“The Political” versus/and Synonymous Terms. An Attempt to Analyse a Theoretical Discourse

Abstract

The paper is an attempt to reconstruct the theoretical discourse on the strategy of using the notion of “the political” and related notions in Polish political theory. The author argues that these concepts, appearing in large numbers in recent years, are not an expression of pointless terminological disputes, but an attempt to cope with the complex character of various political phenomena that are the result of dynamic processes of the politicisation of various previously non-political problems of collective life. The text discusses two ways of understanding “the political” that dominate among Polish political scientists: as an aspect of various political phenomena in conventionally understood politics and beyond, and as a category that allows one to name the fundamental principles through which society as a whole and its various parts (e.g. social classes) are formed. The text also discusses three strategies for searching for synonymous terms in relations to politics and “the political”: (1) attempts to find a superordinate category; (2) transformations of the notion of “the political” through various clarifications (e.g. organic politics) and prefixes (e.g. meta-politics); (3) orientation towards borderline phenomena (e.g. quasi-political ones) in the context of processes of politicisation and depoliticisation that allow for a continuous reconfiguration of the boundaries of what is political.