Radical democracy and antagonism. Interview with Chantal Mouffe

Abstract

With extreme clarity, Chantal Mouffe outlines her oeuvre. She starts with Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, written with Ernesto Laclau, and ends on their current research on the link between social movements and representative democracy. At each stage of this overview Mouffe identifies her intellectual adversaries: Her idea of radical democracy rose up against essentialist Marxism that did not allow the connection between redistributive struggles and those concerning the recognition of identities. The model of an agonistic democracy was thought against moral and economic liberalism, whose model of democracy leaves no space for political and antagonism; that is, something essential to the very idea of democracy. On a more practical political level, Mouffe criticizes Occupy and los indignados because of their rejection of the institutions of representative democracy. As opposed to them, she praises Syriza and Podemos precisely because of their hegemonic project of radical democracy which takes place within liberal representative democracy.