A consensus politics that erases adversaries reproduces the very subordination it claims to fix.

Evidence

For the radical centre. as we have seen, there is of course neither enemy nor adversary. Everybody is pan of ‘the people’. The interests of the rich transnational corporations can be happily reconciled with those of the unemployed, single mothers and the disabled. … By not leaving any space for the advenarial agonistic contestation of shared values, this new politics of behaviour, which Nikolas Rose calls ‘etho-politics’, exacerbates the authoritarianism and the social conservatism latent in the communitarian approach. … By pretending to include everybody in ‘the people’. New Labour conuibutes to reproducing the subordination of the very people that it is supposed to represent and defend. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 531

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘Etho-politics’ is defined here as governance of behaviour and morals that forecloses agonistic contestation.
• ADDENDUM: Could support the immodesty/sacrifice articles’ shared theme of how elite consensus politics re-moralizes subordination as private virtue.
• XREF: connects to: Internal reconciliation forces a subgroup to act through superordinate institutions it dominates — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 801; Consensus is shaped and structured by unequal power rather than freely formed — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 919; Ideological politics destroys the very constituency the ideology claims to serve — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1070 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Economization and governance replace political contestation with managerial consensus. #exemplifies (0.83) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 409
• Consensus is shaped and structured by unequal power rather than freely formed #expands (0.82) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 919
• Ideological politics destroys the very constituency the ideology claims to serve #corroborates (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1070
• Every consensus stabilizes irreducible chaos, and permanent stability would end politics #complicates (0.79) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 586
• Internal reconciliation forces a subgroup to act through superordinate institutions it dominates #exemplifies (0.78) — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 801
• Society represses the negative and then reabsorbs the subversive art that resists it. #complicates (0.76) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 65
• Politicization requires blaming an external opponent for one’s grievances. #qualifies (0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4429
• Rejecting consensus as impossible protects democracy from closure #qualifies (0.74) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 146
• Attacking the arguer substitutes for refuting arguments that challenge consensus. #exemplifies (0.73) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2389