Mouffe Research Articles

Contesting literacies: Beyond the hidden curriculum of the Neoliberal Arts

This essay challenges the broad, ongoing neoliberal transformation of higher education as expressed in contemporary literacy pedagogies based in and around Learning Management Systems. Building on Chantal Mouffe’s conception of agonistic democracy, we seek to model and encourage an alternative–a critical literacy that highlights competing hegemonic projects and the need for active engagement of all in shaping the politics of knowledge.

Agonizing Pancasila: Indonesia’s state ideology and post-foundational political thought

ABSTRACT This article explores the implications of Indonesia’s official state ideology, Pancasila, and its articulations in contemporary Indonesia from the perspective of ‘post-foundational’ agonistic theories of democracy. A set of five precepts created by Soekarno, the nationalist leader and founding president of Indonesia, Pancasila was integral to strategies of social control during the authoritarian ‘New Order’ regime of Soeharto and continues to function in Indonesia as a potent empty signifier, well over two decades after the fall of that regime in the Reformasi of 1998. By engaging with domestic scholarly and political discourses of Pancasila and Pancasila democracy from the agonistic perspective on democracy shaped by theorists such as Étienne Balibar, Chantal Mouffe, and Jacques Rancière, this article points to the tension between the aspiration of the advocates of Pancasila to present Pancasila as democratic and their commitment to seeing Pancasila as an embodiment of traditional culture and values that is essential to the consistency of Indonesian national identity. The relation between the two terms that constitute ‘Pancasila democracy’ is further complicated by the tendency of contemporary proponents of Pancasila to attempt to ‘immunize’ the state ideology from the possibility of interruption and contestation.

Aesthetics and Politics of Participation in Benoît Maubrey’s Speaker Sculptures

Abstract The article discusses the aesthetic and political aspects of Speaker Sculptures – an ongoing series of participatory site-specific sound artworks by the artist Benoît Maubrey. Informed by pragmatist aesthetics and combining artwork analyses with ethnographic observations, the text focuses on the expressive affordances of the sculptures and the way the participants act upon them. Utilizing a variety of communication technologies, Speaker Sculptures bridge the gaps between the public, private and virtual spaces and allow the participants to perform in the public space without being physically present in them. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s theory of the public as the political, Nicolas Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics and Chantal Mouffe’s antagonism theory, the article discusses the political implications of such performances.

Didier Eribon vs. ‘The People’—A Critique of Chantal Mouffe’s Left Populism

In this article, I develop a critique of Chantal Mouffe’s leftist populism and its construction of ‘the people’ against an opposed ‘them’, from a perspective informed by the thought of Didier Eribon. I draw on both his public interventions and his theoretical work, employing his concepts of return, society as verdict, and his two principles of critical thinking to question the desirability of crafting ‘the people’ in the first place. I contend that Eribon’s critique renders Mouffe’s proposal problematic on three accounts. First, her approach is too politically volatile; its instability leaves it devoid of a critical analysis of the differences between concrete social positions, struggles, and subjectivities within ‘the people’. Consequently, the political becomes merely a function of the social. Yet, the social and its determining power remain mostly unaddressed by her framework. Second, its simplistic opposition of an overly generalised ‘the people’ against ‘the oligarchy’ is susceptible to right-wing populist appropriations. Third, for a shot at hegemony and a general appeal, it eclipses plurality and dissensus within ‘the people’. In contrast, Eribon encourages a connection between the social and the political by suggesting that a self-critical analysis be mutually intertwined with social analysis. Instead of merely mobilising affects, they must be critically interrogated. Instead of summoning ‘the people’, a return to their respective genesis must be attempted. Unless both principles of critical thinking, the insights of return, and societal verdicts are deployed to come to terms with the social determinisms at hand, the ‘people’s’ mobilisation against an opposed ‘them’ risks sacrificing pluralism and equality alike and neglecting the criteria of the desirability of specific changes in favour of a “whatever it costs” attempt at hegemony.

Political Ontology and Emancipation in Castoriadis and Laclau–Mouffe

Abstract Cornelius Castoriadis’ The Imaginary Institution of Society and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist Strategy are two cornerstones of contemporary political philosophy. Insufficient consideration has been given to the fact that both works show important theoretical coincidences in terms of structure and content. The first part of this article explores the possibility of reading Castoriadis’ work in post-foundational terms, following Oliver Marchart's approach. In addition, the respective political ontologies of Castoriadis and Laclau and Mouffe are presented as ‘ontologies of signification’ in which the imaginary/discursive component is central. Finally, the contributions of the three authors to the emancipatory project through the notions of ‘autonomy’ (Castoriadis) and ‘radical democracy’ (Laclau and Mouffe) are considered, highlighting both their common features and their divergences. The latter had to do mainly with their antagonistic conceptions of political representation and its relation to democracy.

Can articulations save the planet?

Chantal Mouffe has played an active role in promoting the ‘discursive hegemonic’ politics of left populism, not least in her two most recent books, For a Left Populism and Towards a Green Democratic Revolution: Left Populism and the Power of Affects. Taking these books together, this review article shows how these interventions build on Mouffe's earlier work on ‘the political’ and her vision of ‘radical democracy’ based on an ‘agonistic pluralism’. It argues that we find in Mouffe's latest work some of the salient problems of her overall project. The article focuses on two such problems: Mouffe's notion of antagonism (and its cognate, agonism); and the question of collective action.

The Hegemonization and Counter-Hegemonization of Polish Copyright Discourses

This article explores the nature and structure of Polish discourses on copyright, specifically revealing to what extent social conflict over copyright is visible within these discourses and presenting the most important parties in this conflict. Following Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discursive reconstruction of the hegemony, the article indicates that Polish copyright discourses are structured by an alternating sequence of discursive hegemonic and counter-hegemonic practices. The article specifies the most important logic applied within discursive battles over copyright by deconstructing the central dualities visible in Polish copyright debates. Hegemonization and counter-hegemonization of the discourses are indicated based on the discourse analysis of the Polish public debate on copyright and a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews and focus group interviews with representatives of selected parties in the social conflict over copyright.

Political emotions in a literature classroom

ABSTRACT The democratic potential of literature education has often been accentuated. In this article, we draw on Gert Biesta’s subjectification conception of democratic education, and view democracy as a concept open for (re)negotiation in the classroom. We are informed by Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic democratic theory, and its view of dissent as a foundational aspect of democracy, in that the struggle itself constitutes the identities of the opponents. Agonistic proposals for democratic education also pay attention to political emotions in the classroom. We pair agonism with Sara Ahmed’s view of emotion as performative to explore how power, identity and emotions are entangled in a student group and how this entanglement is integrated in the students’ conceptions of democracy. The students were in their last year of upper secondary school in Sweden. We analysed audio recordings from three group interviews with a total of eleven students. The interviews followed a literary discussion about the short story ‘Farangs’ by Rattawut Lapcharoensap, which was video recorded. The analysis shows that students referred to emotion when constructing the collective identities of themselves and their opponents, and that the power relations between these collective identities influenced what literary interpretations were centred in the discussion.

Discourse Theory, Nodal Points, and Stereoscopic Optics on Justice

ABSTRACT Specific domains of modern life—social, ecological, legal—involve distinct issues of justice that often lead to a single-focused political-philosophical engagement with justice. Such engagements, argues Marianna Papastephanou, risk turning issues of justice that lie beyond the adopted perspective into discursive injustices (i.e. of silencing the Other’s voice) and condemning them to invisibility. To address this risk, Papastephanou proposes a stereoscopic approach that better illuminates the many facets of justice and, concomitantly, the many instances of injustice that escape the dominant political-philosophical perspectives on justice. In the present article, I discuss Papastephanou’s theory of a stereoscopic approach to justice along with Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory and notion of “nodal points.” I suggest that the synergy between the two approaches enhances their efficacy: Papastephanou’s theorization concretizes the implications of establishing nodal points, which, in turn, reveal how the reduction of justice to one of its facets occurs at the discursive level. Enriched by Papastephanou’s theorization, discourse theory makes more visible how a stereoscopic approach to justice can unveil discursive injustices of selective and partial outlooks on (in)justice.

Navigating pandemic waves: Consensus, polarisation and pluralism in the Finnish parliament during COVID-19

This article studies how the COVID crisis affected polarisation, politicisation and consensus in Finnish parliamentary discourse, a case in which we expect pluralist political institutions and culture to mitigate polarisation. In addition to the empirical contribution, we add to the theory of polarisation by drawing from Chantal Mouffe’s theory of plural democracy to argue that the opposite of polarisation may take the form of a depoliticised consensus or a pluralism of legitimate positions (‘agonism’). Furthermore, we apply Norman and Isabela Fairclough’s political discourse analysis to studying polarisation qualitatively, arguing that scrutiny of argumentative premises enables assessment of how profound certain political conflicts are. Studying 485 parliamentary speeches given in 2020–2021, we argue that a morally charged consensus imperative with nationalistic overtones quickly developed in Spring 2020, and pluralism gradually re-emerged later. The article highlights that while polarisation can threaten democracy, so can moralisation and enforced consensus.

Thinking hegemony otherwise – an educational critique of Mouffe’s agonism

ABSTRACT The question ‘What is to be done?’ underpins Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic theory of democratic politics. Yet, despite this affirmative tone that distinguishes her from other radical theorists, her theory neglects the cultural work required for hegemony-building. This omission has resulted in operational difficulties when agonistic democracy is put into practice. This article shows how academics inspired by Mouffe unintentionally depend on theoretical resources from competing democratic theories. As a result of this, agonistic practices risk to reinforce neo-liberal regimes instead of developing counter-hegemonic alternatives. To meet this challenge, and to expand the scope of Mouffe’s agonism, we draw on educational theory to provide a more developed theorization of the cultural work required for hegemony-building. We propose that only by embracing different conceptualisations of education, we can activate cultural interventions that facilitate counter-hegemonic ventures.

Pluralism and Monotheism: On Apophatic Intolerance

AbstractThis paper explores the dangerous yet liberative potentials of so‐called monotheistic intolerance, arguing for its importance in pluralistic politics. Drawing upon the work of political theorist Chantal Mouffe, I examine conventional political notions of inclusivity and show how the metaphysics of “the One True God” has political analogs not merely in despotic, exclusive absolutism but in agonistic pluralism. The metaphysical correlate of pluralism, I argue, is not merely in polytheism but in “apophatic intolerance”—the refusal to lay claim upon the Absolute, the denial of its representation—a subtle mechanics at the heart of monotheism. And yet, ambivalently coinciding with this emancipatory intolerance is a violence‐laden “Mosaic distinction” between true and false religion. The political theology of Egyptologist Jan Assmann helps us interpret such volatile but crucial intolerance for our own democratic and pluralistic context.

A reflection on Hong Kong’s yellow economic circle

ABSTRACT Emerged from the anti-extradition law amendment bill movement in 2019, the yellow economic circle (YEC) is the first ever widely adopted political consumerism in post-handover Hong Kong, where people buycott yellow (pro-movement) and boycott blue (anti-movement/ pro-Beijing/ pro-HKSAR-government) businesses. The reflection’s prominence lies in the popular engagement in YEC, and the political consumerism still lingers in the city even after the abrupt end of the 2019 movement. Existing research lacks the exploration of the meanings YEC entailed in relation to the context of Hong Kong and the lessons YEC can impart to the city’s civil society development. By classifying YEC into “sign” and “process,” the article first examines the particular juncture at which YEC emerged to show how Beijing has tried to govern Hong Kong through the market. It subsequently delves into a discourse analysis, scrutinizing how Beijing has constructed a civility for the market, which is later reshaped by YEC. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s theorization of “politics” as well as Hardt and Negri’s discussion of “identitarian love,” the article continues by shedding light on the identity politics and oxymoron of liberal democracy inherent in the political consumerism. It also addresses the narrow democratic imagination reflected in different incidents arising from YEC, which may be symptomatic of Hong Kong’s current political struggle. The exploration concludes with suggestions on how the YEC can strengthen Hong Kong’s civil society after Beijing’s crackdown.

Border penality as antagonistic politics

This article examines the socio-political implications of using criminal law to address migration issues in Italy. It delves into the polarised political debate characterised by crimmigration, on the one hand, and calls to criminalise border violence to protect migrants, on the other hand. It argues that both uses of penality reflect and foster penal antagonism, whereby both sides of the debate seek to impose their views using punishment. Penal antagonism leads to more migrants being incarcerated and forecloses possibilities for more political changes to the prevailing anti-immigration paradigm. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe's work, the article proposes agonistic politics as an alternative approach: a political confrontation to assert one's vision about migration, but where the opponent is an adversary to engage politically rather than an enemy to be delegitimised through penality. Moving from penal antagonism to political agonism could help decouple migration from penality and remove a central source of harm for migrants.

The agonistic imagination: the illiberal and pluralist possibilities of contemporary BrexLit fiction

ABSTRACT This essay explores recent work of Zadie Smith (‘The Embassy if Cambodia’, 2013, and ‘The Lazy River’, 2019) and David Szalay (All That Man Is, 2016), as examples of BrexLit fiction, a term coined by Kristian Shaw to denote ‘fictions that either directly respond or imaginatively allude, to Britain’s exit from the EU’. In contrast to the nineteenth century state-of-the-nation novel, which drew upon the liberal-humanist resources of the novel to intervene in public debates, I contend that a significant strand of contemporary BrexLit reflects a crisis not simply within but rather of the public sphere. Accordingly, my case studies hit upon the limits of the liberal literary tradition and they do so precisely as a means to explore the deficiencies of the mainstream liberal response to populism. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s post-political thesis – the argument that the representative systems of European democracies have capitulated to a technocratic-centrist inertia based on the idea that there is no alternative to neoliberal globalization – this essay claims that BrexLit offers a generic framework for thinking through an alternative agonistic imagination; a way of thinking and writing that offers a way for redeeming an illiberal politics for progressive rather than reactionary ends.

Collective Subjectivity of Literary Characters as Exemplified by Jorge Amado’s Marginalized Figures

The potential of the use of the concept of collective subjectivity, in literary analyses, has been partially discerned by Mario Vargas Llosa, Gérard Klein, and a group of scholars inspired by Klein’s observations (Bellagamba; Picholle; Tron, 2012). Since none of them have proposed any systematic framework, the paper theorizes the concept, proposes an analysis methodology, and presents the results of a model analysis of the collective subjectivity of Jorge Amado’s marginalized characters and its relation to the hegemonic discourses of Amado’s storyworlds and of Brazil in the 1930s, respectively. The article also presents an evaluation of the concept’s usefulness for narrative scholars. As analyzing a fictional collective subjectivity requires a custom-made framework, it has been elaborated on the basis of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s (2001) Discourse Theory, Discourse-Theoretical Analysis (both alarmingly absent in literary studies), the psycho-sociological framework for real-world collective subjectivity analysis (Fabris; Puccini; Cambiaso, 2019), and narratological findings related to Possible Worlds Theory and fictional minds (Palmer, 2004). The study confirms that the use of the concept as an analytical tool can shed new light on our understanding of numerous narrative art works, especially regarding such issues as focalization, perspective, ideology, narrative empathy, unreliable narration, and consciousness representation. Moreover, the framework enables us to: 1) describe precisely the particularities of the ideological profile of a fictional collectivity and the narrator’s/implied author’s attitude towards them; 2) relate this profile to the context systematically (both to the storyworld and real-world context).

Hegemony Approach and Political Struggles over a New Political Order: The Case of Turkey

Abstract This paper proposes an analytical framework that employs a hegemony approach to political transformations, which bring about significant changes in the fundamental norms and values of a political community, as well as in the organizing principles of the social and economic system. The hegemony approach, drawing inspiration from the works of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, provides political theorists and social scientists with conceptual tools for analyzing struggles over political power. The paper argues that attempts at hegemonic formations, when extended to political transformations, involve articulations around social antagonisms, the construction of the people, establishment of political frontiers, and mobilization of the demands of excluded and oppressed groups. The Justice and Development Party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, serves as a unique case study to illustrate this approach.

Reclaiming Public Spaces in Post-pandemic India (Kolkata): Activist Theatre, Gender and a Resurgence of the Marginal

The politics of our post-Covid times are expressed through various registers. In Kolkata, one especially powerful artistic medium for such expressions was the revival of street theatre as young and senior theatre practitioners plunged into exploring critical issues that have been all-pervasive since the beginning of the pandemic. As people finally started to venture out, content to be amidst human congregations, street plays, being located in open-air spaces, proved both economical and safe. The issues these street performances highlighted and their modes of presentations could be described as what Tony Fisher calls ‘activist theatre’ – which mobilizes the people by interpellating its audience around a specific grievance or issue that possesses an emotional appeal.1 These performances are a form of artistic activism, or ‘artivism’ as termed by Chantal Mouffe: the use of aesthetic means for political activism, ‘as a counter-hegemonic move against the capitalist appropriation of aesthetics’.2

Agonist relationships in the toddler classroom: Exploring the connection between conflict and care

Dominant Western discourse in early childhood education frames conflict as a disruptive and damaging force that is antithetical to the “ideal” classroom environment. However, critical early childhood scholars have begun to reconceptualize the role of conflict in early childhood classroom dynamics, exploring its potential as a productive and necessary force that supports current and future political participation for young children. This paper draws from data collected during an eight-month ethnography of care practices in an infant/toddler classroom at a university laboratory school in the Southeastern United States. Using Chantal Mouffe's theories political conflict, we interpret one teacher's understandings of conflict in her classroom and the practices that she engaged in support of what Mouffe would term “agonist conflict” (i.e., friendly, rather than antagonistic, conflict). Findings demonstrate that this teacher views agonist conflict to be a productive process for young children—one that enables them to articulate their political subjectivities as members of their classroom community and one that will foster their engagement as citizens of a broader democratic society. As such, the emotional support and scaffolding she provided to support such engagement constitute a political form of care. This research holds implications for reconceptualized understandings of peer conflict in early childhood contexts and insight into how teachers can better support children's developing political engagement through agonist conflict with their peers.

Toward a universalistic theory of political obligation: A post-structuralist approach

Developing a plausible theory of political obligation is crucial for understanding our current political lives or constructing new ones. However, it proved to be hard to arrive at a theory that is universalistic and logically consistent. Without adherence to certain universalistic principles, such as freedom and equality, one might be tempted to justify individuals’ allegiance to authoritarian regimes based on particularistic reasons. Also, one may argue that if a general theory of political obligation cannot be devised, we are justified to resort to anarchism. Despite such high political stakes involved, a contention arose that universalistic approaches to political obligation are logically inconsistent because they run afoul of a particularity requirement. The latter is a demand that any plausible theory of individuals’ obligations toward a political entity should account for the reasons why they should obey the rules and orders of a specific authority. In this article, drawing on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s post-structuralist theory, I demonstrate that the dichotomy of universalism vs. particularism need not have destructive effects for a successful theory of political obligation. Indeed, it is possible to accept a particularity requirement but at the same time, argue that political obligations have a universalistic thrust.