Showing posts with label theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theory. Show all posts

15 September 2009

on convergence

Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox (London, 2005)

p. 16, n. 3:

"Once more my reflection dovetails with the work of William Connolly, who--in Identity/Difference (Ithaca, 1991) and The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis, 1995)--argues for a 'politics of paradox'. While we put the accent on different aspects, since Connolly is particularly interested in bringing to the fore what he calls the 'paradox of difference' and I am specially concerned with the paradox of liberal democracy, our approaches converge on many important points. We both consider that it is vital for a pluralist democratic politics to expose and acknowledge paradoxes instead of trying to conceal or transcend them through appeals to rationality or community."

c.f. Connolly's anti-rationalist stance in Why I Am Not a Secularist (Minnesota, 2000), and particularly the "visceral register," relevant here to Mouffe's agonistic pluralism.