Politics and the Political: Dis-Associative Economy of Difference

Abstract

The article analyzes political difference as the ontological foundation of post-foundational political theory and examines its implications for understanding contemporary depoliticizing tendencies. As a point of departure the authors use the thesis that the distinction between politics and the political should be understood not as a terminological differentiation, but rather as an expression of the ontic-ontological difference, which points to the absence of an ultimate foundation of society. The article identifies two main interpretations of the political: the dissociative and the associative. By comparing these interpretations and revealing their immanent interconnection, the authors stake out a more complex hypothesis about the dis-associative nature of the political. According to this hypothesis, the political is understood as an economy of difference: the inclusion and exclusion of significant differences and the expansion or limitation of the political community. The authors develop their argument in three stages, which defines the structure of the article. The first part reconstructs the historical and theoretical coordinates of the discourse on political difference within post-foundational political theory and defines the internal structure of political difference through the interrelation of event, hegemony, and antagonism. The second part offers a typology of the two interpretations of the political, dissociative and associative. The third part unfolds the political as dis-associative: as a mode of the economy of difference that stabilizes the inclusion and exclusion of significant differences within the political community.