Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary

Partial accommodations of plurality: Maclntyre, Sandel and
Young
Maclntyre, Sandel and Young all offer various solutions to the problem of
accommodating the principles of equality, self-determination and the common
good. Maclntyre explicitly recognizes that every individual plays a whole set of
different roles within her specific tradition-bound community. He then insists,
however, that her community’s “narrative repertoire” contains a unity narrative
for her: a story that gives her complex life an intelligible unity. This unity narrative
is in turn granted tremendous precedence: what is good for the individual is
determined by the story that gives her life its unity (Maclntyre 1981). From Laclau
and Mouffe’s perspective, Maclntyre’s prescriptive unity narrative comes far too
close to the substantive common good. In Lefort’s terms, the “empty place” at the
center of a democratic polity for contestation and renegotiation (1986:279) is not
adequately preserved.
For his part, Sandel also recognizes that each individual has multiple and
overlapping memberships within the many different communities that make up
society as a whole. There is no “society as a whole” as such; there is only a complex
network of relatively inclusive or relatively exclusive communities. Each community
makes a specific claim on its members in terms of communal obligations. Sandel not
only admits that the heterogeneity of the various communities’ conception of the
good renders the formation of a common good for society extremely difficult, but
also that we cannot determine in advance which conception of the good should
prevail in a given context (1982:146). Sandel nevertheless maintains his
communitarian faith in the possibilities of knowing the good of the other and of
conducting coercion-free discourse with the other such that this problem can be
ultimately overcome through dialogue. In a more recent work, Sandel acknowledges
the danger of coercion in a republican communitarian regime. In almost Gramscian
terms, he calls for a complex promotion of civic virtues through persuasion,

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habituation and the encouragement of independent thinking. He also envisions a
pluralistic form of deliberation that would preserve multiple interpretations of the
good and the space for future contestation (1996:318–21).
Young constructs a public sphere that would systematically promote the
autonomy of different social groups. She contends that “equality as the participation
and inclusion of all groups sometimes requires different treatment for oppressed or
disadvantaged groups” (1990:158). Young does not, however, pay enough attention
to the fact that each social group is marked not only by difference but also by
antagonism. When she defines a social group as an ensemble of individuals who
share a common “way of life” (1990:186), she does not give adequate emphasis to
the sharp contestations that obtain within each social group about the definition
of its norms. Young’s cultural definition of the collectivities that would be granted
special rights therefore becomes problematic. Who would determine the proper
membership of a racial, ethnic or sexual minority? Whose cultural standards would
they use? The risk here is that the whole problem of social control in the name of
regulating cultural “authenticity” could be reintroduced. Contestations about rights
should take place on a political terrain that is constructed according to the principle
of distributive justice, instead of the principle of culturally-defined groups. Given
the complexity of contemporary social formations, and the hybrid and
overdetermined character of multiple forms of exploitation and oppression, almost
all cultural groups contain within themselves relatively empowered and relatively
disempowered members alike. Complex mechanisms of distributive justice can
deal with claims that arise out of antagonisms within cultural groups, whereas a
system that is based on visions of ideal socio-cultural affiliations and homogeneous
cultural groups cannot do so.
Mouffe shares Young’s concern that different social groups should not have to
suppress their specific identity when participating in the “general will.” She notes,
however, that Young relies upon an essentialist conception of group membership.
For Mouffe, Young implicitly assumes that social groups begin to interact with
each other only after they have fully formed their identities and interests. Politics
then becomes a conversation between fixed actors who pursue their already
established goals. Laclau and Mouffe, by contrast, construct the political as the
site of identity formation, contestation and renegotiation. These processes always
reflect power relations; in the case of a society tending towards radical democracy,
they would also reflect the principles of equality and self-determination. Mouffe
concludes that Young searches in vain for a conversational mechanism by which
heterogeneous groups can be brought together, for she does not make room for
the processes through which they renegotiate their identities and demands
(1993b:85–6).