Chantal Mouffe

Chantal Mouffe's writings have been innovatory with respect to democratic theory, Marxism and feminism. Her work derives from, and has always been engaged with, contemporary political events and intellectual debates. This sense of conflict informs both the methodological and substantive propositions she offers. Determinisms, scientific or otherwise, and ideologies, Marxist or feminist, have failed to survive her excoriating critiques. In a sense she is the original post-Marxist, rejecting economisms and class-centric analyses, and the original post-feminist, more concerned with the varieties of 'identity politics' than with any singularities of 'women's issues'.

While Mouffe's concerns with power and discourse derive from her studies of Gramsci's theorisations of hegemony and the post-structuralisms of Derrida and Foucault, her reversal of the very terms through which political theory proceeds is very much her own. She centres conflict, not consensus, and disagreement, not finality. Whether philosophically perfectionist, or liberally reasonable, political theorists have been challenged by Mouffe to think again, and to engage with a new concept of 'the political' and a revived and refreshed notion of 'radical democracy'.

The editor has focused on her work in three key areas:

These opening chapters (one co-authored with Ernesto Laclau) do much more than produce an interpretation of Gramsci, and a critique of deterministic Marxist theory. Mouffe grips the basics of Marxism - class struggle and political activism - and challenges the very presumption that it, or any indeed theory, can make 'foundational' claims to which 'correct' practice must conform. Hers is a theorisation of contingency, relationality and openness to contestation. Mouffe's lively engagements with the guardians of traditional Marxism generated a provocative but profound explication of the concepts of discourse and power.

Having settled accounts with Marxism, Mouffe moved on in political and theoretical terms to engage the wider communities involved with democratising politics and democratic theory. She did this by deploying her insights into hegemony and identity in energising critiques of contemporary theorists of pluralism and citizenship. Targeting idealist visions of 'ideal speech', feminist naturalisations of femaleness, and liberal obsessions with inclusion, Mouffe set up serious challenges to presumptions of neutrality, rationality and impartiality, while engaging with 'on the ground' notions of community, democracy and activism.

In this final set of chapters we see Mouffe moving from critical to positive engagement, challenging political theorists not simply to acknowledge antagonism but to engage with a democratising politics. This necessitates envisioning conflict as properly between adversaries, rather than enemies, thus making a presumption of continuing disagreement rather than annihiliation. Ever the controversialist, Mouffe drew on selected ideas from Carl Schmitt - while explicitly divorcing these from his repugnant political views - as a way of explicating an 'agonistic' model of democracy.

The volume concludes with a new interview with Chantal Mouffe.