Il colpo mancato. Sul significato della duplicità per i partiti politici

(The Missed Hit: On the Meaning of Duplicity for Political Parties)

Abstract

In the following remarks, I address the question of “duplicity” within political parties and politics in general. My thesis is that, whereas it is true that—first and for the most part—we encounter duplicity in politics as a form of grim hypocrisy, nevertheless this does not imply that all forms of duplicity have to be overcome. The dream of an overcoming of duplicity, I argue, brings close the positions, albeit very distant from one other, of Hobbes, Marx, Schmitt, Gramsci, and Croce, and can be considered a legacy of the metaphysics of the One. In what sense is duplicity in politics not only unavoidable but also opportune and necessary? And what do the Jews have to do with this? Why is there an at least theoretical connection between the question of parties and the Jewish question, starting with Hobbes? Would political parties perhaps be an example of the “small difference” that not only for Carl Schmitt but also for Walter Benjamin constitutes one of the salient features of the Jewish culture? Is the party, in some sense, in the position of the Jew?