Beyond the ‘other’ as constitutive outside: The politics of immunity in Roberto Esposito and Niklas Luhmann

Abstract

Introduction: Roberto Esposito's Incomplete Deconstruction of the Constitutive Other The concept of the 'constitutive outside' was introduced to political theory by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe 1. Drawing on Henry Staten's reading of iterative meaning formation in Derrida 2 , Laclau and Mouffe argue that in the absence of ontological grounding, identity constitution must take place against a "radical outside, without a common measure with the inside" (Laclau, 1990: 18). The 'constitutive outside' has since not only been widely adopted within Continental Political Theory (Oswell, 2006; Hall, 2000). But it also increasingly informs more general social theory and empirical social research in a way which is largely dissociated from the concept's theoretical underpinnings, which thus remain unchallenged (Hawkesworth, 2010; Mara, 2003; Diez, 2004). This article unfolds its argumentation from the insight that this unquestioned theoretical adoption of Laclau and Mouffe's 'constitutive outside' is highly problematic because of the political consequences they infer from its epistemic necessity (Laclau 1990; Mouffe 2000). Intertwined with Carl Schmitt's (1996: 19-27) assumption of a general political antagonism between friend and foe, the fluid, iterative outside of meaning constitution 3 is turned into a solidified other when applied to the political

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“…It is clear, therefore, that the difference is not in the terms we use but in our attitudes toward 'the Other' (also referred to as 'Otherness' and the Constitutive Other' (9)(10)(11). At one extreme, the more detached we become from the sufferer, the more we move toward 'psychosis', and at the other extreme, the more attached we become to the sufferer, the more 'neurotic' we become in our approach to treatment.…”

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