Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary

participation in Western European institutions, with the justification that
theirs is a different cultural identity and that European institutions are
not their concern. In this way, all forms of subordination and exclusion
would be consolidated with the excuse of maintaining pure identities.
The logic of apartheid is not only a discourse of the dominant groups; as
we said before, it can also permeate the identities of the oppressed.
(Laclau 1996g:29)
We should note, in passing, that Laclau does not support his invocation of
“Northern African-” and “Jamaican-” European discourse with any textual
references, making an evaluation of his remarks rather difficult. Theorists who
have conducted extensive concrete research in this area do not construct European

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racial minorities as embracing an exclusively isolationist strategy. Gilroy, Hall
and Bhabha, for example, demonstrate that black and Asian European cultural
formations are the complex products of multiple overdeterminations and hybrid
appropriations (Gilroy 1987, 1993; Hall 1988b, 1990; Bhabha 1990). Even at the
height of the Salman Rushdie affair, the British-South Asian community was deeply
divided on the problem of upholding Rushdie’s right to free speech while opposing,
at the same time, racist depictions of the Muslim as inherently opposed to modern
Western values (Appignanesi and Maitland 1989).
Laclau’s use of examples in this passage, and his use of the term, “the logic of
apartheid,” to describe the identities of the oppressed, are problematic. The
theoretical argument that he is advancing, however, is rather straightforward: the
assertion of a “pure particularism” is self-defeating. Where two or more antagonistic
groups demand their rights in the name of a pure particularism, they will have to
invoke some sort of more general principle in order to resolve their conflict.
Laclau further states that particularism as a principle on its own leads to an
agnosticism that becomes dangerous for disempowered groups.
I can defend the right of sexual, racial and national minorities in the
name of particularism; but if particularism is the only valid principle, 1
have to also accept the rights to self-determination of all kinds of
reactionary groups involved in anti-social practices.
(Laclau 1996g:26)
It is at this point that Laclau introduces his apartheid analogy: the conception of
“separate developments” strategically affirms “difference” while ignoring the terrain
of hierarchical power relations upon which difference is constructed (Laclau
1996g:27).
It could be noted once again that Laclau does not offer any historically specific
reference to a particular movement’s discourse. Actual anti-racist, black nationalist
and multicultural strategies rarely take the form of extremist particularism. In any
event, Laclau’s concern is that the invocation of particularism may lay the basis
for the legitimation for anti-democratic movements. If, for example, we are dealing
with a group that has traditionally won privilege over other groups through
exclusions, exploitation and oppression, then allowing that group to assert its
right to particularism is to “sanction the status quo in the relation of power between
the groups” (1996g:27). Mouffe, for her part, fully concurs on this point. Referring
to the work of Marcil-Lacoste (1992), Mouffe argues that the “extreme” pluralistic
valorization of all differences is highly dangerous for democracy, because it fails to
engage in a differentiated approach to difference, namely the distinction between
“differences that exist but should not exist and differences that do not exist but
should exist” (Mouffe 1996b:247).
Laclau and Mouffe, then, agree that not all differences can be accepted; the
principles of difference, diversity and autonomy must be limited by the principles
of liberty, equality and democracy. Perhaps the only serious problem with this

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argument is that Laclau consistently refers throughout these passages to
hypothetical cases in which racial and ethnic minorities deploy purely particularist
demands for rights. In this sense, Laclau risks reproducing the discriminatory
representation of ethnic and racial difference as inherently particularistic. As
Christian points out, apparently progressive figures often perpetuate this viewpoint
when they congratulate an “extraordinary” minority intellectual for transcending
her naturally “narrow” frame of reference to produce a “universally” significant
work (1994:176–7).
Laclau continues,
These remarks allow us to throw some light on the divergent courses of
action that current struggles in defense of multiculturalism can follow.
One possible way is to affirm, purely and simply, the right of the various
cultural and ethnic groups to assert their differences and their separate
development. This is the route to self-apartheid, and it is sometimes
accompanied by the claim that Western cultural values and institutions
are the preserve of white, male Europeans or Anglo-Americans and have
nothing to do with the identity of other groups living in the same territory.
What is advocated in this way is total segregationism, the mere opposition
of one particularism to another.
(1996g:32)
For Laclau, such an argument would collapse into “perpetual incoherence”: it
would aim to win the legal reforms necessary for the official recognition of its
legitimacy, but it would simultaneously claim that the legal system is inherently
rooted in the “traditional dominant sectors of the West and that [it has] nothing to