The Unbearable Lightness of Theory: Political Ontology and Social Weightlessness in Mouffe’s Radical Democracy

Abstract

In the last couple of decades or so there has been a pronounced ontological turn in contemporary political theory, of all stripes, towards thinking about the quintessential dynamics of the ‘political’ in the kind of transcendental mode famously exemplified by Schmitt. Radical democrats have been particularly drawn to this style of reflection because it is seen as a powerful way of overturning some of the basic presumptions of a prevailing liberal orthodoxy and putting forward a more radical vision of democracy. For these radical democrats, the ‘essence’ of the political resides in the revelation of the groundlessness of social existence, that is, that there is no natural order of things and that any social-democratic regime is an arbitrary configuration of power that cannot lay claim to an incontestable legitimacy. The uncovering of this radical contingency does not lead to a cynical realism, rather it is intended to heighten an awareness of the latent exclusions and submerged conflicts that are an inescapable feature of any democratic order – even the apparently most inclusive - and thereby to strengthen a commitment to a radical counter-hegemonic politics. The claim is, then, that this ontological mode of reflection on the political is not a straightforward form of idealizing abstraction but rather has an intrinsic connection to the critique of power from the perspective of the powerless and excluded.