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Political subject ≈ the author/agent of political processes How may this be understood, in what different ways? -democratic, a people: ruled – ruler, coincidence -collective: group of individuals vs. group vs. individual -beginning something new -a politics that stays in tune with authentic Dasein, subject would relate itself to an ontology -moved, set forth by power relations, power may be positive -interruption of power, disagreement about who has the right to power, movement of non-coincidence of ruler and ruled, subject is the act of …

Political subject ≈ the author/agent of political processes Heidegger: becoming authentic, Das Man as the political subject of power, a politics that stays in tune with authentic Dasein Marx: collective action in relation to material, historical basis, teleology (the right timing), subject in the name of humanity Arendt: creating, beginning something new, floating above the burdens of the present, individuality Habermas: system-level vs. democratic subject: deliberative processes Foucault: Lefort: Derrida: Rancière: puzzling: anti-hegemonic, absolute claim for equality, inclusiveness not the solution, para-politics?, interruption of power, disagreement about who has the right to power, movement of non-coincidence of ruler and ruled

Balibar on the question of the political subject(s) three concepts of politics - politics understood the active mode - the determination of a (mode of) politics depends on “the way they bear subjects or are borne by them” (p. 1) “subjects act in accordance with the identity which is imposed on them or which they create for themselves” (p. 1) a politics? - logical aspects: their internal structure, the kind of interrelations established, their mode of action - ethical aspects: how they relate to basic values - compare Derrida on ethics and politics as similar on one level (justified in terms of basic values) while different on another (individuality vs. institutions) “bear subjects” - roughly: a political subject may be made sufficiently permanent and stable (≈ontologisation) in (at least) these three modes “borne by subjects” - roughly: a political subject may construct its own (imaginary) unity in and base its action on (at least) these three modes

Balibar on the question of the political subject(s) three concepts of politics autonomy of politics - ethical figure of emancipation heteronomy of politics - ethical figure of transformation heteronomy of heteronomy - ethical figure of civility an unconditional universality - Balibar: equaliberty - if politics is the self-determination of the people, then the people is defined in terms of the establishment of a universal/universal right - equality and liberty - implies a universal right to politics - the subject as bearer of a universal => no given or finally established borders a politics made in and in accordance with determinate conditions - politics as critique, reaction and transformation of the actual conditions - the creation of a political subject for the strategic aim of transformation - of these and these conditions as against the violence of identities - identification as exclusion - the establishment of civility as aiming to regulate conflicts of identification

Laclau on the question of the political subject(s) the articulation of demands - a request that turns into a claim - this happens when a request meets resistance from the side of power - this again realises an internal frontier: claim vs. power the equivalential articulation of a set of demands - a set of several demands that are connected together as roughly of equal value (equivalence) - sharing the same internal frontier: claim a, claim b, claim c vs. power - Laclau: equal only in their being in a differential relation to power (equal only in sharing a common political adversary) the construction of an internal frontier - politics as agonistic or conflictual mobilization: the unification of various demands into a stable system of signification - the positive significance of rhetorics Laclau on populism - populism ≈ the construction of a political subject - political subject ≈ the author/agent of political (transformative?) processes construction? - the shaping of a unity, construction of an imaginary subject - the making real of this unity (subject as unity) in terms of action

Laclau on the question of the political subject(s) Laclau on populism democratic demands - basically specific or isolated demands - why call them democratic? - Laclau: ‘democratic’ here a purely descriptive term, entails two things: (1) “formulated to the system by an underdog of sorts – that there is an equalitarian dimension implicit in them” - a demand to become equal, in some respect (2) “their very emergence presupposes some kind of exclusion or deprivation” populist demands - a set of democratic demands may be absorbed by different regimes - compare Lefort on forms or regimes of society - Laclau: liberal, fascist, democratic: “A Fascist regime can absorb and articulate democratic demands as a liberal one” (p. 125)