1

The Impurity of Politics: Deconstructive Interventions1

Aletta J. Norval

Beginnings
The incision of deconstruction is not a voluntary decision, or an absolute
beginning, does not take place just anywhere, or in an absolute elsewhere. An
incision, precisely, it can only be made according to the lines of forces and
forces of rupture that are localizable in the discourse to be constructed.2

The deconstructive intervention, from the outset, eschews all voluntarism and
subjectivism.3 It takes place, tracing out and so making visible, relations of force in
the particular text or discourse under discussion. This work of deconstruction plays a
formative role in the development of Laclau and Mouffe’s writings. The key
characteristic of the their writings – bringing the impurity of thought to bear on the
theorisation and analysis of politics – bears witness to the seminal influence of
deconstruction on discourse theory. Nevertheless, there are important differences
between a deconstructive and a discursive approach to some of the key themes under
discussion in both Derrida and Laclau’s work. This chapter investigates one of those
themes, namely, the relation between deconstruction and democracy. More
specifically, it seeks to lay bare the preconditions for establishing an articulation
between the deconstructive thought of undecidability and the theorisation of a
democratic hegemony in discourse theory. In so doing, it seeks to deepen existing
dimensions of both deconstruction and discourse theory via a mutually critical
encounter and attempts to provide an answer to some of the criticisms to which the
theory of radical democracy has been subjected.4 The first part of this chapter consists
1
This chapter draws on and develops arguments previously articulated. The first
source is a paper written in 1995, the second the paper presented to ‘The politics of
frienship’ conference at the ICA, 19…
2
J. Derrida, Positions,…. p.82
3
As Derrida argues: ‘Deconstruction takes place, it is an event that does not await the
deliberation, consciousness, or organisation of a subject,… It deconstructs itself. It
can be deconstructed… The “it” is not here an impersonal thing that is opposed to
some egological subjectivity.’ (ref?)
4
I am thinking here, first, of the common charge, quite often made against all forms
of post-structuralist theorising, of an absence of normative commitments and, second,
 2

of a brief genealogy of the manner in which deconstruction has shaped some of the
central argumentative strategies and concepts deployed in discourse theory.5 The
second part outlines a rereading of the specificity both of deconstructive themes and
certain discourse-theoretic concepts, clearing the ground for the final part, which
provides an argument for a closer articulation between ‘undecidability’ and the
institution of a democratic hegemony.

I.
A grammar of discourse-theoretic argumentation

As for what begins then – “beyond” absolute knowledge – unheard-of thoughts

are required, sought for across the memory of old signs. (SP, p.102)

In their reading of the Marxist tradition, in particular of the Marxism of the Second
International, Laclau and Mouffe consistently deploy what could only be
characterised as a deconstructive argumentative strategy. The key features of this
strategy consist, firstly, of a reading seeking to make visible the unthought,
constitutive tensions at the heart of Marxist theory. Second, this is done without the
introduction of categories external to this theoretical field. Third, the effects of the
recasting of these conceptual tensions are disseminated to other conceptual fields,
leading to a rethinking of categories central to political theory more generally.6 Take
one example, namely, the reworking of the relation between necessity and

of the more specific claim that Laclau and Mouffe fails to provide adequate support
for their vision of radical democracy.
5
I will not, in this chapter, consider the many examples of the deployment of
deconstructive readings in the analysis of substantive politics. See, for instance, N.
Harvey and C. Halverson, ‘The secret and the promise: women’s struggles in
Chiapas’, in D. Howarth, A.J. Norval and Y. Stavrakakis (eds) Discourse Theory and
Political Analysis, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2000, pp. 151-167; D.
Howarth, ‘Complexities of identity/difference: Black consciousness ideology in South
Africa’, Journal of Political Ideologies, vol. 2(1), 1997; and A.J. Norval,
Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse, London: Verso, 1996.
6
These moves echo almost precisely the Derridean strategy: “ …. (1) … the setting-
aside (prelevement) of a reduced predicative trait, which is held in reserve and limited
within a given conceptual structure (limited for some motivations and relations of
force which are to be analysed) named x; (2) to the delimitation, the grafting and
controlled extension of this predicate which was set aside, the name x being
maintained as a tool of intervention (levier d’intervention) in order to maintain ahold
on the former organisation which it is effective a question of transforming.’ J. Derrida,
Positions, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981, p. 36.
 3

contingency in Marxist theory. Laclau and Mouffe’s reading makes visible the
dependence of relations of necessity on those of contingency, and the privileging of
the former as dependent upon the exclusion and subordination of the latter.
Importantly, this reading does not proceed through a rejection of the categories of
Marxist analysis. It works through these categories, showing how their mutual
imbrication sustains precise political logics, logics put into question by their reading.7
Generalising the insights they gained from this deconstructive account of the relation
between necessity and contingency, Laclau and Mouffe traces out the consequences of
a generalised contingency and facticity for an understanding of politics. In so doing,
they do not replace an emphasis on necessity with one on contingency in a simple
movement of reversal. Laclau argues in this respect:
… if the assertion of the contingent nature of all objectivity merely implied the
absence of any necessity, we would be faced with an empty totality, since the
discourse of contingency would simply be the negative reverse of that of
necessity and would not be able to transcend the latter’s limits. … We are
dealing not with a head-on negation of necessity … but with its subversion. …
In this sense, it is the contingent which subverts the necessary: contingency is
not the negative other side of necessity, but the element of impurity which
deforms and hinders its full constitution. 8

Laclau and Mouffe then proceed to provide a structured genealogy of key concepts, in
which the impossibility of a pure logic of necessity, uncontaminated by contingency is
shown, and the logic of impurity is put to work. From this a more general
argumentative strategy emerges: one which takes full account of the aporias
constitutive of political theorising, but which does not attempt to supersede them in
any simple fashion. Akin to what Gasché characterises as Derrida’s infrastructural
accounting,9 Laclau and Mouffe delineate a series of concepts within the Marxist
tradition marked by similar tensions as those outlined above. This strategy is not,
however, limited to the Marxist tradition. In their later writings both Laclau and
Mouffe respectively emphasise the import of the deconstructive insights developed in
their early writings. For instance, Laclau engages with such key concepts as power
and representation,10 illuminating key aporias constitutive of these concepts. Mouffe,
in turn, deploys the idea of a ‘constitutive outside’, first outlined in Staten’s reading of

7
For a summary of this argument, see, E. Laclau, New Reflections, p. 27/8
8
Laclau, New Reflections, pp.26-7 (emphasis added).
9
Reference to R. Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror, London, Harvard University Press,
1986, and the key features of infrastructural accounting
10
Laclau, …Emacipations …
 4

Derrida,11 to put into question several of the key strategems of contemporary liberal
theorising.12 Taken together, their works provide a panorama of concepts that have
been subjected to deconstructive interventions so as to show their impurity and the
extent to which their transcendental aspirations must always already be frustrated.13
Apart from this general deconstructive argumentative strategy which, it must
be emphasised, is by no means neutral, Laclau and Mouffe also take up more
substantive insights from Derrida’s analysis. Most important for our purposes, is the
question of the relation between undecidability and the decision/hegemony. In the
analysis that follows, I argue that if one is to take account of the richness of the
thought of undecidability as outlined in Derrida’s writings, it is possible to rethink the
manner in which this relation has been understood in discourse theory. My main thesis
is that once the specificity and multiple dimensions of undecidability is taken into
account, it is possible to argue for a closer articulation between undecidability and a
democratic form of hegemony. However, to do so requires a prior rereading of certain
discourse-theoretic concepts so as to be able to highlight the specificity of the
infrastructure of undecidability vis-à-vis the general strategy of deconstruction.

II.
The ‘impossibility of society’ argument

One of the key insights of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy relates to what has
become known as the ‘impossibility of society’ argument. Drawing on Derrida’s
argument on the decentering of the structure,14 Laclau and Mouffe argue that the
representation of societal unity, as positive and fully present, is always already
marked by an ineradicable excess which escapes it. This opens up the space for a
hegemonic form of politics. As Laclau put it already in his seminar article, ‘The

11
Henry Staten, Witttgenstein and Derrida, …. on constitutive outside
12
Most recently, these arguments have been elaborated in C. Mouffe, The Democratic
Paradox, London: Verso, 2000.
13
For a discussion of quasi-transcendentals, see, G. Bennington and J. Derrida,
Jacques Derrida, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 267-84; as well as
G. Bennington, ‘Deconstruction and the Philosophers (the very idea), Oxford Literary
Review, 10 (1988), pp. 73-130.
14
J. Derrida, ‘Structure, sign and play in the discourse of the human sciences’, in J.
Derrida, Writing and Difference, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978, pp. 278-
94.
 5

impossibility of society’,15 any structural system is limited, is always surrounded by

an excess of meaning which it is unable to master.16 Two conclusions for political
analysis follow from this. The first emphasises the ultimate impossibility of fixing any
meaning, and the second, the fact that any attempt to stabilize meaning will take the
form of an act of hegemonization, that is, a partial and incomplete act of articulation
of the excess of the social. This argument holds, not only for the identity of society,
but for identity tout court. That is, every identity is constitutively marked by non-
closure.
Now, in order to retain the specificity of this argument – an argument about
the in principle impossibility of closure of any identity – it is necessary to outline
precisely how it relates to other key discourse-theoretic concepts. Laclau and Mouffe
postulate that the political witness to this impossibility is relations of antagonism. As
they put it: [a]ntagonism is the limit of all objectivity’17 and in that sense shows the
lack of objectivity of the social. What is, however, crucial about antagonism is that it
is inherently a political, articulatory relation. This is particularly clear in the fact that
Laclau and Mouffe distinguish it from real opposition on the one hand, and
contradiction on the other.
In his later work Laclau supplements this argument with the introduction of
the category of ‘dislocation’.18 In New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time
Laclau argues, first, that dislocation is the very form of temporality, of possibility and
of freedom,19 and that ‘every identity is dislocated insofar as it depends on an outside
which both denies that identity and provides its condition of possibility at the same
time.’20 This general argument concerning non-closure is further specified by the
additional claim that dislocation refers specifically to the presence of antagonistic

15
E. Laclau, ‘The Impossibility of society’, Canadian Journal of Political and Social
Theory, vol.7, nos 1&2, 1983.
16
In Laclau’s later work, from New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time
(London: Verso, 1990) onwards, this emphasis on ‘excess’ is replaced by a
theorisation of ‘lack’ drawn from Lacanian psychoanalysis.
17
E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso 1995),
p. … This claim is repeated in New Reflections (p.17). If antagonism is constitutive
of the social in this sense, as Laclau and Mouffe argue, then it cannot also be one
articulatory principle in a political struggle, albeit an absolutely central one.
18
Whilst the category of dislocation is present in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, it
receives a new centrality in New Reflections.
19
Laclau, New Reflections, pp. 41-4.
20
Laclau, New Reflections, p. 39.
 6

forces, making social dislocation ‘coterminus with the construction of power

centres’.21 The former set of claims, in particular, coincide with the several of the
consequences drawn from the argument on the impossibility of society and runs the
risk of obscuring the specificity of the argument concerning dislocation. For instance,
to hold that ‘every identity is always already dislocated’ denudes the concept of
dislocation of its specific import specified in the second set of characteristics. One
way out of this conceptual quandary is to return to the earlier theorisation of the
‘impossibility of closure’, and to treat it as a general theoretical postulate standing in
need of political articulation. In that case, the specificity of both the concepts of
antagonism and dislocation could be recuperated. Antagonism can now take its
rightful place as one possible political articulation of, and response to, a condition in
which the impossibility of closure has become visible. (This, of course, means that
other articulations are equally possible.) And dislocation becomes the name of that
experience which makes visible the non-closure of the social.22
To elaborate: as I have argued, for Laclau and Mouffe, the very idea of the
non-closure of identity, and thus a lack of essence, is what makes possible a
hegemonic politics. That is, the absence of a necessary determination of elements is
what allows for their articulation and disarticulation in political struggle. However, it
is only on the occasion of a dislocation, that this absence of determination becomes
visible, as an ineffable experience and, therefore, also potentially politically relevant.
Dislocation, on this reading, can be characterised as a ‘limit experience’. It is an
unmediated, inexpressible event that shows – in the Wittgensteinian sense of the term
– the non-sutured nature of identity. This is the reason why dislocation should be
distinguished from the postulate of the non-closure of identity. The latter operates at
the level of a general theoretical presupposition, whereas dislocation is concerned
with its staging: it marks and makes visible the non-closure of identity and thus
facilitates its entry onto the scene of the political. However, while dislocation can be
considered to be the occasion upon which that non-closure becomes visible, it does
not determine the sense given to it. For that very reason, dislocation has to receive its
meaning from articulatory practices, and antagonism is one such a key practice. Thus,
the dislocation of a structure is not something that is always already given, but is the
result of processes making visible the structure’s constitutive non-suturedness. If

21
Laclau, New Reflections, p. 40.
22
I have first developed these arguments in a paper dated 1995.
 7

dislocation then can be understood as the political staging of the general impossibility
of closure of any identity and structure, captured in the ‘impossibility of society’
argument, its relation to ‘undecidability’ and ‘the decision’ remains to be clarified.

Undecidability and indeterminacy

We must not hasten to decide.23

It is important to emphasise the specificity of the infrastructure of undecidability.

While deconstruction in principle makes visible the non-sutured nature of any
structure, and can therefore be argued to have analogous consequences to the
arguments presented above (about the impossibility of society) the analysis of
undecidability entails a further specification of that impossibility.
For this I take up a distinction introduced by Derrida between ‘indeterminacy’
and ‘undecidability’. Derrida argues for the distinction in the following terms:
Undecidability is always a determinate oscillation between possibilities …
These possibilities are themselves highly determined in strictly defined
situations … They are pragmatically determined. The analyses that I have
devoted to undecidability concern just these determinations and these
definitions … I say “undecidability” rather than “indeterminacy” because I am
interested in relations of force, in differences of force, in everything that allows,
precisely, determinations in given situations to be stabilized through a decision
of writing (in the broad sense I give to this word, which also includes political
action and speech.

The issues arising here are multiple and complex. Let us start with the relation
between structural openness (or essential indeterminacy/non-closure of identity in
general) and undecidability, before discussing their relation to the moment of the
political. The theoretico-philosophical status of these concepts is quite different.
While the former points to the essential contestability of all identity and the ultimate
impossibility of closure, the latter designates a terrain, not of general openness and
contestability, but of a regulated tension, a suspension in the ‘between’.
In order to tease out these differences, it is necessary to discuss the idea of
undecidability in Derrida’s work in greater depth. (I return later to its relation to the
question of politics in general and democracy in particular.) Derrida’s textual practice

23
J. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. By Alan Bass, Chicago, Il: Harvester
Press, 1982, p.19
 8

makes it clear that undecidability is not caused by some enigmatic equivocality, or by

some inexhaustible ambivalence (excess of meaning in Laclau’s terms discussed
earlier) of a word in natural language.24 What counts is the formal or syntactical praxis
of composition and decomposition, and the relations of force which either disrupt or
allow determinations to be stabilised through a decision. The moment of
undecidability thus arises between multiple, determinate possibilities as a result of
forces operating within the syntax of the text, and undecidability acquires its force
precisely as a consequence of the suspension of decidability.
What precisely does it mean for our understanding of the (political) sites in
which imaginary forms of social division are produced and inscribed? In order to
answer this question, one must consider the nature of this site, of the ‘between’ in
which decidability is suspended. In this interval, the logic of the palisade, a logic
premised upon the fullness of two poles, is suspended in favour of a logic at work ‘at
the edges of being’, a logic which outwits and undoes all ontologies and dialectics, a
‘between’, without a full meaning of its own. If, however, one of the characteristics of
the terrain of the undecidable is that it resists closure, it is also that which inaugurates
the need for a certain ‘decision’, for it marks an irreducible plural terrain, a terrain in
which identity is still at stake, waiting to be inscribed. Now, Derrida first introduces
the term ethico-theoretical decision in order to be able to capture the moment in which
a ‘decision’ has occurred.25 Thus, while undecidability has a revolutionary and
disconcerting sense, it can be thought only in so far as it remains essentially haunted
by the telos of decidability – whose disruption it marks.
The telos of decidability, for Derrida, refers to the logic of necessity operative
in Western metaphysics. There is only an already decided, essential and necessary
path which philosophical discourse can follow, a path determined by the teleological
demand for truth. Much, however, depends upon how the moment of ‘decision’ is to
be understood. Deconstruction shows the ultimate arbitrariness of the decision, its
ungrounded character. One should thus not be mislead to expect some form a rational
passage from one point to another. As Derrida argues:

See, for instance, Derrida’s argument on this in Disseminations, ….. p. 220.

24

See, for instance, Derrida’s reading of Husserlian phenomenology in Speech and

25

Phenomena, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973.

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A decision can come into being in a space that exceeds the calculable
programme that would destroy all responsibility by transforming it into a
programmable effect of determinate causes.26

Indeed, it is questionable whether one can talk here of decision and the choice it
implies at all. Leavey, for instance, holds that undecidables such as difference or
dissemination must be thought in terms other than that of choice. According to him,
the logic of non-choice runs through Derrida’s texts. Choice is indicative of a situation
in which there is a subject who chooses and is free to choose. However, in the
endeavour to lay bare the non-unitary presuppositions of the logic of identity, Derrida
opts neither for a notion of freedom of choice, nor for full determination. Rather, it is
the case that there is no simple possibility of choosing since every ethico-theoretical
decision is always already partially determined. Only retroactively could it be said to
have constituted a ‘decision’ since through it other possibilities are ruled out.27 In
another sense, however, there is no possibility of choice arising at all, for the nature of
the philosophical enterprise is such that alternative possibilities are not viewed, and
are not visible, as alternatives at all. 28 This, I would argue, is the reason why Derrida
is so careful to avoid any attempt to constitute the moment of the ethico-theoretical
decision as a moment of subjectivity, for it is precisely not a choice faced by a subject
conscious of different alternatives. In so far as a ‘decision’ could be argued to have
taken place, it is one prescribed by the tradition. The work of deconstruction is then,
in essence, to make visible possibilities ruled out or not taken up. But, this is always a
matter of work: an operation productive of those possibilities which simultaneously
tries to elaborate the effects of what would have occurred, were different possibilities
not closed off by the tradition.
Thus, the analysis of undecidability sets clear parameters to the question of the
‘decision’. It is not the case that simply anything is possible, or that we are concerned
here with a general incompletion. While the decision – if it has taken place at all –

26
ref Derrida
27
Derrida always hastens to emphasise that one can never be certain that a decision
has indeed taken place. See, J. Derrida with A. G. Duttman, ‘Perhaps or maybe’, p.
10, in J. Dronsfield and N. Midgley (eds), Responsibilities of Deconstruction,
Warwick Journal of Philosophy, vol. 6, 1997.
28
This is particularly clear in Derrida’s reading of Husserl in Speech and Phenomena,
where he argues that the Husserlian enterprise envisages, but closes off the possibility
of a conception of meaning not dominated by object intuition. This possibility is not
realised precisely because the Husserlian project requires a coincidence of meaning
intuition and object …
 10

could be characterised as an absolutely ungrounded madness de jure, de facto it is

limited by the terrain of the given. This limitation, for Derrida, is given in the nature
of the philosophical enterprise as such. This determination, however, does not rule out
the presence of alternative possibilities on the margins of philosophy. In other words,
it is precisely as a result of the impossibility of philosophical discourse to rule
completely and absolutely, that the space for ‘unheard of thoughts’ is opened up by a
deconstructive intervention.
This intervention or, as Staten has called it appropriately, textual labour,29 does
not result only in showing the impossibility of a final closure of identity, although it
does have that effect as well. Rather, the specificity of the logic of the undecidable is
to be found in the making visible of a field of regulated possibilities. On this reading,
a political analysis attempting to locate moments of ‘undecidability’ in a discourse
will consist in an operation quite different from that of only making visible the non-
necessity to any instituted order. It will entail an analysis which aims to locate those
points – within a pragmatically determined discursive context – at which there is a
regulated interplay between multiple discursive strains/relations of forces, such that
the tension between them is retained. In this sense then, undecidability should not be
opposed to a theory of hegemony – as its condition of im/possibility – since
hegemonic politics quite often find their highest expression in contexts in which
decidability is suspended.30 To put it even more strongly: hegemony, as decision, does
not follow in the wake of undecidability, but often the two coincides, but retains their
specificity, in the retention of a multiplicity of possibilities and the tension caused by
that retention.

Locating the political

It is now possible to return to attempts to characterise the relation between

undecidability and the political. Several possibilities present themselves here. The
first conceives of undecidability as the ‘place’ of the condition of (im)possibility of
the political. This characterisation, emphasising only its role in the foregrounding of
the ultimate contingency of any order, negates the specificity of undecidability vis-à-
29
Ref Staten
30
That is, a hegemonic force more often than not succeeds in becoming hegemonic as
a result of its ‘suspension’ of different possibilities, and its ability to hold together
‘contradictory’ moments.
 11

vis the general argument for the non-closure of identity. The second treats
undecidability itself as the political, so conflating two different logics. The political,
instead, should be understood as that moment at which the impossibility of
establishing the social as an objective order becomes visible. The problem of the
political then is the problem of the institution of the social, that is, of the definition
and articulation of social relations and frontiers in a field criss-crossed with
antagonisms.
To summarise: From the point of view of discursive political analysis, and the
conceptual distinctions pertaining to it, it is my contention that the analysis of the
institution of and changes in imaginaries has to take account of four separate but
closely related dimensions. The first, the non-suturedness of any identity, acts as a
theoretical precondition for thinking the moment of the political as institution and the
possibility of dislocation. The second – the political – consists in foregrounding the
instituting act of an order by showing its ultimately contingent nature. The third –
dislocation – could be characterised as the occasion upon which the non-suturedness
of identity is staged. Finally, the logic of the undecidable designates the terrain of
forces in which decidability is suspended, and should neither be subsumed under the
more general rubric of essential contestability, nor opposed to, or posited as a moment
external to hegemony. These distinctions are important, for they make visible different
aspects relevant to the institution and functioning of social division: dislocation
stages the ultimate non-closure of identity politically and, thus, facilitates an analysis
of the non-necessity of new attempts at restructuring, while undecidability points to
an analysis of the discursive production and productivity of the ‘suspension’ of
decidability. This, however, still leaves the question of the relation between
deconstruction and substantive political orderings, in particular, that of democracy as
regime.

III.
Democracy and undecidability

‘Democracy to come’ is a persistent theme of current discussions around

deconstruction. Given this, it is necessary to reflect on some of the more surprising
features of these discussions. The first concerns the very demand that deconstruction,
if it is to be responsible, must respond and must have something to say about political
 12

and ethical issues. And let us remember here that, as recent as 1996, it was possible
for a commentator to argue that the ‘introduction of politics as a specific concept in a
deconstructive style of thinking is not self-evident.’31 Moreover, Derrida himself has
questioned this demand, asking whether it is not intimidation ‘to think that to be
serious and to be taken seriously in a public space we must address political
examples’.32 The very form of (t)his response - that is, the idea that we must address
political examples - is already indicative of the second surprise, namely, the manner in
which political issues have been taken up by Derrida. In contrast to the careful
genealogical scrutiny of other concepts and philosophemes, political concepts in
general and, more specifically, the idea of ‘democracy’, has been introduced in
Derrida’s writings without much reference to its particular tradition of theorisation,
and to the responsibility that we bear for this heritage.33 Once ‘democracy to come’
appears on the horizon, it seems sufficient simply to point to the fact that it exceeds
every actual regime, and that it questions every given stabilization. As Derrida argues:
democracy remains to come; this is its essence in so far as it remains: not only
will it remain indefinitely perfectible, hence always insufficient and future, but,
belonging to the time of the promise, it will always remain, in each of its future
times, to come: even when there is democracy, it never exists, it is never
present, it remains the theme of a non-presentable concept.34

Finally, and following from this, it remains surprising that the domain of questions to
do with ethics and politics regularly appear as paired: ethics and politics. While
extensive work has been done, both by Derrida and commentators on deconstruction,
to determine the specificity of these domains - I am thinking here of work on Levinas
and Schmitt - much remains to be thought through in the articulation of these themes.
This is the case, particularly, with respect to the relation between deconstruction,
hegemony and democracy. I now wish to explore some of the issues that arise in the
movement from deconstruction to democracy by focussing on the logic of democracy,
the space of subjectivity conforming to it, and their relation to hegemony. In so doing,
one is well aware of the fact that this line of approach risks using philosophemes

31
E.E. Berns, ‘Decision, hegemony and law’, Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol.
22, no. 4, p. 71.
32
J. Derrida with A. G. Duttmann, ‘Perhaps or maybe’, p. 12, in J. Dronsfield and N.
Midgley (eds) Responsibilities of Deconstruction, Special issue of the Warwick
Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 6, Summer 1997.
33
J. Derrida, Other Heading, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992, p. 28
34
J. Derrida, Politics of Friendship, London: Verso, 1997, p.306.
 13

before which deconstruction would cause us to hesitate. But, this is an inescapable

and necessary risk.
Let us start with a series of remarks aimed at deepening the import of
deconstruction upon our understanding of hegemony (or, what amounts to the same,
the decision - or is it?), while, simultaneously, questioning the tendency of
deconstruction to an endless deferral of politics. The focus here is specifically on the
resources needed to theorise the democratic moment. Put differently, I will ask
whether the friend/enemy distinction, conceived as the properly political moment,
allows for a democratic articulation of hegemony (that is, for a transformation of the
enemy into the adversary) and, by extension, for an argument for radical democracy.
Thus, my remarks should be read as an appeal ‘concerning the judgement handed
down, concerning its givens’35 both with respect to the tradition of deconstruction, if
such a thing be possible, and with respect to that of hegemony.

A hegemonic reading of deconstruction and democracy

The issue of the relation between deconstruction and hegemony arises in the context
of undecidability and the need for the stabilization of what is essentially unstable and
chaotic.36 Laclau and Mouffe have argued, in this respect, that a deconstructive
approach is highly relevant to two dimensions of the political. The first is the notion
of the political as the instituting moment of society. The second is the incompletion of
all acts of political institution. That is, what makes politics possible - the contingency
of acts of institution - is also what makes it impossible. Ultimately, no instituting act
is fully achievable. In short, deconstruction widens the field of structural
undecidability, so clearing the field for a theory of the decision taken in an

35
Derrida, Politics of Friendship, p. xi.
36
Derrida argues that ‘All that a deconstructive point of view tries to show, is that
since convention, institutions and consensus are stabilizations ... this means that they
are stabilizations of something essentially unstable and chaotic. Thus, it becomes
necessary to stabilize precisely because stabilization in not natural; it is because there
is instability that stabilization becomes necessary ... this chaos and instability, which
is fundamental, founding and irreducible, is at once the worst against which we
struggle with laws, rules, conventions .... but at the same time it is a chance, a chance
to change, to destablize.’ J. Derrida, ‘Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism’, in
C. Mouffe (ed.), Deconstruction and Pragmatism, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 83-
4.
 14

undecidable terrain.37 On this reading, hegemony and deconstruction are but two
dimensions of a single operation: hegemony requires deconstruction (without the
radical undecidability that the deconstructive intervention brings about, many strata of
social relations would appear as essentially linked by necessary logics and there
would be nothing to hegemonize), and deconstruction requires hegemony, that is, a
theory of the decision taken in an undecidable terrain.38 Thus, the passage between
undecidability and the decision is thought as an act of politics through and through.
In addition to my remarks above concerning the specificity of undecidability,
there are several dimensions of this account of the relation between deconstruction
and hegemony, or between undecidability and the decision, in need of further
clarification and elaboration. They are, first, the character of the decision and of
undecidability and, second, the relation of this decision to the discourse of democracy.
On all these dimensions, I will argue, the account offered by Laclau and Mouffe
differs in important respects from the one offered by Derrida. First, undecidability is
used here as a generalised logic, at times co-terminus with the practice of
deconstruction, rather than as a specific infrastructure arising out of several of
Derrida’s readings of philosophical texts. Second, drawing on Schmitt and refusing to
ground the decision in an ethical moment (via a Levinasian account of the relation to
the other) Laclau and Mouffe posit a conception of the decision as based on power.
For them, a decision taken in a terrain of structural undecidables, can only mean (a)
that it (the decision) is self-grounding; (b) that it consists in ‘repressing possible
alternatives that are not carried out’; and (c) that it is internally split (this/a decision).
The terrain of the decision, on this account, is the terrain of the political proper. It is
the terrain of the institution of the social, which depends upon the constitution of
antagonisms, of political frontiers, in short, on the staging of the friend/enemy
distinction.
Third, how is this account related to that of democracy? To put it differently,
what is the differentia specifica of a democratic hegemony? In answer to this
question, Mouffe argues that modern democracy’s specificity lies in the recognition
and legitimation of conflict, and in the refusal to suppress it by imposing an
authoritarian order. Here it is necessary to quote her at length for she clearly

37
E. Laclau, ‘Deconstruction, Pragmatism, Hegemony’, in Deconstruction and
Pragmatism, p.48.
38
Laclau, Deconstruction and Pragmatism, pp.59-60.
 15

articulates how democracy is to be understood in relation to the friend/enemy

distinction inaugurating all politics:
… a democratic society makes room for the ‘adversary’, i.e. the opponent who
is no longer considered an enemy to be destroyed but somebody whose
existence is legitimate and whose rights will not be put into question. The
category of the ‘adversary’ serves here to designate the status of those who
disagree concerning the ranking and interpretation of the values. … It must be
stressed, however, that the category of the enemy does not disappear; it now
refers to those who do not accept the set of values constitutive of the democratic
forms of life. ... There is no way for their demands to be considered legitimate
within the ‘we’ of democratic citizens, since their disagreement is not merely
about ranking but of a much more fundamental type.39

This account of democracy is developed in contradistinction to the intellectual

tradition that attempts to provide a rationalistic justification of democracy. Rather
than such a justification, a defence of democracy, she argues, requires the construction
of democratic life forms and practices. To summarise, on this reading, (1) the
institution of democracy from an undecidable position is a matter of power, and (2)
of an immanent defence of democratic practices. The reason for this, Mouffe argues,
is that were we to reduce politics to a realm inhabited by rational individuals, it would
erase the antagonistic dimension, and foreclose the possibility of apprehending ‘what
constitutes the specificity of a pluralist democratic answer to the political problem, i.e.
the legitimation of conflict and the creation of institutions whose aim is to transform
antagonism into agonism.’40
What is needed here, and I suggest it is lacking, is a theorisation of the
movement from enemy to adversary, of the transformation of antagonism into
agonism, and of the different logics pertaining to each. If deliberative models of
democracy, in the positing of an ideal situation, eliminate the very place of the enemy,
an account of democracy which starts from the political logic of the friend/enemy
distinction, needs to provide an account for the transformation of the enemy into an
adversary, and of the specificity of the logic of the adversary in a democratic context.
To put it differently, while providing us with an account of the decision inaugurating
politics, it leaves us with no apparent way to breach the gap between the moment of
institution, and the institution of democracy. What is needed is an account of politics

39
C. Mouffe, ‘Politics, Democratic Action, and Solidarity’, Inquiry, Vol. 38, 19..,
p.107.
40
Mouffe, ‘Politics, Democratic Action and Solidarity’, p. 108.
 16

and subjectivity that bridges the gap between the institution of hegemony tout court,
and the institution of a democratic hegemony.

The experience of the undecidable and democracy to come

Could deconstruction provide us with the means to fill that gap? On a first reading, it
seems impossible. Let us turn, for a moment, to Derrida’s remarks on the passage
between the undecidable and the decision. In a recent interview he points out that the
exposure to undecidability is neither a neutral position, nor a suspension of decision:
it is the experience of the undecidable, of that which exceeds the calculable. Derrida
points out, in this respect, that undecidability is not
merely the oscillation or the tension between two decisions; it is the experience
of that which, though heterogenous, foreign to the order of the calculable and
the rule, is still obliged - it is obligation that we must speak - to give itself up to
the impossible decision, while taking account of laws and rules’ (1992:24)

Hence, undecidability is not opposed to the decision, but is the condition of any
decision. However, the relation between this experience of undecidability and the
decision is not one that can become the object of a theoretical statement:
One must always say ... a decision, if it takes place, if there is such a thing, ... if
a decision is made, if a responsibility is taken, then it is only to the extent that
some undecidability has been experienced.41

This account of the relation between undecidability--decision not only suggests the
impossibility of theorising the decision (bringing it under a rule), but also puts into
question its very possiblity. If a decision has occured ... Apparently this account
stands at some distance from a hegemonic approach as outlined by Laclau, which
posits a quite strong dimension of theorisation: even though we cannot know the
decision or its contents in advance, we do know that it is a result of power; that it
takes place is not in question at all. It could, of course, be argued that these two
approaches are supplementary: one emphasises a continual hesitation, the other the
necessity of imposition. However, there are further differences that need to be
explored here. To do so, it is necessary to reflect on what I would argue the account
undecidability further entails, and on what, in this entailment, exceeds an account
based purely on imposition and power.

41
Derrida, ‘Perhaps or maybe’, p.10.
 17

An emphasis on the experience of the undecidable adds to the structure of the

decision a dimension lacking from it if understood in Schmittian terms. It is this
dimension that, I would argue, allows us to bridge the gap between institution tout
court, and the institution of a democratic political logic. Thus, despite the persistent
refusal to link deconstruction to any particular regime, including democracy, it is my
view that the account of the experience of the undecidable – invoking thematics of
responsibility, justice and so forth - is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for
thinking the institution of a democratic hegemony. To put it differently, while
democracy (as a specific form of decision, regime) cannot be derived from the
experience of the undecidable, it conforms to it in important respects. If this is the
case, then the specific logic of democracy could be argued to be an embodiment or
institutionalisation, one amongst others, of the experience of the undecidable. And, as
a consequence, I would argue that the experience of the undecidable rules out certain
other forms of embodiment (for instance, an authoritarian political regime).
What then is the structure of this experience?42 Here, works on ethics and
responsibility in relation to deconstruction are relevant, for they pose the question of
the experience of the undecidable explicitly in the context of a relation to the other.
Bernasconi, for instance, holds that what is at stake in the discussion of ethics and
deconstruction is ‘an attack on good conscience’, an abhorrence of complacency and
morality, which takes the form of an interruptive logic ‘in which what interrupts the
order of being is “impossible, unthinkable, unsayable”.43 Similarly, Critchley argues
that the ‘responsibility of deconstruction is to maintain the vigilance of the critical
stance’, to ‘persistently interrupt the argumentative process that results in
consensus’.44 It is this specificity of the responsibility of deconstruction - transformed
from an attribute of the subject, to an openness ‘that makes being a subject possible’45
- that could provide us with the absent link facilitating the movement between
deconstruction and democracy. In this respect, Wood’s suggestions on the
interconnection between responsibility as excessive, and as calculable, are relevant.

42
update references to debate on this issue
43
R. Bernasconi, ‘Justice without Ethics?’, in Dronsfield and Midgley, pp.60, and 66.
44
S. Critchley, ‘The Ethics of Deconstruction: An Attempt at Self-Criticism’, in
Dronsfield and Midgley, p.91.
45
D. Wood, ‘Responsibility Reinscribed (and How), in Dronsfield and Midgley, p.
105. Wood argues that for Derrida, as soon as we introduce the category of the
subject, we are already lost to calculation, and thus no longer in the field of the
undecidable.
 18

He argues that responsibility as openness to the other can be understood as a space of

response-ability, and that this may guide us in the way we deal with and understand
the finite (calculable) responsibilities we take on.46 Viewing our situatedness, our
exposure to the other as a willingness to live in and endure uncertainties may thus be
argued to structure our actual, finite responsibilities. This, I would argue, makes it
possible to conceive of the experience of the undecidable as the space for the
emergence of a form of subjectivity proper to democracy. In other words, the
experience of the undecidable already entails a certain contouring of the relation to
the other and, thus, could serve as a minimum, negative delimitation from which a
democratic form of subjectivity could be said to arise. Moreover, on the basis of
arguments presented earlier, it is clear that democratic hegemony cannot be thought as
external to, and following on from the undecidable, for the latter shapes, internally,
the character of that hegemony.
What would be the nature of a decision in favour of democracy that could arise,
but could not be derived from the experience of the undecidable? And how would it
be possible to relate this account to the question of subjectivity, and the friend/enemy
polarity inaugurating the political? Let us start with the latter, and work our way back
to the former. Against Schmitt, Derrida argues that it is only insofar as the polarity of
the subject/object relation is problematised, that questions of ethics and politics arise.
These questions are related to the structure of the ‘perhaps’:
I have the experience of ‘myself’ as a multiplicity of places, images, imagos,
there are others in me ... there is more than one other, we are numerous in
ourselves, and there are a number of singularities over there, and that is why
there is a perhaps, and why there are questions of ethics and politics.47

It is here where one needs to begin to think another politics:

a politics, a friendship, a justice which begin[s] by breaking with their

naturalness or their homogeneity, with their alleged place of origin. Hence,
which begin where the beginning divides (itself) and differs, begin by marking
an ‘originary’ heterogeneity that has already come and that alone can come, in
the future, to open them up.’48

and, in Spectres,

46
Wood, ‘Responsibility Reinscribed’, p. 111.
47
Derrida, ‘Perhaps or Maybe’, p.13. This remark, and other similar ones by Derrida,
problematises accusations of a lack of a ‘theory of the subject’ in deconstruction.
48
Derrida, Politics of Friendship, p.105.
 19

the effectivity or actuality of the democratic promise ... will always keep within
it, and it must do so, this absolute undetermined messianic hope at its heart, this
eschatological relation to the to-come of an event and of a singularity, of an
alterity that cannot be anticipated.49

Thus, it looks as if this relation - that of the ‘to come’, and of the conception of the
impossible self/we/others that goes along with it - could begin to offer us an account
which moves in the direction of ‘democracy’.
But, as we know, Derrida is insistent on the fact that this does not exclude the
possibility of radical evil; were we to exclude radical evil, we would limit the space of
the event. However, I would argue, it is only by accepting certain necessary
limitations, that we can begin, and must begin, to think the question of democracy.
Two limitations are necessary in this regard. The first concerns the need for the
institution of democracy as regime, and the second, the form/conception of
subjectivity appropriate to it. Let me start with the latter, and bring it together with the
conception of hegemony discussed earlier. I have argued that the idea of hegemony as
decision allows us to think the moment of institution of a regime, but does not provide
us with the means to make the transition from enemy to adversary, and to think their
different logics. On the other hand, the deconstructive account of undecidability opens
up the question of the relation to the other which potentially could be articulated to a
democratic logic. It is in this respect that the two accounts may supplement one
another. But, such a supplementary relation must proceed simultaneously with a
recognition of that which deconstruction already excludes (complacency, closure),
and against a conception of the political which refuses the already, and necessary,
contoured character of a conception of subjectivity conforming to it.

Reconfiguring the argument for radical democracy

In terms of the question of the relation to the other, as a relation of a certain

responsibility to openness, I would argue that the infrastructure of undecidability
specifically offers us, an account necessary to thinking democracy. To put it
differently, even though deconstruction does not limit itself to any regime, democracy
as regime must, of necessity and as a minimum condition, start with a relation to the
other conceived in terms of responsibility, responsibility to openness. It is this

49
J. Derrida, Spectres, .... p.111.
 20

dimension which could bridge the transition from a pure hegemonic institution to the
institution of a democratic regime, and could be elaborated to buttress arguments for
radical democratic subjectivity. And, despite Derrida’s hesitation in this respect, the
relation to an other articulated in deconstruction encompasses an appreciation of
difference, an alertness to elements of contingency that stands at the core of a
democratic ethos. As Connolly argues, a democratic ethos is one:50
through which newly emerging constellations might reconstitute identities
previously impressed upon them, thereby disturbing ... established priorities ... It
is, therefore, a social process through which fixed identities and naturalised
conventions are pressed periodically to come to terms with their constructed
characters, as newly emergent social identities disturb settled conventions and
denaturalise social networks of identity and difference.51

Modern democracy is, therefore, a response to the problematisation of final markers, a

response balancing ‘the desirability of governance ... with a corollary politics of
democratic disturbance’.52 And deconstruction contributes to a theorisation of the
relation to the other, as a relation of responsiveness, necessary to its institution and
maintenance. Thus, it provides us with an account of subjectivity which stiputales the
logics specific to the adversary. Without this emphasis on responsibility, I maintain, it
is not possible to think the institution of a democratic hegemony.
This, however, still leaves us with the wider issue of the way in which the
moment of institution may be accounted for. We have already seen the reasons,
outlined by Mouffe, common to a hegemonic and deconstructive approach, why a
purely rationalistic account of democracy cannot do this work. If, however, the
moment of institution, of the decision cannot be theoretically comprehended,
encapsulated, it can nevertheless be elaborated. The paradox of institution has been
with us for a long time. Rousseau is the name of this paradox. Rather than a paragon
of the death of politics53 and of democracy as some would have it, Rousseau’s
narrative on the creation of a general will both marks and conceals this paradox:
In order for an emerging people to appreciate the healthy maxims of politics ..
the effect would have to become cause; the social spirit , which should be the
result of the institution would have to preside over the founding of the

50
W.E. Connolly, Identity\Difference, London: Cornell University Press, 1991, p.173.
51
W.E. Connolly, ‘Democracy and Territoriality’, Millennium, Vol. 20, No. 3, 1991,
p.477.
52
Connolly, ‘Democracy and Territoriality’, p.477
53
R. Beardsworth, Derrida & the Political, London: Routledge, 1996, p. 66.
 21

institution itself; and men would have to be prior to the laws what they ought to
become by means of laws.54

The justification proper to democracy, and to any political order, is thus always a
retrospective one. It presupposes in advance what is or should be its result. Its
character becomes apparent only once the decision has been taken. The specificity of
the democratic case is to be found in the fact that what is instituted is a political form
that contains, and thematises, elements of arbitrariness not eliminable from political
life.55 This, as Lefort has argued, is the very form of modern democratic politics. But,
it is a form which cannot be thought without the presupposition of responsibility so
central to deconstruction. To conclude, if one is to think the institution of hegemony
in a democratic form, it must proceed via this conception of responsibility that
problematises the sharp friend/enemy distinction, so opening the space for the
emergence of the adversary. This reading, however, also reduces the distance between
deconstruction and democracy. Conceived in this manner, democracy becomes one
possible form of embodiment of the experience of the undecidable. This allows one to
retain the important proviso that Laclau has outlined in his work, and in his response
to what he call the ‘ethicization’ of deconstruction, namely that deconstruction in
general cannot be equated with a set of presuppositions of ethics. It is, however, only
possible to hold onto this proviso if, as I have argued, one distinguishes between a
general logic of non-closure made visible by deconstruction, and the specific logics of
undecidability, for the latter does contour the space of engagement. And this
contouring could be conceived of as a precondition for thinking the institution of a
democratic hegemony.

Concluding remarks

Finally, and in conclusion, one needs to ask what resources there are in the genealogy
of the concept of hegemony that would lead one to regard the proposed articulation as
plausible, and how this articulation would affect our understanding of the practice of
hegemony more generally. It is possible to deal with both of these issues rather
briefly. First, the argument I have presented, via a passage through the undecidable,

54
J.J. Rousseau, The Social Contract, ....
55
Connolly, ‘Democracy and Territoriality’, p.465.
 22

for thinking the constitution of a specifically democratic form of hegemony

supplements Laclau and Mouffe’s theorisation of post-Gramscian hegemony by
recuperating the dimension of ethico-political leadership in Gramsci’s account. For
Gramsci, hegemony was not only a type of political relation, but included a
substantive argument for moral, political and intellectual leadership. Bringing these
substantive emphases back into the account of hegemony enriches it in a direction
entirely compatible with the account presented in this chapter. This also has
consequences for our second, and final question, namely, if and how this recasting
may affect our understanding of hegemonic analyses. On this reading, I would
propose that there yet a further is a coincidence between what is at stake in
deconstruction and in a hegemonic account. The deconstructive intervention cannot be
conceived of as a neutral practice: it uncovers hierarchies and relations of force, and
reinscribes them in a manner that affects the terrain upon which it takes place.
Similarly, producing a hegemonic reading is not a technically neutral exercise: it
disturbs and disrupts sedimented practices; it puts into questions the values of
homogeneity, of closure and of unicity and attempts to account for them through a
thematization of the forgotten relations of power constitutive of them. That is why a
hegemonic reading of deconstruction needs to steer clear of treating deconstruction as
a propadeutic to the decision, and instead, flesh out the full and radical consequences
of their mutual imbrication.