hatzel
13th April 2012, 22:56
So basically I've heard some people posit that Marx's writings have a potently agonistic undercurrent. Others have suggested the inverse, that his conception of communism is anti-agonistic, that the abolition of classes will bring an end to political conflict and thus agonism is a fundamentally anti-/counter-/non-Marxian position. Or perhaps just irrelevant in a post-revolutionary society.
Whichever way you want to look at it, it seems that agonism - and similar positions - are increasingly taking hold in the theoretical milieu. Laclau and Mouffe's agonistic pluralism is the most obvious example (what with it openly using the word), yet Rancière's dissensus, pretty much anybody who talks about 'a politics of difference,' some people from the broad tradition(s) of synthesis anarchism / anarchism without adjectives / pananarchism / whatever else, those who read (too much?) Schmitt and/or Arendt...well yeah, they're all vaguely similar, I guess, under the same umbrella...
So let's...talk about agonism and its relevance for leftist politics or something...?
Whichever way you want to look at it, it seems that agonism - and similar positions - are increasingly taking hold in the theoretical milieu. Laclau and Mouffe's agonistic pluralism is the most obvious example (what with it openly using the word), yet Rancière's dissensus, pretty much anybody who talks about 'a politics of difference,' some people from the broad tradition(s) of synthesis anarchism / anarchism without adjectives / pananarchism / whatever else, those who read (too much?) Schmitt and/or Arendt...well yeah, they're all vaguely similar, I guess, under the same umbrella...
So let's...talk about agonism and its relevance for leftist politics or something...?