Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically

Annotation

When the neutralising consensus hailed by contemporary forms of social democracy has clearly failed in representing the pluralism of society and its demands, Mouffe’s agonism seems more urgent than ever to re-animate politically the public sphere. In this publication she updates her project of returning the political to the heart of democracy by understanding it as an arena for productive conflictuality, in different dimensions (international politics, cosmopolitanism, Europe, etc.). She further devotes a chapter to artistic and cultural practices, which she regards as instrumental in the construction of a counter-hegemony. Agonistic artistic practices, she argues, mobilise affects and shape novel subjectivities against dominant powers, while seeking to reactivate the political in public space in alliance with other critical experiences – and this is why they should endeavour to dispute the institutional realm.

Julia Morandeira Arrizabalaga

In my opinion, those who work in the field of art and culture fall under the category of 'organic intellectuals', to put it in Gramsci’s terms.