Ocean Energy in Belgium - 2019

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Which world order: cosmopolitan or multipolar?

Chantal Mouffe, in her contribution "Which world order: Cosmopolitan or multipolar?", argues that the universality of democracy and human rights, as we understand them, is all too often taken for granted. Western politicians and political thinkers alike see it as an all-or-nothing matter: democracy and human rights are to be literally adopted, in the very same way as they are known in Western Europe or North America. All deviations from this model are by definition morally suspect. They thereby overlook the fact that other societies might have developed institutions that are dissimilar to the ones we know, but that are similar in the degree to which they respect human dignity and create social justice. In other words, they fail to imagine that the "good regime" might come in different forms and versions

Globalització i ciutadania democràtica

L’autora pensa que la teoriapolítica que predomina actualment és incapaç de concebre una formade política democràtica apropiada per a aquesta època de postguerra freda i globalització. Per aquesta raó, considera que cal elaborar un nou model,que anomena “pluralisme agnòstic”, els principis fonamentals del qual intenta definir. Al final presenta algunes reflexions relacionades amb el tipus de política progressista que considera la més adequada per aprofundir la ciutadania democràtica en l’època actual de globalització

Education and articulation: Laclau and Mouffe’s radical democracy in school

This paper outlines a theory of radical democratic education by addressing a key concept in Laclau and Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: articulation. Through their concept of articulation, Laclau and Mouffe attempt to liberate Gramsci’s theory of hegemony from Marxist economism, and adapt it to a political sphere inhabited by a plurality of struggles and agents none of which is predominant. However, while for Gramsci the political process of hegemony formation has an explicit educational dimension, Laclau and Mouffe ignore this dimension altogether. My discussion starts with elaborating the concept of articulation and analysing it in terms of three dimensions: performance, connection and transformation. I then address the role of education in Gramsci’s politics, in which the figure of the intellectual is central, and argue that radical democratic education requires renouncing that figure. In the final section, I offer a theory of such education, in which both teacher and students articulate their political differences and identities

RADIKALNA DEMOKRACIJA IN MODERNA

The author discusses the current debates about modernity and postmodernity from the point of view of the radical democratic project. She tries to show that the critique of the modern rationalist universalist (Enlightenment) epistemology does not necessarily have to lead to political conservatism, as e. g. Habermas (among others) has argued. On the contrary, the critique of this epistemology is what makes possible the articulation of the project of radical and plural democracy. This project is defined as the continuation of the democratic tradition using the tools of the postmodern age.Avtorica obravnava aktualne razprave o modernizmu in postmodernizmu z vidika projekta radikalne demokracije. Dokazuje, da zavračanje moderne (razsvetljenske) racionalistične univerzalistične epistemologije ne pelje nujno v politični konserva-tivizem (kot meni npr. Habermas). Nasprotno, kritika te epistemologije odpira možnosti za artikulacijo projekta radikalne in pluralne demokracije. Avtorica označuje ta projekt kot nadaljevanje demokratične revolucije s pomočjo postmodernistične kritike

Five Minutes with Chantal Mouffe: “Most countries in Europe are in a post-political situation”

Is there a fundamental lack of choice between centre-left and centre-right parties in European party systems? The EUROPP team spoke to Chantal Mouffe on her theory of ‘post-politics’, the need for political parties to offer a real alternative on European integration, and whether populism can have a positive effect on European democracy

Feminist solidarity building as embodied agonism: An ethnographic account of a protest movement

Feminist solidarity, after early and idealistic conceptions of an all‐encompassing sisterhood, has become preoccupied with understanding and theorising differences between women. This study develops an account of solidarity as embodied agonism, where difference and contest are experienced and negotiated through the body. Difference and contest are reframed within feminist solidarity projects as resources for, rather than inhibitors to, generating collective agency. This is done through an ethnography of a protest movement in Montenegro, which drew together diverse groups of women, and bring our data into conversation with theories of agonistic democratic practice and embodied performativity. Embodied agonistic solidarity is theorised as a participative and inclusive endeavour driven by conflictual encounters, constituted through the bodies, language and visual imagery of assembling and articulating subjects. Our account of solidarity is presented as constituted through three dimensions, each of which represents a different emphasis on sensory experience: exposing, which is to make one's body open to the hardship of others, enabling alliances between unlikely allies to emerge; citing, which is to draw on others’ symbolic resources and to publicly affirm them; inhabiting, which is to embody the deprivations of others, enabling alliances to grow and persist

'Memory Must Be Defended': Beyond the Politics of Mnemonical Security

This article supplements and extends the ontological security theory in International Relations (IR) by conceptualizing the notion of mnemonical security. It engages critically the securitization of memory as a means of making certain historical remembrances secure by delegitimizing or outright criminalizing others. The securitization of historical memory by means of law tends to reproduce a sense of insecurity among the contesters of the ‘memory’ in question. To move beyond the politics of mnemonical security, two lines of action are outlined: (i) the ‘desecuritization’ of social remembrance in order to allow for its repoliticization, and (ii) the rethinking of the self–other relations in mnemonic conflicts. A radically democratic, agonistic politics of memory is called for that would avoid the knee-jerk reactive treatment of identity, memory and history as problems of security. Rather than trying to secure the unsecurable, a genuinely agonistic mnemonic pluralism would enable different interpretations of the past to be questioned, in place of pre-defining national or regional positions on legitimate remembrance in ontological security terms

Democracia, derechos humanos y cosmopolitismo: Un enfoque agonístico

Conferencia dictada el 7 de noviembre de 2016 en la Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristian

Demonising populism won't work - Europe needs a progressive populist alternative

How should Europe react to the rise of populist parties? Chantal Mouffe argues that the consensus established between centre-right and centre-left parties on the notion there is no alternative to neoliberal globalisation has left Europe in a post-democratic phase, fuelling the rise of right-wing populist parties. Moral condemnation and demonisation of the supporters of such parties does not work: what is required is an alternative populism that is reformulated in a progressive way, defining the adversary as the configuration of forces that strengthen and promote the neoliberal project