The Institutional Foundations of Free Action

Although the very first word in the title of Linda Zerilli's book is "feminism," one does not have to read it as a contribution to feminist literature. The reason is given in the last word of the title, which is "freedom." For the book's central concern is the defense of an Arendtian anti-sovereign, pro-relational understanding of political action as freedom, which is as relevant for general political theory, in fact for general politics, as it is for feminism. So I will offer a reading here, which for the most part takes Zerilli's book as a general exercise in political theory building. That is to say that I will completely refrain from wrestling with the question of what kind of intervention it aspires to make in ongoing feminist discourses. This said, I would misunderstand the author profoundly if I did not at least also read the book as a political act. After all, it is a performance in a wider genre, which might be called in analogy to litterature engagee a theorie engagee, that is, a writing practice with a political agenda. In effect, then, the book offers a theory of political action as freedom while at the same time performing such an act. This offers us readers an opportunity to see how well the theory does in self-application. My point in playing this old trick of criticism is not to call attention to a possible performative selfcontradiction of the text for the sake of judging its value in terms of the seemingly transcendental value. Instead, my intention in using this ruse is to reveal, in a somewhat single-minded fashion, especially one significant substantive blindspot of Zerilli's conceptual apparatus, the question of the institutional foundations of political action as freedom. Moreover, I will show that this blindspot derives especially from an overreliance on Arendt's notion of freedom, while suggesting that there are other conceptions of freedom that might have served Zerilli's critical purpose just as well, while directing our attention precisely to the enabling conditions of institutional arrangements. Finally, we shall see at the end how my somewhat theatrically wielded sword of criticism is in part blunted by Zerilli's own theoretization of the particular quality of the claims she is making as akin to aesthetic judgments rather than to truth-capable constatives. Throughout the book, Hannah Arendt is not only Zerilli's main source of inspiration but she is in fact Zerilli's authorizing spirit and we shall see in a minute what this means. It is from the author of the Human Condition (1998) and related essays (especially 1977) that she derives her notion of freedom as action. According to Arendt, freedom is not a matter of choice, not a property of the will, but instead a property of action. She captures the difference between what she calls freedom as sovereignty and her own model of freedom in action with the distinction between the formulas "I-will" and "I-can" (Arendt 1977:157ff). As a matter of fact, I think, Arendt would have been better off referring to her own model in terms of "I-do," since she greatly emphasizes that freedom is strictly in actu not in posse. In all admirable brevity, Arendt (1977:151) says: "for to be free and to act are the same." In that vein, she also emphasizes that free action has nothing to do with intellect, or with any kind of symbolically facilitated understanding. And yet, she admits that to realize a goal, action needs both intellect and will. But then, for Arendt, free action is not action for something else: it is based neither on a "because" nor on an "in order to." Thus, it is not meaningful action in the sense that Alfred Schiitz (1932)