Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau

Abstract

References to 'the political' abound in contemporary political theory, especially of the Continental variety. Some draw this distinction from Carl Schmitt, others from Hannah Arendt, but few really dwell for long on what it means and what its wider implications might be for how we understand politics. Indeed, reference to the political in contrast to 'mere politics' can often seem a condescending snub to those preoccupied with the minutiae of party competition, policy choice or normative evaluation. The term 'political' is irreducible to such matters which, often rightly, are dismissed for their narrow preoccupation with (and legitimation of) the polity and its conventions, as opposed to the more profound question of how polities and conventions come to be instituted as they are. But such dismissal can also fail to set out what is at stake in drawing this distinction and how politics might be drawn back into the realm of the political.In his dense but refreshingly instructive book, Oliver Marchart takes up directly the question of 'political difference' (the difference between the political and politics) and surveys a range of alternative stances on its meaning by some of the key contemporary political philosophers. This is a philosophical narrative restricted to assessing what others have to say on the topic and demonstrating recurring themes. But Marchart fruitfully illuminates the political difference and clarifies the overlaps and variations among what he designates 'post-foundational' political thought.By post-foundational, Marchart understands a strand of thinking that emerges in the wake of Heidegger's critique of metaphysics. More precisely, Marchart is interested in a left-wing variant, which emphasizes the emancipatory possibilities of Heidegger's substitution of rational foundations for the notion of an 'Abyssal Ground' to Being. If no principle serves to found all existence, then the difference between specific beings and Being as suchknown as the 'ontological difference' -is insurmountable. 'Ontic', or historically and culturally determined, beings relate to Being as an open-ended range of possibilities rather than as a reflection of their innate features. Being forever exceeds the choices we make as beings and reveals to us the inescapable contingency of existence, which is why, according to Heidegger, we often go to great lengths to 'forget' it.

Donald Trump in Power: Discourse, Performativity, Identification

“…Rural consciousness signals an identification with rural people and rural places and denotes a multifaceted resentment against cities. (p. 6) Cramer's ethnographic perspective and post-foundational takes on identity formation have a shared focus on the negative status of identity and the role antagonism (us vs them, the marginalised vs the privileged, the demonised vs the urban elites) plays in collective identification (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985;Marchart, 2007).…”

From post‐political to authoritarian planning in England, a crisis of legitimacy

“…This perspective is based on a philosophical differentiation between the political as an ontological category (how society is instituted) and politics as an ontic category. The latter refers to “the set of practices and institutions through which an order is created … in the context of conflictuality provided by the political” (2007, p. 9). A key tenet of post‐foundational theories is that society does not have, cannot have, and will never have a fixed, solid, and ultimate foundation or grounding.…”

“…Renouncing these claims, an alternative perspective on politics has emerged from a diverse set of literature that is rooted in Heidegger's philosophy and known as post‐foundational political theories (Marchart, 2007). This perspective is based on a philosophical differentiation between the political as an ontological category (how society is instituted) and politics as an ontic category.…”

The Break between Old and New Orders in Laclau’s Theory of Hegemony

“…The elaboration of the Theory of Radical Investment in On Populist Reason and in several essays collected in The Rhetorical Foundations of Society (Laclau 2014) should be seen as an attempt to realize the ambitions to develop a theorization of politics, within which, extensive, far-reaching social change becomes conceivable under an irreducibly pluralistic and post-foundationalist (Marchart 2007) conception of the social first articulated in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). Yet, it might be questioned whether Laclau's conceptualization of the break between the old and the new orders in terms of radical investment constitutes an adequate response to the Žižekian line of criticism -versions of which continue to appear in Marxist-oriented evaluations of Laclau's thought (see, for example, Kouvelakis 2021) -that consigns the hegemony theory to gradualist or reformist politics.…”