Agonism, Democracy, and the Moral Equality of Voice

• DOI: 10.1177/0090591721993862
• Date: 01 February 2022
• Published date: 01 February 2022
• Author: Stephen K. White
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591721993862

Political Theory

2022, Vol. 50(1) 59 –85

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/0090591721993862

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Article

Agonism, Democracy,

and the Moral Equality

of Voice

Stephen K. White1

Abstract

Agonism emerged three decades ago as an assault on the overemphasis

in political theory on justice and consensus. It has now become the norm.

But its character and relation to core values of democracy are not as

unproblematic today as is often thought, an issue that becomes more pressing

as contemporary politics increasingly seem locked into notions of unrelenting

conflict between “friends” and “enemies.” This essay traces alternative

ontological roots and ethical implications of agonism, distinguishing between

“imperializing” and “tempered” modes. The former, exemplified in the

popular Schmitt-Mouffe formulation, is shown to be fundamentally flawed in

its failure to conceive politics in a fashion that does not allow the dynamic

of friend–enemy to imperially trump appeals to democratic norms. In a

world of insurgent white nationalism in democratic polities, this is no small

fault. “Tempered” agonists, such as William Connolly and Bonnie Honig,

offer ontologies where democratic norms can gain traction. Despite the

admirable qualities of these alternatives, their formulations are nevertheless

not fully persuasive. The difficulty lies in their underarticulated accounts of

equality. I suggest an alternative formulation of agonism that embraces a

central role for the idea of the moral equality of voice, a value that resides in

the seam between notions of difference, resistance, and conflict emphasized

by agonists, on the one hand, and the idea of fairness emphasized by notions

of democratic justice, on the other.

1University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Corresponding Author:

Stephen K. White, University of Virginia, 590 Rodes Dr., Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA.

Email: skw2n@virginia.edu

993862PTXXXX10.1177/0090591721993862Political TheoryWhite

research-article2021

60 Political Theory 50(1)

Keywords

democracy, agonism, equality, ontology, communicative action

In recent years, the idea of agonism has found increasing acceptance among

political theorists, journalists, and politicians, some even finding its place

today as a “democratic good” to be “uncontroversial.”1 This means accepting

the legitimacy of greater levels of contestation as a part of democratic thought

and politics.2 For some, this is simply a call to electoral strategies with a

greater emphasis on partisan conflict versus consensus. For many others,

however, such a call entails a deeper philosophical shift in our understanding

of the character of democracy; more specifically, a shift toward one that

decenters the emphasis on values like reason and deliberation that figure so

prominently in theories of democracy and justice tied in recent decades to

thinkers like Jürgen Habermas or John Rawls.

I will argue both that democratic theory should indeed accept a philo-

sophical revaluing of conflict called for by agonists, but that doing so ade-

quately involves a path of reconceptualization that is more difficult than

typically realized. The problem is especially pressing in a popular version of

agonism that is more dangerous for democratic life than some proponents

tend to realize. I call this version “imperializing,” because of the default pri-

macy it implicitly accords to subduing one’s opponent over any other values.

As we have normalized agonism, insufficient attention has been paid to such

difficulties. My goal is to elucidate this problem, as well as show what might

constitute a satisfactory approach to it.

In the first and second sections, I present the case for understanding ago-

nism as falling into two categories, “imperializing” and “tempered.” The for-

mer anchors itself in the work of the early twentieth-century German jurist

and political thinker, Carl Schmitt; the latter tends to emphasize the impor-

tance of Nietzsche. I argue that “imperialists” provide us with an approach

that is toxic for democracy. “Tempered” proponents offer a more promising

path. Here I examine the work of William Connolly and Bonnie Honig.

Despite their impressive contributions to conceiving a defensible agonism, I

suggest that they are not entirely successful, because they do not provide an

adequate account of equality. Such an account, at least if it is a nonfounda-

tionalist one, can be enhanced by portraying it in an “exemplary scene”

whose role is to embody and vivify our most basic commitments. An exem-

plary scene carries a force that is simultaneously ontological, ethical, and

aesthetic-affective. The third section contends that in the present case a per-

suasive scene of this sort will weave together a portrayal of the agonistic

relation of identity and difference with an idea of moral status represented in