Late Agonies of Liberty in Common

Abstract

Radical ventures to expand common liberty push against various challenges. A conflictual plurality of perspectives interlocks with skepticism about the possibility of perfect freedom and equality. A salient response is an “agonistic” turn in the construction of freedom, bringing together difference, contingency, struggle, and creativity. However, more needs to be done in addressing the potential conflict of singularities in equal liberty. This paper seeks to partially fill this gap by drawing on the agonistic-pluralist discourses of Mouffe and Connolly, supplemented by postanarchist trends, which are keen to take the uncertain step beyond state and capitalism. A more vigorous ethos of liberty should tackle power relations as inherent potentialities, not as inescapable laws, giving up the hope that any particular logic of interaction, such as horizontal networks in a stateless world, holds the magic key to emancipation. The pursuit of concrete alternatives should be tied to reflective scrutiny and review.

Keywords:

• Liberty in Common
• Difference
• Agonism
• Postanarchism
• Reflective Struggle

Notes

¹See, among others, Laclau (1996), Day (2005), and Newman (2007).

²See Laclau (1996), Day (2005), Newman (2007), Mouffe (2000), Unger (2001), and Honneth (1998).

³See, e.g., Foucault (2000), Castoriadis (1985), Kateb (1992), Unger (2001), Hirschmann (2003), Honneth (1998), Byrne and Healy (2006), Roggero (2010), and Callari and Ruccio (2010).

⁴See Day (2005), Gordon (2008), Byrne and Healy (2006), Roggero (2010), Callari and Ruccio (2010).

⁵See Hardt and Negri (2009, 175, 196, 357–9). See also Roggero (2010, 368–9), who claims that “the common is the institution of a new relation between singularity and multiplicity that … does not reduce differences to an abstract subject.” We get little insight into how this relationship works through “heterolingual translation,” which fails to grapple with potentially deep antagonisms of differences. Cf. Callari and Ruccio (2010, 416–17).

⁶See, among others, Day (2005), Newman (2007), May (1994), Gordon (2008), and Tormey (2005).

⁷On this difference, see below, and see more generally Tonder and Thomassen (2005).

⁸This does not mean of course that constituent power does not or should not produce constituted power and bills of rights for a duly regulated conduct of everyday politics. It means that any constitution should be subject to contest and revision, following ideally particular procedures that protect equal liberties from the whims of limited majorities.

⁹For a broader critique of essentialist residues in poststructuralist thought, see Robinson (2005).

¹⁰On how this internal consistency can be achieved see White (2000).

¹¹See, among others, the essays by Habermas, Cohen, and Rawls in Bohman and Rehg (1997).

¹²See Hardt and Negri (2001), Unger (2001), Castoriadis (1987), Arendt (1958).

¹³Mouffe's favorite contestant in an agonistic democracy does not fare much better. The “radical and plural democracy” that she champions discerns indeed the value of utopian imaginaries that negate the present order of society (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, 190). But its main intent is to make room for a plurality of social movements and spaces, to expand freedom and equality across broader sectors of society, and to institutionalize the moment of openness and tension in social relations (181–5, 189–93). These valid political priorities seem short on concrete visionary substance, and they are not geared to an activation of the constituent powers of imagination.

¹⁴For this ambivalence, contrast Mouffe 2000 (33, 48–9) and Mouffe 2005 (15).

¹⁵The postanarchist theorist Saul Newman (2008) develops this critique.

¹⁶It is worth noting that this expression of political creativity is conspicuously missing from Connolly's (2005, 121) list of examples of the “politics of becoming.”

¹⁷See, among others, Day (2005), Stavrakakis (1999, 99–121).

¹⁸See Day (2005), Newman (2007), May (1994), Gordon (2008), and Tormey (2005).

¹⁹Characteristically, the moment of affirmative creation is missed in Byrne and Healy's (2006) account of alternative economic experimentation, while the moments of nonfixity, diversity, contest, and the rejection of ideals are perceptively brought out in the Lacanian frame they deploy. According to Stavrakakis's (1999, 54–70) reading, Lacanian analysis highlights the dimension of constitutive lack, real disruption, and division in social construction, and herein lies its critical merit. This is not to say, however, that Lacanian theory could not be fruitfully combined with other strands of thought which emphasize and explore the forces of creation and the generation of the new in social formations.

²⁰See Kropotkin (2008, 5, 7, 97–8, 151, 158–9, 177–81; 2002, 284–7), and Newman (2007, 37–42).