Abstract
I argue that agonistic pluralism, though not without its faults, offers a unique and powerful, and as yet under-researched, platform through which to understand and explain much about the potential and existing democratic role of ethnic media. Its most intriguing insight, and the source of much of its controversy, stems from its search for a new way of balancing pluralism and consensus (Mouffe, 2000b). My primary engagement with Chantal Mouffe’s version of agonistic democracy, among a raft of overlapping yet differing choices, stems largely from her insistence on the necessity and inevitability of some form of shared grounding and boundaries, upon and within which democratic interactions can take place. That Mouffe wants these foundations consistently questioned, exposed and challenged, rather than abandoned altogether, differentiates her from more radical proponents of an agonism that refuse any form of collective governance or the formation, even temporarily, of shared rules and spaces for democratic dialogue (Wingenbach in Institutionalising agonistic democracy: Post foundationalism and political liberalism. Ashgate Publishing, Surrey). These latter approaches, I suggest, pay less attention to one of the fundamental aspects of Mouffe’s writing, and an aspect of central importance to (ethnic) media studies—the management of interaction in plural societies in a way that rejects political closure and yet acknowledges the importance of institutional support for agonism and difference.
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Notes
- 1.
I focus on the contentious issue of the institutionalisation of agonistic democracy in the next section (see Wingenbach, 2011).
- 2.
Maeseele and Raeijmaekers provide a detailed way of understanding agonism within media texts, one that draws upon several themes in this book (neoliberalism, discourse, and media texts). I will draw on their approach in the next chapters when looking at mainstream media portrayals of ethnic groups in Australia. I also correspond with their view of journalism as made up of hegemonic discursive practices, something to be expanded on in this chapter through the work of several authors.
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Budarick, J. (2019). Agonistic Pluralism. In: Ethnic Media and Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16492-8_5
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