Abstract
This essay focuses on the intersection of democracy and diversity understood as rational diversity. By reflecting on Chantal Mouffe’s assessment of the current crisis of Western democracies, Markus Faltermeier develops an understanding of the current political conjuncture as an epistemological crisis of the liberal tradition in its neoliberal cloth. He delineates a conception of diversity as antagonism to hegemonic governmentalities and challenges the notion that diversity can be addressed adequately from the neoliberal rational consensus. By drawing on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Hannah Arendt, he develops an understanding of revolutionary democratic practice through freely articulated diversity.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that democracy is dying (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018); Edward Luce likewise foreshadows the downfall of liberal democracy (Luce 2017); and Yascha Mounk argues that liberal democracy is in a moment of dissolution (Mounk 2018); not only academics believe the model of liberal democracy to be in danger, similar assessments are made by newspapers and journals (Goldberg et al. 2018; Sheridan 2019).
- 2.
Diversity as concept has many faces and comes with a certain analytic vagueness. In public discourses it is mostly connected to notions of inclusion of discriminated or underprivileged groups, e.g. in the workplace. As an analytic tool in academia it is oftentimes used almost synonymously to concepts such as difference, pluralism, etc. Diversity thus relates to race, class, ethnicity, gender, disability, etc. While my understanding of diversity certainly relates to the aforementioned categories, I am particularly interested in the diversity of rationalities that these categories can produce in relation to hegemony. It is thus the attempt to grasp rationality itself as conditioned by and conditioning diversity as concept, e.g. in the production of subjectivity and narratives of the self or selves. For an introduction to the multiple discursive positions of diversity, see Vertovec (2015).
- 3.
Alasdair MacIntyre first developed his notion of traditions as bearer of reason in his 1978 essay “Epistemological Crisis, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science” (2006a). The most thorough development of his theory is to be found in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988). The argument remains important throughout his work.
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- 5.
What I am suggesting is thus different from those concepts of diversity governance that enquire into possible ways to create better instruments and modes of representation and participation to, e.g. groups based on certain ethnic, gender, or race identities. Such modes of governing diversity are presented, e.g. by Charles Taylor in Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition (1992) or by Will Kymlicka in Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (2003). For an overview of these and similar approaches to government of diversity see O’Leary, “Governing Diversity” (2015). I am more interested in the differing rationalities the positionality of these identities produce, how they interact with hegemonic utterances of rationality, and how they are regulated and governed by hegemonic formations.
- 6.
The concept of tolerance of ambiguity has been developed in connection with psychological enquiries into identity formation and interaction processes. Cf. Adrian Furnham und Tracy Ribchester, Tolerance of Ambiguity: A Review of the Concept, Its Measurement and Applications (1995). Thomas Bauer has developed the concept into an analytical tool to describe the practice in pre-nineteenth-century Islam that older commentaries to Quran allowed for differing and conflicting interpretations. Underlying this practice was the idea that the quest for truth has been understood as a process and not as dogmatic. Cf. Thomas Bauer, Die Kultur der Ambiguität: eine andere Geschichte des Islam (2011).
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- 8.
“Governmentality” is a concept with a complex history of interpretative reception. One of the best accounts in connection with political rationality comes in my opinion from Wendy Brown. She states: “The term is also intended to signify the modern importance of governing over ruling, and the critical role of mentality in governing as opposed to the notion that power and ideas are separate phenomena. Governmentality moves away from sovereign and state-centered notions of political power (though it does not eschew the state as a site of governmentality), from the division between violence and law, and from a distinction between ideological and material power. Finally governmentality features state formation of subjects rather than state control of subjects; put slightly differently, it features control achieved through formation rather than repression or punishment” (2003, para. 2).
- 9.
Foucault and Lemke particularly focus on the continuities and differences between “Ordo-Liberals” and “Neo-Liberals,” who differ in terms of their interpretation of the concrete relation between politics and the economy. However, they share in the view that political rationality should hold a special place for the economy—or that the economy is the essential provider of the common good (Lemke 2001, 197f.).
- 10.
It is commonly assumed that neoliberalism emerged after the repudiation of Keynesian-Welfare State economics as political force (cf. Harvey 2007; Brown 2015, Ch. 1; Mouffe 2018, Ch. 1). The ideological development of its specific understanding of the “liberal” and the “neo” in neoliberalism, however, began as early as the 1920s (Biebricher 2012, 24–31).
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The term “plain person” is used by MacIntyre to contrast a person, who is participating, e.g. in a particular discourse or practice, without being necessarily professionally educated in it. A plain person might ask questions of philosophical depth without being aware of the philosophical underpinnings this question might raise. In “Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy: Rules, Virtues and Goods,” MacIntyre writes: “For, on an Aristotelian view, the questions posed by the moral philosopher and the questions posed by the plain person are to an important degree inseparable. And it is with questions that each begins, for each is engaged in enquiry, the plain person often unsystematically asking: ‘What is my good?’ and ‘What action will achieve it?’ and the moral philosopher systematically enquiring ‘What is the good for human beings?’ and ‘What kinds of actions will achieve the good?’ Any persistent attempt to answer either of these sets of questions soon leads to asking the other” (136f.).
- 13.
The notion of fragmented selves and multiple identities also relates to conceptions of intersectionality. Kimberly Crenshaw developed this approach in an attempt to describe that the specific positionality of black women cannot be grasped by either terms—black or woman. Instead the relevant moment is the intersection between both concepts, between both modes of oppression and subordination. While this certainly touches upon issues that my concept of rational antagonism and hybrid selves treats, I am more interested in the question which outcomes and opportunities for antagonism intersectionality produces in the altercation with hegemony (cf. Crenshaw 2008).
- 14.
“Hybridity” is a core concept in the postcolonial theory in the analysis of cultural diversity. It is, at the same time, also a concept that is heavily disputed and sometimes challenged. Mikhail Bakhtin understood hybridity as “polyphony,” suggesting that multivocal language operations can effectively disrupt and transform the hierarchical power relations in society (cf. Bakhtin 1981, 1984). Probably the most influential development of the concept comes from Homi Bhabha. He associates “hybridity” with an ambivalent space via which we can recognize hybridity as empowerment in which cultural diversity operates (cf. Bhabha 1994). My conception of hybrid selves is indebted to Bakhtin’s and Bhabha’s conceptions of hybridity in the sense that it is pivotal in constructing those notions of selves foundational to rational antagonism—meaning that antagonism to rational hegemony can itself be posited as rational speech-acts—thus producing a polyphony of rationalities in lieu of one, monolithic and universalist conception of reason. For a short introduction to “Hybridity” in postcolonial theory see Ashcroft et al. (2007).
- 15.
“[T]raditions at certain periods actually require and need revolutions for their continuance” (MacIntyre 2006a, 12).
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Faltermeier, M. (2020). Political Practice, Hybrid Selves, and Rational Antagonism. In: Lütge, C., Lütge, C., Faltermeier, M. (eds) The Praxis of Diversity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26078-1_5
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