Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

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