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DEMOCRACY, HOPE AND NIHILISM
ON THE CONCEPT OF HOPE IN LACLAU AND MOUFFE
Thomas Decreus
SINCE THOMAS MORE’S UTOPIA, many thinkers have emphasized the importance
of a utopian or hopeful perspective. Most have even stressed the
unavoidability of this perspective. Oscar Wilde, for example, called
utopia ‘the country at which humanity is always landing’. [1] That line
of thought is also the one Ernesto Laclau seems to start from when he
states: ‘without hope there is no society, because no society is able to
cope with what simply exists.’ [2] Chantal Mouffe, with whom Laclau
wrote Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, also emphasizes the importance
of hope in politics. In her latest book, On the Political, she makes a plea
for a passionate politics, one that can offer hope to the people. Yet,
despite this stress on a politics of hope, both authors theorize starting
from a political ontology in which hope seems to have no place. In
order to show this, I will first highlight some essential features of the
political ontology developed by Laclau and Mouffe. This will enable us
to see why this ontology is very difficult to combine with the concept
of hope, but rather leads to the opposite of hope namely, nihilism. I do
not wish to stick with this purely negative conclusion, however, but
seek to show how hope is still possible despite the nihilism inherent
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DEMOCRACY, HOPE
AND NIHILISM
Thomas Decreus
1
Wilde (2001) 141.
2
Zournazi (2002) 128