Mouffe: Agonistic Pluralism and Religion

Just started reading Jeffrey Robbins' Radical Democracy and Political Theology, which led me to reconsider the work of Chantal Mouffe (who is famous for co-writing a book with Ernesto Laclau). Why I like what I have found in Mouffe is her reading of pragmatism and Wittgenstein (I am starting to see the wisdom of the words Negri once said about how everything has changed since Wittgenstein, which has led to my growing issues with Badiou). Reading Jeffrey Stout's Democracy and Tradition over the summer, Stout's interaction with the pragmatist Richard Rorty (and even Rorty's latter openness to public, religious expressions) and finally, Stout's utilization of key, underdeveloped ideas about the secular from Barth's theology made me look out for pragmatic ideas about democracy. Thus, my antennas went up on Robbins' section on Schmitt and Mouffe.

Mouffe's idea of Agonistic pluralism is framed by the reality of the "us vs them" format made famous by Carl Schmitt (her view of pluralism also has roots from Nietzsche and Weber). What Mouffe attempts to do is articulate a politics that forms a "we", which brings together this multiplicity of conflicts, diversity and antagonism. In short, society is never going to be free of "adversaries" (not Schmitt's "enemies") but the pluralistic, democratic space must find ways to be tolerant of such diverse positions. By framing the argument as "adversaries" and not the moral term "enemies", Mouffe acknowledges the contingency of her own beliefs but also the commitment to fight for her beliefs without making it a moral issue. So her presupposition is her view of pluralism that entails the antagonistic nature of different values. She declares that "the real issue at stake in democratic politics is how to establish the us/them distinction in a way that is compatible with pluralist democracy." In order for this theory to work, there needs to be consensus on the basis of this system of conflict ( a symbolic "common ground"). She points out that any movement or figures that won't work with this consensus thus ultimately places themselves or herself in the category of the "enemy". Probably the most adequate or legitimate place to bring a sense of unity is some type of constitutional document. In essence she is working with both sides of western democracy: its liberalism (rule of law, separation of church/state and powers, individual rights, popular sovereignty) and its democracy (populism, pluralism).

One of the key subjects that people feel passion/emotion for is religious issues. However, one of the cornerstones for liberal democracy is the separation of church and state. Mouffe reads this idea differently in stating that the separation of church and state really means the separation between religion and "state power." I think this is probably the best analysis I have read on this subject and I think it fits with a Barthian view. She has this great quote: "It is the tendency to identify politics with the state and the state with the public that has led to the mistaken idea that the separation between the church and the state means the absolute relegation of religion to the private." She notes that this view cannot be defended. Passions (including religious) cannot be removed from politics. However, there is a post-Nazi fear of the passions because in the liberal-democratic mind it leads to "irrational" decisions by the mob or as Toscano calls "fanaticism".

Oftentimes religious expression spills into the ideas of public policies and shapes reactions to them as well. There is no such thing as the liberal neutral view that manages to keep "divisive issues" out of the public realm. It is better to acknowledge the tensions that are in society and work to deal with them in a way that is tolerant to all segments of society. This is a tolerance that is shaped by an idea that there will never be a final, complete reconciliation of conflicts. She writes that "the prime task of democratic politics is not to eliminate passions or to relegate them to the private sphere in order to establish a rational consensus in the public sphere. It is, rather, to attempt to mobilize those passions toward democratic designs." In summary, diversity is to be praised in whatever format it is expressed as long as it recognizes the right of the difference of the other or the adversary.

Jeffrey Robbins: Taking Zizek's theology seriously

Thank God that Jeffrey Robbins takes Zizek seriously. Robbins finds one of the problems with Milbank and Radical Orthodoxy is in their rather fanciful account of history by wishing modernity never happened because it opened the door to the disenchantment of the universe and thus nihilism. Unlike John Caputo, Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo, who see the death of the death of God theology as something to be celebrated, Milbank sees this as capitulating to the enemy. Zizek argues against both groups but appreciates ideas in both; in Caputo/Vattimo, their use of the weakness of God and in Milbank, his imaginative spiritual commitments. Still, he thinks their problems theologically are that they try to cover up the void and meaninglessness that one sees in human history and best described in the book of Job.


I think that one of the things that makes Zizek as a sort of theologian is his taking of evil seriously especially because the biblical narrative seems to take it serious; Robbins writes: "Perhaps it is the case that Žižek can come to his conclusions just as easily by Lacan or Hitchcock as by Christ, but there is no denying that when it comes to his analysis of the meaning of Christ‘s death on the cross he has the power to evoke the original scandal of the gospel as well, if not better, than any other contemporary thinker. And further, this reminder of the scandal of the gospel is an important and timely corrective to the triumphalistic tendencies of Christianity, as well as to the facile, self-help, or fundamentalist tendencies of contemporary religion. As Žižek writes, 'Christ‘s death on the Cross thus means that we should immediately ditch the notion of God as a transcendent caretaker who guarantees the happy outcome of our acts, the guarantee of historical teleology—Christ‘s death on the Cross is the death of this God, it repeats Job‘s stance, it refuses any deeper meaning‘ that obfuscates the brutal reality of historical catastrophes'".

Robbins ends his review by writing the following: "Our history may very well be a misbegotten path, but there is a great distance between the notion that the modern world is the historical triumph of the necessary outworking of a material logic and the notion that we may reverse or repudiate our history at our whim. It is true that our history is full of latent possibilities and of roads not taken, but the way to build a different and better future does not come by way of denial. Beware of the return of the repressed."

This is exactly my problem with Radical Orthodoxy. Better to read history via Benjamin's more radical history of the missed opportunities and thus in the present try to jump start those events than fall into the trap of blaming Protestantism wholly for the so-called misdirection of history.