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
also 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:
- Hegemony: From Gramsci to ‘Post-Marxism’
- Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship and
Identity
- The Political: A Politics Beyond Consensus
The volume concludes with a new
interview with Chantal Mouffe.
