The incommensurability of universal and particular is the precondition for democracy

Evidence

It seems to be the case, as Laclau suggests, both that “the universal is incommensurable with the particular” and that the former “cannot exist without the latter.” Far from undermining democracy, this so-called “failure” is “the precondition for democracy” (Laclau 1996). Accordingly, this multicultural political logic requires at least two further conditions of existence: a deepening expansion and radicalization of democratic practices in our social life, and the unrelenting contestation of every form of racialized and ethnicized exclusionary closure (whether practiced by others on minority communities, or within communities). — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 378

Categorization

• DEFINE: Laclau’s universal-particular tension becomes a definitional mechanism for democratic multicultural politics.
• XREF: Laclau’s point about universality needing particularity parallels the Gramscian notion of hegemony that Hall elsewhere develops, where universal claims always remain partial and contested. — connects to: Universalist and particularist sensibilities coexisted within the same thinkers — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1744; Political universals like nation and state resist reduction to their parts — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 731; Democracy means only that the people rule, nothing more — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 401 (+13 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does Laclau’s ‘precondition for democracy’ tension map onto the Islamophobia field’s debates about universalist citizenship vs. particularist Muslim identities?