Denying antagonism’s ineradicability is the real threat to democracy
Evidence
To acknowledge the existence of relations of power and the need to transform them, while renouncing the illusion that we could free ourselves completely from power - this is what is specific to the project that we have called ‘radical and plural democracy’. Such a project recognizes that the specificity of modern pluralist democracy - even a well-ordered one - does not reside in the absence of domination and of violence but in the establishment of a set of institutions through which they can be limited and contested. To negate the ineradicable character of antagonism and to aim at a universal rational consensus - this is the real threat to democracy. Indeed, this can lead to violence being unrecognized and hidden behind appeals to . rationality’, as is often the case in liberal thinking which disguises the necessary frontiers and forms of exclusion behind pretences of ‘neutrality’ To illustrate the dangerous consequences of the rationalist approach and show the superiority of the one I am delineating here, I have chosen to take the example of the ‘political liberalism’ of John Rawls. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 102
Categorization
- QUESTION: Core to the reader’s test: Mouffe asserts frontiers and exclusion are ‘necessary’ to democracy, yet the stated goal is to test whether a non-exclusionary pluralist ‘we’ is conceivable against just this claim.
- DEEPTHINKING: The inversion — that universal rational consensus, not antagonism, threatens democracy — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting move worth sitting with.
- XREF: connects to: Adversarial conflict among legitimate positions is democracy’s condition, not its danger — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 338; Democratic politics transforms antagonism between enemies into agonism between adversaries — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 461; Democracy is defined by legitimizing rather than suppressing political conflict — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 502 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Democracy’s task is converting antagonism into agonism, not erasing it
#corroborates(0.92) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 584 - Conflict legitimation, not consensus, is modern democracy’s condition of existence
#corroborates(0.88) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 463 - Rejecting consensus as impossible protects democracy from closure
#corroborates(0.80) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 146 - Undecidability, not consensus, is the condition of democratic freedom
#corroborates(0.78) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 150 - The incommensurability of universal and particular is the precondition for democracy
#corroborates(0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 378 - Effective democracy generates antagonism that can destroy cooperatives if not accommodated.
#qualifies(0.72) — Adrian Josef Amon, Organizing the study of degeneration…, 71