#	Pagina
attuale pagina	/open-h2020/projects/202884/results.html

Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Legitimacy (Legitimacy, Sovereignty and the Public Sphere)

Teaser

Summary

Recent trends of globalisation and democratic development in general have highlighted the problems of participation in and inclusivity of the public sphere of democratic polities. On the one hand, it has been argued that corporate interests and party bureaucracies have hijacked democracy by making political decisions without consideration of the public discussion, which, in turn, has caused the alienation of large sections of population from a reflective involvement in democratic politics. On the other hand, we can observe how globalisation and global political and environmental hazards bring together different peoples, cultures, religions, highlighting the question of openness to and acceptance of differences.

This research traces these problems back to our conceptual thinking about legitimacy, sovereignty, democracy and the public sphere, and focuses on the conditions of possibility of inclusivity and participation in the public sphere. In addressing inclusivity, the project questions the traditional ontology in the prevailing thought on the public sphere, which presumes the existence of the pre-formed subject who creates the public sphere by his or her actions and defends it against inhibiting influences so that free and equal deliberations or competitive conflicts could take place. Such subject is seen as in charge of itself, and whose freedom consists in drawing borders and exclusions in order to be able to sovereignly decide over oneself. In contrast, this research project goes beyond the traditional ontology of the public sphere and aims at advancing an ontology that does not posit a subject prior to the public sphere but considers it to be coexistent with the public sphere. Among approaches that follow this ontology, the research focuses on Jacques Derridaâ€™s deconstruction and shows how a normative injunction for inclusiveness can be understood in this approach. In political terms, this research responds to the issue of openness that in todayâ€™s globalised politics manifests itself in various preconceptions towards refugees, towards other cultures and different religions.

In addressing the question of participation in the public sphere, the research inquires into the possibility that the problems with it are rooted, at least partially, in our inadequate conceptual thinking of the relations between state and society, and specifically, in the unfinished conceptual separation between state and society. Even if Immanuel Kant (if not Jean-Jacques Rousseau) initiated the separation, highlighting the need of mediation between the two, nevertheless, state and society remained latently linked by something that was left theoretically unaccounted for, which persistently as if undermines the possibility and need for the mediation (the public sphere). The central claim of the research project is that the idea of legitimacy has to be addressed, if this conceptual separation is to be brought to its conclusion. In following this argument, the project seeks to disjoin the idea of the selfhood of the people and the idea of sovereignty, offering instead the idea of the public sphere (mediation) for a basis of the selfhood of the people. The redefinition of legitimacy, in turn, has effects on interrelations between various other theoretical concepts and on the way we position ourselves in the world. The rationale of this approach is based on the view that the world is seen by us through the lenses of concepts. As much as concepts structure the world around us, i.e. they determine what can be seen in the world, it is possible to change our behaviour in relation to it by changing concepts through which we interpret it. In this particular case, the proposed changes in conceptual understanding should be conducive to a more inclusive public sphere with more active and responsive participation in it.

Work performed

In the first stage of the research, the question of inclusivity was addressed in engagement with the theory of hegemony of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The theory of hegemony has developed its own post-structurally motivated logic of inclusion/exclusion, which is an influential description of political dynamics, but it denies any possibility to contain a normative injunction for inclusion in its theoretical framework. The research showed how and in what sense the normative dimension appears in deconstruction as well as in the theory of hegemony. By submitting the theory of hegemony to a deconstructive reading, the research exposed its internal aporia, which rather than terminates hegemony, opens it to a normative demand of being open to the other as other. The opening of the normative dimension in the theory of hegemony makes hegemonic theorizing to intervene and de-sediment power relations, thereby becoming part of the wider discourse on the inclusivity of and responsibility in the democratic polity.

The second question of the research project concerning the issue of participation in the public sphere was taken up in engagement with Jacques Derridaâ€™s writings on law and signature. The research project reasons that the (value of) participation in the public sphere is structurally undermined by the incomplete conceptual separation of state and society. It is argued that the separation can be brought about by developing a deconstructed concept of legitimacy. The first discussion in the series that will be devoted to this topic inquired into the role legitimacy plays in Jacques Derridaâ€™s writings. The analysis reveals that, on the one hand, Derrida situates legitimacy under the same category of terms as laws, rules, prescriptions, and so on, that are deconstructible, but on the other hand, he shows that the structure of the â€˜legitimacy givingâ€™ signature (e.g. under the declaration that founds the state) is problematic and undecidable. The research aimed at showing that the signature as much as it is undecidable between its performative and constative aspects cannot hold to its position as a mediator of legitimacy, or as the origin of legitimacy, but becomes indistinguishable from legitimacy and turns into its internal structure. This problematizes Derridaâ€™s categorization of legitimacy on the side of law, rather than justice. The next stage of the research project develops this thought further.

Final results

The research completed so far on both topics contributes new, beyond the state of the art ideas to the existing research in respective areas of political philosophy/theory. The research on the theory of hegemony shows how a normative demand of opening to the other can be incorporated into the hegemonic logic, which, on the one hand, breaks a theoretical impasse in post-marxist hegemonic thought, and, on the other hand, provides a new awareness about the means of critiquing power relations that exclude certain groups and demands from the public sphere. The research on deconstruction and legitimacy via Derridaâ€™s work on signature is an important step toward developing a deconstructed concept of legitimacy, which underpins the further questioning of the grounds of thinking about the public sphere. The wider impact that the research project seeks to achieve is that, by challenging and redefining the existing relationships between concepts such as sovereignty, legitimacy, the public sphere and democracy, it changes the way how people situate themselves in the world, which, in turn, brings about a more inclusive public sphere with a more reflective participation in it.