Community Beyond Hegemony? Liberal Cosmopolitanism, Generic Emancipation and the Political

Abstract

This article critically re-evaluates certain blind spots in the debate on the possibility of a cosmopolitan political community. It does so by addressing certain key areas where, in my view, remaining conceptual misunderstandings prevent a full articulation of the conflicting positions. In particular, I concentrate on the ontological differences between liberalism and poststructuralism which, as long as they are not laid plain, distort the exchange of ideas on the nature of the political and on the issues of identity, recognition and exclusion. I contend that in poststructuralist ontology antagonism remains the only force that can constitute an inside-outside boundary and thus establish an identity. Hence, one needs to agree with Sergei Prozorov when he insists that cosmopolitan politics can only be post-identitarian. I then analyse the differences between the two visions of generic post-identitarian politics identified by Prozorov — those of Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben. This analysis helps to highlight the thesis that even if we can conceive of a truly generic community that is not grounded in any identity and therefore does not presuppose external othering as a constitutive practice, we might still need antagonistic politics as the only means to make this community possible.