The Politics of Homecoming

This paper examines two of the contending fictions of identity in post-election South Africa: that of the far-right and the ANC. It looks at both in terms of their difference from the logic of apartheid, and examines the relation of the fictions of a volkstaat and of non-racialism respectively to the emergence of a democratic space in a post-apartheid South Africa. These questions are developed by drawing on the theoretical discourses of Derrida, Lefort, Žižek and Laclau.This paper examines two of the contending fictions of identity in post-election South Africa: that of the far-right and the ANC. It looks at both in terms of their difference from the logic of apartheid, and examines the relation of the fictions of a volkstaat and of non-racialism respectively to the emergence of a democratic space in a post-apartheid South Africa. These questions are developed by drawing on the theoretical discourses of Derrida, Lefort, Žižek and Laclau

Frontiers in Question

This article investigates the theoretical arguments concerning political frontiers as they arise in the work of Laclau and Mouffe. The question of political frontiers emerges in the context of their anti-essentialist, post-Marxist theorisation of the division of political space, the constitution of political antagonism and the individuation of identity. The aricle traces the genealogy of the concept of frontiers through an investigation of its Marxist and non-Marxist intellectual roots. It argues that Laclau and Mouffe conflate two separate questions concerning political identity in their arguments on political frontiers, namely, the individuation of identity and the constitution of antagonistic relations. Through a deconstructive reading, it proposes an alternative conceptualisation which would allow one to retain the important insights offered in their theorisation, while seperating those distinctive questions.This article investigates the theoretical arguments concerning political frontiers as they arise in the work of Laclau and Mouffe. The question of political frontiers emerges in the context of their anti-essentialist, post-Marxist theorisation of the division of political space, the constitution of political antagonism and the individuation of identity. The aricle traces the genealogy of the concept of frontiers through an investigation of its Marxist and non-Marxist intellectual roots. It argues that Laclau and Mouffe conflate two separate questions concerning political identity in their arguments on political frontiers, namely, the individuation of identity and the constitution of antagonistic relations. Through a deconstructive reading, it proposes an alternative conceptualisation which would allow one to retain the important insights offered in their theorisation, while seperating those distinctive questions

Minoritarian Politics and the Pluralisation of Democracy

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Seeing like a citizen: Understanding public views of biometrics

Despite its controversial history and the significant diffusion of biometrics from institutional settings such as border control and policing, to everyday use in commerce and personal devices, biometrics is now being repositioned as a neutral means to safeguard identity in the digital world. Given this proliferation of uses we argue that understanding perceptions of biometrics amongst ordinary citizens is necessary and long overdue. Situating our analysis in the wider context of the views of governmental and biometric industry experts, we deploy Q-methodology in combination with political discourse analysis to examine the range of positions that have crystallized in ordinary discourse on issues arising from the use of biometrics for identification. Our analysis analysis uncovers four distinctive configurations that put into question a simplistic trade-off between security and privacy that dominates government and industry discourse, and underlines the importance of going beyond a narrow view of technology ‘users’ to understand the political and social concerns that arise with and shape the uses of technology in contemporary societ

Democracy, Critique and the Ontological Turn

This Critical Exchange is the result of two workshops held at the University of Edinburgh and the University of St. Andrews in November 2016. We thank the commentators at these events – Nathan Coombs, Patrick Hayden, Tony Lang and Nick Rengger – for their helpful feedback on the presentations. For institutional support, we owe gratitude to our home universities and Edinburgh University Press. Finally, we are grateful to Andrew Schaap for inviting us to edit the papers as a Critical Exchange for Contemporary Political Theory.Peer reviewe

The politics of antagonism

In perhaps the last piece completed before his sudden death in April 2014 ErnestoLaclau returned to the concept of antagonism (Laclau, 2015, pp. 101–125). Itsconceptual origins lie in his immanent critique of, and break with, Marxism in the1970s. Laclau concluded that antagonism points to the limits of social objectivity andlinked this to an original political ontology (see Hansen, 2016 and Marchart, 2016).The development of this concept is, in effect, the story of Laclau’s theoreticaljourney. In tracking this conceptual history I demonstrate its continued pertinence tocontemporary political theory and link it to the rethinking of representation, toidealisation in political theory, and to the understanding of anti-austerity politics

Dependency Theory and the Aesthetics of Contrast in Fernando Solanas’s La hora de los hornos and Memoria del saqueo

This paper is a comparative analysis of two key documentaries by Fernando Solanas: La hora de los hornos / The Hour of the Furnaces (1966–68) and Memoria del saqueo / Social Genocide (2003). It argues that Solanas produces documentaries when the representative link that ties the political representatives to the represented (the people) is suspended or breaks down, as experienced during the times of the proscription of Peronism (1955–73) and in the more recent crisis of representation in Argentine institutional politics (1989–2001). The comparison follows two axes: political arguments and the aesthetics of contrast. Regarding the first criterion, the paper highlights the current persistence, in Solanas’s political argumentation, of externalist-mechanistic versions of dependency theory of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In relation to the aesthetics of contrast, it analyses the stark oppositions in Solanas’s documentaries as a visual rhetoric which can be read as an essentialist false-bottom economy that opposes ‘appearance’ to ‘reality’. The article concludes that these political and aesthetic polarizations are essentializing and literalizing discursive strategies that denounce the excesses of political representation from an unmediated and transparent site of full popular presence. Within such strategies, there is no room for the constitutive opacity intrinsic to representation and articulatory politics

“Writing a Name in the Sky”: Rancière, Cavell, and the Possibility of Egalitarian Inscription

Democratic theory is often portrayed as torn between two moments: that of disruption of rule, and the ordinary, ongoing institutionalization of politics. This dualism also marks contemporary democratic theory. In Jacques Rancière's theory of politics it takes the form of an emphasis on the ruptural qualities of the staging of novel democratic demands and the reconfiguration of the space of political argument. The reconfiguration of existing political imaginaries depends upon a moment of inscription, which remains underdeveloped in Rancière's work. Arguing that the possibility of inscription is indeed thematized in Rancière's more historical writings, but is often ignored by commentators, this article seeks to draw out the implications of a focus on inscription for democratic theory and practice. To flesh out this account, the article draws on Cavell's writings on exemplarity and the role of exemplars in fostering both critical reflection and the imagination of alternatives. The focus on such exemplars and an aversive, nonconformist ethos together facilitate a better understanding of what is required for such novel demands to be acknowledged and inscribed into democratic life.</jats:p