身份政治与民主民主化:激进民主与立场理论中权力与理性的摇摆

IF 1.2 Q3 POLITICAL SCIENCE
Karsten Schubert
{"title":"身份政治与民主民主化:激进民主与立场理论中权力与理性的摇摆","authors":"Karsten Schubert","doi":"10.1111/1467-8675.12715","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Criticism against identity politics, both in public discourse and political theory, has intensified over the past decade with the rise of right-wing populism and the polarization of politics (Walters, 2018). Such criticism portrays identity politics as a threat to democracy, alleging that it erodes community, rational communication, and solidarity. Drawing on radical democratic and standpoint theories, I argue for the opposite thesis; namely, that identity politics is crucial for the democratization of democracy. I show that democratization works through disrupting hegemonic discourse and is, therefore, a matter of power; and that such power politics are reasonable when following minority standpoints generated through identity politics. In other words, the universal democratic claims of equality and freedom can only become effective through their repeated actualization in particular power struggles. Identity politics is a contested term. Nevertheless, there are systematic overlaps between current criticisms of identity politics that mainly repeat arguments that have been similarly articulated since the 1990s. Communitarians criticize identity politics as dividing the political community, liberals criticize it as disruptive of the public sphere and free deliberation (Fukuyama, 2018; Habermas, 2020; Lilla, 2017), and Marxist and anarchist theorists argue that identity politics undermines the struggle for justice and emancipation and stabilizes state power through neoliberal diversity politics (Fraser, 1990, 2007; Kumar et al., 2018; Newman, 2010; Táíwò, 2022; for a critique of these debates, see Bickford, 1997; Walters, 2018; Young, 2000, pp. 82−87; Paul, 2019). Based on universalist accounts of the political,1 all three positions share the concern that particularist identity politics conflates social positions with epistemological possibilities and political positions, resulting in standpoint fundamentalism. In other words, the critics claim that, in identity politics, it matters more who speaks than what is said.2 Discussions about difference (Benhabib, 1996), counterpublics (Fraser, 1990), and inclusion (Young, 2000) at the intersection of deliberative and Critical theory early criticized such universalist accounts of the political for their exclusionist effects. While these works offer valuable resources to construct the argument that strengthening identity politics is important for the development of more inclusive deliberations and institutions, they frame this as a correction of reason, leaving the aspect of power underdeveloped. To understand both the severe resistance against more inclusive politics and the strategic need for non-deliberative means to achieve it—such as protest, civil disobedience, “cancel culture,” or uprising—what is necessary is a theoretical framework that describes democratization as an oscillation between power and reason. Even Mansbridge (1996) does not offer such a theoretical framework, despite explicitly arguing—contrary to deliberative democracy—that power through coercion is central for democracy and rightly points to the need for “protected enclaves” (p. 57) for the development of minoritarian standpoints. As the tension between power and reason, and respectively, particularism and universalism, is at the center of agonistic3 radical democratic theory (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001; Lefort, 1988a; Mouffe, 2008; Rancière, 1999), it is better suited to develop such a framework than deliberative approaches.4 This tension should not be understood as one where identity politics is positioned on the side of particularism and its critics on the side of universality; rather, it is constitutive of identity politics, and in extension, democracy itself. “Identity politics”—in the sense of the history of the term's origin as well as the current debate—refers to the political practice of marginalized groups who, in relation to the construction of a collective identity and standpoint, defend themselves against their disadvantages due to structures, cultures, and norms of the majority society. Following Combahee River Collective (1979, p. 365), a Black feminist organization, identity politics can be defined as “focusing upon our own oppression,” thus starting from particular experiences and standpoints. However, this should not be conflated—as some contemporary critics do—with essentialist interest group politics. Rather, identity politics is directed against oppression in general, insofar as it is an intersectional and “integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking” (Combahee River Collective, 1979, p. 362). This oscillation between particularist and universalist accounts of oppression is not a flaw in the Collective's text but stems from the inherent tension within identity politics. This tension has been discussed in the rich debates on identity politics, especially in the writings of intersectional feminism (Alcoff, 1988; Alcoff et al., 2006; Bickford, 1997; Briskin, 1990; Gamson, 1995; Hekman, 1999; Kruks, 1995; McNay, 2010; Nicholson, 2008; Whittier, 2017; see also the edited volumes, Benhabib et al., 1995; Hames-Garcia & Moya, 2000; and for an overview, see Bernstein, 2005; as well as Heyes, 2020). However, there is no systematic account of the tension between particularism and universalism in these works, which, indebted to that tradition, I will develop with the aim of strengthening it. As “identity politics” is a contested term, alternative conceptual strategies exist. For example, Young (2000) speaks of the “politics of difference” of “structural social groups” to describe what I call “identity politics,” while, following critics (pp. 82–87), she uses the term “identity politics” for the tendency toward substantialist, merely cultural, and potentially non-intersectional exclusive group-interest politics (p. 86). As the common understanding of “identity politics” entails the breadth of the critical politics of marginalized groups, I think it is important to defend, specify, and revive that term, instead of trying to establish a new term that is not currently criticized. This conceptual strategy underscores that, in general, the critical politics of marginalized groups promote democratization and inclusivity. This, of course, does not mean that all identity politics are equally democratizing. The argument is thus not a carte blanche for every practice of identity politics; rather, the reconstruction of the democratizing function of identity politics is not only descriptive but also normative, as it allows a differentiation of identity politics from exclusive group-interest politics and thereby criticizes identity political projects if they show tendencies to develop into exclusive group-interest politics. To understand identity politics as a democratizing oscillation between power and reason, the radical democratic account has to be refined through standpoint theory. I will proceed in the following steps. First, I will systematically reconstruct the equivalences of both theoretical traditions, filling a gap in the existing research literature that is ignorant of these equivalences. Both put forward a critique of common notions of objectivity and universality, privileging the particularity of oppressed knowledges.5 In contrast to the communitarian, liberal, and Marxist accounts that are based on universalist conceptions of the political, these traditions argue that breaking through established understandings of universal discourse through the use of particular identity politics is central to the further democratization of democracy. However, the radical democratic affirmation of identity politics as a particular disruption of the universal prima facie confirms the critics’ fear that identity politics destroys universal normativity and with it the very foundation of democracy, by fostering exclusive group-interest politics. This points to a more fundamental problem in radical democratic thought, which Volk (2018) recently called a lack of consensus orientation. If politics is only conceptualized as critique, disruption, and protest, this amounts to a rather one-sided account of politics that blends out the importance of institutions and deliberation. Thus, while radical democratic theory helps to understand that the tension between universalism and particularism is constitutive of democracy and identity politics, it risks resolving this tension toward particularism by overemphasizing power instead of reason as definitive of the political. It is, therefore, necessary to correct its lack of consensus orientation to develop the radical democratic account of identity politics. To this end, in the second section, I demonstrate how standpoint theory refines the radical democratic interpretation of identity politics. This addresses the concerns that identity politics undermines intersubjective discourse and offers a solution to the lack of consensus orientation in radical democratic theory in general.6 Standpoint theory allows a substantiation and reconciliation of two claims that are contradictory at first sight. First, that particular standpoints are necessary to criticize the current discursive and institutional order, and second, that such standpoints are based on intersubjective reason and “strong objectivity” (Harding, 1993). This helps to clarify the democratizing function of identity politics and the normativity of radical democratic theory in order to criticize interpretations of this school that reject any claims to objectivity based on the fundamental contingency of the political. Such a total rejection of objectivity is the philosophical basis for the aforementioned lack of consensus orientation in radical democratic thought, leading to dissolving the power/reason tension toward power. The radical democratic and standpoint theoretical interpretation of identity politics that I propose thereby explains that the ongoing oscillation between power and reason, respectively, particularism and universalism, is constitutive of identity politics, and by extension, of democracy. Radical democracy shares two fundamental arguments with standpoint theory. In this section, I will reconstruct the critique of objectivity and universality, and in the following section, I will detail how both theoretical traditions privilege oppressed knowledges. Radical democratic theory is a postfoundationalist theory: It claims that foundations are contingent and therefore an objective theory of the social cannot exist (Marchart, 2007). Rather, politics is the attempt to universalize one particular interpretation of the social and to install it as a hegemonic regime. A primary concern of radical democratic critique is hence the depoliticization caused by expert knowledges and restrictive discourses in neoliberal post-democracy, which often sideline critical voices. Acknowledging the differences in their respective positions, I will reconstruct the critiques of objectivity by Lefort, Mouffe, Laclau, and Rancière. As early as 1966, Lefort (1990)—a key thinker in the tradition of radical democracy—developed a notion of the political as necessarily contingent and contested. He develops his account by criticizing the objectifying theories of Marxism on the one hand, and liberalism on the other. Both are foundationalist theories: they derive politics from an objective account of the social, in the form of economic determinism in the case of Marxism, and as a universalism incompatible with social conflict in the case of liberalism. Both tell stories of an origin of the political that presupposes an ahistorical position (Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 95). Analyzing the logic of the attempts to provide a foundation, and their continuous failure, Lefort defines the political as the ongoing conflictual foundation of society (Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 96). Democracy is the political regime—in contrast to totalitarianism—that acknowledges the original division of society and continuously gives it unity through political representation (Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 110). The argument is epistemological: there is no universal account of society, but only the contingent and particular political attempts to ground society. Democracy thus takes into account the notion that there is no objective and universal account of society, but that its identity is essentially conflictual and contested (Lefort, 1988b). Thus, attempts to bring the democratic conflict to closure by positing a particular truth as universalistic and objective against the plurality of ideologies is, according to Lefort, totalitarian (Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 111). Laclau and Mouffe (2001) take up Lefort's theory—the political as contingency and conflict—in their approach to hegemony, antagonism, and radical democracy. First, their work is crucial for analyzing how identities and political subjectivities are constituted within this postfoundationalist framework; something that I will return to later. Second, they analyze—more historically and concretely than Lefort—how objectification and universalization work in contemporary societies. Laclau's (2000a, 2000b) account of politics as a logic of the universalization of particular demands helps to understand how a neoliberal regime of expertocracy, liberal and deliberative political theory, and the breakdown of social democratic parties, installed a political hegemony that is objectifying politics by suppressing political conflict and agonistic alternatives. Mouffe (2000, 2008) especially elaborated on this critique of post-democracy (Crouch, 2004) as a matter of political theory and the hegemony of liberal and deliberal approaches therein. Thus, objectification is the key strategy of universalization through which the liberal hegemony stabilizes itself. While this (neo-)liberal objectification is anti-democratic and depoliticizing, it is not necessarily totalitarian. Rancière (1999, pp. 21−43) radicalizes the critique of universalism and objectivity through his differentiation of “politics” and “police.” “Police” is Rancière's term for the regime of institutionalized politics as well as the discursive and normative order, while “politics” is the assertion of equality through the eruptive contestation of police from the position of those excluded by the police. It is key that “police,” as an institutional order, is based on a regime of the visible and sayable. It is thus connected to an epistemic order that defines some as intelligible while radically excluding others. This means that every positive order is partial, excluding, and thereby unjust. Thus, Rancière's account helps to debunk claims that pertain to the universality and objectivity of a given order, as the critics of identity politics do, by cloaking such injustice and stabilizing the order. Standpoint theories put forward a similar criticism against claims of objectivity and universality. While they focus on academic truth production and not on political hegemony, they share the critique that objectivity and universality are devices that cloak the particular, political, and unjust character of a given order. From feminist and Black perspectives, standpoint theories show that a traditional understanding of objectivity leads to precisely the opposite of a realist and plausible assessment of the social: a particular perspective of cishet male and White mainstream society. This means that scientific claims to neutrality are never neutral; they cloak their particular standpoint. Both radical democracy and standpoint theory agree that when conceptualized as the opposite of politics, objectivity leads to a particular perspective of hegemony that hides its particularity by presenting it as universality. The sciences’ commitment to social neutrality disarmed the scientifically productive potential of politically engaged research on behalf of oppressed groups. […] Androcentric, economically advantaged, racist, Eurocentric, and heterosexist conceptual frameworks ensured systematic ignorance and error about not only the lives of the oppressed, but also about the lives of their oppressors and thus about how nature and social relations in general worked (Harding, 2004b, p. 5). Thus, the conventional conception of objectivity and universality leads to the presentation of the particular standpoint of the privileged as universal. By linking this analysis to the concepts of “hegemony” and “police” in radical democracy—which emphasize the interplay between knowledge and power—one can argue that conventional views on universality and objectivity bolster the majoritarian hegemony and the prevailing “police.” These very mechanisms are at stake in the contemporary critique of identity politics: by rejecting identity politics as particularistic, they universalize the perspective of the privileged. Is there, then, a way out of these false foundationalist conceptions of objectivity and universality that lead to hegemonic knowledge regimes? Standpoint theory and radical democracy do not only share the postfoundationalist critique of universality and objectivity, they also argue that privileging oppressed knowledges can help overcome foundationalist universality. Standpoint theories develop “stronger” accounts of objectivity that take into account the plurality of standpoints. However, focusing on epistemological discussions, they do not lay out the consequences for democracy that might follow from this standpoint thinking. These consequences become clear through radical democratic theory. Standpoint theories argue for “starting off thought” from the lives of marginalized people [as this] will generate illuminating critical questions that do not arise in thought that begins from dominant group lives (Harding, 1993, p. 56). The critique of conventional objectivity does not entail overthrowing the concept of objectivity altogether. On the contrary, it is about conceptualizing a better version of objectivity, which Harding (1993) calls “strong objectivity.” This objectivity is reflective of the contextualization and limitations of particular knowledges. It is “about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object” (Haraway, 1988, p. 583). In other words, “Only partial perspective promises objective vision” (Haraway, 1988, p. 583). Standpoint theories do not solely make this claim philosophically but are also based on the real existing perspectives of marginalized people. The analysis of these perspectives shows that due to their situatedness, they achieve knowledge that remains undisclosed to the hegemonic perspective but needs to be taken into account to achieve strong objectivity. Thus, standpoint theories are not simply about the pluralization of knowledge; they also assign epistemic privilege to oppressed knowledges (Toole, 2021). The epistemic privilege of oppressed knowledges has been shown through the experiences of women and the experiences of Blacks and People of Color, who need a specific understanding of the social to navigate and survive it. For example, Hartsock (2004) argues that the position of women in reproductive labor enables a critique of masculine ideology. Black scholars refer to personal experience to describe their particular social, and thereby epistemological position within the racialized order. Early, Du Bois (2007, p. 8) spoke of a “double consciousness” that Blacks develop. In a similar vein, hooks (1984, preface) argued that the Black perspective is twofold, both from “the outside in and from the inside out,” as racism requires the awareness of the separation of margin and center. Thus, Blacks in the United States developed an “oppositional view—a mode of seeing unknown to most of our oppressors” (hooks, 1984, preface). Because of their Black feminist social position, Black female researchers can see anomalies in the normal sciences better than white scholars; for example, the systematic leaving out of Black perspectives from normal research (Collins, 1986). Taken together, these diverse empirical accounts of the differentiated positions amount to the insight that it is only through a plurality of “situated knowledges” (Haraway, 1988) that a better account of oppression can be reached. Radical democratic theory also privileges oppressed knowledges. Because no universal perspective is possible in postfoundationalism, radical democracy conceptualizes politics as standpoint-dependent. When democracy is understood as protest by the excluded and disenfranchised, it is dependent on their standpoint. To privilege the perspectives of the oppressed is rooted in the Marxist account of the proletariat as a revolutionary class, and radical democratic theory is post-Marxian in so far as it transforms this standpoint thinking to disentangle it from economic determinism. For Lefort (1990), democracy is characterized by the emptiness of the place of power and the institutionalization of struggles about that power, stemming from the non-fixed identity of society. This is the thinking of pluralistic democracy, based on the impossibility of conventional foundations, and the politically disastrous consequences of attempts to do so. Just as with the standpoint theoretical conception of situated knowledges, Lefort thus puts forward a pluralistic epistemology. His postfoundationalist theory of democracy can thus be seen as a first step in drawing out the consequences of standpoint epistemologies for political theory. However, as Ingram (2006) shows, Lefort is ambiguous. He can be, and has been, interpreted in a liberal and radical democratic vein, emphasizing either the need for stable institutions and universal human rights to confine social conflict, or the ongoing critique of the exclusions of a given regime. While the liberal interpretation falls back on what standpoint theories call the “god trick”—that is, an (imagined) neutral perspective that gives the framework to conflict but is not itself contested—the radical democratic interpretation is more plausible when taking into account standpoint theories. Rancière is a radical democratic reader of Lefort. His conception of democracy, as an ongoing struggle against exclusions by the excluded, is directed against a substantive notion of the people as homogeneous and self-identical. This argument can be further supported by standpoint theory, as the “god trick” not only needs to be avoided from the institutional perspective but also when it comes to political subjectivities. Presupposing identical people in political theory entails a majoritarian conception that leads to the epistemic exclusions of minoritarian perspectives analyzed by standpoint theory. The privileging of oppressed knowledges is intrinsic to Rancière's aforementioned difference between “police” and “politics.” “Police” entails political exclusions rooted in epistemic exclusions targeting specific groups. These can only be countered through the political–epistemological demands of these groups to be included through their assertion of equality. Rancière calls such particular demands for inclusion in the name of equality “politics.” Thus, standpoint theory helps to understand the development of a standpoint as the necessary condition for politics (in Rancière's sense). Radical democratic theory, on the other hand, makes clear that such struggles about political epistemology are not confined to the space of science, but are at the core of the political, transcending any given institutional regime. Vis-a-vis standpoint theory, Rancière helps to understand that the struggle for inclusion into “police” has no clear limitations, but can and often needs to transgress given institutionalized forms of political deliberation; for example, in civil disobedience or revolutionary upheavals. Thus, while standpoint theory privileges oppressed knowledges to develop a stronger notion of objectivity, radical democratic theory shows that without significant political protest and change, it is unlikely that such “stronger objectivity” has political effects. Privileging oppressed knowledges and standpoints is thus pivotal for the further democratization of democracy. How this works concretely in contemporary Western liberal democracies becomes clear in the work of Laclau and Mouffe (2001), who are concerned with how the identity politics of the new social movements can radicalize the democratic revolution by forming new alliances. They analyze the options for leftist politics after it became clear that the traditional Marxist strategy had failed, based, as it was, on an essentialist notion of the working class as a revolutionary subject. The new social movements, which confront various forms of oppression (such as racial or sexual), possess the potential to rejuvenate the radical democratic pursuit of freedom and equality for all; that is, to further democratize democracy. While standpoint theory helps to analyze the epistemic conditions under which such identity political movements can come about, Mouffe and Laclau are key for analyzing how such emancipative politics can become hegemonic. It is only through connecting the different particular projects to a larger one, by so-called “chains of equivalences” (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p. 182), that the hegemony of neoliberalism can be challenged. This entails that the critique of universality that is based on “conventional objectivity” does not mean disposing of universality altogether. Quite the contrary, according to Laclau (2000a, 2000b), politics necessarily entails the universalization of particular demands. Yet, how does emancipatory postfoundationalist universalization differ from its false foundationalist counterpart, and upon which concept of objectivity—if at all—is it anchored? In the next section, I argue that standpoint theory's notion of “stronger objectivity” helps to answer this question. Given this systematic equivalence of radical democracy and standpoint theory, their remaining differences can be harnessed productively: standpoint theory helps to refine a plausible radical democratic interpretation of identity politics; radical democracy can learn from standpoint theory that identity politics is not about radical disagreement but intersubjective understanding. That identity politics can be productively interpreted in the framework of radical democracy became clear throughout the discussion of the systematic equivalences between radical democratic theory and standpoint theory. Identity politics is based on the formation of particular standpoints of oppressed groups, and for radical democratic theory, democratization entails the critique of exclusions from such particular standpoints and not from the majoritarian or hegemonic perspective. Thus, following radical democratic theory, identity politics is not a threat to democracy (as universalistic political theorists argue), but necessary for the further democratization of democracy. However, a critic well versed in the current debates on radical democratic theory might remain unconvinced by this interpretation of identity politics. In these debates, radical democratic theory is criticized for reducing politics to a struggle for power through protest and insurrection, as well as having insufficient concepts of normativity, community, deliberation, consensus, and no account of good political institutions (Arato, 2013; Bergem & Bergem, 2019; Herrmann & Flatscher, 2020; Wiley, 2002). This critique mirrors the ongoing debate around identity politics. It is criticized, much like radical democratic theory, for undermining intersubjectivity and discourse due to its exclusivist power politics; for example, by imposing norms of “political correctness” that prevent further discussion or by excluding participants from debates through “cancel culture.” If both radical democratic theory and identity politics share the same problem—the reduction of politics to power that blocks intersubjectivity and reason and might lead to exclusive group-interest politics—a critic of identity politics would have reason to reject the radical democratic interpretation of identity politics as necessary for democratization. For the critic, such a radical democratic interpretation of identity politics would not solve the problem of identity politics dissolving democracy; on the contrary, she would see it as a confirmation of this problem. To defend the radical democratic approach, and to respond to the problem of differentiating democratizing identity politics from potentially exclusive group-interest politics, I will first reconstruct a rational core of such criticism. The problem is, according to Volk (2018, p. 11), “that radical-democratic thinking overemphasizes one central element of democracy, namely the manifestation of conflict, and falls short in properly grasping the second central element in conceptual terms, namely the postulate of understanding between political opponents.” This underdeveloped account of understanding leads to a series of problems, for example, a lack of normative criteria to distinguish between “progressive and regressive forms of political protest” (p. 11), and a tendency toward decisionism instead of normative justifications. The reason for this tendency lies in the critique of universalism and objectivity that I reconstructed above. When the traditional modes of normative theory not only need to fail in their goal to reach universal normativity but also, when the very attempt to reach such justifications leads to the stabilization of hegemony, it is understandable that radical democratic theory tends not to engage with questions of intersubjective justification and draws instead on the given normativity within social movements without further questioning it (Volk, 2018, p. 14). The following critique of radical democratic theory's overemphasis on power could just as well b","PeriodicalId":51578,"journal":{"name":"Constellations-An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Identity politics and the democratization of democracy: Oscillations between power and reason in radical democratic and standpoint theory\",\"authors\":\"Karsten Schubert\",\"doi\":\"10.1111/1467-8675.12715\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"Criticism against identity politics, both in public discourse and political theory, has intensified over the past decade with the rise of right-wing populism and the polarization of politics (Walters, 2018). Such criticism portrays identity politics as a threat to democracy, alleging that it erodes community, rational communication, and solidarity. Drawing on radical democratic and standpoint theories, I argue for the opposite thesis; namely, that identity politics is crucial for the democratization of democracy. I show that democratization works through disrupting hegemonic discourse and is, therefore, a matter of power; and that such power politics are reasonable when following minority standpoints generated through identity politics. In other words, the universal democratic claims of equality and freedom can only become effective through their repeated actualization in particular power struggles. Identity politics is a contested term. Nevertheless, there are systematic overlaps between current criticisms of identity politics that mainly repeat arguments that have been similarly articulated since the 1990s. Communitarians criticize identity politics as dividing the political community, liberals criticize it as disruptive of the public sphere and free deliberation (Fukuyama, 2018; Habermas, 2020; Lilla, 2017), and Marxist and anarchist theorists argue that identity politics undermines the struggle for justice and emancipation and stabilizes state power through neoliberal diversity politics (Fraser, 1990, 2007; Kumar et al., 2018; Newman, 2010; Táíwò, 2022; for a critique of these debates, see Bickford, 1997; Walters, 2018; Young, 2000, pp. 82−87; Paul, 2019). Based on universalist accounts of the political,1 all three positions share the concern that particularist identity politics conflates social positions with epistemological possibilities and political positions, resulting in standpoint fundamentalism. In other words, the critics claim that, in identity politics, it matters more who speaks than what is said.2 Discussions about difference (Benhabib, 1996), counterpublics (Fraser, 1990), and inclusion (Young, 2000) at the intersection of deliberative and Critical theory early criticized such universalist accounts of the political for their exclusionist effects. While these works offer valuable resources to construct the argument that strengthening identity politics is important for the development of more inclusive deliberations and institutions, they frame this as a correction of reason, leaving the aspect of power underdeveloped. To understand both the severe resistance against more inclusive politics and the strategic need for non-deliberative means to achieve it—such as protest, civil disobedience, “cancel culture,” or uprising—what is necessary is a theoretical framework that describes democratization as an oscillation between power and reason. Even Mansbridge (1996) does not offer such a theoretical framework, despite explicitly arguing—contrary to deliberative democracy—that power through coercion is central for democracy and rightly points to the need for “protected enclaves” (p. 57) for the development of minoritarian standpoints. As the tension between power and reason, and respectively, particularism and universalism, is at the center of agonistic3 radical democratic theory (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001; Lefort, 1988a; Mouffe, 2008; Rancière, 1999), it is better suited to develop such a framework than deliberative approaches.4 This tension should not be understood as one where identity politics is positioned on the side of particularism and its critics on the side of universality; rather, it is constitutive of identity politics, and in extension, democracy itself. “Identity politics”—in the sense of the history of the term's origin as well as the current debate—refers to the political practice of marginalized groups who, in relation to the construction of a collective identity and standpoint, defend themselves against their disadvantages due to structures, cultures, and norms of the majority society. Following Combahee River Collective (1979, p. 365), a Black feminist organization, identity politics can be defined as “focusing upon our own oppression,” thus starting from particular experiences and standpoints. However, this should not be conflated—as some contemporary critics do—with essentialist interest group politics. Rather, identity politics is directed against oppression in general, insofar as it is an intersectional and “integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking” (Combahee River Collective, 1979, p. 362). This oscillation between particularist and universalist accounts of oppression is not a flaw in the Collective's text but stems from the inherent tension within identity politics. This tension has been discussed in the rich debates on identity politics, especially in the writings of intersectional feminism (Alcoff, 1988; Alcoff et al., 2006; Bickford, 1997; Briskin, 1990; Gamson, 1995; Hekman, 1999; Kruks, 1995; McNay, 2010; Nicholson, 2008; Whittier, 2017; see also the edited volumes, Benhabib et al., 1995; Hames-Garcia & Moya, 2000; and for an overview, see Bernstein, 2005; as well as Heyes, 2020). However, there is no systematic account of the tension between particularism and universalism in these works, which, indebted to that tradition, I will develop with the aim of strengthening it. As “identity politics” is a contested term, alternative conceptual strategies exist. For example, Young (2000) speaks of the “politics of difference” of “structural social groups” to describe what I call “identity politics,” while, following critics (pp. 82–87), she uses the term “identity politics” for the tendency toward substantialist, merely cultural, and potentially non-intersectional exclusive group-interest politics (p. 86). As the common understanding of “identity politics” entails the breadth of the critical politics of marginalized groups, I think it is important to defend, specify, and revive that term, instead of trying to establish a new term that is not currently criticized. This conceptual strategy underscores that, in general, the critical politics of marginalized groups promote democratization and inclusivity. This, of course, does not mean that all identity politics are equally democratizing. The argument is thus not a carte blanche for every practice of identity politics; rather, the reconstruction of the democratizing function of identity politics is not only descriptive but also normative, as it allows a differentiation of identity politics from exclusive group-interest politics and thereby criticizes identity political projects if they show tendencies to develop into exclusive group-interest politics. To understand identity politics as a democratizing oscillation between power and reason, the radical democratic account has to be refined through standpoint theory. I will proceed in the following steps. First, I will systematically reconstruct the equivalences of both theoretical traditions, filling a gap in the existing research literature that is ignorant of these equivalences. Both put forward a critique of common notions of objectivity and universality, privileging the particularity of oppressed knowledges.5 In contrast to the communitarian, liberal, and Marxist accounts that are based on universalist conceptions of the political, these traditions argue that breaking through established understandings of universal discourse through the use of particular identity politics is central to the further democratization of democracy. However, the radical democratic affirmation of identity politics as a particular disruption of the universal prima facie confirms the critics’ fear that identity politics destroys universal normativity and with it the very foundation of democracy, by fostering exclusive group-interest politics. This points to a more fundamental problem in radical democratic thought, which Volk (2018) recently called a lack of consensus orientation. If politics is only conceptualized as critique, disruption, and protest, this amounts to a rather one-sided account of politics that blends out the importance of institutions and deliberation. Thus, while radical democratic theory helps to understand that the tension between universalism and particularism is constitutive of democracy and identity politics, it risks resolving this tension toward particularism by overemphasizing power instead of reason as definitive of the political. It is, therefore, necessary to correct its lack of consensus orientation to develop the radical democratic account of identity politics. To this end, in the second section, I demonstrate how standpoint theory refines the radical democratic interpretation of identity politics. This addresses the concerns that identity politics undermines intersubjective discourse and offers a solution to the lack of consensus orientation in radical democratic theory in general.6 Standpoint theory allows a substantiation and reconciliation of two claims that are contradictory at first sight. First, that particular standpoints are necessary to criticize the current discursive and institutional order, and second, that such standpoints are based on intersubjective reason and “strong objectivity” (Harding, 1993). This helps to clarify the democratizing function of identity politics and the normativity of radical democratic theory in order to criticize interpretations of this school that reject any claims to objectivity based on the fundamental contingency of the political. Such a total rejection of objectivity is the philosophical basis for the aforementioned lack of consensus orientation in radical democratic thought, leading to dissolving the power/reason tension toward power. The radical democratic and standpoint theoretical interpretation of identity politics that I propose thereby explains that the ongoing oscillation between power and reason, respectively, particularism and universalism, is constitutive of identity politics, and by extension, of democracy. Radical democracy shares two fundamental arguments with standpoint theory. In this section, I will reconstruct the critique of objectivity and universality, and in the following section, I will detail how both theoretical traditions privilege oppressed knowledges. Radical democratic theory is a postfoundationalist theory: It claims that foundations are contingent and therefore an objective theory of the social cannot exist (Marchart, 2007). Rather, politics is the attempt to universalize one particular interpretation of the social and to install it as a hegemonic regime. A primary concern of radical democratic critique is hence the depoliticization caused by expert knowledges and restrictive discourses in neoliberal post-democracy, which often sideline critical voices. Acknowledging the differences in their respective positions, I will reconstruct the critiques of objectivity by Lefort, Mouffe, Laclau, and Rancière. As early as 1966, Lefort (1990)—a key thinker in the tradition of radical democracy—developed a notion of the political as necessarily contingent and contested. He develops his account by criticizing the objectifying theories of Marxism on the one hand, and liberalism on the other. Both are foundationalist theories: they derive politics from an objective account of the social, in the form of economic determinism in the case of Marxism, and as a universalism incompatible with social conflict in the case of liberalism. Both tell stories of an origin of the political that presupposes an ahistorical position (Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 95). Analyzing the logic of the attempts to provide a foundation, and their continuous failure, Lefort defines the political as the ongoing conflictual foundation of society (Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 96). Democracy is the political regime—in contrast to totalitarianism—that acknowledges the original division of society and continuously gives it unity through political representation (Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 110). The argument is epistemological: there is no universal account of society, but only the contingent and particular political attempts to ground society. Democracy thus takes into account the notion that there is no objective and universal account of society, but that its identity is essentially conflictual and contested (Lefort, 1988b). Thus, attempts to bring the democratic conflict to closure by positing a particular truth as universalistic and objective against the plurality of ideologies is, according to Lefort, totalitarian (Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 111). Laclau and Mouffe (2001) take up Lefort's theory—the political as contingency and conflict—in their approach to hegemony, antagonism, and radical democracy. First, their work is crucial for analyzing how identities and political subjectivities are constituted within this postfoundationalist framework; something that I will return to later. Second, they analyze—more historically and concretely than Lefort—how objectification and universalization work in contemporary societies. Laclau's (2000a, 2000b) account of politics as a logic of the universalization of particular demands helps to understand how a neoliberal regime of expertocracy, liberal and deliberative political theory, and the breakdown of social democratic parties, installed a political hegemony that is objectifying politics by suppressing political conflict and agonistic alternatives. Mouffe (2000, 2008) especially elaborated on this critique of post-democracy (Crouch, 2004) as a matter of political theory and the hegemony of liberal and deliberal approaches therein. Thus, objectification is the key strategy of universalization through which the liberal hegemony stabilizes itself. While this (neo-)liberal objectification is anti-democratic and depoliticizing, it is not necessarily totalitarian. Rancière (1999, pp. 21−43) radicalizes the critique of universalism and objectivity through his differentiation of “politics” and “police.” “Police” is Rancière's term for the regime of institutionalized politics as well as the discursive and normative order, while “politics” is the assertion of equality through the eruptive contestation of police from the position of those excluded by the police. It is key that “police,” as an institutional order, is based on a regime of the visible and sayable. It is thus connected to an epistemic order that defines some as intelligible while radically excluding others. This means that every positive order is partial, excluding, and thereby unjust. Thus, Rancière's account helps to debunk claims that pertain to the universality and objectivity of a given order, as the critics of identity politics do, by cloaking such injustice and stabilizing the order. Standpoint theories put forward a similar criticism against claims of objectivity and universality. While they focus on academic truth production and not on political hegemony, they share the critique that objectivity and universality are devices that cloak the particular, political, and unjust character of a given order. From feminist and Black perspectives, standpoint theories show that a traditional understanding of objectivity leads to precisely the opposite of a realist and plausible assessment of the social: a particular perspective of cishet male and White mainstream society. This means that scientific claims to neutrality are never neutral; they cloak their particular standpoint. Both radical democracy and standpoint theory agree that when conceptualized as the opposite of politics, objectivity leads to a particular perspective of hegemony that hides its particularity by presenting it as universality. The sciences’ commitment to social neutrality disarmed the scientifically productive potential of politically engaged research on behalf of oppressed groups. […] Androcentric, economically advantaged, racist, Eurocentric, and heterosexist conceptual frameworks ensured systematic ignorance and error about not only the lives of the oppressed, but also about the lives of their oppressors and thus about how nature and social relations in general worked (Harding, 2004b, p. 5). Thus, the conventional conception of objectivity and universality leads to the presentation of the particular standpoint of the privileged as universal. By linking this analysis to the concepts of “hegemony” and “police” in radical democracy—which emphasize the interplay between knowledge and power—one can argue that conventional views on universality and objectivity bolster the majoritarian hegemony and the prevailing “police.” These very mechanisms are at stake in the contemporary critique of identity politics: by rejecting identity politics as particularistic, they universalize the perspective of the privileged. Is there, then, a way out of these false foundationalist conceptions of objectivity and universality that lead to hegemonic knowledge regimes? Standpoint theory and radical democracy do not only share the postfoundationalist critique of universality and objectivity, they also argue that privileging oppressed knowledges can help overcome foundationalist universality. Standpoint theories develop “stronger” accounts of objectivity that take into account the plurality of standpoints. However, focusing on epistemological discussions, they do not lay out the consequences for democracy that might follow from this standpoint thinking. These consequences become clear through radical democratic theory. Standpoint theories argue for “starting off thought” from the lives of marginalized people [as this] will generate illuminating critical questions that do not arise in thought that begins from dominant group lives (Harding, 1993, p. 56). The critique of conventional objectivity does not entail overthrowing the concept of objectivity altogether. On the contrary, it is about conceptualizing a better version of objectivity, which Harding (1993) calls “strong objectivity.” This objectivity is reflective of the contextualization and limitations of particular knowledges. It is “about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object” (Haraway, 1988, p. 583). In other words, “Only partial perspective promises objective vision” (Haraway, 1988, p. 583). Standpoint theories do not solely make this claim philosophically but are also based on the real existing perspectives of marginalized people. The analysis of these perspectives shows that due to their situatedness, they achieve knowledge that remains undisclosed to the hegemonic perspective but needs to be taken into account to achieve strong objectivity. Thus, standpoint theories are not simply about the pluralization of knowledge; they also assign epistemic privilege to oppressed knowledges (Toole, 2021). The epistemic privilege of oppressed knowledges has been shown through the experiences of women and the experiences of Blacks and People of Color, who need a specific understanding of the social to navigate and survive it. For example, Hartsock (2004) argues that the position of women in reproductive labor enables a critique of masculine ideology. Black scholars refer to personal experience to describe their particular social, and thereby epistemological position within the racialized order. Early, Du Bois (2007, p. 8) spoke of a “double consciousness” that Blacks develop. In a similar vein, hooks (1984, preface) argued that the Black perspective is twofold, both from “the outside in and from the inside out,” as racism requires the awareness of the separation of margin and center. Thus, Blacks in the United States developed an “oppositional view—a mode of seeing unknown to most of our oppressors” (hooks, 1984, preface). Because of their Black feminist social position, Black female researchers can see anomalies in the normal sciences better than white scholars; for example, the systematic leaving out of Black perspectives from normal research (Collins, 1986). Taken together, these diverse empirical accounts of the differentiated positions amount to the insight that it is only through a plurality of “situated knowledges” (Haraway, 1988) that a better account of oppression can be reached. Radical democratic theory also privileges oppressed knowledges. Because no universal perspective is possible in postfoundationalism, radical democracy conceptualizes politics as standpoint-dependent. When democracy is understood as protest by the excluded and disenfranchised, it is dependent on their standpoint. To privilege the perspectives of the oppressed is rooted in the Marxist account of the proletariat as a revolutionary class, and radical democratic theory is post-Marxian in so far as it transforms this standpoint thinking to disentangle it from economic determinism. For Lefort (1990), democracy is characterized by the emptiness of the place of power and the institutionalization of struggles about that power, stemming from the non-fixed identity of society. This is the thinking of pluralistic democracy, based on the impossibility of conventional foundations, and the politically disastrous consequences of attempts to do so. Just as with the standpoint theoretical conception of situated knowledges, Lefort thus puts forward a pluralistic epistemology. His postfoundationalist theory of democracy can thus be seen as a first step in drawing out the consequences of standpoint epistemologies for political theory. However, as Ingram (2006) shows, Lefort is ambiguous. He can be, and has been, interpreted in a liberal and radical democratic vein, emphasizing either the need for stable institutions and universal human rights to confine social conflict, or the ongoing critique of the exclusions of a given regime. While the liberal interpretation falls back on what standpoint theories call the “god trick”—that is, an (imagined) neutral perspective that gives the framework to conflict but is not itself contested—the radical democratic interpretation is more plausible when taking into account standpoint theories. Rancière is a radical democratic reader of Lefort. His conception of democracy, as an ongoing struggle against exclusions by the excluded, is directed against a substantive notion of the people as homogeneous and self-identical. This argument can be further supported by standpoint theory, as the “god trick” not only needs to be avoided from the institutional perspective but also when it comes to political subjectivities. Presupposing identical people in political theory entails a majoritarian conception that leads to the epistemic exclusions of minoritarian perspectives analyzed by standpoint theory. The privileging of oppressed knowledges is intrinsic to Rancière's aforementioned difference between “police” and “politics.” “Police” entails political exclusions rooted in epistemic exclusions targeting specific groups. These can only be countered through the political–epistemological demands of these groups to be included through their assertion of equality. Rancière calls such particular demands for inclusion in the name of equality “politics.” Thus, standpoint theory helps to understand the development of a standpoint as the necessary condition for politics (in Rancière's sense). Radical democratic theory, on the other hand, makes clear that such struggles about political epistemology are not confined to the space of science, but are at the core of the political, transcending any given institutional regime. Vis-a-vis standpoint theory, Rancière helps to understand that the struggle for inclusion into “police” has no clear limitations, but can and often needs to transgress given institutionalized forms of political deliberation; for example, in civil disobedience or revolutionary upheavals. Thus, while standpoint theory privileges oppressed knowledges to develop a stronger notion of objectivity, radical democratic theory shows that without significant political protest and change, it is unlikely that such “stronger objectivity” has political effects. Privileging oppressed knowledges and standpoints is thus pivotal for the further democratization of democracy. How this works concretely in contemporary Western liberal democracies becomes clear in the work of Laclau and Mouffe (2001), who are concerned with how the identity politics of the new social movements can radicalize the democratic revolution by forming new alliances. They analyze the options for leftist politics after it became clear that the traditional Marxist strategy had failed, based, as it was, on an essentialist notion of the working class as a revolutionary subject. The new social movements, which confront various forms of oppression (such as racial or sexual), possess the potential to rejuvenate the radical democratic pursuit of freedom and equality for all; that is, to further democratize democracy. While standpoint theory helps to analyze the epistemic conditions under which such identity political movements can come about, Mouffe and Laclau are key for analyzing how such emancipative politics can become hegemonic. It is only through connecting the different particular projects to a larger one, by so-called “chains of equivalences” (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p. 182), that the hegemony of neoliberalism can be challenged. This entails that the critique of universality that is based on “conventional objectivity” does not mean disposing of universality altogether. Quite the contrary, according to Laclau (2000a, 2000b), politics necessarily entails the universalization of particular demands. Yet, how does emancipatory postfoundationalist universalization differ from its false foundationalist counterpart, and upon which concept of objectivity—if at all—is it anchored? In the next section, I argue that standpoint theory's notion of “stronger objectivity” helps to answer this question. Given this systematic equivalence of radical democracy and standpoint theory, their remaining differences can be harnessed productively: standpoint theory helps to refine a plausible radical democratic interpretation of identity politics; radical democracy can learn from standpoint theory that identity politics is not about radical disagreement but intersubjective understanding. That identity politics can be productively interpreted in the framework of radical democracy became clear throughout the discussion of the systematic equivalences between radical democratic theory and standpoint theory. Identity politics is based on the formation of particular standpoints of oppressed groups, and for radical democratic theory, democratization entails the critique of exclusions from such particular standpoints and not from the majoritarian or hegemonic perspective. Thus, following radical democratic theory, identity politics is not a threat to democracy (as universalistic political theorists argue), but necessary for the further democratization of democracy. However, a critic well versed in the current debates on radical democratic theory might remain unconvinced by this interpretation of identity politics. In these debates, radical democratic theory is criticized for reducing politics to a struggle for power through protest and insurrection, as well as having insufficient concepts of normativity, community, deliberation, consensus, and no account of good political institutions (Arato, 2013; Bergem & Bergem, 2019; Herrmann & Flatscher, 2020; Wiley, 2002). This critique mirrors the ongoing debate around identity politics. It is criticized, much like radical democratic theory, for undermining intersubjectivity and discourse due to its exclusivist power politics; for example, by imposing norms of “political correctness” that prevent further discussion or by excluding participants from debates through “cancel culture.” If both radical democratic theory and identity politics share the same problem—the reduction of politics to power that blocks intersubjectivity and reason and might lead to exclusive group-interest politics—a critic of identity politics would have reason to reject the radical democratic interpretation of identity politics as necessary for democratization. For the critic, such a radical democratic interpretation of identity politics would not solve the problem of identity politics dissolving democracy; on the contrary, she would see it as a confirmation of this problem. To defend the radical democratic approach, and to respond to the problem of differentiating democratizing identity politics from potentially exclusive group-interest politics, I will first reconstruct a rational core of such criticism. The problem is, according to Volk (2018, p. 11), “that radical-democratic thinking overemphasizes one central element of democracy, namely the manifestation of conflict, and falls short in properly grasping the second central element in conceptual terms, namely the postulate of understanding between political opponents.” This underdeveloped account of understanding leads to a series of problems, for example, a lack of normative criteria to distinguish between “progressive and regressive forms of political protest” (p. 11), and a tendency toward decisionism instead of normative justifications. The reason for this tendency lies in the critique of universalism and objectivity that I reconstructed above. When the traditional modes of normative theory not only need to fail in their goal to reach universal normativity but also, when the very attempt to reach such justifications leads to the stabilization of hegemony, it is understandable that radical democratic theory tends not to engage with questions of intersubjective justification and draws instead on the given normativity within social movements without further questioning it (Volk, 2018, p. 14). 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摘要

在过去十年中,随着右翼民粹主义的兴起和政治两极分化,对公共话语和政治理论中身份政治的批评愈演愈烈(Walters, 2018)。这种批评将身份政治描述为对民主的威胁,声称它侵蚀了社区、理性沟通和团结。根据激进民主和立场理论,我提出了相反的论点;也就是说,身份政治对民主的民主化至关重要。我表明,民主化通过破坏霸权话语而起作用,因此,民主化是一个权力问题;这种权力政治是合理的,当遵循少数人的立场产生的身份政治。换句话说,平等和自由的普遍民主主张只有通过在特定的权力斗争中反复实现才能发挥作用。身份政治是一个有争议的术语。然而,目前对身份政治的批评之间存在系统性的重叠,这些批评主要是重复自上世纪90年代以来类似的论点。社群主义者批评身份政治分裂了政治共同体,自由主义者批评它破坏了公共领域和自由审议(Fukuyama, 2018;哈贝马斯,2020;Lilla, 2017),马克思主义和无政府主义理论家认为,身份政治破坏了争取正义和解放的斗争,并通过新自由主义的多样性政治稳定了国家权力(Fraser, 1990, 2007;Kumar et al., 2018;纽曼,2010;泰沃,2022;关于这些辩论的评论,见Bickford, 1997;沃尔特斯,2018;Young, 2000,第82 - 87页;保罗,2019)。基于普遍主义对政治的描述,这三种立场都有一个共同的担忧,即特殊主义的身份政治将社会立场与认识论的可能性和政治立场混为一谈,导致立场原教旨主义。换句话说,批评者声称,在身份政治中,谁说话比说什么更重要关于差异(Benhabib, 1996年)、反公众(Fraser, 1990年)和包容(Young, 2000年)在审议理论和批判理论的交叉点上的讨论,早期批评了这种对政治的普遍主义解释,因为它们具有排他性的影响。虽然这些著作提供了宝贵的资源来构建强化身份政治对更具包容性的审议和制度的发展很重要的论点,但它们将其框定为对理性的纠正,使权力方面不发达。要理解对更具包容性的政治的严重抵制和实现这一目标的非协商手段的战略需要,如抗议、公民不服从、“取消文化”或起义,就必须有一个理论框架,将民主化描述为权力与理性之间的振荡。即使Mansbridge(1996)也没有提供这样一个理论框架,尽管他明确地认为——与协商民主相反——通过强制手段获得的权力是民主的核心,并正确地指出需要“受保护的飞地”(第57页)来发展少数民族的立场。由于权力与理性之间的紧张关系,以及特殊主义与普遍主义之间的紧张关系,是激烈激进民主理论的核心(Laclau & Mouffe, 2001;Lefort, 1988;Mouffe, 2008;ranci<e:1>, 1999),它更适合开发这样一个框架比审议的方法这种紧张关系不应该被理解为身份政治站在特殊主义一边,而它的批评者站在普遍性一边;相反,它是身份政治的组成部分,延伸开来,是民主本身的组成部分。“身份政治”——从这个术语起源的历史以及当前的争论的意义上来说——指的是边缘群体的政治实践,他们与集体身份和立场的建构有关,捍卫自己免受多数社会的结构、文化和规范所造成的不利影响。继黑人女权主义组织Combahee River Collective (1979, p. 365)之后,身份政治可以被定义为“关注我们自己的压迫”,因此从特定的经历和立场出发。然而,这不应该像一些当代批评家所做的那样,与本质主义的利益集团政治混为一谈。相反,身份政治通常是针对压迫的,因为它是一种交叉的、“基于主要压迫系统相互关联这一事实的综合分析和实践”(Combahee River Collective, 1979, p. 362)。这种特殊主义和普遍主义对压迫的描述之间的摇摆并不是《集体》文本中的缺陷,而是源于身份政治内在的紧张。 这种紧张关系在身份政治的丰富辩论中得到了讨论,特别是在交叉女权主义的著作中(Alcoff, 1988;Alcoff et al., 2006;比克福德,1997;Briskin, 1990;Gamson, 1995;Hekman, 1999;Kruks, 1995;McNay, 2010;尼克尔森,2008;惠蒂尔,2017;另见编辑卷,Benhabib等人,1995年;Hames-Garcia & Moya, 2000;关于概述,见Bernstein, 2005;以及Heyes, 2020)。然而,在这些作品中没有系统地描述特殊主义和普遍主义之间的紧张关系,得益于这一传统,我将以加强这一传统为目的进行发展。由于“身份政治”是一个有争议的术语,存在其他概念性策略。例如,Young(2000)用“结构性社会群体”的“差异政治”来描述我所说的“身份政治”,而在批评之后(第82-87页),她使用“身份政治”一词来描述实体主义的、仅仅是文化的、潜在的非交叉排他的群体利益政治(第86页)。由于对“身份政治”的普遍理解包含了边缘群体批判政治的广度,我认为重要的是捍卫、明确和复兴这个术语,而不是试图建立一个目前没有受到批评的新术语。这一概念战略强调,总体而言,边缘化群体的批判性政治促进了民主化和包容性。当然,这并不意味着所有的身份政治都同样民主化。因此,这一论点并不是对每一种身份政治实践的全权委托;相反,身份政治的民主化功能的重建不仅是描述性的,而且是规范性的,因为它允许将身份政治与排他性的群体利益政治区分开来,从而批评身份政治项目,如果它们显示出发展为排他性的群体利益政治的倾向。为了将身份政治理解为权力与理性之间的民主化振荡,激进民主的解释必须通过立场理论加以完善。我将按以下步骤进行。首先,我将系统地重构两种理论传统的等价性,填补现有研究文献中对这些等价性的无知。他们都对客观性和普遍性的共同概念提出了批判,对受压迫的知识的特殊性给予了特权与基于普遍主义政治概念的社群主义、自由主义和马克思主义的描述相反,这些传统认为,通过使用特定的身份政治来突破对普遍话语的既定理解,是民主进一步民主化的核心。然而,激进的民主主义对身份政治的肯定是对普遍表象的一种特殊破坏,这证实了批评者的担忧,即身份政治通过培养排他性的群体利益政治,破坏了普遍的规范性,从而破坏了民主的基础。这指出了激进民主思想中一个更根本的问题,Volk(2018)最近称之为缺乏共识导向。如果政治只是被概念化为批判、破坏和抗议,那么这就相当于对政治的一种相当片面的描述,它混淆了制度和审议的重要性。因此,虽然激进民主理论有助于理解普遍主义和特殊主义之间的紧张关系是民主和身份政治的组成部分,但它有可能通过过度强调权力而不是理性作为政治的决定性因素来解决这种紧张关系。因此,有必要纠正其缺乏共识取向,以发展对身份政治的激进民主解释。为此,在第二部分中,我展示了立场理论是如何完善身份政治的激进民主解释的。这解决了身份政治破坏主体间话语的担忧,并为激进民主理论普遍缺乏共识导向提供了解决方案立足点理论允许证实和调和两个乍一看是矛盾的主张。首先,特定的立场对于批评当前的话语和制度秩序是必要的,其次,这种立场是基于主体间理性和“强客观性”(Harding, 1993)。这有助于澄清身份政治的民主化功能和激进民主理论的规范性,以批评这一学派的解释,这些解释拒绝任何基于政治的基本偶然性的客观性主张。 这种对客观性的全盘否定是激进民主思想中缺乏共识取向的哲学基础,从而消解了权力/理性对权力的张力。我提出的激进民主和立场理论对身份政治的解释解释了权力和理性之间持续的摇摆,分别是特殊主义和普遍主义,是身份政治的组成部分,延伸开来,是民主的组成部分。激进民主与立场理论有两个基本的共同点。在本节中,我将重建对客观性和普遍性的批判,在下一节中,我将详细说明这两种理论传统是如何特权压迫知识的。激进民主理论是一种后基础主义理论:它声称基础是偶然的,因此社会的客观理论不可能存在(Marchart, 2007)。更确切地说,政治是试图将社会的一种特殊解释普遍化,并将其作为一种霸权政权。因此,激进民主批判的主要关注点是新自由主义后民主中的专业知识和限制性话语所导致的去政治化,这往往会使批评的声音边缘化。鉴于他们各自立场的不同,我将重构勒福特、墨菲、拉克劳和朗西弗里特对客观性的批评。早在1966年,激进民主传统的关键思想家Lefort(1990)就提出了政治必然是偶然的和有争议的概念。他一方面批评马克思主义的客观化理论,另一方面批评自由主义,从而发展了他的解释。两者都是基础主义理论:它们从对社会的客观描述中得出政治,在马克思主义中是经济决定论的形式,在自由主义中是与社会冲突不相容的普遍主义。两者都讲述了以非历史立场为前提的政治起源的故事(Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 95)。Lefort分析了提供基础的尝试的逻辑及其不断的失败,将政治定义为社会持续冲突的基础(Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 96)。民主是一种政治制度,与极权主义相反,它承认社会的原始分裂,并通过政治代表不断赋予社会统一(Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 110)。这个论点是认识论的:没有对社会的普遍描述,只有偶然的和特殊的政治尝试来建立社会。因此,民主考虑到没有客观和普遍的社会描述,但其身份本质上是冲突和争议的(Lefort, 1988b)。因此,根据Lefort的说法,试图通过将特定的真理设定为普遍的和客观的,以反对意识形态的多元性来结束民主冲突是极权主义的(Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 111)。拉克劳和墨菲(2001)在他们对霸权、对抗和激进民主的研究中采用了勒福特的理论——政治作为偶然性和冲突。首先,他们的工作对于分析身份和政治主体性是如何在后基础主义框架内构成的至关重要;稍后我还会讲到。其次,他们比勒福特更历史、更具体地分析了物化和普遍化在当代社会中的作用。拉克劳(2000a, 2000b)将政治描述为一种特殊需求普遍化的逻辑,这有助于理解专家制的新自由主义政权、自由主义和协商政治理论以及社会民主党的崩溃,是如何通过压制政治冲突和对抗替代方案,将政治物化的政治霸权。Mouffe(2000, 2008)特别阐述了这种对后民主的批判(Crouch, 2004),将其作为政治理论的问题,以及其中自由主义和审慎方法的霸权。因此,客观化是普遍化的关键策略,自由主义霸权以此来稳定自身。虽然这种(新)自由主义的物化是反民主和去政治化的,但它不一定是极权主义的。ranci<e:1>(1999,第21 - 43页)通过对“政治”和“警察”的区分,激进地批判了普遍主义和客观性。“警察”是ranci<e:1>对制度化的政治制度以及话语和规范秩序的称呼,而“政治”则是通过警察从被警察排斥的人的立场上爆发的争论来主张平等。关键是,“警察”作为一种制度秩序,是建立在可见和可说的制度基础之上的。因此,它与一种认识秩序联系在一起,这种秩序将一些人定义为可理解的,而从根本上排除了其他人。 这意味着每一个积极的秩序都是片面的,排斥的,因此是不公正的。因此,ranci<e:1>的叙述有助于揭穿与特定秩序的普遍性和客观性有关的主张,正如身份政治的批评者所做的那样,通过掩盖这种不公正和稳定秩序。立场理论对客观性和普遍性的主张提出了类似的批评。虽然他们关注的是学术真理的生产,而不是政治霸权,但他们都批评客观性和普遍性是掩盖特定秩序的特殊性、政治性和不公正特征的手段。从女权主义和黑人的角度来看,立场理论表明,对客观性的传统理解导致了与现实主义和合理的社会评估恰恰相反的结果:一种特定的男性和白人主流社会的观点。这意味着科学宣称的中立永远不会是中立的;他们掩盖了自己的特殊立场。激进民主和立场理论都认为,当客观性被概念化为政治的对立面时,客观性导致了一种特殊的霸权视角,这种视角通过将其呈现为普遍性来隐藏其特殊性。科学对社会中立的承诺削弱了代表被压迫群体进行政治参与研究的科学生产潜力。[…]男性中心主义、经济优势、种族主义、欧洲中心主义和异性恋主义的概念框架确保了系统的无知和错误,不仅对被压迫者的生活,而且对压迫者的生活,从而对自然和社会关系的一般运作方式(Harding, 2004b,第5页)。因此,传统的客观性和普遍性概念导致了特权者作为普遍的特殊立场的呈现。通过将这一分析与激进民主中的“霸权”和“警察”概念联系起来——它们强调知识与权力之间的相互作用——人们可以辩称,关于普遍性和客观性的传统观点支持了多数主义霸权和盛行的“警察”。这些机制在当代对身份政治的批判中处于危险之中:通过拒绝将身份政治视为特殊主义,它们将特权阶层的观点普遍化。那么,有没有一种方法可以摆脱这些导致霸权知识体制的错误的客观性和普遍性的基础主义概念呢?立场理论和激进民主不仅分享了后基础主义对普遍性和客观性的批判,他们还认为,对被压迫的知识给予特权有助于克服基础主义的普遍性。立场理论发展了“更强”的客观性描述,考虑到立场的多元性。然而,他们专注于认识论的讨论,并没有列出从这种观点思考可能产生的民主后果。这些后果通过激进民主理论变得清晰。立场理论主张从边缘人群的生活“开始思考”[因为这]将产生启发性的批判性问题,而这些问题不会出现在从主导群体的生活开始的思考中(Harding, 1993,第56页)。对传统客观性的批判并不意味着完全推翻客观性的概念。相反,它是关于概念化客观性的更好版本,Harding(1993)称之为“强客观性”。这种客观性反映了特定知识的语境化和局限性。它是“关于有限的位置和情境知识,而不是关于主体和客体的超越和分裂”(Haraway, 1988, p. 583)。换句话说,“只有局部视角才能保证客观视野”(Haraway, 1988, p. 583)。立场理论不仅在哲学上提出这一主张,而且还基于边缘化人群真实存在的观点。对这些视角的分析表明,由于它们的情境性,它们获得了霸权视角未披露但需要考虑的知识,以获得强大的客观性。因此,立场理论不仅仅是关于知识的多元化;他们还为受压迫的知识分配知识特权(Toole, 2021)。被压迫知识的认知特权通过女性的经历、黑人和有色人种的经历表现出来,他们需要对社会有特定的理解,才能在社会中导航和生存。例如,Hartsock(2004)认为女性在生育劳动中的地位使得对男性意识形态的批判成为可能。黑人学者引用个人经验来描述他们特定的社会,从而在种族化秩序中的认识论地位。早些时候,杜波依斯(2007,第8页)谈到了黑人发展的“双重意识”。 在拉克劳和墨菲(2001)的著作中,这在当代西方自由民主国家是如何具体发挥作用的变得清晰起来,他们关注的是新社会运动的身份政治如何通过形成新的联盟来激进化民主革命。他们分析了左派政治的选择,因为传统的马克思主义策略显然已经失败了,因为它是基于工人阶级作为革命主体的本质主义概念。新的社会运动面对各种形式的压迫(如种族或性别的压迫),有可能重振对所有人的自由和平等的激进民主追求;那就是进一步民主化民主。立场理论有助于分析这种认同政治运动产生的认知条件,而墨菲和拉克劳则是分析这种解放政治如何成为霸权的关键。只有通过所谓的“对等链”(Laclau & Mouffe, 2001,第182页),将不同的特定项目连接到一个更大的项目中,新自由主义的霸权才能受到挑战。这就意味着,基于“传统客观性”的普遍性批判并不意味着完全抛弃普遍性。恰恰相反,根据拉克劳(2000a, 2000b)的观点,政治必然包含特定需求的普遍化。然而,解放主义后基础主义的普遍化与错误的基础主义的普遍性有何不同?如果有的话,它是建立在哪个客观概念之上的?在下一节中,我认为立场理论的“更强的客观性”概念有助于回答这个问题。鉴于激进民主和立场理论的这种系统对等,它们之间的剩余差异可以被有效地利用:立场理论有助于完善对身份政治的合理的激进民主解释;激进民主可以从立场理论中学习到,身份政治不是激进的分歧,而是主体间的理解。身份政治可以在激进民主的框架下得到有效的解释,这一点在讨论激进民主理论和立场理论之间的系统对等时变得清晰起来。身份政治是建立在被压迫群体形成特定立场的基础上的,对于激进民主理论来说,民主化需要从这种特定立场来批判排斥,而不是从多数主义或霸权的角度来批判排斥。因此,根据激进民主理论,身份政治不是对民主的威胁(如普遍主义政治理论家所认为的那样),而是民主进一步民主化的必要条件。然而,一个精通当前激进民主理论辩论的批评家可能仍然不相信这种对身份政治的解释。在这些辩论中,激进民主理论被批评为将政治简化为通过抗议和起义争夺权力的斗争,以及缺乏规范,社区,审议,共识的概念,并且没有考虑到良好的政治制度(阿拉托,2013;Bergem & Bergem, 2019;Herrmann & Flatscher, 2020;威利,2002)。这种批评反映了围绕身份政治的持续辩论。像激进民主理论一样,它被批评为由于其排他性的权力政治而破坏了主体间性和话语;例如,通过强加“政治正确”的规范来阻止进一步的讨论,或者通过“取消文化”将参与者排除在辩论之外。如果激进民主理论和身份政治都有同样的问题——将政治降格为权力,阻碍了主体间性和理性,并可能导致排他性的群体利益政治——身份政治的批评者就有理由拒绝认同政治的激进民主解释,认为这是民主化所必需的。在批评家看来,这种对身份政治激进的民主解释并不能解决身份政治消解民主的问题;相反,她会认为这是对这个问题的确认。为了捍卫激进的民主方法,并回应将民主化的身份政治与潜在的排他性群体利益政治区分开来的问题,我将首先重构这种批评的理性核心。根据Volk(2018,第11页)的说法,问题在于“激进民主思想过分强调民主的一个核心要素,即冲突的表现,而未能从概念上正确把握第二个核心要素,即政治对手之间的理解假设。”这种不发达的理解导致了一系列问题,例如,缺乏区分“进步和倒退形式的政治抗议”的规范性标准。 11),以及倾向于决策主义而不是规范性辩护。产生这种倾向的原因在于我上文重构的对普遍性和客观性的批判。当规范理论的传统模式不仅需要在达到普遍规范性的目标上失败,而且当达到这种正当性的尝试导致霸权的稳定时,激进民主理论倾向于不参与主体间正当性的问题,而是在没有进一步质疑的情况下借鉴社会运动中给定的规范性,这是可以理解的(Volk, 2018,第14页)。下面对激进民主理论过分强调权力的批判也可以是b
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Identity politics and the democratization of democracy: Oscillations between power and reason in radical democratic and standpoint theory
Criticism against identity politics, both in public discourse and political theory, has intensified over the past decade with the rise of right-wing populism and the polarization of politics (Walters, 2018). Such criticism portrays identity politics as a threat to democracy, alleging that it erodes community, rational communication, and solidarity. Drawing on radical democratic and standpoint theories, I argue for the opposite thesis; namely, that identity politics is crucial for the democratization of democracy. I show that democratization works through disrupting hegemonic discourse and is, therefore, a matter of power; and that such power politics are reasonable when following minority standpoints generated through identity politics. In other words, the universal democratic claims of equality and freedom can only become effective through their repeated actualization in particular power struggles. Identity politics is a contested term. Nevertheless, there are systematic overlaps between current criticisms of identity politics that mainly repeat arguments that have been similarly articulated since the 1990s. Communitarians criticize identity politics as dividing the political community, liberals criticize it as disruptive of the public sphere and free deliberation (Fukuyama, 2018; Habermas, 2020; Lilla, 2017), and Marxist and anarchist theorists argue that identity politics undermines the struggle for justice and emancipation and stabilizes state power through neoliberal diversity politics (Fraser, 1990, 2007; Kumar et al., 2018; Newman, 2010; Táíwò, 2022; for a critique of these debates, see Bickford, 1997; Walters, 2018; Young, 2000, pp. 82−87; Paul, 2019). Based on universalist accounts of the political,1 all three positions share the concern that particularist identity politics conflates social positions with epistemological possibilities and political positions, resulting in standpoint fundamentalism. In other words, the critics claim that, in identity politics, it matters more who speaks than what is said.2 Discussions about difference (Benhabib, 1996), counterpublics (Fraser, 1990), and inclusion (Young, 2000) at the intersection of deliberative and Critical theory early criticized such universalist accounts of the political for their exclusionist effects. While these works offer valuable resources to construct the argument that strengthening identity politics is important for the development of more inclusive deliberations and institutions, they frame this as a correction of reason, leaving the aspect of power underdeveloped. To understand both the severe resistance against more inclusive politics and the strategic need for non-deliberative means to achieve it—such as protest, civil disobedience, “cancel culture,” or uprising—what is necessary is a theoretical framework that describes democratization as an oscillation between power and reason. Even Mansbridge (1996) does not offer such a theoretical framework, despite explicitly arguing—contrary to deliberative democracy—that power through coercion is central for democracy and rightly points to the need for “protected enclaves” (p. 57) for the development of minoritarian standpoints. As the tension between power and reason, and respectively, particularism and universalism, is at the center of agonistic3 radical democratic theory (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001; Lefort, 1988a; Mouffe, 2008; Rancière, 1999), it is better suited to develop such a framework than deliberative approaches.4 This tension should not be understood as one where identity politics is positioned on the side of particularism and its critics on the side of universality; rather, it is constitutive of identity politics, and in extension, democracy itself. “Identity politics”—in the sense of the history of the term's origin as well as the current debate—refers to the political practice of marginalized groups who, in relation to the construction of a collective identity and standpoint, defend themselves against their disadvantages due to structures, cultures, and norms of the majority society. Following Combahee River Collective (1979, p. 365), a Black feminist organization, identity politics can be defined as “focusing upon our own oppression,” thus starting from particular experiences and standpoints. However, this should not be conflated—as some contemporary critics do—with essentialist interest group politics. Rather, identity politics is directed against oppression in general, insofar as it is an intersectional and “integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking” (Combahee River Collective, 1979, p. 362). This oscillation between particularist and universalist accounts of oppression is not a flaw in the Collective's text but stems from the inherent tension within identity politics. This tension has been discussed in the rich debates on identity politics, especially in the writings of intersectional feminism (Alcoff, 1988; Alcoff et al., 2006; Bickford, 1997; Briskin, 1990; Gamson, 1995; Hekman, 1999; Kruks, 1995; McNay, 2010; Nicholson, 2008; Whittier, 2017; see also the edited volumes, Benhabib et al., 1995; Hames-Garcia & Moya, 2000; and for an overview, see Bernstein, 2005; as well as Heyes, 2020). However, there is no systematic account of the tension between particularism and universalism in these works, which, indebted to that tradition, I will develop with the aim of strengthening it. As “identity politics” is a contested term, alternative conceptual strategies exist. For example, Young (2000) speaks of the “politics of difference” of “structural social groups” to describe what I call “identity politics,” while, following critics (pp. 82–87), she uses the term “identity politics” for the tendency toward substantialist, merely cultural, and potentially non-intersectional exclusive group-interest politics (p. 86). As the common understanding of “identity politics” entails the breadth of the critical politics of marginalized groups, I think it is important to defend, specify, and revive that term, instead of trying to establish a new term that is not currently criticized. This conceptual strategy underscores that, in general, the critical politics of marginalized groups promote democratization and inclusivity. This, of course, does not mean that all identity politics are equally democratizing. The argument is thus not a carte blanche for every practice of identity politics; rather, the reconstruction of the democratizing function of identity politics is not only descriptive but also normative, as it allows a differentiation of identity politics from exclusive group-interest politics and thereby criticizes identity political projects if they show tendencies to develop into exclusive group-interest politics. To understand identity politics as a democratizing oscillation between power and reason, the radical democratic account has to be refined through standpoint theory. I will proceed in the following steps. First, I will systematically reconstruct the equivalences of both theoretical traditions, filling a gap in the existing research literature that is ignorant of these equivalences. Both put forward a critique of common notions of objectivity and universality, privileging the particularity of oppressed knowledges.5 In contrast to the communitarian, liberal, and Marxist accounts that are based on universalist conceptions of the political, these traditions argue that breaking through established understandings of universal discourse through the use of particular identity politics is central to the further democratization of democracy. However, the radical democratic affirmation of identity politics as a particular disruption of the universal prima facie confirms the critics’ fear that identity politics destroys universal normativity and with it the very foundation of democracy, by fostering exclusive group-interest politics. This points to a more fundamental problem in radical democratic thought, which Volk (2018) recently called a lack of consensus orientation. If politics is only conceptualized as critique, disruption, and protest, this amounts to a rather one-sided account of politics that blends out the importance of institutions and deliberation. Thus, while radical democratic theory helps to understand that the tension between universalism and particularism is constitutive of democracy and identity politics, it risks resolving this tension toward particularism by overemphasizing power instead of reason as definitive of the political. It is, therefore, necessary to correct its lack of consensus orientation to develop the radical democratic account of identity politics. To this end, in the second section, I demonstrate how standpoint theory refines the radical democratic interpretation of identity politics. This addresses the concerns that identity politics undermines intersubjective discourse and offers a solution to the lack of consensus orientation in radical democratic theory in general.6 Standpoint theory allows a substantiation and reconciliation of two claims that are contradictory at first sight. First, that particular standpoints are necessary to criticize the current discursive and institutional order, and second, that such standpoints are based on intersubjective reason and “strong objectivity” (Harding, 1993). This helps to clarify the democratizing function of identity politics and the normativity of radical democratic theory in order to criticize interpretations of this school that reject any claims to objectivity based on the fundamental contingency of the political. Such a total rejection of objectivity is the philosophical basis for the aforementioned lack of consensus orientation in radical democratic thought, leading to dissolving the power/reason tension toward power. The radical democratic and standpoint theoretical interpretation of identity politics that I propose thereby explains that the ongoing oscillation between power and reason, respectively, particularism and universalism, is constitutive of identity politics, and by extension, of democracy. Radical democracy shares two fundamental arguments with standpoint theory. In this section, I will reconstruct the critique of objectivity and universality, and in the following section, I will detail how both theoretical traditions privilege oppressed knowledges. Radical democratic theory is a postfoundationalist theory: It claims that foundations are contingent and therefore an objective theory of the social cannot exist (Marchart, 2007). Rather, politics is the attempt to universalize one particular interpretation of the social and to install it as a hegemonic regime. A primary concern of radical democratic critique is hence the depoliticization caused by expert knowledges and restrictive discourses in neoliberal post-democracy, which often sideline critical voices. Acknowledging the differences in their respective positions, I will reconstruct the critiques of objectivity by Lefort, Mouffe, Laclau, and Rancière. As early as 1966, Lefort (1990)—a key thinker in the tradition of radical democracy—developed a notion of the political as necessarily contingent and contested. He develops his account by criticizing the objectifying theories of Marxism on the one hand, and liberalism on the other. Both are foundationalist theories: they derive politics from an objective account of the social, in the form of economic determinism in the case of Marxism, and as a universalism incompatible with social conflict in the case of liberalism. Both tell stories of an origin of the political that presupposes an ahistorical position (Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 95). Analyzing the logic of the attempts to provide a foundation, and their continuous failure, Lefort defines the political as the ongoing conflictual foundation of society (Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 96). Democracy is the political regime—in contrast to totalitarianism—that acknowledges the original division of society and continuously gives it unity through political representation (Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 110). The argument is epistemological: there is no universal account of society, but only the contingent and particular political attempts to ground society. Democracy thus takes into account the notion that there is no objective and universal account of society, but that its identity is essentially conflictual and contested (Lefort, 1988b). Thus, attempts to bring the democratic conflict to closure by positing a particular truth as universalistic and objective against the plurality of ideologies is, according to Lefort, totalitarian (Lefort & Gauchet, 1990, p. 111). Laclau and Mouffe (2001) take up Lefort's theory—the political as contingency and conflict—in their approach to hegemony, antagonism, and radical democracy. First, their work is crucial for analyzing how identities and political subjectivities are constituted within this postfoundationalist framework; something that I will return to later. Second, they analyze—more historically and concretely than Lefort—how objectification and universalization work in contemporary societies. Laclau's (2000a, 2000b) account of politics as a logic of the universalization of particular demands helps to understand how a neoliberal regime of expertocracy, liberal and deliberative political theory, and the breakdown of social democratic parties, installed a political hegemony that is objectifying politics by suppressing political conflict and agonistic alternatives. Mouffe (2000, 2008) especially elaborated on this critique of post-democracy (Crouch, 2004) as a matter of political theory and the hegemony of liberal and deliberal approaches therein. Thus, objectification is the key strategy of universalization through which the liberal hegemony stabilizes itself. While this (neo-)liberal objectification is anti-democratic and depoliticizing, it is not necessarily totalitarian. Rancière (1999, pp. 21−43) radicalizes the critique of universalism and objectivity through his differentiation of “politics” and “police.” “Police” is Rancière's term for the regime of institutionalized politics as well as the discursive and normative order, while “politics” is the assertion of equality through the eruptive contestation of police from the position of those excluded by the police. It is key that “police,” as an institutional order, is based on a regime of the visible and sayable. It is thus connected to an epistemic order that defines some as intelligible while radically excluding others. This means that every positive order is partial, excluding, and thereby unjust. Thus, Rancière's account helps to debunk claims that pertain to the universality and objectivity of a given order, as the critics of identity politics do, by cloaking such injustice and stabilizing the order. Standpoint theories put forward a similar criticism against claims of objectivity and universality. While they focus on academic truth production and not on political hegemony, they share the critique that objectivity and universality are devices that cloak the particular, political, and unjust character of a given order. From feminist and Black perspectives, standpoint theories show that a traditional understanding of objectivity leads to precisely the opposite of a realist and plausible assessment of the social: a particular perspective of cishet male and White mainstream society. This means that scientific claims to neutrality are never neutral; they cloak their particular standpoint. Both radical democracy and standpoint theory agree that when conceptualized as the opposite of politics, objectivity leads to a particular perspective of hegemony that hides its particularity by presenting it as universality. The sciences’ commitment to social neutrality disarmed the scientifically productive potential of politically engaged research on behalf of oppressed groups. […] Androcentric, economically advantaged, racist, Eurocentric, and heterosexist conceptual frameworks ensured systematic ignorance and error about not only the lives of the oppressed, but also about the lives of their oppressors and thus about how nature and social relations in general worked (Harding, 2004b, p. 5). Thus, the conventional conception of objectivity and universality leads to the presentation of the particular standpoint of the privileged as universal. By linking this analysis to the concepts of “hegemony” and “police” in radical democracy—which emphasize the interplay between knowledge and power—one can argue that conventional views on universality and objectivity bolster the majoritarian hegemony and the prevailing “police.” These very mechanisms are at stake in the contemporary critique of identity politics: by rejecting identity politics as particularistic, they universalize the perspective of the privileged. Is there, then, a way out of these false foundationalist conceptions of objectivity and universality that lead to hegemonic knowledge regimes? Standpoint theory and radical democracy do not only share the postfoundationalist critique of universality and objectivity, they also argue that privileging oppressed knowledges can help overcome foundationalist universality. Standpoint theories develop “stronger” accounts of objectivity that take into account the plurality of standpoints. However, focusing on epistemological discussions, they do not lay out the consequences for democracy that might follow from this standpoint thinking. These consequences become clear through radical democratic theory. Standpoint theories argue for “starting off thought” from the lives of marginalized people [as this] will generate illuminating critical questions that do not arise in thought that begins from dominant group lives (Harding, 1993, p. 56). The critique of conventional objectivity does not entail overthrowing the concept of objectivity altogether. On the contrary, it is about conceptualizing a better version of objectivity, which Harding (1993) calls “strong objectivity.” This objectivity is reflective of the contextualization and limitations of particular knowledges. It is “about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object” (Haraway, 1988, p. 583). In other words, “Only partial perspective promises objective vision” (Haraway, 1988, p. 583). Standpoint theories do not solely make this claim philosophically but are also based on the real existing perspectives of marginalized people. The analysis of these perspectives shows that due to their situatedness, they achieve knowledge that remains undisclosed to the hegemonic perspective but needs to be taken into account to achieve strong objectivity. Thus, standpoint theories are not simply about the pluralization of knowledge; they also assign epistemic privilege to oppressed knowledges (Toole, 2021). The epistemic privilege of oppressed knowledges has been shown through the experiences of women and the experiences of Blacks and People of Color, who need a specific understanding of the social to navigate and survive it. For example, Hartsock (2004) argues that the position of women in reproductive labor enables a critique of masculine ideology. Black scholars refer to personal experience to describe their particular social, and thereby epistemological position within the racialized order. Early, Du Bois (2007, p. 8) spoke of a “double consciousness” that Blacks develop. In a similar vein, hooks (1984, preface) argued that the Black perspective is twofold, both from “the outside in and from the inside out,” as racism requires the awareness of the separation of margin and center. Thus, Blacks in the United States developed an “oppositional view—a mode of seeing unknown to most of our oppressors” (hooks, 1984, preface). Because of their Black feminist social position, Black female researchers can see anomalies in the normal sciences better than white scholars; for example, the systematic leaving out of Black perspectives from normal research (Collins, 1986). Taken together, these diverse empirical accounts of the differentiated positions amount to the insight that it is only through a plurality of “situated knowledges” (Haraway, 1988) that a better account of oppression can be reached. Radical democratic theory also privileges oppressed knowledges. Because no universal perspective is possible in postfoundationalism, radical democracy conceptualizes politics as standpoint-dependent. When democracy is understood as protest by the excluded and disenfranchised, it is dependent on their standpoint. To privilege the perspectives of the oppressed is rooted in the Marxist account of the proletariat as a revolutionary class, and radical democratic theory is post-Marxian in so far as it transforms this standpoint thinking to disentangle it from economic determinism. For Lefort (1990), democracy is characterized by the emptiness of the place of power and the institutionalization of struggles about that power, stemming from the non-fixed identity of society. This is the thinking of pluralistic democracy, based on the impossibility of conventional foundations, and the politically disastrous consequences of attempts to do so. Just as with the standpoint theoretical conception of situated knowledges, Lefort thus puts forward a pluralistic epistemology. His postfoundationalist theory of democracy can thus be seen as a first step in drawing out the consequences of standpoint epistemologies for political theory. However, as Ingram (2006) shows, Lefort is ambiguous. He can be, and has been, interpreted in a liberal and radical democratic vein, emphasizing either the need for stable institutions and universal human rights to confine social conflict, or the ongoing critique of the exclusions of a given regime. While the liberal interpretation falls back on what standpoint theories call the “god trick”—that is, an (imagined) neutral perspective that gives the framework to conflict but is not itself contested—the radical democratic interpretation is more plausible when taking into account standpoint theories. Rancière is a radical democratic reader of Lefort. His conception of democracy, as an ongoing struggle against exclusions by the excluded, is directed against a substantive notion of the people as homogeneous and self-identical. This argument can be further supported by standpoint theory, as the “god trick” not only needs to be avoided from the institutional perspective but also when it comes to political subjectivities. Presupposing identical people in political theory entails a majoritarian conception that leads to the epistemic exclusions of minoritarian perspectives analyzed by standpoint theory. The privileging of oppressed knowledges is intrinsic to Rancière's aforementioned difference between “police” and “politics.” “Police” entails political exclusions rooted in epistemic exclusions targeting specific groups. These can only be countered through the political–epistemological demands of these groups to be included through their assertion of equality. Rancière calls such particular demands for inclusion in the name of equality “politics.” Thus, standpoint theory helps to understand the development of a standpoint as the necessary condition for politics (in Rancière's sense). Radical democratic theory, on the other hand, makes clear that such struggles about political epistemology are not confined to the space of science, but are at the core of the political, transcending any given institutional regime. Vis-a-vis standpoint theory, Rancière helps to understand that the struggle for inclusion into “police” has no clear limitations, but can and often needs to transgress given institutionalized forms of political deliberation; for example, in civil disobedience or revolutionary upheavals. Thus, while standpoint theory privileges oppressed knowledges to develop a stronger notion of objectivity, radical democratic theory shows that without significant political protest and change, it is unlikely that such “stronger objectivity” has political effects. Privileging oppressed knowledges and standpoints is thus pivotal for the further democratization of democracy. How this works concretely in contemporary Western liberal democracies becomes clear in the work of Laclau and Mouffe (2001), who are concerned with how the identity politics of the new social movements can radicalize the democratic revolution by forming new alliances. They analyze the options for leftist politics after it became clear that the traditional Marxist strategy had failed, based, as it was, on an essentialist notion of the working class as a revolutionary subject. The new social movements, which confront various forms of oppression (such as racial or sexual), possess the potential to rejuvenate the radical democratic pursuit of freedom and equality for all; that is, to further democratize democracy. While standpoint theory helps to analyze the epistemic conditions under which such identity political movements can come about, Mouffe and Laclau are key for analyzing how such emancipative politics can become hegemonic. It is only through connecting the different particular projects to a larger one, by so-called “chains of equivalences” (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p. 182), that the hegemony of neoliberalism can be challenged. This entails that the critique of universality that is based on “conventional objectivity” does not mean disposing of universality altogether. Quite the contrary, according to Laclau (2000a, 2000b), politics necessarily entails the universalization of particular demands. Yet, how does emancipatory postfoundationalist universalization differ from its false foundationalist counterpart, and upon which concept of objectivity—if at all—is it anchored? In the next section, I argue that standpoint theory's notion of “stronger objectivity” helps to answer this question. Given this systematic equivalence of radical democracy and standpoint theory, their remaining differences can be harnessed productively: standpoint theory helps to refine a plausible radical democratic interpretation of identity politics; radical democracy can learn from standpoint theory that identity politics is not about radical disagreement but intersubjective understanding. That identity politics can be productively interpreted in the framework of radical democracy became clear throughout the discussion of the systematic equivalences between radical democratic theory and standpoint theory. Identity politics is based on the formation of particular standpoints of oppressed groups, and for radical democratic theory, democratization entails the critique of exclusions from such particular standpoints and not from the majoritarian or hegemonic perspective. Thus, following radical democratic theory, identity politics is not a threat to democracy (as universalistic political theorists argue), but necessary for the further democratization of democracy. However, a critic well versed in the current debates on radical democratic theory might remain unconvinced by this interpretation of identity politics. In these debates, radical democratic theory is criticized for reducing politics to a struggle for power through protest and insurrection, as well as having insufficient concepts of normativity, community, deliberation, consensus, and no account of good political institutions (Arato, 2013; Bergem & Bergem, 2019; Herrmann & Flatscher, 2020; Wiley, 2002). This critique mirrors the ongoing debate around identity politics. It is criticized, much like radical democratic theory, for undermining intersubjectivity and discourse due to its exclusivist power politics; for example, by imposing norms of “political correctness” that prevent further discussion or by excluding participants from debates through “cancel culture.” If both radical democratic theory and identity politics share the same problem—the reduction of politics to power that blocks intersubjectivity and reason and might lead to exclusive group-interest politics—a critic of identity politics would have reason to reject the radical democratic interpretation of identity politics as necessary for democratization. For the critic, such a radical democratic interpretation of identity politics would not solve the problem of identity politics dissolving democracy; on the contrary, she would see it as a confirmation of this problem. To defend the radical democratic approach, and to respond to the problem of differentiating democratizing identity politics from potentially exclusive group-interest politics, I will first reconstruct a rational core of such criticism. The problem is, according to Volk (2018, p. 11), “that radical-democratic thinking overemphasizes one central element of democracy, namely the manifestation of conflict, and falls short in properly grasping the second central element in conceptual terms, namely the postulate of understanding between political opponents.” This underdeveloped account of understanding leads to a series of problems, for example, a lack of normative criteria to distinguish between “progressive and regressive forms of political protest” (p. 11), and a tendency toward decisionism instead of normative justifications. The reason for this tendency lies in the critique of universalism and objectivity that I reconstructed above. When the traditional modes of normative theory not only need to fail in their goal to reach universal normativity but also, when the very attempt to reach such justifications leads to the stabilization of hegemony, it is understandable that radical democratic theory tends not to engage with questions of intersubjective justification and draws instead on the given normativity within social movements without further questioning it (Volk, 2018, p. 14). The following critique of radical democratic theory's overemphasis on power could just as well b
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