3031'1Politics of the agon: Arendt, Mouffe etc'

1
30-31.1 Politics of the agon Arendt, Mouffe
etc. 6.2 Politics of the agon. Deliberative
democracy. 7.2 Texts Chantal Mouffe For an
Agonistic Model of Democracy in The Democratic
Paradox (2000) Jacques Rancière Introducing
Disagreement in Angelaki Journal of the
Theoretical Humanities 93 (2004, downloadable)
and Eleven Theses on Politics on
http//everybodys.be/node/82 and Alain Badiou
Rancière and Apolitics from Metapolitics (2005,
Abrégé de métapolitique, 1998)
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Hannah Arendt (1906-75) Books Origins of
Totalitarianism (1951) The Human Condition, Vita
Activa (1958) On Revolution (1962) Eichmann in
Jerusalem (1963) Collections of essays Between
Past and Future (1968) Men in Dark Times
(1968) Crises of the Republic (1969) Responsibilit
y and Judgment (2003) The Promise of Politics
(2005)
3
The earth is the very quintessence of the human
condition (Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
(1958), p 2) What I propose in the following is
a reconsideration of the human condition from the
vantage point of our newest experiences and our
most recent fears ... What I propose, therefore,
is very simple it is nothing more than to think
what we are doing ... It deals only with the most
elementary articulations of the human condition,
with those activities that traditionally, as well
as according to current opinion, are within the
range of every human being (p. 5) The human
condition comprehends more than the conditions
under which life has been given to man. Men are
conditioned beings because everything they come
into contact with turns immediately into a
condition of their existence (p. 9)
4
Human plurality, the basic condition of both
action and speech, has the twofold character of
equality and distinction. If men were not equal,
they could neither understand each other and
those who came before them nor plan for the
future and foresee the needs of those who will
come after them. If men were not distinct, each
human being distinguished from any other who is,
was or will ever be, they would need neither
speech nor action to make themselves
understood Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
(1958), p . 175-76
5
To act, in its most general sense, means to take
an initiative, to begin ... to set something in
motion It is in the nature of beginning that
something new is started which cannot be expected
from whatever may have happened before Hannah
Arendt, The Human Condition (1958), 177-178
6
Mode of activity condition domains of risk
Labor life hunger, death, poverty necessities of
life
Work worldliness worldlessness, fabrication of
things world alienation
Action plurality atomisation, mass speech,
interaction society the political, public
space, power as acting in concert politics as rule
7
the value of plurality/politics expressive
interpretation (aesthetic) enables persons to
express him/herself, live out, construct and
reconfigure identity in a web of
relationships identity is narrative
(intersubjective, anchored in the world,
transformative) communicative
interpretation enables power as persons acting
in concert in a public sphere, in contrast with
being ruled freedom enables freedom as
personal development, participation in the
beginning of the new, non-domination
8
power acting in concert preserves
plurality public sphere, shared world not
pre-figured by demands of fabrication
power
rule domination (not Arendts term) tyranny,
totalitarian rule administrative
rule predominance of social demands over
plurality
9
the value of plurality/politics does not
guarantee good decisions justice? just
political order creates the common, but does
not say anything about the content
needs to be supported by a diagnosis of
society not for philosophy to decide
10
Without action to bring into the play of the
world the new beginning of which each man is
capable by virtue of being born, there is no new
thing under the sun without speech to
materialize and memorialize, however tentatively,
the new things that appear and shine forth,
there is no remembrance without the enduring
permanence of a human artifact, there cannot be
any remembrance of things that are to come with
those that shall come after. And without power,
the space of appearance brought forth through
action and speech in public will fade away as
rapidly as the living deed and the living
word. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958)
p. 204 (internal quotes from the Jewish text
Ecclesiastes)
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Chantal Mouffe (born 1943) Books Ernesto
Laclau Chantal Mouffe Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy (1985) The Return of the Political
(1993) The Democratic Paradox (2000) On the
Political (2005)
12
A well-functioning democracy calls for a vibrant
clash of democratic political positions. If this
is missing there is the danger that this
democratic confrontation will be replaced by a
confrontation among other forms of collective
identification, as is the case with identity
politics the result can be the crystallization
of collective passions around issues which cannot
be managed by the democratic process and an
explosion of antagonisms that can tear up the
very basis of civility Chantal Mouffe, The
Democratic Paradox, p. 104
13
envisaged from the perspective of agonstic
pluralism the aim of democratic politics is to
transform antagonism into agonism p. 103
14
what is really at stake in the allegiance to
democratic institutions is the constitution of an
ensemble of practices that make possible the
creation of democratic citizens. This is not a
matter of rational justification but of
availability of democratic forms of individuality
and subjectivity