Demonstrations as Narrative
One definition of "demonstration"
From Gérard Sfez, "Demonstration (French: Manifestation, German: Kundgebung,
Manifestation)," in Dictionaire critique du marxisme, edited by Georges Labica and
Gérard Bensussan (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999), pp. 691-692:
"At the intersection of the registers of the 'theory of knowledge' and political practice, this
term has long signified a religious model of truth, understood as being revealed, incarnated. Close
to such notions as appearance and apparition (Schein-Erscheinung), demonstration was the
indication of a truth and only that. Kant and especially Hegel were to make of it a moment in the
process of the constitution of truth, 'an essential moment of essence,' a moment entering into its
concrete determination.
Historical materialism has especially revived this term in order to exhibit its double status. Thus,
religion is at the same time the demonstration of real misery and a protest against it. This double
status of demonstration that calls it a negative determination is of course very marked by Hegel.
Later, the term demonstration in the political field designates more than the function of an
indication; it designates a function of anticipation and of constitution of the balance of forces.
A demonstration creates a balance of forces rather than repeating or reflecting one; it possesses a
formative energy in the dynamic of history. A religious functioning of the demonstration defuses it
in order to make it function as a juridical regulation of the system and of the ruling State. The
right to demonstrate thus constitutes for Lenin an element that is necessary for this dynamic whose
principal function is to shatter the very element of Law."
(Translated by Ted Stolze.)
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More Information
- Ted's blog
- "G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) Social and Political Thought", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730-1848, Rudé
- Out Now! A Participant's Account of the Movement in the U.S. Against the Vietnam War, Halstead
- The Spitting Image, Lembcke
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