Community beyond hegemony? Liberal cosmopolitanism, generic emancipation and the political

Agamben, this Franciscan of ontology, prefers, to the affirmative becoming of truths, the delicate, almost secret persistence of life, what remains to one who no longer has anything; this forever sacrificed `bare life, both humble and essential, which conveys everything of which we - crushed by the crass commotion of powers - are capable of in terms of sense [35, p. 559] On the concept of bare life and its political significance, see [36], and for its use in IR [11; 28]..

What differentiates the two authors is the fact that Badiou's politics strives to transcend the situation by opposing the state in a series of acts whose preconditions are defined by the local context but which nevertheless resist any inclusion by virtue of being true to the revolutionary void of the event. As it is subtractive rather than destructive, it does not make opposing the Master its point of departure, but it is certainly ready to fight if the situation so demands. By contrast, Agamben's subtraction is equivalent to withdrawal: his subject lets the state remain as it is in its irreparable bankruptcy and engages in inoperative praxis which is incomprehensible from within the norms on which sovereign power rests. Whether this amounts to resistance or escapism and depoliticisation might be a question of definition, or simply of taste. Yet this concern must definitely accompany Agamben's political project - very much in the same way as Badiou's project is necessarily self-restrained by the requirement of self-reflection conceptualised as fidelity to an event.

This article has critically analysed a number of recent attempts to present theoretical grounds for thinking about a future cosmopolitan community. The key questions that shape the debate boil down to one crucial point: the possibility to conceive of politics that would be free of antagonism and therefore non-exclusionary. It makes no sense to question the existence of a universal human identity and therefore of humankind as a community, which is so visibly present in all types of everyday discourses and practices. However, as soon as we enter the political terrain, the notion of cosmopolitan identity that presupposes no difference at all - either within itself or in the form of exclusion - does not seem to be a logical possibility. This is acknowledged even by liberal universalists such as Abizadeh.

In the final analysis, the rationale of the whole exercise is to demonstrate that, contrary to Schmitt, antagonism is not a definitional feature of politics and thus to substantiate the feasibility of a cosmopolitan political community that is not based on exclusion and negativity. This critique does invalidate Schmitt's view of a political enemy as a `fighting collectivity of people' [2, p. 28]. Yet poststructuralist political theory has reworked this ontology by redefining antagonism as occurring between political positions rather than groups of individuals. In this case, we can conceive of a community whose identity does not depend on the explicit exclusion of any pre-given empirically identifiable group of individuals, but whose political existence nevertheless inevitably produces negative dynamic which results in specific instances of exclusion where concrete individuals are targeted depending on the circumstances. Nazi politics, for example, clearly and unambiguously excluded several concrete groups of individuals, first of all Jews. An attribute of Stalinism, on the contrary, was the exclusion of `enemies of the people', an indistinct category that potentially held everyone in its grip, from simple workers and peasants to top party leaders.

The defining moment here consists in the ontological hierarchy that lies at the core of liberal thought. For liberals, the autonomous individual pre-exists any social structures. Poststructuralism, on the contrary, explicitly rejects any pre-given hierarchies, which leaves us with an infinite expanse of differences where no specific type of units enjoys the privilege of existence before others. Since there is no genuine, primary identity that can serve as a starting point for community-building, antagonism remains the only constitutive force in identity politics. If liberals are unhappy with this image, they have to start their criticism at the ontological level instead of criticising poststructuralist inferences on the basis of an ontology that poststructuralism does not share.

If, on the contrary, we accept the poststructuralist perspective, we must conclude that a cosmopolitan identity is impossible, while the only way to imagine a cosmopolitan community consists in abandoning identitarian politics altogether. This possibility is suggested in the philosophical writings of Agamben and Badiou and elaborated by Prozorov. In both versions, generic emancipation starts with subtraction from the existing order of things, and thus with a refusal to associate political subjectivity with any identity whatsoever. The key question that arises in this connection is whether subtraction necessarily amounts to withdrawal, as Agambens inoperosity seems to suggest, or it can still take the form of purposeful action aimed at transcending the reality, antagonising at least some of its elements. In the former case, there is a danger of making one's political project irrelevant, while the more militant option stands on the verge of reverting back to the Hegelian dialectics and confronting the Master in a frontal antagonism. It must be noted, however, that the most pertinent empirical examples of generic politics, such as the `Not in Our Name' movement, come into existence through the logic of negativity and visibly antagonise certain segments of the mainstream political space. This evidence is certainly inconclusive, but it shifts the balance in favour of the opinion that genuine political praxis, in as much as it is generic, presupposes being prepared for antagonism - simply because the establishment of an inclusive generic community must revolutionise the existing political order, and this rebellion, whatever form it might take, is bound to cause resistance on the part of the Master.

References

1. Wendt, A. (2003), Why a World State Is Inevitable, European Journal of International Relations, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 491-542.

2. Schmitt, C. (1996), The Concept of the Political, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 162 p.

3. Prozorov, S. (2009), Generic Universalism in World Politics, International Theory, 2009, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 215-247.

4. Bull, H. (1977), The Anarchical Society. A Study of Order in World Politics, Columbia University Press, New York, xv+335 p.

5. Campbell, D. (1998), Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 289 p.

6. Mouffe, C. (2005), On the Political, Routledge, London and New York, 144 p.

7. Abizadeh, A. (2005), Does Collective Identity Presuppose an Other? On the Alleged Incoherence of Global Solidarity, American Political Science Review, vol. 99, no. 1, pp. 45-60.

8. Arditi, B. (2007), Post-Hegemony: Politics Outside the Usual Post-Marxist Paradigm, Contemporary Politics, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 205-226.

9. Rovane, C. (1997), The Bounds of Agency: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 272 p.

10. Mouffe, C. (2000), The Democratic Paradox, Verso, London, 192 p.

11. Vaughan-Williams, N. (2009), The Generalised Bio-Political Border? Re-Conceptualising the Limits of Sovereign Power, Review of International Studies, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 729-749.

12. Walker, R.B.J. (1993), Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, xii+233 p.

13. Walker, R.B.J. (2010), After the Globe, Before the World, Routledge, London and New York, 369 p.

14. Richter, H. (2019), Beyond the `other' as constitutive outside: The politics of immunity in Roberto Esposito and Niklas Luhmann, European Journal of Political Theory, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 216-237.

15. Laclau, E., Mouffe C. (1985), Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Verso, London, 197 p.

16. Badiou, A. (2005), Being and Event, Continuum, London and New York, 526 p.

17. Laclau, E. (1996), Emancipation(s), Verso, London, 124 p.

18. Mьller, K.B. (2018), Active Borders and Transnationalization of the Public Sphere in Europe: Examining Territorial and Symbolic Borders as a Source of Democratic Integration, Positive Identity, and Civic Learning, Alternatives, vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 119-136.

19. Errejon, I. and Mouffe, C. (2016), Podemos: In the Name of the People, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 160 p.

20. Staten, H. (1984), Wittgenstein and Derrida, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 184 p.

21. Wsver, O. (1998), Insecurity, Security and Asecurity in the West European Non-war Community, in Adler, E., Barnett, M. (eds), Security Communities, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 69-118.

22. Diez, T. (2004), Europe's Others and the Return of Geopolitics, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 319-335.

23. Joenniemi, P. (2007), Towards a European Union of Post-Security? Cooperation and Conflict, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 127-148.

24. Prozorov, S. (2011), The Other As Past and Present: Beyond the Logic of `Temporal Othering' in IR Theory, Review of International Studies, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 1273-1293.

25. Rumelili, B. (2008), Interstate Community-Building and the Identity / Difference Predicament, in Price, R. (ed.), Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 253-280.

26. Mouffe, C. (2009), Democracy in a Multipolar World, Millennium, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 549-561.

27. Laclau, E. (2005), On the Populist Reason, Verso, London, 276 p.

28. Prozorov, S. (2009), Giorgio Agamben and the End of History: Inoperative Praxis and the Interruption of the Dialectic, European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 523-542.

29. Badiou, A. (2006), Theoretical Writings, Continuum, London and New York, 292 p.

30. Interview with Alain Badiou (2006), Carceraglio, 16 October, available at: http://scentedgardens - fortheblind.blogspot.com/2006_10_15_scentedgardensfortheblind_archive.html (accessed: 26.01.2019).

31. Wright, C. (2008), Event or Exception? Disentangling Badiou from Schmitt, or, Towards a Politics of the Void, Theory and Event, vol. 11, no. 2, available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/240327 (accessed: 26.01.2019).

32. Prozorov, S. (2014), Ontology and World Politics, Routledge, London and New York, 132 p.

33. Agamben, G. (2005), The Coming Community, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London.

34. Agamben, G. (2000), Means Without End: Notes on Politics, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 168 p.

35. Badiou, A. (2009), Logics of Worlds, Continuum, London and New York, 640 p.

36. Agamben, G. (1998), Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 228 p.

Размещено на Allbest.ru