Immunitarian Democracy :: Democracy Politics Community

Immunitarian Democracy1. Does lodge refer to democracy? If not, could it or is it too deeply embedded in the conceptual lexicon of the Romantic, authoritarian and racist Right? This is the question, one already asked by American neo-communitarianism, that is emerging again in Europe at the precise moment when, some, especially in France and in Italy, are risking thinking community anew. At issue is not barely a legitimate question, but in some ship canal stock-still an inevitable one, in which democractic culture deeply examines its own theoretic precepts and future. This doesnt change the fact though that its the wrong question or that its severely put. Wrong or badly put because it takes as its term of affinity -- in order to be related to the category of community - a concept, that of democracy that is utterly incapable of understanding it, not only because its young meaning at least, arrives much later, but also because it is flatter and increasingly overwhelmed in a dime nsion that is entirely political and institutional. With respect to this wish of depth and substance of the politicological notion of democracy, community has a very contrary semantic width, both on the vertical level of history and on the synchronic one of meaning. This isnt the place to attempt a complete reconstruction, though my recent research beginning with the etymological origins of the term communitas and even much before that of munus in Latin does confirm the historical and semantic impressiveness of the concept (R. Esposito, 1998). What we can infer from the above discussion, however, is that the correct question isnt whether the community can become a part of the democratic lexicon, but whether even democracy can be a part or at a minimum acquire some of its meaning in the lexicon of community. Without scatty to show my hand too quickly, a first step is required, which focuses more on the second term. Here we arent helped at all by the conceptual dichotomies with which 20th century philosophy has tried to define community, one that confused along the way the original meaning of community. Im not talking only of the one constructed by the so-called American communitarians with respect to their presumed adversaries, the liberals, who constitute quite a their exact interface in the specific sense that they unconsciously ploughshare the same subjectivist as well as exclusively partisan lexicon, utilize not to the community but to the individual (where communities like individuals are lofty between them, one from the other).