Depoliticisation in agonistic ontologies

pp. 103-135

in: Vassilios Paipais, Political ontology and international political thought, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

This chapter critically engages with agonistic and radical democratic approaches to pluralism. Theorists of agonistic democratic pluralism, such as Chantal Mouffe and William Connolly, celebrate difference and contingency affirming the antagonistic nature of the political. And yet, they also seem to be enacting a form of ontological politics, as opposed to a political ontology, that valorises difference, contingency and multiplicity as the virtuous pole of a reversed polarity. The issue here is not the emancipatory or counter-hegemonic ethico-political orientation of these approaches, but their tendency to reverse, rather than transcend, the binaries they set out to deconstruct. The persistence, here, of a logic of depoliticisation may seem odd since post-structuralist agonistic approaches to difference and pluralism are programmatically opposed to the priorities of onto-theology and traditional metaphysics that value unity, harmony and presence; and, reversely, enthusiastically in favour of an alternative non-foundational or weak ontology that denies fixities or eternal verities and announces a critical ethos of freedom, responsibility, critical responsiveness, generosity and reverence for life. And yet, this chapter raises considerable doubts about whether such an emphasis on a post-metaphysical ontology and "ontopolitical" critique delivers its promise for a more politicised engagement with difference and plurality.