Table Of ContentThe Return of the
Political
CHANTALMOUFFE
VERSO
London ■ New York
First published by Verso 1993
©Verso 1993
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Foreword vii
Introduction: For an Agonistic Pluralism 1
1 Radical Democracy: Modern or Postmodern? 9
2 American Liberalism and its Communitarian Critics 23
3 Rawls: Political Philosophy without Politics 41
4 Democratic Citizenship and the Political Community 60
5 Feminism, Citizenship and Radical Democratic Politics 74
6 Towards a Liberal Socialism 90
7 On the Articulation between Liberalism and Democracy 102
8 Pluralism and Modern Democracy: Around Carl Schmitt 117
9 Politics and the Limits of Liberalism 135
Index 155
Acknowledgements
The articles collected in this volume were originally published as
follows: 'Radical Democracy: Modern or Postmodern?' in Andrew
Ross, ed., Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism, University
of Minnesota Press 1988; 'American Liberalism and its Communitarian
Critics' (originally entitled 'American Liberalism and its Critics: Rawls,
Taylor, Sandel and Walzer') in Praxis International, vol. 8, no. 2,
July 1988; 'Rawls: Political Philosophy without Politics' in David
Rasmussen, ed., Universalism vs Communitarianism, MIT Press 1990;
'Democratic Citizenship and the Political Community' in Chantal
Mouffe, ed., Dimensions of Radical Democracy, Verso 1992; 'Feminism/
Citizenship and Radical Democratic Politics' in Judith Butler and Joan
Scott, Feminists Theorize the Political, Routledge 1992; Towards a Liberal
Socialism' is the edited text of a paper presented at the World Congress
of the International Political Science Association in Buenos Aires,
Argentina, in July 1991; 'On the Articulation between Liberalism and
Democracy' is the edited text of a paper presented at the conference.
The Legacy of C. B. Macpherson' in Toronto, Canada, in October 1989;
'Pluralism and Modern Democracy: Around Carl Schmitt' in New
Formations, no. 14, Summer 1991; 'Politics and the Limits of Liberalism'
was written for this volume.
VI
Foreword
This volume brings together nine pieces written in the last five years.
Some of them are articles already published, mostly in collective
volumes; others are texts of presentations at conferences. The last one,
'Politics and the Limits of Liberalism' has been written especially for
this book.
From different angles, all the essays deal with the same topics:
radical democracy, liberalism, citizenship, pluralism, liberal democ-
racy, community - which are here approached from an 'anti-
essentialist' perspective.
The central theme that provides the unity of the book is a reflection
on the political and on the ineradicable character of power and
antagonism. I have tried to draw the consequences of such a reflection
for a critique of the current rationalist and individualist liberal
discourse, as well as for a reformulation of the leff s project in terms of
'radical and plural democracy'.
Since the pieces were conceived for diverse audiences, there is
obviously a certain amount of repetition due to the necessity of making
the same points in different contexts. Nevertheless I decided to leave
them in their original form because I consider that which is reiterated to
be of the greatest importance.
Several of the essays were researched and written when I was a
Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1988-89
and a Senior Fellow at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell
University in 1989-90.1 am very grateful to both institutions for their
support.
vu
Alas, poor race of mortals, unhappy ones,
from what conflicts and what groans were you born
Empedodes
Introduction:
For an Agonistic
Pluralism
The trick is not to fool oneself about certain things: small rocky
islands in the sea of self-deception. Clutching them and not
drowning is the utmost that a human being achieves.
ELIASCANETTI
1
Not long ago we were being told, to the accompaniment of much
fanfare, that liberal democracy had won and that history had ended.
Alas, far from having produced a smooth transition to pluralist
democracy, the collapse of Communism seems, in many places, to
have opened the way to a resurgence of nationalism and the
emergence of new antagonisms. Western democrats view with
astonishment the explosion of manifold ethnic, religious and nationalist
conflicts that they thought belonged to a bygone age. Instead of the
heralded 'New World Order7, the victory of universal values, and the
generalization of 'post-conventional' identities, we are witnessing an
explosion of particularisms and an increasing challenge to Western
universalism.
Taken by surprise by such a convincing refutation of their optimistic
forecasts, many liberals have reacted by evoking the deferred effects of
totalitarianism or a new upsurge of 'the archaic'. They respond as if it
represented only a temporary delay on the road that necessarily leads
to the universalization of liberal democracy: a short parenthesis before
rationality reimposes its order, or a last desperate cry of the political
before it is definitively destroyed by the forces of law and universal
reason.
Because it is indeed the political which is at stake here, and the
possibility of its elimination. And it is the incapacity of liberal thought
to grasp its nature and the irreducible character of antagonism that
l
2 THE RETURN OF THE POLITICAL
explains the impotence of most political theorists in the current
situation - an impotence that, at a time of profound political change,
could have devastating consequences for democratic politics.
2
This evasion of the political could, I believe, jeopardize the hard-won
conquests of the democratic revolution, which is why, in the essays
included in this volume, I take issue with the conception of politics that
informs a great deal of democratic thinking today. This conception can
be characterized as rationalist, universalist and individualist. I argue
that its main shortcoming is that it cannot but remain blind to the
specificity of the political in its dimension of conflict/decision, and that
it cannot perceive the constitutive role of antagonism in social life.
With the demise of Marxism, the illusion that we can finally dispense
with the notion of antagonism has become widespread. This belief is
fraught with danger, since it leaves us unprepared in the face of
unrecognized manifestations of antagonism.
In an attempt to bring a much needed corrective to that liberal vision,
several pieces below engage with the work of Carl Schmitt. Schmitt's
critique of liberal democracy constitutes, in my view, a challenge that'
we cannot ignore. Yet I also think that, by revealing the deficiencies of
liberalism, he can help us - unwittingly - to identify the issues that
need to be addressed and thereby to gain a better understanding of the
nature of modern democracy. My objective is to think with Schmitt,
against Schmitt, and to use his insights in order to strengthen liberal
democracy against his critiques. By drawing our attention to the
centrality of the friend/enemy relation in politics, Schmitt makes us
aware of the dimension of the political that is linked to the existence of
an element of hostility among human beings. This can take many
forms and manifest itself in very different types of social relations. This
is an important idea, which I have tried to reformulate within the
framework of the contemporary critique of essentialism that I take
to constitute the most fruitful theoretical approach to pluralist
democracy.
When we accept that every identity is relational and that the
condition of existence of every identity is the affirmation of a
difference, the determination of an 'other' that is going to play the role of
a 'constitutive outside', it is possible to understand how antagonisms
arise. In the domain of collective identifications, where what is in
question is the creation of a 'we' by the delimitation of a 'them',
the possibility always exists that this we/them relation will turn
INTRODUCTION 3
into a relation of the friend/enemy type; in other words, it can
always become political in Schmitt's understanding of the term.
This can happen when the other, who was until then considered only
under the mode of difference, begins to be perceived as negating
our identity, as putting in question our very existence. From that
moment onwards, any type of we/them relation, be it religious,
ethnic, national, economic or other, becomes the site of a political
antagonism.
As a consequence, the political cannot be restricted to a certain
type of institution, or envisaged as constituting a specific sphere or
level of society. It must be conceived as a dimension that is inherent to
every human society and that determines our very ontological
condition. Such a view of the political is profoundly at odds with liberal
thought, which is precisely the reason for the bewilderment of this
thought when confronted with the phenomenon of hostility in its
multiple forms. This is particularly evident in its incomprehension of
political movements, which are seen as the expression of the so-called
'masses'. Since they cannot be apprehended in individualistic terms,
these movements are usually relegated to the pathological or deemed
to be the expression of irrational forces. Witness, for instance, the
incapacity of liberal theorists to come to terms with the phenomenon of
fascism.
3
On the eve of the twenty-first century, our societies are undergoing a
deep process of redefinition of their collective identities and experienc-
ing the establishment of new political frontiers. This is linked to the
collapse of Commimism and the disappearance of the democracy/
totalitarianism opposition that, since the Second World War, had
provided the main political frontier enabling discrimination between
friend and enemy. This disappearance confronts'us with a double
situation:
1 In the former Communist bloc, the unity created in the common
struggle against Communism has vanished and the friend/enemy
frontier is taking a multiplicity of new forms linked to the resurgence of
old antagonisms - ethnic, national, religious and others.
2 In the West, it is the very identity of democracy which is at stake, in
so far as it has depended to a large extent on the existence of the
Communist 'other' that constituted its negation. Now that the enemy
has been defeated, the meaning of democracy itself has become
4 THE RETURN OF THE POLITICAL
blurred and needs to be redefined by the creation of a new frontier.
This is much more difficult for the moderate right and for the left than
for the radical right. For the latter has already found its enemy. It is
provided by the 'enemy within', the immigrants, which are presented
by the different movements of the extreme right as a threat to the
cultural identity and national sovereignty of the 'true' Europeans. I
submit that the growth of the extreme right in several countries in
Europe can only be understood in the context of the deep crisis of
political identity that confronts liberal democracy following the loss
of the traditional landmarks of politics. It is linked to the necessity of
redrawing the political frontier between friend and enemy.
4
We are in a conjuncture where the incapacity of liberalism to
apprehend the political could have very serious consequences. All
those who believed that the fall of Communism would necessarily be
followed by the establishment of pluralist democracy, and that the
destruction of the old antagonist could only herald a great advance for
democracy, are quite unable to understand the specificity of the new
situation. For that reason, it is vital that we abandon a theoretical
perspective that prevents us coming to terms with the nature of the
tasks before us.
Once we accept the necessity of the political and the impossibility of
a world without antagonism, what needs to be envisaged is how it is
possible under those conditions to create or maintain a pluralistic
democratic order. Such an order is based on a distinction between
'enemy' and 'adversary7. It requires that, within the context of the
political community, the opponent should be considered not as an
enemy to be destroyed, but as an adversary whose existence is
legitimate and must be tolerated. We will fight against his ideas but we
will not question his right to defend them. The category of the 'enem/
does not disappear but is displaced; it remains pertinent with respect
to those who do not accept the democratic 'rules of the game' and who
thereby exclude themselves from the political community.
Liberal democracy requires consensus on the rules of the game, but
it also calls for the constitution of collective identities around clearly
differentiated positions and the possibility of choosing between real
alternatives. This 'agonistic pluralism' is constitutive of modern
democracy and, rather than seeing it as a threat, we should realize that
it represents the very condition of existence of such democracy.
Niklas Luhmann has argued that the specificity of liberal democracy
