp. It sets its own condition: "The reading is valid to the extent that it is applied to oneself as much as to the other camp." Neither pole comes out enlarged; both come out open to completion.
The ARC reading
ReadingThe intellectual left articulates: it produces language, concepts and critique, and brings social justice and sensitivity to injustice into public debate. What it rarely does is operate: walk in the real according to the principles it articulates and test its tools.
ReadingThe operational right operates: it walks, takes risks, builds. What it lacks is articulation: the language to transmit, connect and name what it does, and the examination of its own why.
ReadingEach blames the other for the amputation it performs itself in another way. The left blames the right for not questioning, without questioning its own tools; the right blames the left for operating badly, without examining the why of its own operation.
ReadingThe whole configuration would carry both at once: sensitive to injustice like the left, walking in the real like the right. The engineer who designs a bridge gives the image: she articulates statics, then construction tests the articulation against the real.
Objections
The reading describes poles as they appear in contemporary Western societies, not every person who identifies with them. One can object that many left-wing activists operate on the ground, that many right-wing actors produce articulated thought, and that the left-right axis itself does not sum up every position.
Further reading
- Volume 11, The City and Meaning (English summary)
- Chapter 8: left and right, an unrecognised inverse pair (in French)
- Volume 11, full PDF (in French)