Chantal Mouffe, as we
have briefly mentioned before, has another concept, the adversary ranking in
terms of its effect on the political, between Schmitt’s Feind (enemy)
and the competitor as the liberalists way of understanding the political. As it
should clearly be reckoned, the adversary ultimately brings out the reality in
which the conflict has to lose its weight on the political. The main attempt in
Mouffe’s understanding of the political is, of necessity, to stay within the
limits of democracy (in Grenzen der Demokratie). Mouffe’s approach is
quite useful to posit that the conflict between different poles in politics,
or, in political realm in which political practices occur, can be posed a
perpetual and infinite concept. In other words, it is impossible to refuse the
very existence of the conflict in politics. However, that, from which Mouffe’s
understanding suffers, is the softening of concept of the conflict between
poles in politics. What it does mean is not the refusal of the concept, but the
vain enthusiasm of staying within the limits of democracy.
Mouffe does pose
Canetti’s views on the parliamentary system through which we, by voting,
witness the renunciation of the death in this system, a renunciation by which
the antagonism is perpetually turned into the agonism. As she clearly depicts,
“This is an excellent example of how enemies can be transformed into
adversaries, and we see here very clearly how, thanks to democratic
institutions, conflicts can be staged in a way which is not antagonistic but
agonistic. … Think for instance of the case of Germany and the way in which,
with the collapse of parliamentary politics, the Jews became an antagonistic
‘they’. This, I think, is something worth meditating on for left-wing opponents
of parliamentary democracy!” Chantal Mouffe’s argumentation against rationalist
liberal view is acceptable in regard to approval of the plurality continuing to
exist still and to the myth of the end of the history. However, it is quite
important to ask her appearance of idea of the necessary consensus in modern
era. It does not directly drop out of the sky. Even in Germany in 1930s, the
process ending up with totalitarianism is a result of alleged parliamentary
system. Thus, her approach to the political clearly razors the link between the
collapse of parliamentary system and its causes. It is very possible to think
of the parliamentary system as a self-destructive system.
Mouffe benefits from
Canetti’s reflections on the phenomenon of the ‘crowd’ as a component of
unification of social agents. In this sense, the social agent should be
conceived as an individual having two different drives in itself. These drives
are, respectively, towards individuality and distinctiveness, and, towards
being a part of a ‘crowd’ occurring the ‘fusion with the masses’. By doing so,
appearance of some ideologies, i.e. nationalism which has a great effect on its
stakeholders, or, much more proper than that, on its companions, can be
redefined. What is quite clear is that these ideologies are able to put a
belief into hearts of its companions, or, better to claim, to have
correspondence with passions of those people relying on it.
Her claim rests upon two
instincts unveiled by Freud in his Civilization and its Discontents. As
it is known, this book was written after the WWI took place and Freud was
obliged to add a negative instinct, namely the ‘death instinct’, to his primary
‘Eros’ or the ‘life instinct’. That could be understood as the effect of
massive war on Freud, and, of course, on the psychoanalytic theory. As Freud (1961,
p. 111) explicates, “The command to love our neighbours as ourselves is the
strongest defence there is against human aggressiveness and it is a superlative
example of the unpsycho-logical attitude of the cultural super-ego. The command
is impossible to fulfil; such an enormous inflation of love can only lower its
value and not remedy the evil.” According to Schmitt, this command cannot even
be counted as a component of the political. However, Mouffe reduces the
political to the level of individual instincts. Thus, it is not enough to take
these two instincts from Freud to legitimate the concept of agonism. Obviously,
there is a link between individual instincts and political behaviours; however,
massive movements or grouping can never be reduced to this.
REFERENCES
Freud, S., (1961), Civilization
and its Discontents, [Tr. Peter Strachey], W. W. Norton.
Mouffe, C., (2005), On the
Political, New York: Routledge.
