On the other side of “agonism”: “The enemy,” the “outside,” and the role of antagonism

Abstract

This article takes issue with Chantal Mouffe's concept of "agonistic pluralism." With this concept, Mouffe brings political theory to the field of "real politics." In planning theory, the concept of agonism has recently been used as an alternative to the consensual communicative deliberative approach: The notion of agonism seems to be fit for replacing communicative theory as the theoretical framework of planning theory. My point is that Mouffe's proposed "agonistic pluralism" has an internal and fundamental flaw and that the advocated "taming of antagonism into agonism" is neither possible nor necessary. To clarify my hypothesis, I consider in a first step the roots of Mouffe's theory: Carl Schmitt's notion of the political and his (in)famous friend/enemy concept. Schmitt's model is not only a main reference of Mouffe's work but the very reason of her calling for pluralistic agonism. In a second step, I turn to Ernesto Laclau's political theory where another version of antagonism model appears: the conceptualization of the "constitutive outside" as irreducible reason of an endless hegemonic play of antagonistic forces. I show the difference between Schmitt's and Laclau's models and argue that the rationale for a conceptualization of agonism disappears with the latter. In my conclusion, I discuss whether and how antagonism theory can be linked with planning theory without importing Mouffe's short circuit.

Why agonistic planning? Questioning Chantal Mouffe’s thesis of the ontological primacy of the political

“…Mouffe and Laclau's post-structuralist ontology and the concept of the political Roskamm (2014) convincingly argues that the notion of the political in Chantal Mouffe's agonistic pluralism is considered ontologically primary because it is based on Carl Schmitt's ([1932] 2007) conceptualisation of the political as the friend/enemy concept 1 and that the possibility of antagonism is inherent in all social relations (Mouffe, 1999a). Before engaging with this Schmittian basis of Mouffe's conceptualisation of the political, however, it is necessary to trace Mouffe's understanding of the political back to her earlier work with Ernesto Laclau in HSS.…”

Governing ‘places that don’t matter’: agonistic spatial planning practices in Finnish peripheral regions

“…Building on the 'friend-enemy' dichotomy, Mouffe argues that antagonisms are constitutive to 'the political' in society and cannot be erased by means of communication such as the consensus-oriented theories of deliberative democracy suggest. Where she departs the company of Schmitt, is in her accounts concerning the ways in which antagonisms should be handled (Roskamm, 2015). She contends that antagonisms should be recognized and tamed into agonistic pluralism, where enemies become adversaries (Mouffe, 2013, p. 7).…”

“…Even though the concept of taming of antagonisms makes Mouffe's theory relevant in the field of administration, a field that cannot dwell on disagreements but has to deliver solutions, the emphasis on such taming has been criticized for eradicating the radicalism agonistic theory and turning it into just another theory that facilitates post-political planning (Roskamm, 2015). We will return to this criticism in the final section.…”

On ‘the subject’ of planning’s public interest

“…In countering this, such theorist stresses the impossibility of seeking durable consensus consequent on the view that political engagement is intrinsically antagonistic and at best only ‘exists as a temporary result of a provisional hegemony’ (Mouffe, 1999: 756). Building upon the ancient Greek concept of agon (‘struggle’), the agonistic planning approach conceives the subject as one who is engaged in a contest with others to advance his or her objectives in a field of competing voices (Roskamm, 2014). In this sense, those advancing the agonistic planning approach are highly suspect of assertions concerning the ability or even willingness of interlocutors to extricate bias from deliberations.…”