On the final (im-)possibility of resistance, progress and avant-garde

The category of political resp. artistic avant-garde – as being progressive, sectarian and dogmatic – is under assault. However, there is no emancipatory politics feasible without any Jacobin element. In order to develop a post-avant-garde (as opposed to both avant-garde and non-avant-garde) democratic strategy everything depends on our ability to establish the paradoxes of a non-teleological progressivism, an empty and relative universalism and an asymmetric particularism. This search for a political stand, which has not yet lost any idea of the New as the empty signifier of (Non-)Order, may lead us to what Laclau and Mouffe have called »radical and plural democracy«. Such hegemonic pluralism might be the alternative to muddy strategical pragma (Lenin), clean messianic theory (popularized Derrida) and po-mo happy dispersion (Lyotard, et alii).The category of political resp. artistic avant-garde – as being progressive, sectarian and dogmatic – is under assault. However, there is no emancipatory politics feasible without any Jacobin element. In order to develop a post-avant-garde (as opposed to both avant-garde and non-avant-garde) democratic strategy everything depends on our ability to establish the paradoxes of a non-teleological progressivism, an empty and relative universalism and an asymmetric particularism. This search for a political stand, which has not yet lost any idea of the New as the empty signifier of (Non-)Order, may lead us to what Laclau and Mouffe have called »radical and plural democracy«. Such hegemonic pluralism might be the alternative to muddy strategical pragma (Lenin), clean messianic theory (popularized Derrida) and po-mo happy dispersion (Lyotard, et alii)

Imagining Populism Differently. Notes on the Proposal of a Feminist, International, Republican Populism

In the article I briefly discuss four important interventions from Biglieri and Cadahia’s Seven Essays on Populism: (a) against anti-institutionalist readings of populism, they make a plea for a ‘populist institutionality’; (b) they defend a plebeian version of republicanism; (c) they seek to rehabilitate the nation-form while, at the same time, arguing for a transnational populism, and (d) they argue in favour of the feminization of populism and an ‘antagonism of care’. However, while it is argued in the article that their main intervention, i.e., their ontological claim about the intrinsically emancipatory nature of all populism, remains ultimately unconvincing, it could be interpreted as a productive political incantation to make use of the human faculty of imagination and start imagining populism differently

Die Prekarisierungsgesellschaft. Prekäre Proteste. Politik und Ökonomie im Zeichen der Prekarisierung

Gesellschaft erscheint uns heute im flackernden Licht der Verunsicherung. Nicht erst seit der Finanzkrise erweisen sich stabil geglaubte Arbeits- und Lebensverhältnisse als prekär. Der Autor stellt die wichtigsten ökonomischen und soziologischen Theorien der Prekarisierung vor und zeigt: Prekarität hat die Gesellschaft in ihrer Gesamtheit erfasst. Wir leben in der Prekarisierungsgesellschaft. Aber was ist daraus zu schließen? Marchart beschreibt die gegenwärtigen Sozialproteste und ihre Forderungen. Er untersucht ihre demokratiepolitischen Implikationen und führt hin zu einer Gesellschaftstheorie des Konflikts und der Kontingenz.Society appears to us today in the flickering light of instability. It has not just been since the financial crisis that matters related to working and living conditions have proved themselves to be precarious. The author introduces the most important economic and sociological theories of precarization, and demonstrates that precarity has seized society in its entirety. We live in the society of precarity. But what can be drawn from this? Marchart describes contemporary social protests and their demands. He investigates their democratic and political implications and works towards a social theory of the conflict and of its contingencies

Namen der Geschichte – Politik des Namens: Historische Benennungskraft und die politische Theorie des Postfundamentalismus (Rancière, Laclau, Agamben, Brossat)

In this article, it is argued that Rancière’s theory of history should be located in the eld of political theory rather than historiography. To substantiate this claim, the historico-political function of naming (of the people) or self-naming (by the people), as presented by Rancière in the Names of History, is discussed and compared to the explicitly political role attributed to naming by Ernesto Laclau in On Populist Reason. It is argued that in both cases an inner dialectic can be observed between plebs and populus (or demos) which also gures in the theories of Giorgio Agamben and Alain Brossat. However, in Agamben and Brossat the plebs is presented in such messianic or insurrectionist terms that any connection to the world of real politics or to the category of the political is lost. On this account, Rancière’s and Laclau’s theories fare better, but, conversely, suffer from what can be described as a normative deficit. As a remedy, a post-foundational theory of democracy is proposed in which the ethical and the political are seen as two separate but intersecting dimensions of democracy.In this article, it is argued that Rancière’s theory of history should be located in the eld of political theory rather than historiography. To substantiate this claim, the historico-political function of naming (of the people) or self-naming (by the people), as presented by Rancière in the Names of History, is discussed and compared to the explicitly political role attributed to naming by Ernesto Laclau in On Populist Reason. It is argued that in both cases an inner dialectic can be observed between plebs and populus (or demos) which also gures in the theories of Giorgio Agamben and Alain Brossat. However, in Agamben and Brossat the plebs is presented in such messianic or insurrectionist terms that any connection to the world of real politics or to the category of the political is lost. On this account, Rancière’s and Laclau’s theories fare better, but, conversely, suffer from what can be described as a normative deficit. As a remedy, a post-foundational theory of democracy is proposed in which the ethical and the political are seen as two separate but intersecting dimensions of democracy

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

Sobre la primacía de la política: el “giro ontológico” como forma del actuar político

En los últimos años el pensamiento político ha dado un cierto giro, a veces llamado “giro ontológico”, para diferenciar lo político de la política. La clave de cada ontología de la política reside en esta diferenciación, la cual ha sido desarrollada por numerosos autores, quienes distinguen entre una política óntica y una ontología de lo político (relativa a la totalidad del campo de lo social, mas no solo a su práctica particular). Esta diferenciación (que en francés está dada por la diferencia entre la politique y le politique) se remonta al artículo “La paradoja política” de Paul Ricoeur, pero que emergió con fuerza en pensadores tan diversos como Jean Jean-Francois Lyotard, Claude Lefort, Alain Badiou, Jacob Rogozinski, Jacques Rancière y Étienne Balibar en la década del ochenta

Thinking "Thinking Antagonsim". A Response

This contribution replies to a set of articles by Paula Biglieri, Allan Dreyer Hansen, Vassilios Paipais, David Payne, Gloria Perelló and Dimitris Vardoulakis about the book ‘Thinking Antagonism. Political Ontology after Laclau’ (Edinburgh University Press 2018) by Oliver Marchart. The author positions his own ontology of the political, i.e. of antagonism, in relation to the work of Ernesto Laclau and within the intellectual context of the Essex School. He thereby reflects on the role of the university, the transferential relationship between academic ‘master’ and ‘disciple’, the question of what is ‘proper’ to a given thought, agonistic democracy, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and what ‘thinking’ could mean from a political perspective