Öteki Kavramı Bağlamında Radikal Demokrasi Üzerine

Abstract

The identities categorized as different from each other for various reasons point to the “other”. This study will explore the possibility that the differences with respect to gender, race, religion-language, etc. –the others– participate in politics without abolishing one another. It will discuss the basis of a political approach on which the identity differences are together and which is not standardizing but is ruled by the pluralist understanding. The problem of being together with the other in the political sphere remains unsolved by the understanding of liberal democracy today. For liberal democracy leads to the idea of standardization of the other by drawing on modernism’s project of “universalization”. Postmodernism’s attitude against “grand narratives”, however, makes it possible that the other is understood not as universal, but as difference. Radical democracy as a postmodernist approach can be regarded as an effective field that can provide a solution to the problem of the possibility of politics that takes account of the other. However, the clash of ideas within radical democracy itself gives rise to the question where politics that takes the other into account should be positioned. The clash in question is the one between the Habermasian conception of negotiation and the Schmittian concept of antagonism. Both thinkers espouse the pluralist understanding in politics, arguing that the political sphere should accommodate the other. But Habermas maintained modernism’s understanding of universality and so he moved away from radical democracy and got closer to liberal democracy. Whereas, unlike Habermas, Schmitt offers a political layout based on strife. But, Schmitt's conception of politics based on antagonism includes the destruction of the other. For this reason, I think both approaches have their drawbacks and therefore a different approach is required that will incorporate both and go beyond them. The basis of our study is the conception of radical democracy presented as a theory by Mouffe and Laclau in their Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985), which draws on both of the views above as the bases of being together with the other in the political sphere, while putting forward a view that is different from either.