Post-Foundational Political Thought Taking on the Political Series Editors: Benjamin Arditi and Jeremy Valentine International Advisory Editors: Michael Dillon and Michael J. Shapiro Titles in the Taking on the Political series include: Polemicization: The Contingency of the Commonplace Benjamin Arditi and Jeremy Valentine Post-Marxism Versus Cultural Studies: Theory, Politics and Intervention Paul Bowman Untimely Politics Samuel A. Chambers Speaking Against Number: Heidegger, Language and the Politics of Calculation Stuart Elden Cinematic Political Thought Michael Shapiro Politics and Aesthetics: Style, Emotion and Mediation Jon Simons Post-Foundational Political Thought Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau Oliver Marchart Edinburgh University Press # Oliver Marchart, 2007 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in 11 on 13 Sabon by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore and printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 2497 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 2498 0 (paperback) The right of Oliver Marchart to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Expanded Contents List vii Introduction: On the Absent Ground of the Social 1 1 The Contours of ‘Left Heideggerianism’: Post-Foundationalism and Necessary Contingency 11 2 Politics and the Political: Genealogy of a Conceptual Difference 35 3 Retracing the Political Difference: Jean-Luc Nancy 61 4 The Machiavellian Moment Re-Theorized: Claude Lefort 85 5 The State and the Politics of Truth: Alain Badiou 109 6 The Political and the Impossibility of Society: Ernesto Laclau 134 7 Founding Post-Foundationalism: A Political Ontology 154 Bibliography 179 Index 193 Expanded Contents List Introduction: On the Absent Ground of the Social 1 1 The Contours of ‘Left Heideggerianism’: Post-Foundationalism and Necessary Contingency 11 1.1 Anti-Foundationalism and Post-Foundationalism 11 1.2 The ‘Quasi-Transcendental Turn’ 13 1.3 Heidegger: Event, Moment, Freedom, Dif-ference 18 1.4 The ‘Grounding Question’ regarding the Ontological Difference 22 1.5 Contingency 25 1.6 Moment and Constellation 31 2 Politics and the Political: Genealogy of a Conceptual Difference 35 2.1 The Political Paradox 35 2.2 The Associative Political: the Arendtian Trait 38 2.3 The Dissociative Political: the Schmittian Trait 41 2.4 Neutralization, Colonization and Sublimation of the Political 44 2.5 The Conceptual Difference: a Diachronic View 48 2.6 The Politicization of Concepts and the Concept of the Political 52 2.7 The Crisis of the Social – or Why Conceptual Nominalism is Not Enough 56 3 Retracing the Political Difference: Jean-Luc Nancy 61 3.1 Philosophy and the Political: the Deconstruction of the Political 61 3.2 The ‘Retreat’ of the Political 63 3.3 La Politique and le Politique 67 viii Expanded Contents List 3.4 Community and the Political Difference 69 3.5 The Moment of the Political: Event 74 3.6 The Danger of Philosophism and the Necessity of a ‘First Philosophy’ 78 4 The Machiavellian Moment Re-Theorized: Claude Lefort 85 4.1 Thinking, Philosophy, Science 85 4.2 Politics and the Political 88 4.3 Conflict as Foundation: Society’s Double Division 92 4.4 The Machiavellian Moment according to Lefort 96 4.5 The Real as Disturbance and the Imaginary as Concealment 99 4.6 Democracy as ‘Ontic Institutionalization’ of the Originary Division 103 5 The State and the Politics of Truth: Alain Badiou 109 5.1 Against Political Philosophy as a Philosophy of the Political 109 5.2 Politics of the Real 115 5.3 A ‘Politics’ of Truth: Equality and Justice 120 5.4 The Grace of Contingency and the Evil of Foundationalism 124 5.5 The Danger of Ethicism 128 6 The Political and the Impossibility of Society: Ernesto Laclau 134 6.1 The Impossibility of Society 134 6.2 Social Sedimentation and the Event of Reactivation 138 6.3 Politics and the Political – a ‘Laclauian’ Difference 142 6.4 Discourse Theory as Political Ontology 146 6.5 The Seventh Day of Rest 150 7 Founding Post-Foundationalism: A Political Ontology 154 7.1 Towards a Philosophy of the Political 154 7.2 Post-Foundationalism and Democracy 156 7.3 The Political Displacement of Politics 159 7.4 Political Thought as First Philosophy 162 7.5 The Political Difference as Political Difference 169 Bibliography 179 Index 193 Introduction: On the Absent Ground of the Social The controversy over the concept of the political is of a more serious nature than yet another familyquarrel among paradigms; it is about the relevance or irrelevance of political philosophy to our times. Agnes Heller (1991: 336) Thefollowingstudyonpost-foundationalpoliticalthoughtnavigates around a curious difference, which has assumed some currency in recent continental and Anglo-American political thought: the differ- ence between politics and the political, or, in French, between la politique and le politique, or again, in German, between Politik and das Politische. As is well known, a distinctive notion of the political wasdevelopedfirstintheGerman-speakingworld,whereitwasCarl Schmittwhofamously–infamouslyforsome–soughttodifferentiate thepoliticalfromotherdomainsofthesocial,includingthedomainof politicsinthenarrowsense(seeChapter2).In2001,thenotionofthe ‘political’, as explicitly differentiated from ‘politics’, has even been institutionally canonized, with Pierre Rosanvallon taking up a pres- tigious chair for the ‘modern and contemporary history of the political’ at the Colle`ge de France (see Rosanvallon 2003). In the German-speaking world, the two most important historical diction- ariestakeaccountofthedifferencebetweenPolitikanddasPolitische (Sellin 1978; Vollrath 1989), and in the English-speaking world a strongnotionofthepoliticalasdifferentiatedfromthe‘weak’notion ofpoliticshasbecomeasortofhouseholdconceptforthosequarters of Anglo-American political theory that are receptive to continental thought (Beardsworth 1996; Dillon 1996; Stavrakakis 1999; Arditi and Valentine 1999; Williams 2000).