The Impasse of Liberal (In)Equality: Materialising Egalitarian Politics Through Collective Fidelity

This thesis is concerned with ways in which equality may be materialised through politics. It engages with various strands of literature that have had a profound impact on theoretical considerations of egalitarian politics. The thesis begins by mapping various branches of liberal egalitarianism that all set equality as a political objective. In attempting to substantiate equality through the liberal democratic nexus, these thinkers often construct their egalitarian models alongside liberal values such as individual liberty, autonomy, human rights, and market exchange. These approaches fall short of reconciling their egalitarian ambitions with the inegalitarian tendencies of market exchange, reducing equality to a question of inequalities in the process. Whereas contemporary neoliberal subjects embody the complete marketisation and individualisation of the liberal ideal of autonomy, hence foreclosing its egalitarian potential into purely heteronomous conducts, Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou provide a way out of the impasse of liberal (in)equality. They do so by reconceptualising equality as a starting point rather than an objective of politics. Framed as such, egalitarian politics becomes a fully emancipatory project depending on the work of a subject for its realisation. Although Rancière’s egalitarianism is boundless, his account of subjectivation is politically limiting. Conversely, Badiou offers a methodical account of the process of ‘becoming subject’ rooted in his notions of ‘event’, ‘truth’, and ‘fidelity’. Focusing specifically on the latter, the last part of this thesis will theorise the notion of faith as a process for the materialisation of egalitarian politics. Against Badiou, political fidelity will be conceptualised as a subjective as well as an objective procedure. The object of political fidelity is the actual constitution of a collective. To the extent that theoretical subjects and truths play a crucial role in enacting egalitarian politics, existing bodies also actively participate in its material elaboration through a distinctive perspective provided by the horizontality of the existing ground, and their capacity to relate as equal through economic production, distribution, and exchange.