Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
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From Hope to Nihilism<br />
96<br />
DEMOCRACY TODAY<br />
Is an agonistic democracy enough to establish a politics of passions<br />
and, ultimately, hope? It is certainly a step in the good direction. It is<br />
probably true that emphasizing the importance of contestation leads to<br />
more genuine pluralism. And this pluralism will certainly lead to more<br />
passionate political debates. But can it offer hope? At first glance we can<br />
say it <strong>do</strong>es, because an agonistic model of democracy offers alternatives<br />
to the existing order. Yet what are these alternatives worth? Are they<br />
worth investing our desires and passions in them? Having an alternative<br />
<strong>do</strong>es not automatically lead to hope. Something more is needed. In the<br />
following paragraph, I will try to explain what is missing in Laclau’s and<br />
Mouffe’s theory and why this leads to nihilism rather than hope.<br />
In Laclau’s and Mouffe’s political ontology and in Mouffe’s concept<br />
of agonistic democracy the notion of impossibility occupies a central<br />
place. From an ontological perspective, as it was stated above, society<br />
as such is impossible, and an agonistic democracy accepts and cultivates<br />
this impossibility. This means that there can never be a perfectly<br />
harmonious or just society. It is ontologically impossible, and being<br />
democratic means accepting this impossibility without reservations.<br />
So, being democratic implies giving up on striving for a perfectly just<br />
society, that is, utopia. Utopia has finally become a u-topos, ‘a place<br />
that <strong>do</strong>es not exist’. The question, however, is whether utopia is not<br />
a necessary illusion for every hope? And can an agonistic democracy<br />
which establishes a new left-right division even exist without having<br />
some glimpses of utopia?<br />
First of all, when Mouffe defends the re-institution of the left-right<br />
division in society, she seems to forget one crucial dimension. The left<br />
has always been driven by a utopian spirit. The goal has always been<br />
a society without classes, without capitalism, inhabited by free and<br />
equal people. Of course, people within the left disagreed about how to<br />
reach this state, what it should look like, and thousands of other things.<br />
But it cannot be denied that there always existed, somewhere in the<br />
background, this utopian hope. This leftist utopian hope collapsed<br />
after 1989 and the left lost itself in an intellectual crisis that continues<br />
today. By emphasizing the impossibility of society, Lalcau and Mouffe<br />
<strong>do</strong> not solve this crisis. On the contrary, they contribute to it.