Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism? (Mouffe, 1999)

Annotations:

• This implies that any social objectivity is ultimately political and that it has to show the traces of exclusion that governs its constitution. 

1. For Habermas, the more democratic a society is, the less power would be constitutive of social relations.(Habermas). However, power relation exists, we need to constitute forms of power that are compatible with democratic values. (Mouffe)

Annotations:

• by putting an exclusive emphasis on heterogeneity and incommensurability, a view of universalization would impede recognition how certain differences are constructed as relations of subordination and should therefore be challenged by radical democratic politics.
• 去普遍化的政治主体。 墨菲认为，自由主义一直专注于构建普遍性的公民身份（政治主体）概念，其工作以这样一种判断为基础：所有人生来都是平等和自由的，但是，它又使公民身份仅仅沦为一种法律地位，这暗示着个人所拥有的那些权利同国家是相对立的。而去，这种自由主义的政治主体带有普遍主义的特征。而任何普遍主义又必然包含排斥的行为。因此，为了构建一种激进民主霸权，需要一种新的现代民主的政治主体，即去普遍化的政治主体。

1. 1. participants have the same chance to initiate speech, to question and to open debate
2. 2. all have the right to question the assigned topics of conversation
3. 3. all have the right to initiate reflexive arguments about the rules of discourse and the way in which they are applied or carried out.

1. Agreement on language(agreement in forms of life)

   Annotations:

   • 语言学是个什么鬼....== For Wittgenstein, to have agreement in opinions there must first be agreement on the language used and this, as he points out, implies agreement in forms of life.
   • " we have got on the slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also,just  because of that, we are unable to walk: so wee need friction, back to the rough ground." 维特根斯坦认为这种民主模式太过理想化

1. discourse are authoritarian

   Annotations:

   • the free-floating dispersion of signifiers: it is only through the intervention of a master signifier that a consistant field of meaning can emerge. 主能指是一种象征性的authority, 只有主能指的参与，意义的生产过程才能完整。而这种与权力机制关联的属性，又使得哈贝马斯所期望的free of constraints , equal平等交流无法实现。因此，lacan 的理论从根本上undermine了哈贝马斯的deliberative democracy

Annotations:

• By "the political", Mouffe refers to the dimension of antagonism that is inherent in all human society, antagonism that can take many different forms and can emerge in diverse social relations. "Politics", on the other hand, refers to the ensemble of practices, discourses and institutions that seek to establish a certain order and to organize human coexistence in conditions that are always potentially conflictual because they are affected by the dimension of " the political" 

Annotations:

• two type of political relations: one of antagonism between enemies 敌人之间的敌对 and one of agonism between adversaries.对手之间的“激动”  passion   The aim of democratic politics is to transform an "antagonism" into an "agonism"

Annotations:

• a pluralist democracy needs to make room for dissent and for the institutions through which it can be manifested. Its survival depends on collective identities forming around clearly differentiated positions, as well as on the possibility of choosing between real alternatives.