Chantal Mouffe On the Political

Chantal MouffeOn the Political

Chantal Mouffe French political philosopher 1989-1995 Programme Director the College International de Philosophie in Paris Professorship at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster in the UK, directs the Centre for the Study of Democracy

Chantal Mouffe Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (with Ernesto Laclau, 1985) A type of post-marxist political inquiry drawing on Gramsci, post-structuralism and theories of identity, and redefining Left politics in terms of democracy The Return of the Political(1993) A prominent critic of ‘deliberative democracy’, (especially in its Rawlsian and Habermasian versions) Agonistic Pluralism

On the Political (2005) Challenges facing democratic politics 21st Century; post-political approach; beyond left and right but right and wrong; partisan free democracy; cosmopolitan democracy; global civil society and good governance; antagonistic dimension (a partisan character) is required;

What matters “I want to challenge this ‘post-political’ vision (sociology, political theory, international relations)…this optimistic view of globalization and…a consensual form of democracy” (p.1)

Logic of inquiry “what I will do is bring to the fore the consequences for democratic politics of the denial of ‘the political’ as I define it. I will reveal how the consensual approach, instead of creating the conditions for a reconciled society, leads to the emergence of antagonisms that an agonistic perspective, by providing those conflicts with a legitimate form of expression, would have managed to avoid.” (p.4)

Thesis begins “a vibrant ‘agonistic’ public sphere of contestation where different hegemonic political projects can be confronted.. is the sine qua non” (p.3) “the conflictual dimension in social life… is the necessary condition for grasping the challenge to which democratic politics is confronted.” (p.4) “we have entered a new era where this potential antagonism has disappeared. And this is why it can put in jeopardy the future of democratic politics.” (p.7)

Thesis1:right vleft wrong “when the channels are not available through which conflicts could take an ‘agonistic’ form, those conflicts tend to emerge on the antagonistic mode. Now, when instead of being formulated as a political confrontation between ‘adversaries’, the we/they confrontation is visualized as a moral one between good and evil, the opponent can be perceived only as an enemy to be destroyed and this is not conducive to an agonistic treatment. Hence the current emergence of antagonisms which put into question the very parameters of the existing order.” (p.5) “nowadays…the political is played out in the moral register there is still a we/they discrimination, but the we/they instead of being defined with political categories, is now established in moral terms. In place of struggle between ‘right and left’ we are faced with a struggle between ‘right and wrong’”(p.5)

Thesis2:partisan citizenship“Passions” not reason “a we/they discrimination…play a central part in politics and the task of democratic politics is not to overcome them through consensus but to construct them in a way that energizes the democratic confrontation. The mistake of liberal rationalism is to ignore the affective dimension mobilized by collective identifications and to imagine that those supposedly archaic ‘passions’ are bound to disappear with the advance of individualism and the progress of rationality…The part played by ‘passions’ in politics reveals that, in order to come to terms with ‘the political’, it is not enough for liberal theory to acknowledge the existence of a plurality of values and to extol toleration. Democratic politics cannot be limited to establishing compromises among interests or values or to deliberation about the common good; itneeds to have a real purchase on people’s desires and fantasies. To be able to mobilize passions towards democratic politics must have a partisan character.” (p.6)

Thesis3:multipolar cosmopolitanism “the dangers entailed by the current unipolar order can be avoided only by the implementation of a multipolar world, with an equilibrium among several regional poles allowing for a plurality of hegemonic powers. This is the only way to avoid the hegemony of one single hyperpower.” (pp.6-7)

Theoretical Framework:Carl Schmitt “Because of the rationalism prevalent in liberal political discourse, it is often among conservative theorists that I have found crucial insights for an adequate understanding of the political. They can better shake our dogmatic assumptions than liberal apologists. This is why I have chosen to conduct my critique of liberal thought under the aegis of such a controversial thinker as Carl Schmitt….the most brilliant and intransigent opponents of liberalism. I am perfectly aware that, because of Schmitt’s compromise with Nazism, such a choice might arouse hostility…. I see the refusal of many democratic theorists to engage with Schmitt’s thought on moral grounds as typical of the moralistic tendency which is characteristic of the post-political Zeitgeist. In fact, the critique of such tendency is at the core of my reflection.” (pp. 4-5)

Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) conservative German legal, constitutional, and political theorist. Schmitt is often considered to be one of the most important critics of liberalism, parliamentary democracy, and liberal cosmopolitanism. But the value and significance of Schmitt's work is subject to controversy, mainly due to his intellectual support for and active involvement with National Socialism. Critical Conceptions: • Sovereignty & dictatorship • The political • The theory of partisan

Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) “when a state fights its political enemy in the name of humanity, it is not a war for the sake of humanity, but a war wherein a particular state seeks to usurp a universal concept against its military opponent. At the expense of its opponent, it tries to identify itself with humanity in the same way as one can misuse peace, justice, progress and civilization in order to claim these as one’s own and to deny the same to the enemy.” - Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1976, p.54

Current Challenges to the Post-political vision • Right-wing populism • The dangers of the consensus model -Consequence of the lack of channels (to express political passions, conflicts) -The collective/affective dimension could not be eliminated from politics. -Dialogue and rational deliberation is vulnerable when confronted with a populist politics offering collective identifications with a high affective content like ‘the people’. -Traditional parties label right-wing populists as ‘extreme right’

Current Challenges to the Post-political vision • Politics in the register of morality -Draw the frontier at the moral level: ‘the good democrats’ v ‘evil extreme right’ -’constitutive outside’ is necessary to secure their identity: “there is no consensus without exclusion, no ‘we’ without ‘they’ and no policies is possible without the drawing of a frontier.” (p.73) -the other side of passion: using traditional repetoire of antifascist discourse; people feel very good and very virtuous by simply participating in the denunciation of the ‘evil forces’ -moralistic reactions “this mechanism consists in securing one’s goodness, through the condemnation of the evil in others.” (p.74) -“there is, in my view, a direct link between the weakening of the political frontier characteristic of the adversarial model and the ‘moralization’ of politics.” (p.75) - Politics is being played out in the moral register (not by morality)

Current Challenges to the Post-political vision • Terrorism as consequence of a unipolar world -”we can see terrorism as the product of a new configuration of the political which is characteristic of the type of world order being implemented around the hegemony of a single hyper-power.” (p.81) -”there is a correlation between the now unchallenged power of the USA and the proliferation of terrorist groups.” (p.81) - “the lack of political channels for challenging the hegemony of the neo-liberal model of globalization is, I contend, at the origin of the proliferation of discourses and practices of radical negation of the established order.” (p.82)

Current Challenges to the Post-political vision • The universality of liberal democracy • “a great part of democratic theory is dedicated to proving the superiority of liberal democracy which is presented as the only just and legitimate regime, whose institutions would, in idealized conditions, be chosen by all rational individuals.” (p.83) • “Every opposition is automatically perceived as a sign of irrationality and moral backwardness and as being illegitimate.” (p. 85) • [On Habermas, ‘human rights confront us today with fact that leaves us no choice’] “the enforced universalization of the Western model… lead to ever bloodier reaction on the part of those whose cultures and ways of life are being destroyed by this process.” (p.87) • [On Habermas, ‘the democratic procedure legitimizing force only… from the general accessibility of a deliberative process whose structure grounds an expectation of rationally acceptable results.] “what are those ‘rationally acceptable results?” “who will decide on the limits to be imposed to the expression of political will? What are going to be the grounds for exclusion?” (p.87)

On ‘human-rights’:The West version of globalization from above Human rights, central in today’s liberal democratic discourse; play a key role in the cosmopolitan project of a worldwide implementation of liberal democracy. Indeed its main tenet is that the universalization of human rights requires other societies to adopt Western institutions. Q: “problematize the idea of the universality of human rights as it is generally understood. Is whether other cultures do not give different answers to the same question; look for functional equivalents of human rights, if we accept that what is at stake in human rights is the dignity of the person, this question can be answered in a diversity of ways. What Western culture calls ‘human rights’ is a culturally specific form of answering this question, an individualistic way specific to liberal culture and which cannot claim to be the only legitimate one.” (p. 126)

On Rawls “he pretends that such a discrimination is grounded in rationality and morality while I claim that the drawing of the frontier between the legitimate and the illegitimate is always a political decision, and that it should therefore always remain open to contestation… I assert that our allegiance to democratic values and institutions is not based on their superior rationality and that liberal democratic principles can be defended only as being constitutive of our form of life. Contrary to Rawls and Habermas, I do not attempt to present liberal democracy as the model which would be chosen by every rational individual in idealized conditions… the normative dimension inscribed in political institutions … to indicate that it always refers to specific practices, depending on particular contexts, and that it is not the expression of a universal morality… no place for ‘rational disagreement’… is incompatible with recognizing the deeply pluralistic character of the world and the irreducible conflict of values.” (p.122)

Final thought: goal, content, experience of citizenship education “To be sure there will still be conflicts in a multipolar world but those conflicts are less likely to take an antagonistic form than in a unipolar world. It is not in our power to eliminate conflicts and escape our human condition, but it is in our power to create the practices, discourses and institutions that would allow those conflicts to take an agonistic form. This is why the defense and the radicalization of the democratic project require acknowledging the political in its antagonistic dimension and abandoning the dream of a reconciled world that would have overcome power, sovereignty and hegemony.” (p. 130)

Chantal Mouffe On the Political