CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Smolenski, Jan Pawel |
|---|---|
| Title | Beyond Liberal Democracy? A Critical Assessment of Political Theories of Chantal Mouffe and Slavoj Žižek |
| Summary | In this thesis I compare and assess political theories of Chantal Mouffe and Slavoj Žižek who develop conflictual alternatives to real existing democracies marked by post-political condition and to normative liberal democratic theories. I trace theoretical differences between Mouffe and Žižek to the different ways in which they articulate concepts of 'capitalism' and 'democracy': for Mouffe 'democracy' is a name of the radical potential of the ideals of freedom and equality and 'capitalism' signifies the inequality of power in the socioeconomic realm, whereas for Žižek democracy is an ideological phantasy securing smooth circulation of capital. Consequently, Mouffe prescriptive project is radicalization of liberal democracy in which plurality of local struggles of legitimate adversaries occupies a central position, while Žižek argues for resuscitation of the Idea of communism. I claim that both theories suffer from certain deficiencies: Whereas Mouffe, due to her focus on the political realm, is unable to address the source of the structural socioeconomic inequalities, Žižek's total critique makes creation of substantive prescriptive theory impossible. By extracting valuable points from their theories and supplementing it with Elizabeth Anderson's conception of relational equality, I suggest a way of overcoming aforementioned deficiencies and propose a theory that would combine comprehensive critique of capitalist society with appreciation of local struggles. |
| Supervisor | Miklosi, Zoltan |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/smolenski_jan.pdf |
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