Agonistic Democracy

“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.

In December 2008, Athens saw an eruption of violent protests that followed the murder of a teenager by a policeman. Initially reacting to police violence, the protestors did not articulate a specific agenda. The rallies, which mobilised a substantial part of the population – particularly the youth – dissipated a few weeks later. Similar outbreaks have taken place in other European cities in recent years (e.g. the Paris banlieues) and warrant a number of questions with regards to the capacity of our states and our cities to nurture a strong democratic life, acknowledging the role of conflict and preventing its violent expression.

In the age of the spectacle, democracy has never looked so bleak. Our world, saturated with media and marketing, endlessly confronts us with spectacles vying for our attention: from Apple and 9/11 to Facebook and the global financial crisis. Democratic politics, by comparison, remain far from engaging. A society obsessed with spectacles results in a complete misfiring of the democratic system. This book uses critical democratic theory to outline the effects of consumer culture on citizenship. It highlights the importance that public space plays in creating the critical culture necessary for a healthy democracy, and outlines how contemporary 'public' spaces—shopping centres, the Internet, social networking sites and suburban communities—contribute to this culture. Terrorism, ecological destruction and the financial crisis are also outlined as symptoms of the politics of the spectacle. The book concludes with some basic principles and novel suggestions which could be employed to avoid the pitfalls inherent in our spectacular existence.

Axel Honneth may be criticised for reducing political philosophy to moral psychology. In what follows, I argue that if his theory of recognition is reframed as one of democracy, quite another picture will appear. To do this, I systematically reconstruct Honneth’s stance as a multidimensional version of radical democracy. The question I discuss is the manner in which this framework combines the three dimensions of democratic deliberation, culture, and conflict. I then discuss Honneth’s picture from both a deliberative and agonistic viewpoint. How one understands the way in which he combines the abovementioned dimensions is dependent upon which one of these two approaches one may choose. I claim that when taken together, these three dimensions form the grounding of a radical-democratic understanding of a struggle for recognition, which I term institutional agonism.

This research addresses the colonial legacies traversing understandings of indigenous languages and their “revitalisation” in Colombia, arguing that neither language theories nor policies escape power-knowledge relations. It shows how alphabets and grammars have operated as colonial normalising technologies and defined indigenous languages as “illiterate” or “incomplete” languages, forcing them to adjust to foreign models and justifying the intervention of colonisers, missionaries and academic experts (who sought to “transform” indigenous languages into “complete” grammatical and alphabetical languages). It examines the asymmetrical clashes regarding the validation of “expert knowledge” over indigenous knowledge practices. Additionally, it acknowledges the contributions of postcolonial, decolonial, ecological, critical and cultural theories for decentring alphabetical, grammatical and monolingual normalisations and relocating indigenous languages in complex (non-anthropocentric) relations and community filiations.
This research proposes a comprehensive “(po)ethical” approach that dialogues with indigenous language practices in their poetical, ethical and political dimensions. This has three important effects. Firstly, it challenges reductive models of literacy and grammaticality, consolidated since the colonial encounter. Secondly, it highlights the deep articulation of indigenous language practices with the recreation of traditions and community filiations. Thirdly, it redefines “revitalisation” as a process that goes beyond linguistics insofar as, conceived otherwise, it challenges colonial epistemic violence, rebuilds community filiations, and enables healing.
(Po)ethical practices are agonistic. They emerge from the pain of the conflicts, historical conditions and violent asymmetries that are inscribed in the bodies and the languages we inhabit. In contrast to colonial technologies and policies of multiculturalism, (po)ethical practices do not pursue the elimination or assimilation of difference. Through agonistic translations, they acknowledge and connect creative processes of resistance and healing, allowing dialogue between adversaries instead of “eradicating conflict” by eliminating difference. The research stresses the local and global potential of agonistic translations of (po)ethical language practices in challenging coloniality and rebuilding communities.

Not published yet.
It is argued that agonistic democracy fails to fully distinguish itself from delibertive democracy and so it shares similar shortcomings. basically, agonistic democracy is unable to think about conflict as radical contestation of power.

Die Frage, was eine demokratische Gesellschaft zusammenhält, steht heute wieder im Raum. In fast allen deutschen Parteien gilt der gesellschaftliche Zusammenhalt als „Herzensthema“, und so fördert das deutsche Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung mit 40 Millionen Euro an gleich elf Standorten ein Forschungsinstitut gleichen Namens.

Wer sich um den gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt sorgt, bangt auch um die liberale Demokratie. Es geht nicht allein darum, was unsere pluralistische Gesellschaft zusammenhält, sondern auch um ihre normativen Voraussetzungen. Daher bietet es sich an, nach der Geschichte des Begriffs zu fragen. Schnell zeigt sich, dass es in einer liberalen Demokratie mit dem Zusammenhalt nicht so weit her ist. „Zusammenhalten“, heißt es 1811 in Campes Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, bedeutet „fest verbunden sein und bleiben“. Und weiter: „Freunde, Eheleute halten fest und treu zusammen.“ Wir können ergänzen: das gilt auch für Seilschaften im Hochgebirge, in der Wissenschaft und in der Mafia.

Das Zusammenleben in der pluralistischen Demokratie dagegen kennzeichnet eine stachelige Zwietracht. Wir sehnen uns nach „gegenseitiger Wärme“, heißt es in Schopenhauers Parabel von der Gesellschaft der Stachelschweine in einer kalten Winternacht, und empfinden zugleich die „gegenseitigen Stacheln“. Der Streit um den Klimawandel und die Migration, die Gleichberechtigung von Mann und Frau, das Kopftuch und das Kruzifix, um die Religion und Moral, die Nation und Europa ist unvermeidlich. Doch können wir überlegen, was zu tun ist, damit er nicht in wechselseitiger Verhetzung endet.

Through this essay we will look into the challenge of architecture to support the city commons in contested spaces by establishing relations between modes of reconciliation and processes of urban regeneration. To address such challenge, we need to look into architecture as urban practice, recognizing its inherent non-conflict-free interventional character. Architecture as urban practice in contested spaces has a hybrid character, since its agencies, modes of action, as well as its pedagogical stance, emerge thanks to a tactful synergy across material practices, such as architecture, urban design, planning, visual arts, and Information and Communication Technology. The moving project lies in the heart of architecture as urban practice, since the process of making, the agencies of the materiality of such a process, as well as the emergent actorial relations, get a prominent role. Modes of reconciliation are embedded deep into the making of by establishing platforms of exchange of desi...

Radical democrats highlight dramatic moments of political action that disrupt everyday habits of perception, which sustain unequal social relations. In doing so, however, we sometimes neglect how social conditions, such as precarious employment, social dislocation and everyday exposure to violence, might undermine political agency or be contested in uneventful ways. Despite their differences, two thinkers who have significantly influenced radical democratic theory (Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière) have been similarly criticised for contributing to such a socially weightless picture of politics. However, attending to how they are preoccupied by the social conditions of inequality and loneliness enables us to recognize two distinct aspects of democratic politics: emancipation and civility. Cultivating an interpretive flexibility to shift between these aspects of politics might enable radical democrats to more clearly picture how struggles for appearances are limited and shaped by the social conditions within which they are enacted.

Timē e Aretē come valori assoluti nelle competizioni agonistiche dal passato ai giorni nostri.
(Agon e Philotimia: valori umani di una società civile o aspetti negativi di un mondo in continua lotta per il potere?)
Saggio di di Fernando Sammarco

Co-Authored with Grit Straßenberger.

Generally, Mouffe’s political theory is labeled as a radical democratic concept. We are going to challenge this common view by showing that Mouffe derives her theory from the tradition of a conflictive liberalism. Coping with the political problems of the present, she re-narrates the history of democracy in order to generate a normative foundation of society that likewise acknowledges its own contingency. In sharp contrast to the commonalities of enlightenment liberalism and socialism, the acceptance of contingency makes clear that liberal democracy must always be both conceptually incomplete and nevertheless actively defended. Re-narrating democracy, Mouffe therefore encourages a liberal connection of pluralism and conflict. Both function as the antibodies to the threats of liberal democracy, debunked by Carl Schmitt. We reconstruct the intellectual references for Mouffe’s conflictive liberalism and finally propose to reconsider the relationship between liberalism and republicanism from this point of view.

- peer reviewed -

Rad se bavi pitanjem komplementarnosti teorijskog konstrukta agonističke demokratije i levog populizma u radovima Šantal Muf. Strategiju levog populizma praktično primenjuju partije Siriza, Podemos i
Nepokorna Francuska (France Insoumise). Jedna od pretpostavki pojave levog populizma je da je radikalna desnica prva uspela da ponudi
alternativu otuđenom postpolitičkom i postdemokratskom političkom
sistemu tvrdeći da vraća politiku narodu (npr. FPÖ u Austriji, Front
National u Francuskoj). Agonisti zbog toga zagovaraju povratak politici koja uspostavlja jasnu političku granicu (levi u odnosu na desni populizam) kako bi se stvorili uslovi za agonističko osporavanje i omogućavanje demokratskih alternativa ali i podstakli demokratski akteri da se uključe u borbu za moć i osvajanje političkih institucija.

Ključne riječi: agonistička demokratija, levi populizam, narod, Šantal Muf, Ernesto Laklau

While the normative debate on the “ideal” public sphere is ongoing and did not reach any form of agreement since Jürgen Habermas’s thesis publication in 1962, the study of public spheres in actually existing democracies did not lose its relevance. Our thesis therefore joins this field of study by envisioning the public sphere as a conflict-centred source of legitimacy of the state. Guided by Jostein Gripsrud’s (ed.) framework in the study of the history of the Norwegian public sphere (2017a), the following pages dig into Quebec’s francophone political public sphere between 1956 and 1966. This period includes governments from two adversarial parties, and covers the transition between what has been called the “Great Darkness” and the “Quiet Revolution”. To do so, we study in a socio-historic perspective two main elements of the public sphere. That is, the media system and, in line with Terje Rasmussen’s study on Norwegian parliamentarianism (2015), the parliamentarian legislative work. That leads to an analytical description of the public sphere in Quebec between 1956 and 1966. Two important findings emerge from it: the structure of the public sphere is stable, yet the government change comes with a rise to power of a previously oppositional elite.

The relationship between representative democracy and conflict in John Stuart Mill’s political philosophy has been interpreted in very different ways. While some scholars claim that Millian democracy is incompatible with political conflict, others identify in Mill a radical political agonism that would offer a non-consensual model of deliberative democracy. This paper argues that neither of these views is exactly accurate: although he highlights the centrality of conflict in political life, Mill believes that democratic deliberation presupposes a minimal level of consensus regarding the formal value of democracy’s basic principles, viz. the principles of individual freedom and equality. Initially, I reconstruct the relationship between conflict and consensus in Mill’s conception of representative democracy. Next, I investigate Mill's association of representation and advocacy and show that his encomium on political conflict was influenced by Guizot’s work. Finally, I explain how a democratic debate riven with conflict is conducive to individual freedom.

The paper discusses important elements of a democratic ethics alongside Dewey’s philosophy: the idea of perspectival creativity, Dewey’s ‘argument for democracy’, and an account of democratic virtues. I assume that ethics and democracy should be radically connected. The quality of a democracy depends on living and promoting democratic virtues on different levels of social life.
Against this background I argue that Dewey’s democratic virtue theory complements the Deweyan argument for democracy as reconstructed by Hilary Putnam (1992). First, I will introduce Dewey’s perspectival view of creativity which is foreshadowed in his article “Construction and Criticism” and interpret it in the context of Dewey’s normative criteria for democracy (II). Second, this view of creativity and the motive of the recognition of individuality is linked to Putnam’s (1992) argument (III). Third, an account of democratic virtues after Dewey will be outlined that complements the ‘Deweyan argument for democracy’ (IV).

In recent years, scholars have begun to explore the democratic valences of Michael Oakeshott's political thought. Commentators generally present him either as a skeptical and reluctant democrat or as an advocate of deliberative democracy. This article contends that Oakeshott criticizes some epistemological and substantive commitments that are characteristic of deliberative theories, yet his vision of democracy is more robust than skeptical readers admit. Using the themes of consensus and epistemic politics as points for comparison with the ideas of Oakeshott and deliberative democrats, I consider how his theory of civil association, critique of rationalism, and characterization of conversation as "the gist and meaning of democracy" speak to contemporary democratic theory. I conclude that he offers a pluralistic ethos, rather than a self-contained model, for democratic politics that has affinities with agonistic theories of democracy.

A decade since international actors engaged in peace-building and state- building processes in Kosovo, tensions still prevail between the two main ethnic groups, the Albanian majority and the Serb minority, in the country. After failing to build a rational consensus in a deeply divided Kosovo society, international actors have shifted the focus towards legalising the ethnic divisions by creating or allowing for state institutions to function on the grounds of ethnicity, thus perpetuating ethnic antagonisms. The technocratic approach of international state- building in Kosovo is sceptical about the domestic political process and sees it as damaging to the plans for Kosovo. However, as an outcome of impeding the political process, antagonisms take more radical forms and the formation of new political identities that overcome ethnicity, is prevented. This study considers pluralist democracy and politics of inclusion as a strategy for allowing communities to articulate and debate their political values and aspirations at a national level. Pluralist democracy would facilitate agonistic relations in which conflict is characterised by a struggle between political adversaries whose existence is legitimate and must be tolerated, thus replacing actual antagonistic relations between enemies seeking to eliminate each-other. Nevertheless, a consensus about certain rules of ‘the game’ regarding the space and the context in which deliberation could take place, as well as and with regard to certain procedures of decision-making, is necessary.

This is a conceptual paper that seeks to apply agonistic theories of democracy to critique the embracing of dialogic communication in public relations theory. Several strands of scholarship, despite their vastly different starting points and epistemological assumptions, have converged on advancing dialogic forms of communication as representing the best normative theories for shifting practice toward what might be considered civic, democracy-friendly norms. As a consequence theorising has emphasised compromise and consensus which pressurises practitioners to adopt ostensibly non-partisan styles of communication. In contrast agonistic democratic theory elevates the value of permanent contest, dissensus and performance in vibrant public spaces which expose and test the legitimacy of those who hold power and privilege. However, the disputes in other academic fields between advocates of deliberative and agonistic approaches have up to now been largely absent in the public relations literature. This paper uses agonistic theory, particularly the work of Chantal Mouffe, to critique some of the assumptions that have been used to apply to public relations a) Habermasian deliberation b) two-way symmetrical communication. Finally, the paper discusses the value of the agonistic framework for building new models for understanding the forms of public relations that would support democratic practice.

Theories of radical democracy are one of the most discussed approaches in current theories of democracy. One of the most important proponents is Chantal Mouffe. She is pleading for an agonistic democracy theory and imagines the political as a non-reconcilable conflict. These antagonistic conflicts are channeled through institutions into agonisms in western-liberal democracies. However, it stays unclear, what institutions are and how she defines them. In fact, I argue that Mouffe does not address institutional settings in greater detail which creates a gap in her approach. As a result, she underestimates the inherent conflictual and agonistic character of institutions. By referring to the neo-poulantzian analysis of the state, I aim to fill this theoretical gap in Mouffe’s approach in order to theorize the agonistics of institutions.

¿Es el animal un tema de interés para Carl Schmitt? El sentido común académico presupone que la cuestión del animal es ajena tanto a los intereses intelectuales de Schmitt como a su concepción de lo político, de lo teológico y de la relación que ambos mantienen entre sí. En este trabajo sugerimos que esta impresión debe ser revisada a la luz de evidencia textual que revela el interés de Schmitt por la cuestión del animal y de intérpretes de su obra que, aunque de manera tangencial, discuten dicha cuestión.
Palabras clave: Schmitt  - animal - política - teología - zoología

Recent political theory has become more and more focused on the problems of pluralism and conflict. Debating the idea or ideal of a consensus-aimed politics, agonistic writers such as Mouffe, Honig, Connolly, Tully and Muldoon have drawn attention to the multiplicity of opinions within any community and the alleged ineradicability of conflict within society. The current political climate, in which problems of conflicting world-views are becoming more and more prominent have led us to ask ourselves: how can we deal with pluralism, and: does the dominant idea of deliberative democracy provide us with the proper means to deal with conflict? The agonistic answer to this last question is a resounding 'no'. Deliberative democracy is blind to some of the fundamental properties of democracy and pluralism, they argue, and they propose an alternative approach that sees conflict not as a fundamental problem, but as one of its core elements. Such an approach certainly has its sway, especially when one considers the day to day political struggles in our modern world that deal with conflict, dissensus and dissatisfaction. However, the idea of an agonistic politics also calls for a question. Traditionally, within democratic theory public opinion, or 'what the people want' is essentially seen as the legitimatising force of any type of coercion or rule of law. But if, as agonism proposes, we see conflict as the foundation of democracy rather than consensus, in what way can we provide a means for preserving the democratic character of politics and distinguishing democratic politics from arbitrary rule? Does agonism replace the former idea of consensus-based legitimacy with some other ground, and if so, with what?

Agonism is a political theory that places contestation at the heart of politics. Agonistic theorists charge liberal theory with a depoliticization of pluralism through an excessive focus on consensus. This paper examines the agonistic critiques of liberalism from a normative perspective. I argue that by itself the argument from pluralism is not sufficient to support an agonistic account of politics, but points to further normative commitments. Analyzing the work of Mouffe, Honig, Connolly, and Owen, I identify two normative currents of agonistic theory: emancipatory agonism, aimed at challenging violence and exclusion, and perfectionist agonism, aimed at the cultivation of nobility. From a normative perspective the former presents an internal challenge to liberalism, while the latter constitutes an external challenge to liberalism by providing a competing account of the ends of politics. Recognition of the distinction between emancipatory and perfectionist agonism is crucial in assessing the purchase of agonistic critiques of liberalism. Furthermore, this analysis draws us beyond the simple opposition between contestation and consensus. It is not simply a question of valuing genuine pluralism and therefore criticizing consensus; rather the question comes to be: what are the ends of politics?

Ce travail propose d’analyser la représentation politique dans sa fonction symbolique de construction des identités collectives. Il s’appuie sur la théorie des hégémonies développée par Ernesto Laclau et Chantal Mouffe, ainsi que sur la subjectivation politique telle qu’abordée par Jacques Rancière, théories qui placent le dissensus au fondement de toute communauté politique et invitent à une réflexion sur le rôle fondamental des représentations de l’altérité dans la construction discursive des identités et du social. L’approche praxématique en analyse du discours offre un cadre épistémique et méthodologique particulièrement heuristique pour analyser cette intersubjectivité, à travers les figements progressifs de la dialectique du même et de l’autre. Le terrain d’étude est celui de la campagne des élections au Parlement européen (mai 2014), par rapport à laquelle l’analyse permet d’appréhender la difficile émergence d’un espace politique européen, autrement que par le truchement de son opposition à l’espace national. Il s’agit d’identifier les conditions d’émergence d’un demos européen, qui ne se confonde ni avec l’ethnos, dont il est montré qu’il n’a rien d’essentiel, ni avec le corps social atomisé de l’individu libéral. Les traces textuelles de cette émergence s’appréhendent en (co)(n)texte, suivant des réseaux praxiques. L’analyse s’intéresse au rôle de l’ensemble des unités linguistiques dans la coconstruction du réel et dans sa mise en récit. Elle tente également d’appréhender la problématique du discours représenté dans sa polymorphie. Parallèlement au (sur)marquage des points de vue, les phénomènes d’effacement énonciatif s’avèrent déterminants dans la construction hégémonique du sens, comme producteurs d’évidence.

Images of police armored vehicles in Ferguson and Baltimore have been influential in a public conversation about the militarization of the police. However, recent critical and abolitionist work on policing rejects the concept of “militarization” for obscuring the longstanding histories and institutional connections between military and police apparatuses. By following the transfers of armored vehicles to police, this article illuminates the logistical pathways that connect colonial warfare and domestic policing, adding an account of the material composition of police power to the historical work of critical and abolitionist thinkers. The article proceeds through a critical reading of records of the Defense Logistics Agency, tracking the transfer of surplus armored vehicles to the police. Designated as “high-visibility property” by the Defense Logistics Agency, these vehicles testify to the materiality of police power. The article then tracks the visibility and materiality of these v...

Destacado representante de la tradición realista de lo político en la Europa de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, la obra de J. Freund ha sido entendida muy habitualmente como uno de los más acabados desarrollos teóricos del «conflictualismo político» schmittiano. La interpretación freundeana, sin embargo, está lejos de poder reducirse a esta única dimensión, articulada alrededor de la antítesis «amigo–enemigo». En este artículo se pretende ofrecer una revisión crítica de este tópico desde una lectura comprehensiva de la obra del autor francés, siguiendo como clave de lectura su intento de conciliación teórica entre el punto de vista del pensamiento político clásico y el moderno. // EN: Well-known representative of political realism tradition in the Europe of the second half of 20th century, J. Freund’work has currently been understood as one of the most accomplished developments of schmittian «politics as conflict theory». Freund’s interpretation cannot be reduced to this only dimension based on the analytical «friend-enemy» opposition. In this article we intend to offer a critical revision of this topic from a comprehensive reading of the work of French author, following as interpretative key his attempt to theoretical reconciliation between classical and modern political point of view.

My book, published in October 2018 by Cambridge University Press, argues that John Dewey's pragmatist philosophy can build an effective critique of current democratic theory's focus on ideal forms of political debate, and can bring the fight against structural social inequality into the forefront of democratic thinking. See: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/political-theory/equality-beyond-debate-john-deweys-pragmatic-idea-democracy?format=HB#wpCcr8O246TV3k2b.97