CHANTAL MOUFFE GLOSSARY

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1 CHANTAL MOUFFE GLOSSARY This is intended to introduce some key concepts and definitions belonging to Mouffe s work starting with her categories of the political and politics, antagonism and agonism, and her central concept of hegemony. It then moves onto a selection of other relevant vocabulary specific to Mouffe s theories. It is in no way exhaustive or authoritative rather we hope for it to be a supplement or guide to your own reading of her work and hopefully of some help! the political For Mouffe, the concept of the political addresses the ontological meaning essential or intrinsic dimension of politics: that human societies consist of irreducible antagonistic relations. For a more expanded definition of antagonism see below, but what is crucial to grasp here is that society is, and always will be, built upon division and difference, upon us and them relations. Although these relations and division are not fixed or essential themselves (they can be realised and contested in different ways) the division and difference will always exist as such, belonging to the realm of political. For Mouffe, the dimension of the political constitutes a dynamic ground (a conflictual terrain ), meaning that it is foundational to any practice of politics. Where in other political theories the political is often neglected or misunderstood, Mouffe sees it as essential to recognise, and crucially not to resolve or mediate it, by trying to overcome, negate or repress it. How she realises this is by foregrounding the importance of hegemony (see hegemony below) and the continual negotiation of difference and division through an agonistic conception of politics (see agonism below). politics Moving from the political to politics this is about how politics is done or how it is put into practice. Articulated as an ensemble of practices, discourses and institutions seeking to establish a certain order and organisation of human coexistence, it is the means of constructing hegemony. The field of politics is therefore always specific and contingent to a particular context and society, and can function to various different political objectives. For example, a communist state would require different ways of doing politics to our immediate context, and wouldn t necessarily involve the structures and institutions we are familiar with, such as the parliament, an elected government, a representative local member, etc. So where the political can be understood as foundational, politics is constructive, and is built upon that foundation or conflictual terrain. Its task is to create a means of unification in a context of conflict and diversity (the political) through certain institutions and practices that become hegemonic or create a certain order. Yet it is important for Mouffe that politics, along with hegemony, can never properly or ultimately achieve unification, and that any particular formation of a unity will never be total or fixed or permanent but rather it will always be contested, deconstructed and reconstructed. Brainlina, April

2 This all leads to Mouffe s own articulation of politics, which revolves around her idea of agonistic pluralist democracy (see agonism ). This arises from her interpretation of and development from Marxist discourse and history, and resolves the contradictions she sees within other models, such as deliberative democracy, or the idea of a communist state. antagonism For Mouffe, the concept of antagonism signifies the existence of necessary and definitive divisions between subjects and groups within any given society or population. It expresses the fundamental irreducibility of people to the same ontological position, meaning that politically speaking no objectivity can ever be reached (where one position can be assumed for all). Rather, there only exists a heterogeneous assemblage of divisions that can be renegotiated and rearranged. For Mouffe, these antagonistic dynamics structure the political. Going beyond a simple concept of pluralism or heterogeneity (where many diverse things might exist in some kind of predetermined harmony, one ness, or for the sake of their own difference) these divisions are always founded upon struggles between enemies upon oppositions and insurmountable differences. Any social entity is therefore determined and transformed by what it is not, by what is outside of it (see constitutive outside ) and through a multiplication of us and them, these defining relations properly undertake their antagonistic character. Always latent or dormant within society, antagonisms can be and will be realised and played out in many specific and contextual ways, perhaps most concretely in a war where there are two enemies intending to destroy the other due to irreconcilable differences. Antagonism is figured more abstractly in the case of the man/woman antagonism, which although is constituted by a variety of positions and operates differently within diverse contexts in nevertheless an insurmountable difference or division (as Mouffe would say, a frontier ) that is negotiated politically. agonism Where antagonism signifies the relation between enemies, agonism transforms this into a relation between adversaries who meet upon a shared symbolic space. This is therefore the role of politics to create this open and contested space on which adversaries can engage in conflict and negotiate their divisions to create a contestable order. Adversaries fight against each other because they want their interpretation of the principles to become hegemonic, but they do not put into question the legitimacy of their opponents right to fight for the victory of their position. This confrontation of adversaries is what constitutes the agonistic struggle that is the very condition of a vibrant democracy. Agonistics, p. 7 This symbolic space of agonism revolves around a shared adhesion to the principles of democracy: liberty and equality (see below). Yet the meaning and implementation of those principles can only ever be fraught consensus (agreement) only ever achieved through conflict (a conflictual consensus ) and on the condition that it can be different or otherwise (there is always the possibility of dissensus and further conflict). For Mouffe, there is no rational or moral resolution to conflict, there is never a universal that can be reached, only the ongoing articulation of hegemonies. Hence Brainlina, April

3 the latent antagonistic dimension you can never properly resolve division into unity; you can never properly have agonism without antagonism. hegemony For Chantal Mouffe, hegemony occurs at the point of convergence or rather mutual collapse between objectivity and power where a particular mode of being, doing, seeing or believing etc. (an objectivity) is asserted over all others. Hegemony is therefore a totalising practice or realisation of power yet crucially it can also always be undone and remade. Hegemony is never fixed or static it is not something you can point to rather, it is a type of political relation (among people, institutions, social groups, etc.) or articulation, that is always built upon contingent ground. As Mouffe states, hegemony emerges in a field criss crossed by antagonisms. Corresponding with politics, it is the process of transforming these antagonisms, and creating and fixing a given order, however temporarily. This can be manifest in multiple ways and engendered through a variety of practices. Some examples being: Through various political and social institutions (parliament, political parties, the law, the courts, etc.) The category of common sense (which asserts that there is a common, right, or universal way to think or reason one can think of humour as an example of this what is culturally appropriate to laugh at) An instance when a police officer arrests someone (an act of power that assumes an objective ground, and a pre established relationship between participants) What is crucial for Mouffe, and how she transforms the concept of hegemony in contrast to its conventional understanding, is that rather than these acts of power ever being absolute, superior, or reasonable, she asserts the radical potential for hegemony to always be different and contested, disarticulated and rearticulated. This has wide ranging implications; for instance, actual institutions like the government, parliament, or the police can always otherwise, through contestation or rearticulation, and that even reason itself can be rethought. Hegemony frequently disguises its own contingency, obscuring its origins to appear as though it has been forever. However, hegemony can only ever be temporary and precarious things could always be otherwise and each order is always at the exclusion of other possible orders. This can be expanded to the extent that anything conceived as natural or pre determined can be understood as sedimented forms of hegemony (see the social ). For Mouffe then, politics becomes a space for the ongoing and necessary negotiation and renegotiation of hegemony. Consequently, there is no politics without or beyond hegemony the task at hand is not to get rid of hegemony, but to find ways of pluralising and rearticulating hegemonies! Brainlina, April

4 democracy Democracy is, fundamentally, a way of structuring politics around the core values of liberty and equality for all. Mouffe s conception of democracy, as a form of political structure, always refers to specific practices rather than any expression of a universal morality. These practices aim to transform antagonism into agonism, and through this process the opponent is constructed not as an enemy, but as an adversary. Mouffe frames the central issue of democratic politics not as a question of how to overcome difference in pursuit of consensus (as in models of liberalism, see below), but rather of how to articulate a diversity of movements with different and conflicting interests, and thus properly engage with the political through drawing frontiers (lines of inclusion and exclusion.) This includes a revitalisation of the left/right distinction in politics as means of recognising social division and legitimating conflict. This is in distinct contrast to the the project of third way politics or post politics which claims that the old class based divisions of left and right are now redundant, and thus it is necessary to transcend these categories in order to reach an all inclusive consensus in the centre. For Mouffe, the confrontation of adversaries is what constitutes agonistic struggle, and this is integral for democratic politics to properly engage with the political in its irreducible antagonistic divisions. Coming to terms with the constitutive nature of power implies relinquishing the ideal of a democratic society as the realisation of a perfect harmony or transparency no limited social actor can attribute to herself or himself the representation of the totality and claim to have the mastery of the foundation. The Democratic Paradox, p. 100 liberty and equality These are the core values of modern democracy, however they arise from very different traditions: the liberal tradition places central emphasis on human rights (see below), the rule of law and the value of individual liberty; while democracy historically privileges equality and sovereignty of the people. The ways in which liberalism is democratized and democracy liberalized is negotiated differently in various forms of modern democracy. The relationship between these two traditions has no essential character: the way they are negotiated is not fixed, nor are they always necessarily compatible. On the contrary, liberalism considers it legitimate to establish limits on popular sovereignty towards a non negotiable framework for the respect of human rights; meanwhile, democracy necessarily entails the drawing of frontiers between us and them in the creation of a demos, with no guarantee that this will not jeopardize some existing rights. The two principles do not form a dualism, but an ineradicable and contingent tension that can never be overcome or eliminated. They are mutually reliant in order to be instituted, however in their co articulation each changes the identity of the other, and thus prevents one from ever being fully realised over the other. Brainlina, April

5 liberalism Liberal democracy aims to reach a compromise among individual competing interests through a process of negotiation, embodied in the idea of the market (aggregative democracy). Alternatively, it strives for an all inclusive consensus in which all interests have been reconciled, thus collapsing the realms of politics and morality into one (deliberative democracy). Mouffe is highly critical of both approaches of liberalism insofar as they effectively evade or ignore the specificity of politics, in its proper engagement with the political, and instead substitute it with the realms of economics and ethics. An extensive outline of aggregative and deliberative democracy, and Mouffe s criticisms thereof, is given in The Democratic Paradox. cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitanism aims to extend the principles of liberal democracy beyond the sphere of national politics and into international relations in order to create a global democratic system wherein each cosmopolitan citizen has the same rights and obligations. By instituting a global order based on its principles of rationality and impartiality, cosmopolitanism attempts to be a politics beyond hegemony (i.e. not grounded in power relations.) According to Mouffe, this could only signify the worldwide hegemony of a dominant power, in no way escaping or renegotiating pre existing power relations. An extensive outline of the different versions of cosmopolitanism can be found in On the Political. human rights According to Mouffe, the discourse of human rights is constructed as universal yet is in fact specific to a western liberal culture based on a framework of individualism and rationalism, and thus not the only legitimate way of relating to the world and to others. This is not a reason to reject them outright; rather, we need to re articulate the discourse of human rights around cultural specificity, and to pluralise it so as to prevent them from becoming an instrument of western hegemony. multipolar According to Mouffe, we need to acknowledge the pluralist character of the world rather than allowing a single hegemonic power to decide when and how to take other nation s opinions into account (at present, the United States). To take a multipolar perspective on world politics means establishing an international system of law based on regional poles and cultural identities which are federated amongst themselves and autonomous. For example, Mouffe advocates for Europe to become one such pole (and so be autonomous from the US) alongside the rise of China, India, the regional bloc of South South American countries, etc. frontier Frontiers delineate the insurmountable and irreducible divisions between enemies marking out the lines of inclusion and exclusion as such, they also constitute the point of contact between these enemies. Each is configured as a separate entity by their relation to (or disjuncture from) the other along these frontiers: us is always predicated on a them (see constitutive outside ). Crucially, these frontiers are not fixed or essential, but in a constant process of (re )negotiation as a function of antagonism. To deny the existence of such a moment of closure, or to present the frontier as dictated by rationality or morality, is to naturalize what should be perceived as a contingent and temporary Brainlina, April

6 hegemonic articulation of the people through a particular regime of inclusion exclusion. The Democratic Paradox, p.49 constitutive outside Any social entity is constituted through acts of power. Power is not an external relation between two pre constituted identities, but rather constitutes the identities themselves by determining what each is and is not, along lines of a particular hegemonic regime of inclusion and exclusion. The constitutive outside (a term borrowed from Derrida) is thus present within the inside as its always real possibility, and so every identity becomes purely contingent. Social objectivity is constructed by concealing the constitutive outside and treating only what is present or included as the totality of that identity. undecidability The lines of inclusion and exclusion along which an identity is formulated could always be otherwise: the frontiers are not concrete, and the constitution of the identity is a matter or tension and radical undecidability. Any ultimate positivity is thus rendered impossible. contingency Society is not governed by any external logic or natural laws. There is no pre determined end point or final ground to which society should aspire, and nothing about it is ever fixed or absolute. Things could always have been otherwise every order is predicated on the exclusion of other possibilities, and so is always necessarily contingent and contextual. the social The social is the sedimentation of a particular articulation of a hegemony; it reinstates and reinforces the power relations of that hegemony, extending beyond the domain of politics into the everyday. However, its origins in the political are concealed, resulting in its appearance as "common sense" or the "natural order". Nevertheless, the frontier between the social and the political is unstable and always in a process of displacement and renegotiation. passions Passions refer to the drive to be lost in the moment of fusion with the masses, as opposed to the drive towards individuality and reason (foundational principles of liberalism.) For Mouffe, the attraction of the crowd, and the desire for collective identification more generally, is not an archaic phenomenon to be overcome or dismissed, but rather they express the desire and affect of politics. If passions are not mobilised in a democratic direction, they will find other outlets; for example, right wing populism or religious fundamentalism. In acknowledging passions, a reasonable or objective approach to politics becomes unfounded. Within a vibrant democracy, passions therefore need to be given outlet in many possible political identities available to citizens. Brainlina, April