Planning Theory
2015, Vol. 14(4) 384 –403
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DOI: 10.1177/1473095214533959
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On the other side of
“agonism”: “The enemy,”
the “outside,” and the
role of antagonism
Nikolai Roskamm
Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Abstract
This article takes issue with Chantal Mouffe’s concept of “agonistic pluralism.” With this
concept, Mouffe brings political theory to the field of “real politics.” In planning theory, the
concept of agonism has recently been used as an alternative to the consensual communicative
deliberative approach: The notion of agonism seems to be fit for replacing communicative theory
as the theoretical framework of planning theory. My point is that Mouffe’s proposed “agonistic
pluralism” has an internal and fundamental flaw and that the advocated “taming of antagonism into
agonism” is neither possible nor necessary. To clarify my hypothesis, I consider in a first step the
roots of Mouffe’s theory: Carl Schmitt’s notion of the political and his (in)famous friend/enemy
concept. Schmitt’s model is not only a main reference of Mouffe’s work but the very reason of her
calling for pluralistic agonism. In a second step, I turn to Ernesto Laclau’s political theory where
another version of antagonism model appears: the conceptualization of the “constitutive outside”
as irreducible reason of an endless hegemonic play of antagonistic forces. I show the difference
between Schmitt’s and Laclau’s models and argue that the rationale for a conceptualization of
agonism disappears with the latter. In my conclusion, I discuss whether and how antagonism
theory can be linked with planning theory without importing Mouffe’s short circuit.
Keywords
agonism, agonistic planning theory, antagonism, Carl Schmitt, Chantal Mouffe, constitutive
outside, Ernesto Laclau
Introduction
Recently, the issue of “agonism” has reached the field of urban studies. The source of this
debate is Chantal Mouffe’s conception of “agonistic pluralism” as a “tamed” relation of
Corresponding author:
Nikolai Roskamm, Technische Universität Berlin, B3, Hardenbergstr. 40A, 10623 Berlin, Germany.
Email: [email protected]
533959PLT 0010.1177/1473095214533959Planning TheoryRoskamm
research-article2014
Article
Roskamm 385
antagonism. Mouffe’s agonistic approach is particularly audible in some contributions of
planning theory (cf. Bäcklund and Mäntysalo, 2010; Bond, 2011; Gunder, 2003; Hillier,
2002, 2003, 2008, 2010; Mäntysalo, 2011; Ploger, 2004). The import of Mouffe’s (2000b)
concept—which she describes as “post-structuralist” or “post-structuralist informed” (p.
11)—into planning theory usually pursues the aim of discussing the strengths and weak-
nesses of communicative theory and the Habermasian ([1962] 1990) deliberative ideal,
which in the last decades or so has become the theoretical framework of planning theory
(cf. Forester, 1989, 1993; Healey, 1997; Innes and Booher, 2010; Sager, 2010, 2013). But
such communicative theory is also at stake, not at least because of the accurate analysis
that consensual and collaborative planning provides an “extremely attractive way” for
neoliberalism (Purcell, 2009). In planning theory, the concept of agonism is increasingly
popular as counter weight to communicative theory and as alternative framework in its
own right. I suggest in this article to consider Mouffe’s agonism concept from the other
side: from the perspective of antagonism theory (Laclau, 1990, 2005; Lefort, 1988;
Marchart, 2010a, 2013; Žižek, 2010). “Agonism” here is the very object of examination,
that is, my intention is not to use Mouffe’s concept to contest communicative theory or
to use it to sketch an alternative framework but to scrutinize such efforts themselves—
albeit not from a Habermasian perspective but from a perspective of radical antagonism
theory. Mouffe herself is a scholar of political antagonism theory, and here, the roots of
her agonistic concept can be found. Put simply, I challenge Mouffe’s concept at her own
game.
Mouffe’s point of departure is to perceive (and to deplore) an increasing depoliticiza-
tion, a neutralization of the political. According to her, the political is replaced with the
“post-political” politics in neoliberal late capitalism, which goes under the name of
“deliberative democracy” (Mouffe, 1999: 745). What we needed would be a new type of
relation where the conflicting partners, “although acknowledging that there is no rational
solution to their conflict, nevertheless recognize the legitimacy of their opponents”
(Mouffe, 2005: 20). Mouffe’s proposal for such a new type of relation is her conception
of agonism, which derives from the Greek agon, a concept in which both Hannah Arendt
(1958) and Friedrich Nietzsche ([1872] 1973) were also strongly interested. Agon is a
struggle, albeit conceptualized not as “war” but as “contest,” a struggle with roles and
without destruction. The “other,” this is how Mouffe (1999) puts it, should no longer be
seen as an enemy to be destroyed, but as an “adversary” (p. 754). Mouffe poses the ques-
tion how to establish the “us/them discrimination” in a way that is compatible with plu-
ralist democracy. According to her, in this, agon compromises are possible because they
are part of the political process, but they should be seen as “temporary respites in an
ongoing confrontation” (Mouffe, 1999: 755). Mouffe (1999) explains that the “need to
acknowledge the dimension of power and antagonism and their ineradicable character”
hangs in balance within such a concept (p. 752). The fundamental challenge of democ-
racy would be not to arrive at a “rational consensus” (this would be impossible) but to
cope with the “fact of antagonism” (Mouffe, 1999: 754). Mouffe (2005, 2013) declares
that “the task of democracy is to transform antagonism into agonism” (p. 20) and “to
defuse the potential antagonism that exists in human relations” (p. 6).
To clarify a central point from the outset, I am convinced that important parts of
Mouffe’s diagnosis are completely correct. My critique of Mouffe’s “agonistic
386 Planning Theory 14(4)
pluralism” is not directed against her sharp analysis of contemporary neoliberalism
and its varieties. I agree with Mouffe and her diagnosis that what has quite literally
taken place in liberal–democratic capitalism is a politics of consensus and cessation:
The dominant ideology is to claim that there is no alternative—no alternative to the
primacy of the economic (managerialism, profit-maximization, over-expansion,
growth orientation, etc.), and no alternative to the existing world of inequality.
Moreover, I am convinced that it is advisable to combine critical urban theory and its
combating against neoliberalism (cf. Brenner, 2009; Harvey, 2005; Smith, 1984) with
post-structuralist approaches of political theory (cf. Hillier, 2002; Purcell, 2013;
Swyngedouw, 2007). Using Mouffe’s concept of agonism as alternative framework in
planning theory can be described precisely in this way. I think that the debate—to cope
with recent and sometimes provocative post-structuralist perspectives—is necessary
and that traditional critical theory has to be open for such discussion. Ignoring these
trends leads to theoretical stagnation and to the loss of conceptual power (and sooner
or later to irrelevance). For this reason, my article does not aim to refute Mouffe’s
approach generally but to discuss different possibilities. My critique of the agonistic
attempt pursues the purpose of finding another way (rather than destroying the very
intention of the concept). Any theory, as Louis Althusser (2005) puts it, which does not
scrutinize its end remains a prisoner of this end and its imposed “realities” (p. 171). It
is in this sense that I have planned my intervention. The idea of my article—with and
beyond my critique of the concept of agonism—is to think about the theoretical
requirements of importing political theory into the urban field. My concern is virtually
a “meta-theoretical” intervention: to discuss the issue of “agonism” not as planning
theory instrument but as its (im)possible precondition. My critique and my proposal do
not wish to delegitimize critical analysis (such as Mouffe’s) but to debate the adequate
content and form for such a critique.
In order to debate Mouffe’s theory, I will take a step backward and go into the origins
of her conceptualization, that is, into Carl Schmitt’s and Ernesto Laclau’s concepts of the
political. I elaborate some crucial points of such antagonism theories: (1) Schmitt’s
friend/enemy concept as the reason for Mouffe’s agonistic intervention and (2) Laclau’s
“constitutive outside” that shows that intervention’s weak point. In my final discussion,
I will argue that bringing Mouffe’s “agonistic pluralism” into planning theory is—in the
final analysis—not to import political theory but to avoid it.
Carl Schmitt and “the enemy”
Carl Schmitt’s ([1932] 2007b) The Concept of the Political is one of the milestones in
political theory and a main reference until this day. This piece of work inspires many
recent approaches—despite or perhaps because of the author’s deep involvement in the
Nazi regime and ideology. However, without doubt, Schmitt is at the center of a dispute
concerning the “nature of the political” ever since he published his work. The famous
and catchy formula with which Schmitt ([1932] 2007b) answers “the question as to the
specific content of the political” (p. 44) is the “dissociative” (Marchart, 2007: 38) iden-
tification of the political with a contradiction: “Political thought and political instinct
prove themselves theoretically and practically in the ability to distinguish friend and
Roskamm 387
enemy” (Schmitt, [1932] 2007b: 67). Schmitt ([1932] 2007b) prepares his thesis by pos-
tulating that the “general definition of the political” (p. 22) is only possible “by discover-
ing and defining the specifically political categories” and its “own criteria” (p. 25).
Schmitt ([1932] 2007b) distinguishes between good and evil as criteria in the “realm of
morality,” beautiful and ugly as constitutive in aesthetics and profitable and unprofitable
as final instances in economics (p. 25). However, the political (here seen on the same
level as morality, aesthetics, and economics) obtains the “friend and enemy concept,”
and Schmitt ([1932] 2007b) explains especially who the enemy is: “the other, the stran-
ger” (p. 27). In ominous language, Schmitt ([1932] 2007b) continues that the distinction
should be made “whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent’s way of life and
therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one’s own form of existence”
(p. 27).1 The “original existential sense [seinsmäßige Wirklichkeit]” of friend and enemy
is Schmitt’s foundation of the political and precisely the reason for the actuality of his
concept in recent political theory.
On the one hand, Schmitt’s repetitive and iterative reference to the matter of being-
ness “[seinsmäßig]” locates his definition of the political on an ontological level (cf.
Marchart, 2010b: 149). According to Schmitt ([1932] 2007b), the political is a “decisive
entity” by its “very nature” (p. 45); he declares the primacy of the political: The realm of
the political is prima philosophia. But Schmitt ([1932] 2007b) pursues a second goal: On
such ontological grounding, the political becomes divided from the “imprecise liberal
concept of ‘the social’” (p. 43). In Schmitt’s mind, the social has another nature and
another essence than the political. He constitutes the political entity as prior and deter-
mining the social and/or the economic (as well as morality and the aesthetic). Schmitt’s
fundamental point is to proclaim the primacy of the political—defined as friend and
enemy concept—and therefore as determining the social, and this is precisely the link to
the recent debates in post-structuralist political theory: the constitution of the political as
autonomous phase, as an ontological area of its own.
But on the other hand, Schmitt’s insistence on the “seinsmäßig” friend–enemy dichot-
omy is attracted to National Socialism (NS) and its ideology (in both directions: through
it, NS ideology became interesting for Schmitt and Schmitt’s theory became interesting
for NS ideology). First, “the other” and “the stranger” are fundamental categories for
völkisch, nationalistic and racist approaches which have had a discursive climax in the
early 1930s that led to the Nazi triumph in Germany in 1933, a political theory which
was based on the essential constitution of “the other” and “the stranger” corresponds
with this historical development. Moreover, Schmitt ([1933] 2001) elaborates on the
constitution of “the other” with his notion of “ethnic identity as basic concept of the
National-Socialist law” (p. 36), and he became one of the leading juridical theoreticians
of the young NS state. Second, Schmitt ([1932] 2007b) stresses often times that the con-
cept of the enemy is closely linked to the concept of conflict and to the concept of war
(p. 32). Schmitt ([1932] 2007b) is aware that such “terminological questions become
thereby highly political” (p. 32); accordingly, it would only be justified to “repel and
fight” the enemies physically if there really are “enemies in the existential [seinsmäßi-
gen] sense as meant here” (p. 49). Finally, war to Schmitt ([1932] 2007b) is the “leading
presupposition” of the political, which “determines in a characteristic way human action
and thinking and thereby creates a specifically political behavior” (p. 34). It is obvious
388 Planning Theory 14(4)
that for the Nazi movement and its military build up (starting soon after the 1933 coup
d’état), Schmitt’s theory was very attractive.2
However, for recent debates in political theory and political philosophy, Schmitt’s
concept of conflict and antagonism is a crucial tenet. Schmitt ([1932] 2007b) insists that
“what always matters is only the possibility of conflict” (p. 39). He embeds his definition
of the political in a historical context (Macchiaveli, Hobbes, Weber); moreover, he intro-
duces terms such as “association,” “dissociation,” and “antagonism,” which in the actual
terminology of political theory are impossible to imagine one without the other. To stress
the notion of conflict is at the same time to reject the consensual thinking of liberalism,
and such rejection is vice versa a basic motive of the recent debates about the meaning
of “the political” (cf. Laclau, 1990; Mouffe, 2005; Rancière, 1999). According to Schmitt
([1932] 2007b), ending conflict “would lead to world peace—thus setting forth the idyl-
lic goal of complete and final depoliticization” (p. 54): a “world without politics” (p. 35),
where there is “no conflict” and people “could reach common agreement through the
debates and exchanges of opinion” (Schmitt, [1929] 2007a: 89). But even at this point, a
völkische connotation appears in Schmitt’s ([1932] 2007b) argument: “If a people no
longer possesses the energy or the will to maintain itself in the sphere of politics, the lat-
ter will not thereby vanish from the world. Only a weak people will disappear” (p. 53).
Schmitt’s refusal of the deliberative consensus as the aim of the political is associated
with a critique of the economic supremacy (i.e. the validity claim for a unique and domi-
nating sphere of production and consumption, price formation, and market) that is even
compatible with recent criticism of neoliberalism. Schmitt ([1932] 2007b) calls the eco-
nomic claim one of the “few truly unquestionable dogmas” of the liberal age (p. 72). In
this context, he charges the concept of humanity of being an “especially useful ideologi-
cal instrument of imperialist expansion” and in its “ethical-humanitarian form” a “spe-
cific vehicle of economic imperialism” (Schmitt, [1932] 2007b: 54). All concepts of
liberalism would flow between ethics (intellectuality) and economics (trade), and start-
ing from both these places, they would try to eliminate the political; the concept of pri-
vate law would serve “as a lever,” and the notion of private property would form “the
centre of the globe, whose poles—ethics and economics—are only the contrasting emis-
sions from this central point” (Schmitt, [1932] 2007b: 71). Schmitt ([1932] 2007b)
resumes that “ethical or moral pathos and materialist economic reality” would be com-
bined in “every typical liberal manifestation” and would give “every political concept a
double face”; thus, the “political concept of battle” in liberal thought would be trans-
formed into “competition in the domain of economics and discussion in the intellectual
realm” (p. 71). According to Schmitt ([1932] 2007b), even the Marxist power of convic-
tion had resided above all in the fact that “it followed its liberal bourgeois enemy into its
own domain, the economic, and challenged it, so to speak, in its home territory with its
own weapons” (p. 74). In summary, Schmitt’s concept of the political is embedded in his
threefold critique of three central notions: a sharp criticism of pluralistic theory, a refusal
of any kind of liberalism (and economic domination), and finally the rejection of “the
social.”
Mouffe’s political theory has taken on an ambivalent legacy with her strong reference
to Schmitt. She legitimates her choosing with Schmitt’s genuineness. “In spite of his
moral flaws,” that is how she puts it, “he is an important political thinker whose work it
Roskamm 389
would be a great mistake to dismiss merely because of his support for Hitler in 1933”
(Mouffe, 1999: 1; see also Mouffe, 2000a). Mouffe (2005) states that she is “perfectly
aware” that “because of Schmitt’s compromise with Nazism, such a choice might arouse
hostility” (p. 4). And yet her point is “I believe that it is the intellectual force of theorists,
not their moral qualities, that should be the decisive criteria in deciding whether we need
to establish a dialogue with their work” (p. 4). Moreover, the refusal of many democratic
theorists to engage with Schmitt’s thought was based “on moral grounds as typical of the
moralistic tendency which is characteristic of the postpolitical Zeitgeist” (p. 5).
I have some doubts about this line of argumentation and am not convinced that it
catches the ambivalence of Schmitt’s theory adequately. I agree with Mouffe that Schmitt
is an important thinker, but to put the “support for Hitler” as “merely” a “moral flaw” is
not convincing from my perspective. In my eyes, this is not (only) a question of morality
but a theoretical one, and therefore, Schmitt’s role and his Nazi support should be con-
sidered in a more substantial way. What in Schmitt’s theory is inherently functioning as
support to Nazi ideology? Mouffe misses to pose this question. I think the work of
Schmitt is not only ambivalent because of his (missing) moral qualities but because of
the intellectual force of constituting “the other” as “the enemy” based on their “ethnic
identity.”3 The choice of placing Carl Schmitt in the center of a theoretical debate requires
more efforts of contextualization. The debate about agonistic pluralism in planning the-
ory, that is my point, should acquaint itself with its contaminated theoretical heritage.
In The Politics of Friendship (2005a), Jacques Derrida (like Mouffe a philosopher
concerned with political theory) is concerned with Schmitt’s work, too. Derrida (2005a)
grants Schmitt’s theses “their originality, where they seem, however, as ragingly con-
servative in their political content as they are reactive and traditionalist in their philo-
sophical logic” (p. 83). But Derrida (2005a) stresses, “the undeniable link between this
thinking of the political and political thought on the one hand and, on the other hand,
Schmitt’s political commitments, those which led to his arrest and conviction after the
war” (p. 107). Derrida’s conclusions take quite a different direction compared to Mouffe’s
(and to most of the other thinkers of post-structuralist political theory). Derrida (2005a)
shows “two distinct sides of the same answer” to Schmitt’s concept of the political (p.
104). On the one hand, he confirms Schmitt in his diagnosis of an “essential and neces-
sary depoliticization” in modern times, but Derrida’s (2005a) punch line is that he does
not (as Schmitt does) deplore that fact but welcomes it: “This depoliticization would no
longer necessarily be the neuter or negative indifference to all forms of the social bond,
of community, of friendship” (p. 104). Indeed, this seems to be a fresh view and another
possible perspective even for critical urban studies: to welcome depoliticization instead
of bemoaning the loss of politics. Derrida (2005a) adds, on the other hand, that through
this depoliticization and through “this genealogical deconstruction of the political (and
through it of the democratic), one would seek to think, interpret and implement another
politics, another democracy” (p. 104). For my concern, it is first of all important to notice
Derrida’s proposal to call for deconstruction as precondition. This point is particularly
important, namely, not only because of some sort of “political correctness” but especially
because of Derrida’s point that only through and with a genealogical deconstruction an
actual version of a concept of the political becomes possible. In other words, even the
transfer of a concept of the political (i.e. in urban studies and planning theory) has to
390 Planning Theory 14(4)
work through its problematic heritage; if it does not, the transfer is likely to import unfil-
tered the specters (cf. Derrida, 2006) of the concept—and this cannot be desirable. And
particularly in empirical social sciences (like urban studies)—where the traditions and
discourses of political theory are perhaps less present—the import of the concept(s) of
the political is committed to help clarify the ambivalent birth canals of this thinking.
But back to Mouffe’s concept. Mouffe places Schmitt at the beginning of her thinking
on the political, and of course, this placement is a statement itself. She adopts some of
Schmitt’s main points: first of all, the very question about the essence of the political; the
definition of the political as sphere of antagonistic forces; the primacy of the political;
and the critic of cosmopolitan liberal–democratic approaches. The problem is that
Mouffe attempts to create a democratic political theory, therefore something that Schmitt
does not. Mouffe (1993) explains that Schmitt would help us to see that “there is some-
thing paradoxical about modern democracy” but that he failed “to understand its real
significance” (p. 133). Schmitt would constitute pluralist democracy as a contradictory
combination of irreconcilable principles: on the one hand, deliberative consensus (the
aim of democratic politics), on the other, antagonistic forces (the essence of the politi-
cal). But both would seclude one another, which—according to Schmitt—would lead to
the recognition that liberal democracy is a non-viable form of government. Mouffe’s
(1993) punch line is to invert this argument and to declare that the contradiction of the
logic of identity (consensus) and the logic of difference (antagonism) is constituting
democracy:
I believe, on the contrary, that it is the existence of this tension between the logic of identity and
the logic of difference that defines the essence of pluralist democracy and makes it a form of
government particularly well-suited to the undecidable character of modern politics. (p. 133)
Far from bewailing this tension, Mouffe adds, we should be thankful for both its log-
ics and its contradiction and see it as something to be defended, not eliminated. The
tension would constitute “the best guarantee that the project of modern democracy is
alive and inhabited by pluralism” and the desire to resolve the contradiction “could lead
only to the elimination of the political and the destruction of democracy” (Mouffe,
1993: 133).
In her explanation, Mouffe refers to her theory that was later elaborated by Ernesto
Laclau (see the following section). But one point is still unresolved in such conception:
How to cope with Schmitt’s “essential enemy”? For her theory, this is not a secondary
problem—the enemy is in the very center of Schmitt’s antagonistic concept of the
political, his “enemy” is the essence (and the outcome) of antagonism, and Mouffe
declares that we have to insist on the antagonistic character of the political. Her answer
to the question is of course her concept of agonism, her proposal to tame antagonism
(“the enemy”) into agonism (“the adversary”), something that becomes—in her politi-
cal theory—the main task of democracy. My point is to ask whether Mouffe’s proceed-
ing is necessary. Is antagonism equivalent to the enemy? Is the taming of antagonism
into agonism necessary?
Before I discuss these questions by considering Laclau’s concept of the political, I
will take a side glance toward Heidegger, the second ambivalent reference of
Roskamm 391
post-structuralist political theory (cf. Marchart, 2007).4 As Stuart Elden (2006) points out
(p. 85), Heidegger stresses polemos (war) and not agon (the matching of two friendly
adversaries) in his philosophy: Der Kampf ist innerste Notwendigkeit des Seienden im
Ganzen (Heidegger, 2001: 92). Elden explains that Heidegger’s reference to “struggle”
(Kampf) is “obviously using language closely associated with Hitler’s Mein Kampf,” and
in his reference to “enemy” (Feind), he is reminiscent of Schmitt’s work. Following
Elden, however, the key contrast to Schmitt is that “the enemy is not named.” Heidegger
argues for a reading of politics as polemos, as Auseinandersetzung, as confrontation or
negotiation but he is not “against anything in particular”; unlike Schmitt, Heidegger’s
concept of struggle is conceptualized “not against a polemos, there is not an enemy”
(Elden, 2006: 85). This is the crucial point, and I think it probably shows the very grounds
for Mouffe’s concept of agonism: only because she is following Schmitt in ascribing
antagonism to “the essential enemy” the necessity to tame antagonism into agonism
emerges (if she does not want to take part in Schmitt’s war against the essential enemy).
Yet—and this is the point the next section makes—there is an alternative conception of
antagonism which challenges such necessity.
Ernesto Laclau and “the constitutive outside”
My second approach to Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism is to consider the political theory of
Ernesto Laclau. Even Laclau refers to Carl Schmitt, although he does it not only more
implicitly but in a different way. Laclau has collaborated with Mouffe intensively, and
their book Hegemony and Socialist Strategy is very influential, even for recent critical
urban studies. My following focus on Laclau’s antagonism and contingency theory takes
into account that Mouffe is of course very well informed about this theory (and that she
is in some parts its co-author), but her concept of agonism chooses another direction and
I think that the implications and the problems of this direction are better understandable
by elaborating on Laclau’s way of thinking.
Taken as a whole, Laclau’s development of his political theory is based on the premise
of non-determined history. According to Laclau, history is the result of contingent power
relations between forces that cannot be reduced to any kind of unitary principle. Every
power relation is contingent and depends on conditions that are equally contingent.
Because no power relation is determined—and this is the optimistic element in Laclau’s
theory—there is the possibility of changing these relations: “If social relations are con-
tingent, it means they can be radically transformed through struggle, instead of that trans-
formation being conceived as a self-transformation of an objective nature” (Laclau,
1990: 35; cf. Laclau, 1995: 151). Laclau refers to Claude Lefort (1988) and his thesis of
the “locus of power” as “an empty place,” which “cannot be occupied” because “no
individual and no group can be consubstantial with it—and it cannot be represented” (p.
17). Intrinsically, in this place, we should find the “final reason,” the deterministic foun-
dation for all history. The post-foundational argument (Marchart, 2007) is that such a
final reason and such a basic foundation do not and cannot exist because there is no final
objectivity. Struggles and conflicts (the contingent and antagonistic forces) over the
occupation of this place cannot be successful in an enduring way, but it is equally impos-
sible to end or to complete such struggles and conflicts (cf. Roskamm, 2013b).
392 Planning Theory 14(4)
According to Laclau (1990), the ultimate contingent essence of all objectivity is being
revealed by antagonism (p. 18). His basic assumption is the “radical contingency of all
objectivity” and the “constitutive nature of antagonism” (Laclau, 1990: 26). Laclau
(1990) defines the contingent as “that being whose essence does not entail its essence”
(p. 19); however, modern thought had decided to eliminate contingency and to absorb it
radically by the necessary (p. 20). This turn-about rests upon the conception of the
rational and the real as a unity, which is in turn the same as an objective and positive
concept of the social, and which is not compatible with the (negative) constitutive nature
of antagonism (Laclau, 1990: 20). In other words, contingency is the impossibility of any
fixing of identities. This again refers to the theory of antagonistic forces, which perform
two functions at the same time: On the one hand, they prevent the absolute constitution
of identity; on the other hand, they are part of the identity itself. Contingency is, accord-
ing to Laclau (1990), nothing other than this connection between prevention and affirma-
tion of identity (p. 21). Laclau emphasizes the potential to transform as a fundamental
condition for political thinking. In Laclau’s theory, antagonism is the propellant that
produces contingency, the discursive form which constitutes the limit of objectivity and
which reveals that all objectivity is partial and precarious (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001:
122). Antagonism does not have an objective meaning; it rather prevents the very consti-
tution of objectivity itself (Laclau, 1990: 17). Laclau (1990) stresses that negativity is
constitutive and foundational with the result that “the uniqueness and rationality of his-
tory must be abandoned” (p. 18). His stress on antagonism and negativity refutes those
approaches that construct the social world as an objective consensus model of free
communication.
In a way, Laclau’s concept of the political includes also a theory of space, but one
that is very different from concepts of space in sociology and geography. The crucial
point here is the notion of the “constituted outside,” which Laclau (1990) uses, as he
puts it, “in the sense it has received in Derrida’s theory” (p. 84). Laclau does not expli-
cate this reference in more detail. However, for Derrida the “outside” is quite exposed
in some of his writings. Derrida (1997), starting from a linguistic analysis, reflects the
relationships between “speech and writing, that is, between an inside and an outside”
and the “absolute exteriority of writing” as well as the “interiority of the principle of
writing to language” (p. 35). The
sickness of the outside (which comes from the outside but also draws outside, thus equally, or
inversely, the sickness of the homeland, a homesickness, so to speak) is in the heart of the living
word, as its principle of effacement and its relationship to its own death. (Derrida, 1997: 313)
Derrida (1997) adds that it would be important to “speculate upon the power of exte-
riority as constitutive of interiority: of speech, of signified meaning, of the present as
such” (p. 313). Again and again, it is important for Derrida that the outside is constitutive
of or at least influencing the inside—a position that Laclau adopts.
Henry Staten—whose work Mouffe (2002: 6) claims attention for—expands Derrida’s
outside into the notion of the “constitutive outside.” He explains that Derrida conceives
the outside as necessary for the constitution of a phenomenon “in its as-such, a condition
of the possibility of the ‘inside’.” According to Staten (1986), the constitutive outside is
Roskamm 393
not so much “accidental” as it is indefinite, since it is necessary for a given kind as-such;
it is accidental as non-essence that befalls essence (p. 16). The constitutive outside is
therefore the deconstructive alternative to the fundamental philosophical concept of
form or essence—that is, of unity and self-identity as the most general and inviolable
boundaries of being and knowledge (Staten, 1986: 23). Such “non- or anti-essence” vio-
lates the boundary of positivity by which a “concept has been formerly thought to be
preserved in its as-such,” but in violating it, it “becomes the positive condition of the
possibility of the assertion of that positive boundary” (Staten, 1986: 18).
Indeed, Laclau adopts Derrida’s theory and Staten’s elaboration. Following Laclau,
the outside constitutes every system of significance: every space—and Laclau (1990)
stresses that his understanding of “space” includes the physical space, because every
space is a discursive construct at any time (p. 41)—every discourse and every identity.5
These systems of meaning (the inside) need the outside as their own constitutive other.
According to Laclau’s theory, all systems of signification are bound to strive all along
to become identical with the outside. But this is not possible because it is a constitutive
and “radical” (Marchart, 2010a: 193) outside. Therefore, the outside is the reason for
the permanent effort of those systems to stabilize their regime (becoming identical
with the outside) and at the same time the reason for the impossibility to comply
(Laclau, 1990: 9).
According to Laclau, space is a “system of meaning.” The crucial point in his concep-
tion is that space (i.e. discourses, identities, societies) is fragile and cannot be stabilized
completely. Despite the fact that stabilizations are, after all, impossible, the feature of
such systems is their permanent attempt to establish stability. Laclau (1990) describes the
attempt at stabilization and closing as “spatialization” (p. 42). Spatialization emerges
through a practice of repetition with the aim of fixing meaning in a hierarchic structure.
Precisely, these practices are involved in the “producing of space.”6 Such a spatialization
cannot be successful in the final instance, but hegemonic forces can temporarily produce
space in an iterative articulation. Laclau describes such an intermittently successful spa-
tialization as “sedimentation.” Sedimentation is the temporary effective fixing of mean-
ing and hence another word for “objectivity.” Sedimentation is based on the “forgetting
of the origins” through routinization (Laclau, 1990: 35). In this regard, “dislocation”—
another one of Laclau’s key concepts—is the contrary of sedimentation and spatializa-
tion. Dislocation stresses the uncertain and the interference.
The concepts of spatialization (as hegemonic repetitive articulation) and sedimenta-
tion (both temporary successful fixing of meaning and a term for supposed objectivity)
are crucial in Laclau’s theory. Now, sedimentation yet has another designation: It is noth-
ing other than “politics.” The contrary of politics—the contrary of sedimentation—is the
defixation, or loosening of meaning, the interrogation of stabilization, the insistence on
the uncertain. Laclau describes this contrary as dislocation, disturbance, interrupting,
incident, or as “the political.” Hence, an analysis based on Laclau’s antagonism and con-
tingency theory enables the identification of the political and the possibility to think the
conditions for its re-activation. In his theory, politics (sedimentation) and the political
(dislocation) are situated on the same stage but have opposing functions. They are the
two parts of the endless antagonistic game. This is how Laclau explains the necessary
contingent conditions and antagonistic forces of history by drawing on the notion of the
394 Planning Theory 14(4)
spatially related “constitutive outside”; this is how his theory includes its own concept of
“the political.”
Now it is easier to catch the similarities and differences of Schmitt’s, Mouffe’s, and
Laclau’s approaches: All of them sketch a model with constitutive contingent and antag-
onistic forces, all of them challenge the liberal thinking and “the social” and all of them
insist on the leading ontological state of the political. But from here onward they part
company. Schmitt brings antagonism to the social level of politics and addresses the
enemy (as “the other”). Mouffe follows Schmitt onto this level (Marchart suggests to use
Heidegger’s term “ontic” to name it); to avoid Schmitt’s physically materialized essen-
tial enemy, she proposes the alternative concept of “agonistic pluralism” as tamed antag-
onism. Laclau, on the contrary, does not follow Schmitt and hence does not need to tame
antagonism; he does not have to cope with any concept of enemy (because for him antag-
onism is a principle, not a person).
To deepen the understanding of this differentiation, it is instructive to consider the
ongoing and controversial debate that contests Laclau’s political theory (partly or gener-
ally), particularly in some debates in critical geography and urban studies. At its core, the
Laclau-critique in urban studies addresses his understanding of the concept of space.
This critique started in the early 1990s with Doreen Massey’s intervention against
Laclau’s concept of space (Massey, 1992). Massey opposes Laclau because (in her view)
he places “space” as passive product in a line with politics, meanwhile “time” is defined
as practice of dislocation and equivalent to “the political.” Massey accuses Laclau of a
depoliticization of “space”: “Laclau’s view of space is that it is the realm of stasis. There
is, in the realm of the spatial, no true temporality and thus no possibility of politics”
(Massey, 1992: 67). Massey’s argument is that urban studies and critical geography have
transformed space into a “political category” and that hence Laclau’s diagnosis fails.
Oliver Marchart (1999) responds to Massey’s intervention by stating that “it is cer-
tainly rather odd to accuse an (exclusively) political theorist of depoliticizing his con-
cepts from the viewpoint of geography, i.e. it is strange to accuse a political theory of
advocating unpolitical concepts.” Marchart (1999) focuses on the traditionally difficult
relationship between political theory and critical urbanism: Could it be, he asks, that
critical urbanists “do not take the concepts and theoretical constructions of political the-
ory/philosophy on their own terms” and that the language game of political theory “can-
not be translated into critical urbanism at all?” According to Laclau, Marchart points out,
space is neither passive nor active nor apolitical; in a strict ontological sense, space (as
closed system of meaning) cannot exist: Space is ultimately not possible. Furthermore,
the constitutive outside of space would have to be what is “radically different with
respect to the system—something which cannot be explained from the inner logic of the
system itself, or which has never had any prescribed place in the topography” (Marchart,
2007: 139). Only through the constitution of the outside as radical outside (cf. Laclau,
2004: 309), the difference between an inside and an outside could be possible; if the
outside is not radical and necessary, it becomes part of the inside and in the last instance
identical with it (Marchart, 2010a: 193).
In the recent debate on Laclau in urban studies, the notion of the spatial and its con-
notation of the “constitutive outside” resurfaces and the old doubts are refreshed.
Mustapha Dikeç (2012), one of the most ambitious and active scholars in recent
Roskamm 395
attempts to import political theory into urban studies and critical geography, tells us
that Laclau would emphasize a “constitutive outside, the enemy, against which the
political identity of the friend is constituted” (p. 672). Dikeç (2013b) adds in his
instructive text about the Paris banlieus that “the Apaches” of Belleville (the “barbar-
ians at the gates”) have become “the constitutive outside” (pp. 28–40). Elsewhere and
directly referring to Mouffe he interprets the “constitutive outside” as political enemy
in a Schmittian sense (Dikeç, 2013a: 79–80). Finally, Dikeç (2012) criticizes—at this
point referring directly to Massey—the “limited spatial imaginary of inside/outside” of
Laclau’s model: “This spatial imaginary of exteriority and delimitation seems to me
inadequate to account for more complex relations than can be captured by a simple
inside/outside dichotomy” (p. 673).
In my view, the critique of Laclau’s constitutive outside as “limited spatial imaginary”7
misses the mark in a similar way as Massey’s accusation of space-depoliticization. Perhaps
such impeachments are based on a reflexive defensiveness as the main object of geogra-
phy—space—becomes contested8 Laclau’s political theory is beyond the bounds of
Massey’s and Dikeç’s criticism: Space is of course “political,” even, if “spatialization” on
the ontological level is—in Laclau’s antagonism theory—not separable from sedimenta-
tion (politics). Laclau’s intervention is not to charge “space” with normative power but to
state that “space” is ultimately not possible. “Space” itself (and not any person or group,
not “the other” or “the enemy”) is the “constitutive outside.” From this perspective, geog-
raphy as analytical field of spatialization is not devaluated, on the contrary. Laclau (1990)
writes that in order to understand social reality, the adequate question is not “to understand
what society is, but what prevents it from being” (p. 44). The same statement can be made
with regard to the issue of space: To understand spatial reality, the adequate question is not
to understand what space is, but what prevents it from being. This, I suggest, presents a
crucial raison d’être for critical geography and spatial analysis.
The misunderstanding of Laclau’s approach to space repeats in the final instance
Mouffe’s agonism concept. Indeed, Mouffe (2005, 2013) connects the “constitutive
outside” with the notion of constituting “the other” (p. 15) and “the enemy” (p. 18).
And this is exactly what distinguishes her agonism from Laclau’s conceptualization of
antagonism and differentiates between the “anti-Schmittian Schmittian” Laclau (Žižek,
1999: 172) and the “Left neo-Schmittian” Mouffe (Marchart, 2007: 45). Laclau consti-
tutes the outside as necessary part of a theoretical model on an ontological level (the
level of the political); Mouffe converts to the social level (the level of politics) and
addresses—following Carl Schmitt—the outside as the enemy. And only because of
this change and because of addressing this, her agonism concept becomes necessary:
Now antagonism has to be tamed to avoid the essential (physical) exclusion of the
enemy/the other in the Schmittian sense. In other words, that antagonism “demands”
the “war of existence” (Purcell, 2008: 66) is only true if antagonism (or the constitutive
outside) is conceptualized as an anthropological dimension, if antagonism is trans-
ferred to the social (or ontic) level; on the ontological level of political philosophy,
antagonism addresses neither an enemy nor demands (essentially) any (physical) war.
Once again we can refer to Derrida (1997): The condition “outside of the system”
would be a “‘scandal’ only if one wished to comprehend it within the system whose
condition it precisely is” (p. 104). The condition of a “constitutive outside”
396 Planning Theory 14(4)
is problematic (scandalous) only in the ontic system of the social; both Schmitt’s
addressing the enemy and Mouffe’s taming of antagonism are emerging from the
attempt to cope with such a scandal. To put it differently, the ontological ground of
Laclau’s political theory is the (impossibility of) space and not “the enemy,” and this
is the reason why his concept of “the constitutive outside” pulls away the rug from
underneath Mouffe’s concept of agonism.
Conclusion
Any planning theory needs a notion or an idea of how things are related, how society
works, how cities work. In contemporary planning theory, the perhaps most popular ver-
sion of such an idea is the collaborative, consensual approach of communicative theory.
Here, the narrative suggests that the best result emerges through the perfect deliberative
discussion. According to the framework of communicative theory, the task of planning
theory is to organize consensus. Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism is used as an alternative
framework in planning theory, and it seems to be in the process of replacing communica-
tive and collaborative planning theory as the hegemonic paradigm in the field. The
“advent of agonistic planning theory” (Mäntysalo, 2011: 266) has acquired the top of an
alleged consecutive sequence: After comprehensive–rationalist, incrementalist and com-
municative planning theory, agonism has now become the most convincing position (cf.
Bäcklund and Mäntysalo, 2010: 343). This is the reason for my excursion to the other
side of agonism.
For considering the other side of something, it is often necessary to change one’s own
position (imagine the dark side of the moon). This is why I have tried in my article to
start not from planning theory but rather from post-structuralist antagonism theory and a
genealogical perspective of political philosophy. However, what is the result of such
reflection? What is the result for planning theory? And what is my very critique on
Mouffe’s theory?
From the view of antagonism theory (this is still my perspective), the concept of the
agon is very well suited to explain politics and planning, too. Agon in a Nietzschean
sense is a sublimation of antagonism: Antagonism is a structural base of the social; it is
present at any time, more or less latent, but it is always present. Agonism is the name for
the attempt to tame antagonism. To create agonism, it is indeed necessary to build a soci-
ety. Politics in general and planning in particular are the main instruments for ordering
and reordering the social and for suppressing the founding antagonism. Politics and plan-
ning pursue the very task of domesticating, or taming, antagonism into agonism, of trans-
forming it into something sufferable. Planning acts, as Michael Gunder (2010) puts it,
are a “key state apparatus in facilitating the ideological task by harmoniously articulating
how populations should enjoyably use their settlements, spaces and environments when
seeking a better future” (p. 366).9 Indeed, planning practice will always be agonistic
(Hillier, 2002: 268).10 Antagonism theory is suitable for explaining such purpose, and it
explains as well that at the bottom of such agonistic action lurks always something that
subverts such intension: antagonism.11
Until this point, Mouffe’s concept of agonism is in varying degrees congruent with
such an approach based on antagonism theory. However, up to here—this is my
Roskamm 397
point—two crucial and connected differences appear. The first one is the insufficiently
considered impossibility of taming antagonism: Mouffe makes this point, but she insists
on constituting the production of the agon as democracy’s main task without making
clear that this is impossible in the final instance. The second one is the programmatic
turn of her line of argument itself: Domesticating antagonism is attractive for planning
and planning theory but it is conflicting with antagonism theory. In the last paragraphs of
my article, I will try to elaborate these two points.
The punch line of antagonism theory is the conviction that taming antagonism into ago-
nism is not possible. It is only possible for a short time, temporarily, with fragile results.
This is crucial because the stable and permanent cut-off of antagonism would close all
systems of meaning and exclude the possibility of alternatives (Laclau, 1990). It would
lead to stillstand of the world. Jean Hillier (2002) made a similar point with reference to
Lacan and his thinking of the Real (this parallelism is not surprising because Lacan is an
important inspiration for Laclau). The Real is impossible, unattainable, and inaccessible. It
is defining for Lacan’s (1977) theory that it is exactly the condition of impossibility that
creates the Real. Moreover, the necessarily moribund attempt to access the Real is the driv-
ing force of any social activity. Laclau adopts this theory for his notion of the constitutive
outside: The outside is the Real (Marchart, 2013: 311). The attempt to tame antagonism is
similarly paradox as the attempt to realize the Real. Both—antagonism and the Real—are
constituted through negative forces: not being accessible (the Real) and not being tamable
(antagonism). However, both impossibilities are the driving force of society.
My critique on Mouffe’s concept of agonistic pluralism is that she does not stress
enough the impossibility of taming antagonism. Yes, she mentions it (cf. Mouffe, 2013:
15), if rather in passing. I believe she cannot stress it because that would counter her
main project: to create a positive alternative for democratic politics. In planning theory,
such a programmatic alternative is thankfully inscribed. Moreover, agonistic planning
theory recently seems to become the hegemonic paradigm in the field. My objection is
that through this positivistic and programmatic turn, the crucial element of agon/antago-
nism theory (the condition of impossibility) disappears. Mouffe’s concept, her claim of
taming antagonism, and her agonistic theory as positive guideline obfuscate the analyti-
cal power of the theory of agon and antagonism.
Mouffe’s theory is based on a conception of the political as distinctive (and primary)
ontological category, distinct from “real politics”: “Politics” is the realm of planning, of
data, of society; “the political” is a modus of being, a paradox foundation consisting of
contingency and antagonism. Mouffe’s aim is to bring both categories together: to import
antagonism theory from the sphere of the political into the realm of politics. But this
linking fails. It fails because antagonism theory does not survive this very transfer. Such
a transfer would equal the attempt of taking fire into water: The fire is extinguished (and
loses its virtues). In other words, Mouffe’s tamed antagonism is no longer antagonistic.
Mouffe’s concept loses its conceptual power on the way: its power to define and to
explain the political. Through taming antagonism, the imported political theory changes
its aggregate state, “the political” turns into “politics.” This is why Mouffe’s agonism—
to use her own words—is itself a “post-political” concept.12 Literally, tamed agonism is
post-antagonism, and in this sense beyond the political (because antagonism is the cru-
cial substance of the political). The concept of agonism is based on a shift from one
398 Planning Theory 14(4)
phase to another, from the level of the (ontological) political to the level of (ontic) poli-
tics. Through this shift the agonism concept deprives antagonism of its radical negativity
(cf. Marchart, 2013).
Agonism/antagonism theory does not work well for a positive planning theory. Or, to
put it differently by referring to a well-known distinction, such a conception is appropri-
ate for a theory about planning but less for a theory of planning (cf. Faludi, [1973] 2008;
Friedmann, 2003; Lord, 2014). Concerning the latter, a reflection based on agonism/
antagonism theory cannot provide a positive contribution but a critical analysis. Any
theory of planning (including the current agonistic planning theory) builds of the uncer-
tain ground of antagonism and is constituted by the impossibility of a constitutive out-
side. However, if this is the truth, can antagonism theory offer an alternative? Or, as
Hillier (2003) puts it, “Is there hope for planners?” (p. 51). Maybe there is. Hence, the
reflection on Carl Schmitt and Ernesto Laclau has shown that both antagonism and the
constitutive outside are not the enemies and that antagonism is not a personal feature but
a structural principle. Accepting the possibility of an outside without thinking in friend/
enemy distinctions constitutes a starting point for a fresh rendezvous of agon/antagonism
and planning theory. A second point has already been made by Hillier (2002: 267, refer-
ring to Žižek, 1997): The condition of impossibility is at the same time the condition of
possibility. I have mentioned this very statement with reference to Laclau earlier in my
article. He states (Laclau, 1990) that because every power relation is contingent and
depends on conditions that are equally contingent, there is the possibility of changing
these relations; if social relations are contingent, they can be transformed through strug-
gle. Agon/antagonism theory shows that in the last instance alternatives are possible, and
this is pleasing for the ear (not only in planning theory). Third, there is, as I mentioned
earlier with regard to the example of “space,” a strong analytical argument on the other
side of agonism, which can be useful for a theoretical approach to planning, too: The
possibility to postpone the purpose of analysis in planning theory, following the principle
of the constitutive lack. What does this mean however? Traditionally, the aim of reflect-
ing on planning is to ask how planning could be successful and what planning is. Now—
equipped with agon/antagonism theory—we can pose another question: What does
planning prevent from being successful? In my view, such a shift is of crucial relevance
and opens possibilities for new analytical possibilities. However, with its paradoxical
constitution, this approach is quite compatible with working on the question of why the
production of its own dilemmas is a “systemically inscribed outcome” of planning theory
(Lord, 2014). It is also compatible with rethinking the still unresolved “wicked prob-
lems” of planning (Rittel and Webber, 1973 [2008]).
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the referees for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. I also thank
Bettina Engels, Anna Richter, Manuela Kölke, and Laura Calbet for their helpful remarks in dif-
ferent discussions about agonism.
Funding
Finally, I would like to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG for funding my project
“Die unbesetzte Stadt” and making this thinking possible.
Roskamm 399
Notes
1. The German original is perhaps even more unsettling than the English translation: “… ob das
Anderssein des Fremden im konkret vorliegenden Konfliktsfalle die Negation der eigenen Art
Existenz bedeutet und deshalb abgewehrt oder bekämpft wird, um die eigene, seinsmäßige
Art von Leben zu bewahren.”
2. According to Georg Lukács (1973), Schmitt’s analysis has had the purpose to delegitimize
the parliamentarism of the Weimar republic and to show the necessity of a transition to Nazi
dictatorship (p. 567); despite its essentialist–philosophical attitude, the core of Schmitt’s
theory would be the very poor mask of reduction of all political and juridical relations into
the friend/enemy concept. The emptiness and arbitrariness of Schmitt’s concept would have
been very effective in the period in which German ideology became fascism: as methodo-
logical, abstract and “scientific” corresponding part to Hitler’s concept of racism (Lukács,
1973: 573).
3. Especially, Jürgen Habermas, who is in the center of Mouffe’s critique, shares the intense
reception of the role of Carl Schmitt; Habermas quotes Schmitt (and Schmitt’s quote speaks
for itself): “… we need to liberate the German spirit from all Jewish falsifications, falsifica-
tions of the concept of spirit which have made it possible for Jewish emigrants to label the
great struggle of Gauleiter Julius Streicher as something un-spiritual” (Schmitt, 1935, quoted
in Habermas, 1983: 41).
4. Although, as Derrida (2005a) puts it, Schmitt’s approaches to Nazi ideology had been “more
repugnant” than those of Heidegger (p. 107).
5. Laclau and Mouffe (2001) reject the distinction between discursive and non-discursive prac-
tices and explicate that every object is constituted as an object of discourse, insofar as no
object is given outside any discursive condition of emergence (p. 107). Against the assump-
tion of the mental character of discourse, they insist on the “material character of every dis-
cursive structure”; the point is to contest the “very classical dichotomy between an objective
field constituted outside of any discursive intervention, and a discourse consisting of the pure
expression of thought” (p. 108).
6. To some extent, Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) Production of Space is compatible with Laclau’s
concept of spatialization (cf. Roskamm, 2013b).
7. Even Derrida (2005b) considers the “spatial pair inside-outside,” and he asks, “but is this, in
all its aspects, a spatial pair?” (p. 109).
8. See my summary reflection on the debate concerning the “nature of space” and the “spa-
tial turn” (Roskamm, 2012) as well as my detailed study on the spatial form of “density”
(Roskamm, 2011). A good overview of the contested ontological dimension is given in Benno
Werlen’s (2013) article Raum und Gesellschaft [Space and Society] and its critical discussion
in the journal EWE, assembled by 26 scholars of geography, sociology, urban studies, and
philosophy in the German-speaking context (cf. Roskamm, 2013a).
9. Against Alex Lord (2014), I assume that planning and planning theory generally cannot be
“post-positivist” (p. 39).
10. Hillier (2002) states that paradoxically, “the Real of consensus has become the driving force
of much participatory communicative planning practice” (p. 266). This is certainly a correct
analysis, but it is equally applicable to agonistic planning practice. The same applies to the
explanation that
what the neoliberal project requires are decision-making practices that are widely accepted
as “democratic” but that do not (or cannot) fundamentally challenge existing relations of
400 Planning Theory 14(4)
power. Communicative planning, insofar as it is rooted in communicative action, is just such
a decision-making practice. (Gunder, 2010: 303; Purcell, 2009: 141)
Even agonistic planning is such a decision-making practice.
11. In Homer’s competition ([1872] 1973), Nietzsche distinguishes between the good and the bad
strive:
When the traveller Pausanius during his wanderings through Greece visited the Helicon, a
very old copy of the first didactic poem of the Greeks, Hesiod’s The Works and Days, was
shown to him, inscribed upon plates of lead and severely damaged by time and weather.
However he recognised this much, that, unlike the usual copies it had not at its head that little
hymnus on Zeus, but began at once with the declaration: “Two Eris-goddesses are on earth.”
This is one of the most noteworthy instances of Hellenic thinking and worthy to be impressed
on the newcomer immediately at the entrance-gate of Greek ethics:
One would like to praise the one Eris, just as much as to blame the other, of one uses one’s
reason. For these two goddesses have quite different dispositions. For the one, the cruel one,
furthers the evil war and feud! No mortal likes her, but under the yoke of need one pays hon-
our to the burdensome Eris, according to the decree of the immortals. She, as the elder, gave
birth to black night.
In his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, Nietzsche ([1874] 1998) states,
The strife of the opposites gives birth to all of becoming; the definite qualities which look
permanent to us express but the momentary ascendancy of one partner. But this by no means
signifies the end of the war; the contest endures in all eternity. (p. 55)
Nietzsche’s position is quite obvious: Both the bad strife (antagonism) and the good strife
(agonism) would have been “children of Night” (cf. Allison, 2001: 258; see as well Marchart,
2013; Turner, 2006).
12. The notion of “post-politics” was introduced by Žižek (2010) referring to Rancière (1999),
see Michel and Roskamm (2013) and Swyngedouw (2007).
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Author biography
Nikolai Roskamm is leading his research project “Die unbesetzte Stadt” [the unoccupied city] at
Technische Universität Berlin. He is author of Dichte. Eine transdisziplinäre Dekonstruktion
[Density. A transdisciplinary deconstruction] published by Transcript and editor of the journal for
critical urban studies sub\urban (www.zeitschrift-suburban.de).
