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The Agony of the Political
*Robert T. Tally, Jr. *
/ Texas State University/
robert.tally@txstate.edu
(c) 2007 Robert T. Tally, Jr.
All rights reserved.
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Review of:
Chantal Mouffe, On the Political. London: Routledge, 2005.
1. In On the Political, Chantal Mouffe argues that all politics,
properly conceived, must be agonistic. The "political" for Mouffe
names a field of struggle where contesting groups with opposing
interests vie for hegemony. Rather than being the rational
conversation of modern liberalism, politics involves a battle
where a recognizable "we" fight against a likewise identifiable
"they." Mouffe agonizes over the fact that so many political
theorists today would deny the antagonistic character of the
political. She wishes to combat the pervasive sense among social
theorists that, since the end of the Cold War and the advent of
globalization, we are living in a "post-political" world, a world
in which the problems of societies are resolved by recourse to
universal human values, liberal consensus, and human rights.
2. Mouffe argues that by denying the existence of partisan and
adversarial interests based on collective identities, modern
liberalism has foreclosed the symbolic space for such conflicts to
occur. Mouffe enlists the aid of a strategic ally, the
conservative theorist Carl Schmitt, to help make her case. This is
a dangerous move, because Schmitt is opposed to the sort of
pluralist democracy Mouffe wants to champion. Schmitt's
anti-liberalism provides a tincture against the platitudinous
banalities of that philosophy. For Schmitt, politics always
involves collective identities of we/they. This characterization
of self and other is also a friend/enemy distinction, which can
then lead to violent disavowals of the other's right to exist at
all. There can be no rational consensus because identity is always
based on exclusion. There is no alternative to the we/they binary,
so the goal cannot be to overcome this antagonism. According to
Mouffe, Schmitt concludes that pluralism has no place in
democratic society; only a homogenous society can work. For
Mouffe, who insists on democratic pluralism, the goal is to
maintain Schmitt's /agonism/ and to prevent it from becoming
/antagonism./ In other words, she wants to maintain a we/they
relationship while keeping it from devolving into a friend/enemy
relationship. "The fundamental question for democratic theory is
to envisage how the antagonistic dimension--which is constitutive
of the political--can be given a form of expression that will not
destroy the political association" (52).
3. Mouffe insists that, contrary to appearances, the agonistic model
actually makes for a more harmonious, and safer, society in the
long run. This is in part because partisans have an arena in which
to fight. She cites the rise of right-wing populist movements in
Europe. As political parties and theorists deny traditional
categories of collective identity, fringe parties championing just
such traditional ideas (e.g., "the people") have shown themselves
able to garner strong support from those disaffected by society.
By appearing to offer a real difference, clearly identifying a
friendly "we" (the people) and an enemy "they" (foreigners, for
instance), right-wing groups have filled a void left by
post-political liberalism. Many liberal democrats might view these
people as un- or anti-modern, residues of a passing era, epigones
who will inevitably fade away before the inexorably open,
rational, cosmopolitan world that is unfolding. But Mouffe shows
that the return of such movements is a timely reaction to the
current situation of global politics.
4. The successes of these movements have also enabled a dangerous
overlapping between morality and politics. If the "they" is our
enemy, then they are not only wrong, but evil. This is not
morality substituted for politics, but, as Mouffe says, politics
"played out in the moral register" (75). Once this occurs, the
opportunity for a truly agonistic politics is lost, because an
evil enemy cannot be permitted to be part of the contest. Nor
would a party that is considered "evil" want to play the game.
Turning a "they" into an evil enemy can lead to nonparticipation
in the political arena, which can lead to anti-democratic forms of
protest (at the extreme, terrorism). Rather than acknowledging the
merits of one's opponents and striving to overcome the opponents
in a contest, the moralists call their enemies immoral and have
done with it.
5. In the post-Cold War era, Mouffe says, we find ourselves in a
unipolar world, one in which the hegemony of the United States
seems unquestioned. The response of the "cosmopolitans" has been
largely to celebrate this condition, viewing the globalization of
capitalism and the triumph of liberal democracy as the "end of
history" that Francis Fukayama once trumpeted. Against this
theory, Mouffe calls for a multipolar world system, in which
semiautonomous blocs--say, the countries of ASEAN or of Mercosur
or the European Union--can vie with the U.S. for hegemony.
Ultimately, this is the only way a globally democratic politics
could work. In a unipolar world, after all, the reigning hegemon
would not have to listen to others; indeed, it might cast the
conversation in a language that makes the other's inaudible or
unintelligible. Mouffe does not address this aspect of power,
which Gramsci and Foucault understood well.
6. Perhaps as an after-effect of her earlier post-Marxist stance,
Mouffe does not look at the economic conditions that affect the
political. The reason the world looks the way it does has much
less to do with how politics is "envisaged," and a great deal to
do with globalization, which arises from the real facts of
imperialism and late capitalism. Works like David Harvey's Spaces
of Capital or The New Imperialism provide analyses of the
political crises occasioned by, if not caused by, globalization.
Although she takes some time to excoriate Michael Hardt and
Antonio Negri's Empire, she does so only to dispute the
theoretical image of the political. She does not address the
underlying arguments about the actual effects of power in an era
of globalization. Nor does she examine the cultural aspects that
clearly factor in to any political practices (see, for instance,
Arjun Appadurai's Modernity at Large).
7. What would Mouffe's adversarial, agonistic politics actually look
like? Apparently, it would look quite familiar. The most damning
critique of On the Political may be that it winds up reinforcing
the status quo. To be sure, Mouffe's language--involving
antagonism, hegemony, and the we/they rubric--sounds less
harmonious than liberal, "post-political" theory, but is her
practice any different? When Mouffe cites with approval Elias
Canetti's claim that parliamentary systems defuse partisan
tensions, she seems to be arguing in favor of a system already
present in the U.S. and in Europe. Canetti notes that consensus is
not what happens in a vote; each side fights for its respective
interests and opposes the other's. But the vote is then decisive.
Nobody believes that, just because "our" side lost the vote,
"their" side's position was better, more moral, or more correct.
As Canetti puts it, "the member of an outvoted party accepts the
majority decision, not because he has ceased to believe in his own
case, but simply because he admits defeat" (qtd. 23). Mouffe adds
that without an arena for such contests (i.e., a parliamentary
institution), anti-democratic forces will prevail. But how is this
any different from the American or European political systems
already in place?
8. Indeed, Mouffe's agonistic politics does not seem very radical at
all. Whenever Mouffe addresses practical matters, she uses the
/language/ of adversarial or agonistic politics, but evokes tame
and familiar scenes. Mouffe argues for a pluralism that recognizes
real differences, but that also ensures that everyone plays by the
same rules. "Partisans" who /really/ want to change the political
landscape may not be allowed to participate. As Mouffe puts it,
this pluralism "requires discriminating between demands which are
to be accepted as part of the agonistic debate and those which are
to be excluded. A democratic society cannot treat those who put
its basic institutions into question as legitimate adversaries"
(120). Fair enough, but who decides? If it is the current
hegemonic power, then isn't the deck stacked against the
opposition in the war of position? If the United States is allowed
to decide which political demands are worthy and which cannot be
allowed to gain legitimacy, then one can easily imagine a
Bush-administration official agreeing with every word of this
book, right down to the sorts of agonistic strategies needed to
win elections. And speaking of a multipolar world order, will
those regional blocs that do not maintain such basic institutions
be eager to establish them?
9. Mouffe's image of a we/they politics in which collective
identities vie with one another for hegemony looks a bit like
organized sports. Consider the football game: rival sides squared
off in a unambiguously agonistic struggle for dominance, with a
clear winner and loser, yet agreeing to play by certain shared
rules, and above all unwilling to destroy the sport itself (i.e.,
the political association) in order to achieve the side's
particular goals. Football teams have no interest in dialogue, and
the goal is not consensus, but victory. The winner is triumphant,
and the loser must regroup, practice, and try again later. A
clearly defined "we" will fight against the "they," but the aim is
to win, not to destroy "them" or the sport itself. But, noteworthy
in the extended metaphor, some organizing body (rarely democratic)
has established the rules and standards by which the sport is
played. The players have no say in how the game is structured.
10. If the sports analogy seems too facile, consider Mouffe's own
characterization. Responding to the "fundamental question for
democratic theory" (i.e., how to maintain antagonism in politics
without destroying political association), Mouffe answers that it
requires
distinguishing between the categories of "antagonism"
(relations between enemies) and "agonism" (relations between
adversaries) and envisaging a sort of "conflictual consensus"
providing a common symbolic space among opponents who are
considered "legitimate enemies." Contrary to the dialogic
approach, the democratic debate is conceived as a real
confrontation. Adversaries do fight--even fiercely--but
according to a shared set of rules, and their positions,
despite being ultimately irreconcilable, and accepted as
legitimate perspectives. (52)
Play ball! Of course this means that, if the opposition party--oh,
let's go ahead and call them the Reds--wishes to change the
relations of power, it must do so within the political framework
(e.g., legislative body or rules of the game). To be outside of
the framework is to not be playing the game at all.
11. A better model might be that of games on the playground. On the
playground, children both organize and play games, often coming up
with and changing the rules as they go along. Their power
relations are constantly adjusted, modified so as to make the game
more fair ("you get a head start"), more safe ("no hitting"), more
interesting ("three points if you can make it from behind that
line"), and so on. The overall structure of the game does not
necessarily change, but the specifics of how the game is played
can vary. This is not a utopian vision, obviously. The power
relations on display at most playgrounds are not the most
salutary. But this model at least provides an image of what a
radical version of Mouffe's agonistic, democratic politics might
look like. How this would work outside the playground, in a global
political context, is a different question. Can we get the world's
diverse "teams" together on the same playground? Would a
multipolar world system enable multiple grounds for playing? Who
would or would not be allowed to play? Who would decide?
12. These practical questions are exceedingly tough to answer. The
agonistic model of politics requires an arena where contestants
can hold competitions. It requires rules that may be altered but
that also must be in place in order to know what game is being
played. And it requires a system that allows the sport to continue
when particular games end. (That is, the winner cannot cancel
further contests, a problem that has plagued nascent democracies.)
A radical democracy founded on adversarial politics cannot simply
replicate existing structures of liberal, parliamentary democracy.
It must change the game.
/ Department of English
Texas State University
robert.tally@txstate.edu /
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