Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically

practices.

Introduction

The essays collected in this volume examine the relevance of the agonistic approach I have elaborated in my previous work for a series of issues that I take to be important to the left-wing project. Each chapter deals with a different question, but in each case my aim is to address the question in a political way. As Ernesto Laclau and I argued in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, to think politically requires recognizing the ontological dimension of radical negativity.¹ It is because of the existence of a form of negativity that cannot be overcome dialectically that full objectivity can never be reached and that antagonism is an ever present possibility. Society is permeated by contingency and any order is of an hegemonic nature, i.e. it is always the expression of power relations. In the field of politics, this means that the search for a consensus without exclusion and the hope for a perfectly reconciled and harmonious society have to be abandoned. As a result, the emancipatory ideal cannot be formulated in terms of a realization of any form of ‘communism’.

The reflections proposed here take their bearings from the critique of rationalism and universalism that I have developed since The Return of the Political, where I began to elaborate a model of democracy which I call ‘agonistic pluralism’.² In inscribing the dimension of radical negativity in the political domain, I proposed in that book to distinguish between ‘the political’ and ‘politics’. By ‘the political’, I refer to the ontological dimension of antagonism, and by ‘politics’ I mean the ensemble of practices and institutions whose aim is to organize human coexistence. These practices, however, always operate within a terrain of conflictuality informed by ‘the political’.

The key thesis of ‘agonistic pluralism’ was later elaborated in The Democratic Paradox, where I argued that a central task of democratic politics is to provide the institutions which will permit conflicts to take an ‘agonistic’ form, where the opponents are not enemies but adversaries among whom exists a conflictual consensus.³ What I intended to show with this agonistic model was that it was possible, even when starting with the assertion of the ineradicability of antagonism, to envisage a democratic order.

Nonetheless, it is true that political theories that affirm such a thesis usually end up defending an authoritarian order as the only way to keep civil war at bay. This is why most political theorists committed to democracy believe that they have to assert the availability of a rational solution to political conflicts. My argument, however, is that the authoritarian solution is not a necessary logical consequence of such an ontological postulate, and that by distinguishing between ‘antagonism’ and ‘agonism’, it is possible to visualize a form of democracy that does not deny radical negativity.

In recent years, reflecting on worldwide political developments, I have been led to enquire about the possible implications of my approach for international relations. What are the consequences in the international arena of the thesis that every order is an hegemonic one? Does it mean that there is no alternative to the current unipolar world, with all the negative consequences this entails? Undoubtedly, the illusion of a cosmopolitan world beyond hegemony and beyond sovereignty has to be relinquished. But this is not the only solution available, as we can also conceive of another one: a pluralization of hegemonies. In my view, by establishing more equal relations between regional poles, a multipolar approach could be a step towards an agonistic order where conflicts, although they would not disappear, would be less likely to take an antagonistic form.

Another aspect of my reflections concerns the consequences of the hegemonic approach regarding radical projects whose aim is to establish a different social and political order. How can such a new order be brought about? What strategy to follow?

The traditional revolutionary approach has mostly been forsaken, but it is increasingly replaced by another one that, under the name of ‘exodus’, reproduces, albeit in a different way, many of its shortcomings. In this book I take issue with the total rejection of representative democracy by those who, instead of aiming at a transformation of the state through an agonistic hegemonic struggle, advocate a strategy of deserting political institutions. Their belief in the availability of an ‘absolute democracy’ where the multitude would be able to self-organize without any need of the state or political institutions signifies a lack of understanding of what I designate as ‘the political’.

To be sure, they question the thesis of a progressive homogenization of the ‘people’ under the category of ‘the proletariat’, while affirming the multiplicity of ‘the multitude’. But to acknowledge radical negativity implies recognizing not only that the people is multiple, but that it is also divided. Such a division cannot be overcome; it can only be institutionalized in different ways, some more egalitarian than others. According to this approach, radical politics consists in a diversity of moves in a multiplicity of institutional terrains, so as to construct a different hegemony. It is a ‘war of position’ whose objective is not the creation of a society beyond hegemony, but a process of radicalizing democracy – the construction of more democratic, more egalitarian institutions.

There is another topic to which I have dedicated special attention in recent years, thanks mainly to the frequent invitations I have received to speak at art schools, museums and biennales. Can an agonistic conception help artists to theorize the nature of their interventions in public space? What can be the role of artistic and cultural practices in the hegemonic struggle? In the current stage of post-fordist capitalism, the cultural terrain occupies a strategic position because the production of affects plays an increasingly important role. Being vital to the process of capitalist valorization, this terrain should constitute a crucial site of intervention for counter-hegemonic practices.

In order to address those different topics, the book is organized as follows. The first chapter revisits the main lines of the agonistic approach that I have elaborated over several years in a series of books. It also distinguishes my perspective from the other agonistic theories currently available. Stressing the antagonistic dimension which characterizes the political domain, I put special emphasis on the difference between ethical and political perspectives and the necessity for agonistic theorists to acknowledge the link between agonism and antagonism instead of postulating the availability of an ‘agonism without antagonism’.

After having clarified my theoretical problematic, in the subsequent chapters I engage with a series of topics: an agonistic approach to international relations, the modes of integration of the European Union, different visions of radical politics, and finally cultural and artistic practices as they relate to politics. In the second chapter, I discuss some of the issues raised by the idea of a multipolar world. Developing a theme already introduced in On the Political, where, criticizing several cosmopolitan projects, I argued in favour of a multipolar world, I now enquire about the implications of seeing the world as a pluri-verse. Taking issue with the view that democratization requires Westernization, I defend the thesis that the democratic ideal can be inscribed differentially in a variety of contexts.

Some of my readers will probably be surprised by my critique of the way social and political theorists use the term ‘modern’ to qualify Western institutions. Have I not myself repeatedly referred to ‘modern democracy’ to designate the Western model? In truth, I have ceased doing it in recent writings: I now try to avoid speaking of ‘modern democracy’. I have become aware that by doing so, I contradict my assertion regarding the contextualist nature of liberal democracy, as well as my claim that it does not represent a more advanced stage in the development of rationality or morality.

I strongly believe that it is high time for left-wing intellectuals to adopt a pluralist approach and to reject the type of universalism that postulates the rational and moral superiority of Western modernity. At the moment, when the Arab uprisings have put the question of how to build democracy on the agenda in several Middle Eastern countries, I see this question as being of the utmost importance. It would indeed be a fatal mistake to force those countries to adopt the Western model, refusing to recognize the central place of Islam in their cultures.

The European Union is the topic of the third chapter, where I examine the relevance of the agonistic approach for envisaging possible forms of European integration. I argue in favour of conceiving the EU on the mode of a ‘demoi-cracy’ composed of a multiplicity of diverse demoi providing different spaces for the exercise of democracy. Scrutinizing the causes of the growing disaffection towards the European project, I also stress the urgency of elaborating a new vision that offers an alternative to the neo-liberal policies that are at the origin of the current crisis.

The fourth chapter is dedicated to contrasting two models of radical politics. In the first place, it argues against the strategy of ‘withdrawal from’ inspired by the Italian Autonomia movement and theorized by post-operaist theorists like Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Paolo Virno, who call for an exodus from the state and traditional political institutions and for a rejection of representative democracy. In contrast, I advocate a strategy of ‘engagement with’. Such a strategy includes a multiplicity of counter-hegemonic moves aiming at a profound transformation, not a desertion, of existing institutions. Scrutinizing the conflicting theoretical frameworks informing these two opposite strategies, I suggest that the problem with the kind of radical politics defended by the exodus theorists is that they have a flawed understanding of the political. This can be seen in the observation that they do not accept the ineradicable dimension of antagonism.

In the last chapter, I turn my attention to the field of cultural and artistic practices. I engage with the ongoing discussion about the effects of post-fordist capitalism on the cultural and artistic fields. According to some thinkers, the commodification of culture is such that there is no space anymore for artists to play a critical role. Others, while in disagreement with this pessimistic diagnosis, claim that such a possibility still exists, but only outside the art world.

My own view is that cultural and artistic practices can play a critical role by fostering agonistic public spaces where counter-hegemonic struggles could be launched against neo-liberal hegemony. Taking my bearings from Antonio Gramsci, I assert the central place occupied by the cultural domain in the construction of ‘common sense’, highlighting the necessity of artistic intervention in order to challenge the post-political view that there is no alternative to the present order. Here again, my views are contrasted with those of post-operaist theorists already discussed in chapter 3. But this time the focus is on their interpretation of the transition from fordism to post-fordism and the role played by cultural practices in this transition.

Finally, in the conclusion I examine recent protest movements in the light of the two modes of radical politics I mentioned earlier: post-operaist and agonistic. I argue that these movements should be seen as reactions to the lack of agonistic politics in liberal democracies, and that they call for a radicalization, not a rejection, of liberal democratic institutions.

I decided to call this book Agonistics to stress that it consists in a variety of theoretico-political interventions in domains where I think it is necessary to question some established left-wing positions. Its aim is to foster an agonistic debate among those whose objective is to challenge the current neo-liberal order.

1 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards Radical Democratic Politics, Second Edition, London and New York: Verso, 2001.

2 Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political, London and New York: Verso, 2005.

3 Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, London and New York: Verso, 2005.

Chapter 1

What Is Agonistic Politics?

In recent years, agonistic approaches to politics have become increasingly influential. However, they exist in a variety of forms, which has often created some confusion. Since this book intends to examine the relevance of my conception of agonism to several fields, it is necessary to clarify the specificity of my approach and the way it differs from other agonistic theories. I will begin by recalling the basic tenets of the theoretical framework that informs my reflections on the political as it was elaborated in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, co-written with Ernesto Laclau.¹

In this book, we argued that two key concepts – ‘antagonism’ and ‘hegemony’ – are necessary to grasp the nature of the political. Both pointed to the importance of acknowledging the dimension of radical negativity that manifests itself in the ever-present possibility of antagonism. This dimension, we proposed, impedes the full totalization of society and forecloses the possibility of a society beyond division and power. This, in turn, requires coming to terms with the lack of a final ground and the undecidability that pervades every order. In our vocabulary, this means recognizing the ‘hegemonic’ nature of every kind of social order and envisaging society as the product of a series of practices whose aim is to establish order in a context of contingency. We call