- character and empty place of power -

Claude Lefort's description of democracy: 

"The democratic axiom is that the place of power is empty, that there is no one who is directly qualified for this post either by tradition, charisma, or his expert and leadership properties. This is why, before democracy can enter the stage, terror has to do its work, forever dissociating the place of power from any natural or directly qualified pretender: the gap between this place and those who temporarily occupy it should be maintained at any cost.

The elections do not pretend to select the most qualified person. The achievement of democracy is to turn what is in traditional authoritarian power the moment of its greatest crisis, the moment of transition from one to another master when, for a moment, "the throne is empty," which causes panic, into the very resort of its strength: democratic elections are the moment of passing through the zero-point when the complex network of social links is dissolved into purely quantitative multiplicity of individuals whose votes are mechanically counted.

The moment of terror, of the dissolution of all hierarchic links, is thus re-enacted and transformed into the foundation of a new and stable positive political order.

In film, empty place of power has been populated over the decades with various fictive characters in order to test the audience and prepare them for different scenarios of  political kind (for example, we have seen a number of african-american presidents in cinema; first time such character was introduced in cinema is 1933 film "Rufus Jones for President" with Sammy Davis Jr. In this short musical comedy, the 7-year-old Davis is told by his mother, that anyone can become president, and later dreams of his own inauguration. Outside the dreams, the film reflects contemporary racist attitudes).

In TV show "24", Dennis Haysbert portrayed the lead character David Palmer, a successful terrorism-fighting president. The Jerusalem Post speculated in June 2008 that television ratings "may have predicted Obama's primary victory over Hillary Clinton, as the most recent female television president appears to have been less popular than the black leaders of 24."

"I believe that films of the 20th century were the most significant, direct dramatization of social fantasies." (Slavoj Zizek)

Empty place of power raises also question of representation of non-being with theological consequences. The question is not simply "how does one think non-being?" but also "how does one name non-being?" The proper name, as Badiou points out, is not the transcendent God or the promise of the One or presence but the "un-presentation and the un-being of the one". 

“Names in politics are impoverished. … The weakness of politics today is a weakness of poetry. The fall of communism, also influenced that impoverishment. Marxism had a constellation of names for political concepts. It was a sky of names. We lost the sky." (Alain Badiou)