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Abstract
By assuming the permanence of conflict, agonistic theories of politics are apparently incompatible with cosmopolitanism. Nevertheless, this paper aims to reveal the potential for a theory of cosmopolitanism in Chantal Mouffe's agonistic theory. In the first section, I present Mouffe's own critique of cosmopolitanism, pointing to its inconsistencies. The second section examines four aspects of Mouffe's agonism and explores their cosmopolitan potential. First, I argue that Mouffe's account of pluralism reveals the interconnectedness of political practices at different levels. Second, Mouffe's sense of the transformation from “enemy” into “adversary” through “conversion” can be extended to cosmopolitanism. Third, the “conflictual consensus” which Mouffe attributes to adversaries is adequate for a cosmopolitanism that lacks a global consensus, but nonetheless is based on a minimal commonality of all human beings. Fourth, contestation, as conflict in the “tamed” mode, has a cosmopolitan potential to contest any hegemony, whether local or global. In conclusion, I show how these tendencies qualify as “cosmopolitan,” even while avoiding the premises and structures of standard cosmopolitanism.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Tom Bailey for inviting me to contribute to this special issue, for his generous and supportive engagement with earlier versions of the paper, and for his innumerable corrections of my written English. My work on the paper was supported by a grant from the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS–UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-RU-TE-2011-3-0218.
Notes
1 For a definition of cosmopolitanism in terms of individualism, universality and generality, see T. Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms (Oxford: Polity, 2002), 169.
2 S. Rummens has argued that Mouffe's theses require disambiguation in “Democracy as a Non-Hegemonic Struggle? Disambiguating Chantal Mouffe's Agonistic Model of Politics,” Constellations 16.3 (2009): 376–91.
3 Other agonistic theorists, although not resolutely anti-cosmopolitan, have not elaborated on the cosmopolitan implications of their theories. One exception is W. Connolly, “Speed, Concentric Cultures and Cosmopolitanism,” Political Theory 28.5 (2000): 596–618.
4 E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985).
5 C. Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993), 141; C. Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox (London: Verso, 2005), 21; C. Mouffe, On the Political (London: Routledge, 2005), 16.
6 On Mouffe's use and misuse of Schmitt, see M. Fritsch, “Antagonism and Democratic Citizenship (Schmitt, Mouffe, Derrida),” Research in Phenomenology 38 (2008): 174–90; and M. Beckstein, “The Dissociative and Polemical Political: Chantal Mouffe and the Intellectual Heritage of Carl Schmitt,” Journal of Political Ideologies 16.1 (2011): 33–51.
7 Mouffe, On the Political, 16.
8 Mouffe, On the Political, 9.
9 Mouffe, The Return of the Political, 1–2.
10 Mouffe, The Return of the Political, 141.
11 Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 101–2.
12 Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 103.
13 The apparent tensions created by appealing to such commonality in an agonistic theory have been the main target of Mouffe's critics. See A. Knops, “Debate: Agonism as Deliberation – On Mouffe's Theory of Democracy,” Journal of Political Philosophy 15.1 (2007): 115–26; W. Leggett, “Restoring Society to Post-Structuralist Politics: Mouffe, Gramsci and Radical Democracy,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 39.3 (2013): 299–315; Rummens, “Democracy as a Non-Hegemonic Struggle?;” and Ilan Kapoor, “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism? The Relevance of the Habermas-Mouffe Debate for Third World Politics,” Alternatives 27.4 (2002): 459–87. As one author observes, “Whenever Mouffe addresses practical matters, she uses the language of adversarial or agonistic politics, but evokes tame and familiar scenes. Mouffe argues for a pluralism that recognizes real differences, but also ensures that everyone plays the same rules. ‘Partisans' who really want to change the political landscape may not be allowed to participate” (R. T. Tally, “The Agony of the Political,” Postmodern Culture 17.2 (2007): 7–8).
14 C. Mouffe, Agonistics. Thinking the World Politically (London: Verso, 2013), xiii.
15 See, for example, D. Held and D. Archibugi, “Cosmopolitan Democracy: Paths and Agents,” Ethics & International Affairs 25.4 (2011): 433–61.
16 Mouffe, On the Political, 97–103; Mouffe, Agonistics, 20.
17 W. Kymlicka and K. Walker, eds., “Introduction,” in Rooted Cosmopolitanism: Canada and the World (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2012), 1–31.
18 Mouffe, Agonistics, 20–2; Mouffe, On the Political, 107.
19 Mouffe, On the Political, 107.
20 C. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1976), 53.
21 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 116.
22 C. Mouffe, “Which World Order: Cosmopolitan and Multipolar?,” Ethical Perspectives 15.4 (2008): 456. The argument is restated in Agonistics, 19–43.
23 Mouffe, “Which World Order,” 456.
24 Mouffe makes reference to R. Panikkar, “Is the Notion of Human Rights a Western Concept?,” Diogenes 120 (1982).
25 Mouffe, “Which World Order,” 461; Mouffe, Agonistics, 31–2.
26 Mouffe, Agonistics, 39.
27 Mouffe, “Which World Order,” 466.
28 Mouffe, Agonistics, 41.
29 On the implicit return of morality in Mouffe's discourse about the multipolar world, see M. Thaler, “The Illusion of Purity: Chantal Mouffe's Realist Critique of Cosmopolitanism,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 36 (2010): 785–800.
30 Thaler, “The Illusion of Purity,” 793.
31 Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 39. See also Mouffe, The Return of the Political, 121.
32 Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 55.
33 Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 56.
34 See Kapoor, “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?,” 459–87.
35 See Beckstein, “The Dissociative and Polemical Political,” 38–41.
36 Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 18.
37 C. Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 17.
38 Mouffe, Agonistics, 22.
39 C. Mouffe, “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?,” Social Research 66 (1999): 755–6. See also Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 101–2; and Mouffe, Agonistics, 6–9.
40 Mouffe, The Return of the Political, 140.
41 Mouffe, On the Political, 23.
42 For this critique, see Kapoor, “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?,” 483.
43 The plausibility of an agonistic individuality in Mouffe's theory is confirmed by attempts to build a theory of political education for adversaries. See C. W. Ruitenberg, “Educating Political Adversaries: Chantal Mouffe and Radical Democratic Citizenship Education,” Studies in Philosophy of Education 28 (2009): 269–81; and G. Biesta, “The Ignorant Citizen: Mouffe, Rancière, and the Subject of Democratic Education,” Studies in Philosophy of Education 30 (2011): 141–53.
44 D. Miller, “Cosmopolitanism: A Critique,” Current Research in Social Psychology (CRISP) 5.3 (2002): 80–85.
45 Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, 141–2.
46 G. Leung. “A Critical History of Cosmopolitanism,” Law, Culture and the Humanities 5 (2009): 373.
47 Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 121.
48 E. Erman, “What is Wrong with Agonistic Pluralism? Reflections on Conflict in Democratic Theory,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 35.9 (2009): 1047.
49 See, for example, Kymlicka and Walker, Rooted Cosmopolitanism; P. Werbner, ed. Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism: Rooted, Feminist and Vernacular Perspectives (Oxford: Berg, 2008); and S. Pollock, “Cosmopolitan and Vernacular History,” Public Culture 12.3 (2000): 591–625.
50 Knops, “Agonism as Deliberation,” 116.
51 E. Wingenbach, Institutionalizing Agonistic Democracy: Post-Foundationalism and Political Liberalism (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 190.
52 For Mouffe's critique of the notion of the “multitude” in particular, and of the work of Hardt and Negri in general, see Agonistics, 65–85.
53 Mouffe, Agonistics, 79.
54 S. Pollock, H. K. Bhabha, C. A. Breckenridge and D. Chakrabarty, “Cosmopolitanisms,” in Cosmopolitanism, ed. C. A. Breckenridge et al. (Durham, NC: Duke, 2002), 1.
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Notes on contributors
Tamara Caraus
Tamara Caraus is Researcher in Political Philosophy at the New Europe College in Bucharest, Romania. Her research focuses on cosmopolitanism, agonism and poststructuralist political theory. She has published Traps of Identity (Bucharest: Cartier, 2011) and Ethical Perspectives on the Postmodern Rewriting (Bucharest: Paralela 45, 2003), and edited Re-Grounding Cosmopolitanism: Towards a Post-Foundational Cosmopolitanism (with E. Paris, London: Routledge, 2015) and Cosmopolitanism and the Legacy of Dissent (with C. Parvu, London: Routledge, 2014).