Suchergebnisse

Zusammenfassung
Der Beitrag untersucht das Verhältnis aktivistischer Kunst zu den Eigenlogiken des Kunstfelds einerseits und der Politik andererseits. Es wird postuliert, dass aktivistische Kunstpraktiken, sofern sie zwar in die Politik wechseln, aber teils doch Kunst bleiben, ein "dialektisches" Verhältnis zu künstlerischem Autonomieanspruch einerseits und politischer Heteronomiezumutung andererseits entwickeln. Die Integration von Inseln der Autonomie in das Reich politischer Heteronomie kann demokratiepolitisch von Wert sein, sofern sie sozialen Bewegungen einen Ankerpunkt liefert, von dem aus sie ihre eigenen Gewissheiten hinterfragen können, was zugleich den politischen Vorstellungshorizont zu erweitern hilft.

Abstract
Der Aufsatz kritisiert den unrealistischen Politikbegriff vieler der aktuell boomenden Theorien politischer Imagination. Mit dem Ziel der Entwicklung einer realistischen politischen Theorie der Imagination wird der Begriff der politischen Einbildungskraft mit dem der Entscheidung konterkariert und das Werk von Cornelius Castoriadis mit dem von Ernesto Laclau kontrastiert. Anhand einer Diskussion der Subjekt- und Entscheidungstheorie Laclaus in ihrem Verhältnis zur Imagination erweist sich, dass Dezisions- und Imaginationstheorien im Rahmen eines realistischen Ansatzes aufeinander verwiesen bleiben müssen, denn ihre jeweiligen Defizite, die sich postfundamentalistisch auf die ontologische Defizienz der Gründe zurückführen lassen, können nur im wechselseitigen Verweis von Imagination auf Dezision und von Dezision auf Imagination bearbeitet werden.

This article contrasts the liberal idea of a "sleeping sovereign" with the democratic one of a "sovereign awakened." The right to protest is defended as an expression of popular sovereignty, envisaged as a right to popular "self-awakening" instigated by an imperative call of duty not reducible to a set of liberal individual rights. In contrast to some approaches of agonistic democracy, it is argued that democratically breaking the rules of the game of liberal democracy is an indispensable dimension of democratic protest. Taking into account Étienne Balibar's thoughts about a rule-breaking right to have rights, it is suggested we revisit the French Constitution of 1793, in which a popular duty to insurrection is enshrined. The article ends with the proposal to supplement insurrectionary accounts of sovereignty with a Gramscian view that would insist on the necessity of hegemonically constructing a democratic "collective will."

This contribution replies to a set of articles by Paula Biglieri, Allan Dreyer Hansen, Vassilios Paipais, David Payne, Gloria Perelló and Dimitris Vardoulakis about the book 'Thinking Antagonism. Political Ontology after Laclau' (Edinburgh University Press 2018) by Oliver Marchart. The author positions his own ontology of the political, i.e. of antagonism, in relation to the work of Ernesto Laclau and within the intellectual context of the Essex School. He thereby reflects on the role of the university, the transferential relationship between academic 'master' and 'disciple', the question of what is 'proper' to a given thought, agonistic democracy, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and what 'thinking' could mean from a political perspective.

Oliver Marchart, Contribution to the discussion Thinking the Political: After the 'Ontological Turn' , ICI Berlin, 25 September 2019, video recording, mp4, 30:01

Abstract
Die Biennalisierung trägt nicht nur zur Akkumulation von Kapital bei, sondern auch zur Konstruktion lokaler, nationaler und kontinentaler Identität. Darin schließt das Format der Biennale, wie oft beobachtet wurde, direkt an jenes der Weltausstellungen an, die das innere nation building der Kolonial- und Industrienationen des 19. Jahrhunderts institutionell unterfütterten. Die Weltausstellungen waren ihrerseits riesige Hegemoniemaschinen der – westlichen, global herrschenden – Dominanzkultur. Globalität war hier aus der Perspektive untereinander konkurrierender europäischer National- und das heißt Kolonialstaaten gedacht und somit fest im Westen zentriert. Das Format der Biennalisierung ist jedoch nicht allein ein Ausläufer des europäischen Kolonialismus, sondern muss zugleich auch als Ausläufer des historischen Gegenprojekts von Dekolonisierungskämpfen verstanden werden.

In this article, it is argued that Rancière's theory of history should be located in the eld of political theory rather than historiography. To substantiate this claim, the historico-political function of naming (of the people) or self-naming (by the people), as presented by Rancière in the Names of History, is discussed and compared to the explicitly political role attributed to naming by Ernesto Laclau in On Populist Reason. It is argued that in both cases an inner dialectic can be observed between plebs and populus (or demos) which also gures in the theories of Giorgio Agamben and Alain Brossat. However, in Agamben and Brossat the plebs is presented in such messianic or insurrectionist terms that any connection to the world of real politics or to the category of the political is lost. On this account, Rancière's and Laclau's theories fare better, but, conversely, suffer from what can be described as a normative deficit. As a remedy, a post-foundational theory of democracy is proposed in which the ethical and the political are seen as two separate but intersecting dimensions of democracy. ; In this article, it is argued that Rancière's theory of history should be located in the eld of political theory rather than historiography. To substantiate this claim, the historico-political function of naming (of the people) or self-naming (by the people), as presented by Rancière in the Names of History, is discussed and compared to the explicitly political role attributed to naming by Ernesto Laclau in On Populist Reason. It is argued that in both cases an inner dialectic can be observed between plebs and populus (or demos) which also gures in the theories of Giorgio Agamben and Alain Brossat. However, in Agamben and Brossat the plebs is presented in such messianic or insurrectionist terms that any connection to the world of real politics or to the category of the political is lost. On this account, Rancière's and Laclau's theories fare better, but, conversely, suffer from what can be described as a normative deficit. As a remedy, a post-foundational theory of democracy is proposed in which the ethical and the political are seen as two separate but intersecting dimensions of democracy.

In this article I contend that Claude Lefort is both a contingency theorist and a post-foundationalist. Both contingency and the emptiness of the place of power indicate that society is not built on a stable ground: they designate the absence of social or historical necessity, the absence of a positive foundation of society. What they also designate, though, is that the dimension of ground does not simply disappear since it remains present as absent. This is the point where democracy enters the stage. Our interpretation of Lefort's work will substantiate the following claim: Democracy must be understood as the ontic recognition of society's ontological condition. By this we understand the institutional recognition and discursive actualization of the absence of a positive ground of society. By actualizing the absent ground within the particular institutional, cultural and discursive dispositive of democracy, a place, or rather: a 'non-place' is symbolically allocated to it. It is obvious, we must add immediately, that this can only be a paradoxical enterprise since it is impossible to fully institutionalize something purely negative and absent into a presence. Therefore, democracy has to aim at the recognition of absence as absence, that is, the recognition of the impossibility of founding society once and for all. By accepting the logic of groundlessness and self-division as constitutive, the dimension of ground does not disappear. Rather, it is emptied of any positive content and retained as something which is absent. This is what makes democracy - and Lefort's theory of democracy - post-foundational. For, unlike any other form of society, democracy is founded upon the recognition of the very absence of any definite foundation. ; V pričujočem članku izhajam iz teze, da je Claude Lefort teoretik kontingence in hkrati postfundacionalist. Tako kontingentnost kot praznost mesta oblasti napotujeta na to, da družba ni zgrajena na trdnem temelju: opozarjata na odsotnost družbene oziroma zgodovinske nujnosti, odsotnost pozitivnega temelja družbe. S tem pa hkrati opozarjata, da razsežnost temelja ni preprosto izginila, kajti navzoča je prav skozi svojo odsotnost. Prav na tej točki pa stopi demokracija na prizorišče. Naša interpretacija Lefortovega dela si bo prizadevala upravičiti tole trditev: demokracijo moramo razumeti kot ontično prizpoznanje ontološke pogojenosti družbe. S tem mislimo na insitutcionalno pripoznanje in diskurzivno aktualizacijo odsotnosti pozitivnega temelja družbe. Z aktualizacijo odsotnega temelja v okviru posebnega institucionalnega, kulturnega in diskurzivnega dispozitiva demokracije, je družbi simbolno dodeljeno mesto ali rajši 'ne-mesto' njenega temelja. Ni dvoma, da gre tu, kot moramo takoj pristaviti, za paradoksno podjetje, ker je nemogoče popolnoma institucionalno prezentificirati nekaj čisto negativnega oziroma odsotnega. Demokracija si mora potemtakem prizadevati za pripoznanje odsotnosti kot odsotnosti, to je, za pripoznanje, da družbe ni mogoče enkrat za vselej utemeljiti. S sprejemanjem logike breztemeljnosti, samorazcepa kot nečesa konstitutivnega, razsežnost temelja ne izgine povsem. Prej bi morali reči, da je ta razsežnost očiščena vsake pozitivne vsebine in ohranjena kot nekaj odsotnega. Prav v tem smislu je mogoče reči, da je demokracija - in z njo Lefortova teorija demokracije - postfundacionalistična. Kajti v nasprotju z drugimi družbenimi formami, demokracija temelji prav na pripoznanju odsotnosti vsakršnega dokončnega temelja.

The category of political resp. artistic avant-garde – as being progressive, sectarian and dogmatic – is under assault. However, there is no emancipatory politics feasible without any Jacobin element. In order to develop a post-avant-garde (as opposed to both avant-garde and non-avant-garde) democratic strategy everything depends on our ability to establish the paradoxes of a non-teleological progressivism, an empty and relative universalism and an asymmetric particularism. This search for a political stand, which has not yet lost any idea of the New as the empty signifier of (Non-)Order, may lead us to what Laclau and Mouffe have called »radical and plural democracy«. Such hegemonic pluralism might be the alternative to muddy strategical pragma (Lenin), clean messianic theory (popularized Derrida) and po-mo happy dispersion (Lyotard, et alii). ; The category of political resp. artistic avant-garde – as being progressive, sectarian and dogmatic – is under assault. However, there is no emancipatory politics feasible without any Jacobin element. In order to develop a post-avant-garde (as opposed to both avant-garde and non-avant-garde) democratic strategy everything depends on our ability to establish the paradoxes of a non-teleological progressivism, an empty and relative universalism and an asymmetric particularism. This search for a political stand, which has not yet lost any idea of the New as the empty signifier of (Non-)Order, may lead us to what Laclau and Mouffe have called »radical and plural democracy«. Such hegemonic pluralism might be the alternative to muddy strategical pragma (Lenin), clean messianic theory (popularized Derrida) and po-mo happy dispersion (Lyotard, et alii).

"Oliver Marchart stellt ein Programm der 'radikalen Demokratie' vor, die er zur Aufgabe gegenwärtiger politischer Theorie und Praxis erklärt. Er schlüsselt die verschiedenen, mit der Französischen Revolution ins Werk gesetzten demokratischen Strömungen auf und verfolgt sie durch die Ideengeschichte. Dies erlaubt es ihm, die radikale Demokratie, in der Demokratie zum Selbstzweck wird, als Antwort auf die postfundamentalistischen Erschütterungen in der politischen Theorie und die krisenhaften Erschütterungen in der Wirklichkeit herauszuarbeiten." (Autorenreferat)