Radical democracy

Mihailo Marković

pp. 289-312

in: José M. Dominguès, Critical theory and political modernity, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

Domingues discusses in this last chapter the concept of democracy. The classics come back. The diverse formulations of democracy, especially liberal democracy, with Dahl, Bobbio and Urbinati, as well as Huntington and other, but also the Marx-Lenin alternative, are laid out. Radical democracy and the politics of the extraordinary, featuring Laclau and Mouffe as well as Kalyvas, are mobilized in order to lend the book a firm emancipatory edge. This is carried out within an immanent critical perspective. Political plebeianism comes to the fore. The notion of the will as well the concepts of sovereign and constituent power close the book. The chapter resumes also the concept of the imaginary and how emancipatory openings can be discerned in it.