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Does philosophy contribute to an invasioncomplex? Sloterdijk the antagonist and theagonism of Mouffe

Nikos Papastergiadis

To cite this article: Nikos Papastergiadis (2017) Does philosophy contribute to an invasioncomplex? Sloterdijk the antagonist and the agonism of Mouffe, Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 9:2,13-24, DOI: 10.1080/20004214.2017.1343083

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2017.1343083

© 2017 The Author(s). Published by InformaUK Limited, trading as Taylor & FrancisGroup.

Published online: 24 Dec 2017.

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Does philosophy contribute to an invasion complex? Sloterdijk the antagonistand the agonism of MouffeNikos Papastergiadis

School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

ABSTRACTThe political backlash against multiculturalism alongside the media portrayal of the globalrefugee crisis would suggest that the spaces for cultural difference have contracted andmoved into a mode of transnational crisis management. This article addresses the moralpanic over cultural difference by challenging some of the philosophical frameworks that havejustified naturalized negative attitudes towards migrants and dismissed the viability ofcosmopolitan perspectives. In particular, the author will critically evaluate the antagonisticperspective developed in Peter Sloterdijk’s writings and Chantal Mouffe’s theory of agonism.To grasp the complex and hybrid forms of cross-cultural exchanges, the author argues that amore robust vision of cosmopolitanism is necessary.

KEYWORDSMulticulturalism;cosmopolitanism; agonism;antagonism; Sloterdijk;Mouffe

Why does the presence of cultural difference inspiresuch hostility? Even if the proportion of people whoare defined as a minority is expanding, and the role ofcultural difference is assuming greater significance inpublic life, why is this presence interpreted as such athreat to the nation, and why is the arrival of theother rendered as the apocalyptic end of civilization?The fear of the other, and, in particular, the scape-goating of refugees and migrants, have never been socentral to political discourse. In the US PresidentDonald Trump promised to build the great wall andmake Mexico pay for it. Prior to the Brexit scenariothe leaders in Europe had already launched scathingassaults on multiculturalism. The former FrenchPresident Nicolas Sarkozy revealed that the real threatto the Republic was women wearing the hijab inpublic institutions.1 German Chancellor AngelaMerkel declared that the “multicultural approach of‘let’s co-exist and enjoy each other’, this approach hasfailed, absolutely failed”.2 This was in step with thethen British Prime Minister David Cameron’sannouncement that: “State multiculturalism is awrong-headed doctrine that has had disastrousresults.”3 “Absolute failure”, “disastrous results”,“the end of the Republic”, this hysterical and vitriolicchorus of complaints was rather excessive given thatthe experimentation with multiculturalism in Europehad been mostly at the symbolic level. Despite thelimited application of multiculturalism at a structurallevel, it should come as no surprise that this politicaldiscourse has fanned a populist resentment againstpluralism and laid the political bedrock for a series of

lazy conflations between economic migration anddeindustrialization, as well as the promotion ofvicious slurs that equate refugees with terrorists.

One would assume that in Australia, where theconcept of multiculturalism was pioneered and theinstitutional impact has been far more significant, amore balanced approach would be evident. Despite theceremonial boasts about Australia as the multiculturalsuccess story, the political status of multiculturalism isincreasingly distorted by fears that reflect both a spe-cific manifestation of an “invasion complex”,4 and theinfluence of a new transnational “crisis” discourse.5

The backlash first surfaced during the conservativeHoward government in Australia (1996–2007), andwas extended by former Australian Prime MinisterTony Abbott, who distilled these fears in his impera-tive: that migrants should “join us not change us”.6

The current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has notmoved from the hymn sheet of his predecessors. Afterthe recent bombings in Paris and Brussels, and in anutterly disingenuous manner, he boasted of the “dee-per insights” that his own security agencies possessedin relation to those “who are likely to pose a risk”, andwas equally quick to criticize the supposedly inferiormeasures in Europe: “If you can’t control your bor-ders, you don’t know who’s coming or going.Regrettably they allowed things to slip and that weak-ness in European security is not unrelated to theproblems they’ve been having in recent times.”7

Throughout his tenure he has combined bothHoward’s and Abbott’s one-line mantras into a two-pronged slogan: “We will decide who enters this

CONTACT Nikos Papastergiadis n.papastergiadis@unimelb.edu.au The University of Melbourne, W209 Level 2, John Medley (Building 191),Grattan St, Victoria 3010, Australia

JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE, 2017VOL. 9, NO. 2, 13–24https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2017.1343083

© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permitsunrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

country, and we stop the boats.”8 Turnbull’s justifica-tion for the review of the Racial Discrimination Actwas based on the spurious claim that the currentdefence of minority rights was impinging on the prin-ciples of freedom of speech. This failed attempt to bothlower the legal threshold for permissible bigotry,9 anddelegitimize the institutional evolution of minorityrights,10 was another example of how the mainstreampolitical discourse was disconnected from the prevail-ing demographic realities and cultural sensitivities.

These examples suggest that there is a global poli-tical consensus to push multiculturalism into retreat.11

The demands for cultural integration and conformityto national ideals are no longer expressed in a dialogicform, but twisted into nationalistic imperatives.12 Forinstance, the German concept of Leitkultur was firstintroduced by Bassam Tibi, a German–Arab scholar,to evoke the open space of modernity within whichmulticulturalism could participate as a force for shap-ing a new common culture. Despite being conceived asa term that could enhance the space for cross-culturalinteraction, Leitkultur was quickly reinterpreted by theChristian Democrats and Conservatives to assert thepre-existence of an essentially monocultural Germanicleading culture.13 Yet, for all the crisis discourse onmulticulturalism, there is a stunning gap between thepolitical rhetoric and reality of lived experiences.Conservative politicians descried the failure of multi-culturalism to garner public support, but in Australia ithas remained a popular and widely acceptedprinciple.14 The political anxiety over the “Muslimproblem” and the chorus of laments over a looming“civics deficit” also bear little relation to reality. Onerecent study found that Australian Muslims have ratesof volunteering that vastly exceed the national average,that much of this volunteerism is directed to non-Muslim-specific activities and that they cultivateneighbourly relations that transcend national and reli-gious boundaries.15 In another extensive Australianstudy on multiculturalism and governance, it wasnoted that, while people born overseas are significantlyless likely to feel at home in Australia, they are morelikely than those born in Australia to consider itimportant for them to “fit in” with Australian culture.The same study also stressed that, while young peopleare moving away from traditional forms of politicalparticipation and national belonging, they are signifi-cantly more likely to experience cosmopolitan belong-ing. 16 These findings directly contradict the myth ofmulticulturalism as facilitating self-segregating ghet-toes. Trevor Phillips’s famous claim that Britain was“sleep walking towards segregation”17 also bears littleresemblance to the evidence in the UK that points tothe growing residential dispersal and the diverse com-position of friendship networks amongst minorities.Statistics show that Muslims are as likely to marryout as White Christians, and the only proof of

sustained ghettoes and ethnic isolation are the Whitepeople who live in places where over 90% of thepopulation is White. Minorities tend to live in neigh-bourhoods with less than 20% of their own group.18

These perduring signs of multiculturalism frombelow, and globally connected forms of transcultur-alism, are at odds with the political rhetoric on thedeath of multiculturalism. It is a banal platitude but itis worth repeating: no culture is an island, all culturesare formed through the interplay with others, they arein a perpetual state of mixing, shape-shifting, bound-aries are never sealed and identities are constantlyreconfigured through a process of mimicry, borrow-ing and hybridization. The existence of this process ofhuman interaction and cultural transformation seemshard to refute. What appears to be contestable is theperceived outcome of this process when both thedegree of diversity has multiplied, and the frequencyof interaction has accelerated. Does this super-diver-sity and accelerationism in cultural exchange takeculture itself to a tipping point? In short, will anintensified cultural dynamic blast culture out of exis-tence? Furthermore, does the positive inclination inglobalizing discourses towards transgressing bound-aries, mixing of opposites and building expandednetworks, reverse the balance of power and shift theadvantage away from the embedded constructs, as itwelcomes disruptive adversaries as champions ofinnovation and naively beckons the arrival of rivalcivilizations as mere spectacle?

In this article I will explore two theoretical per-spectives on culture: the antagonistic perspectiveexemplified by Peter Sloterdijk, and the agonisticviewpoint developed by Chantal Mouffe. These twoapproaches offer contrasting accounts of the relation-ship between culture and difference. In particular, itwill allow us to focus on how their distinctiveassumptions and frameworks produce contrastiveviews on whether violence inevitably follows fromthe admission of difference, or the interplay betweendifferent cultures can operate within non-coercivechannels and ultimately generate creative transforma-tions. Contrasting Sloterdijk’s and Mouffe’sapproaches helps clarify not only the differences intheir political perspectives, but also reveals a relianceon untested philosophical claims about the primacyof conflict. The point of this article is not simply tocounter the errors and opinions with the truth anddata on the contribution of minorities to culturalrevitalization, or to demonstrate the rates of adher-ence to the law and civic participation as proof thatmigrants are good citizens, but rather to explore theconceptual frameworks and cultural assumptions thatunderpin antagonistic and agonistic viewpoints. Toaddress this nexus between deep-seated fears andwide-open anxieties, I will contend that the conceptof culture is increasingly conceived through two

14 N. PAPASTERGIADIS

perspectives: antagonism and agonism. The differ-ence between these two perspectives is profound interms of the contrasting stance towards cultural plur-alism. However, there are also some unsettling pointsof convergence; in particular, there is a sharedassumption that conflict is the principle feature ofhuman consciousness and social formation. Thisemphasis on conflict limits the possibility for culturalexchange, as it provides an irreconcilable stumblingblock that infuses the ideal of multiculturalism with aprimordial fear, and defers any genuine experience ofcosmopolitanism. The politics of fear has purchase inthe political imaginary because it draws on a culturalworldview that prejudges the other as an enemy, anddefines the home as besieged territory that must bedefended. In particular, this article will critique theprimordial presumption of misanthropy in humansubjectivity and the prioritization of conflict in socialformations.

Sloterdijk and cultural antagonism

Let us begin by unpacking the fears associated withcultural difference in the extensive writings of PeterSloterdijk. To see the wider dimensions that are atplay in Sloterdijk’s writing, it is useful to avoid anyswift reduction of it as either ideological neo-national-ism, or neurotic populism. As a self-styled modernDiogenes, Sloterdijk is a contrarian. He attacks boththe delusions in neo-conservatism and the platitudesof progressives. While Sloterdijk’s polemic against glo-balization does not fall neatly into conventional politicalposition, there is an explicit antagonistic frameworkthat both shapes the status of the stranger and thephenomenon of mobility, as well as predetermineshow the function of borders and political institutionsare nested in a theory of culture, civilization andcosmology.19 My aim is to unpack Sloterdijk’s concep-tion of culture and demonstrate how it draws on aprimordial theory that places conflict at the heart ofboth human consciousness and political solidarity. It isby examining the way Sloterdijk naturalizes misan-thropy and prioritizes conflict within a given philoso-phical perspective, that we can also see how hecontributes to the wider political discourse that deni-grates the identity ofmigrants and rejects the viability ofmulticulturalism.

Sloterdijk’s specific views on migration, multicul-turalism and cosmopolitanism are embedded in andeasily confused with his political and cultural analysisof globalization. In Sloterdijk’s view, globalization isan economic project for the integration of marketsthat has also appropriated the cosmopolitan rhetoricof expanding the frontiers and multiplying the pointsof human connection. Sloterdijk, like a number ofother cultural theorists, has come to the view thatthe cultural logic of globalization leads to the

flattening of experience in trivial consumption.20

Sloterdijk claims that it reduces all forms of symbolicidentification to mere transactions in the market-place, and, in this deterritorialized world, all formsof belonging are stripped down to temporary associa-tions that are devoid of any deep attachments. Thenet effect of globality is that it has produced a placewithout identity, a banal zone that privileges theneeds of the passers-by over the dwellers, leaving usall adrift in a boring mall that he descries for having“no atmosphere”.21

Sloterdijk’s alarmist vision of globalization is notconfined to the familiar cultural critique of theMcDonaldization thesis, it also extends to a politicalcritique of national sovereignty and a rejection of thewelfare state. He has attacked the welfarist model onthe grounds that it supposedly encourages, what hecalls, a kleptocracy, where the weak will feel entitledto perpetual lifestyle support from the state, and therich will be forced to sacrifice their elan, curtail theirambitions and bow down in guilt. A similar com-plaint is also registered in relation to the demands ofmulticulturalism and the promotion of the “welcomeculture” for refugees. Once again, Sloterdijk sees theseinvocations as coming from pious but naive advo-cates who, while caring for the weak, also drain thenational elan. He goes so far as to conclude thatmulticulturalism is not just another sentimentalexample of utopian rhetoric, but a mechanism bywhich malevolent migrants achieve their goal of“coercive accommodation”.22

If we focused on the content of these complaints,we would miss the deeper issues that are also in play.Sloterdijk’s critique of the ascending culture of globa-lization and the decline in the political authority of thenation state is embedded in a deeper philosophical andanthropological worldview that asserts fear of differ-ence as a fundamental feature of human nature. At thecentre of his critique of the role of hyper-diversity andaccelerationism in contemporary society is an irredu-cible conception of misanthropy. Thus, globalizationthat was supposed to promote a cosmopolitan order ofopenness, solidarity and compassion with the whole ofhumanity, results in his view as producing its opposite:a misanthropic condition that is characterized byrepulsion, fragmentation and fear.23

Misanthropy provides the confusing foundationfor Sloterdijk’s critique of globalization and his ulti-mate rejection of cosmopolitanism. On the one hand,misanthropy is at odds with Sloterdijk’s admirationfor the early philosophical visions of the cosmos. Onthe other hand, it reinforces the political critiqueagainst globalization. Despite dedicating long admir-ing passages in his Spheres trilogy on the conceptualradiance of pre-Socratic thought and celebrating itssuperiority over the zealousness of religious thought,as well as using the grandeur of these philosophical

JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 15

vistas to highlight both the venal versions of eco-nomic globalization, and the poverty of philosophicalimagination in the post-Socratic tradition of ration-alist scepticism, the overall thrust of Sloterdijk’s argu-ment flips as it then turns towards a total rejection ofthese poetically brilliant but politically redundantfootings of philosophy. The cosmological origins ofphilosophy are declared as having no purchase incontemporary society.

The tension at the centre of Sloterdijk’s antagonis-tic image of culture and identity is compounded bythe reliance on the classical references to the cosmosimage in his trans-historical depiction of the sphere.Again, the authority of this image is confusing, attimes his gaze upwards and celestial, but then inmore decisive tones he turns downwards and towardsthe womb. Hence, Sloterdijk’s spherical view of theworld is ultimately derived from the presumption ofblissful unity in the intra-uterine space, and anambivalent exile. This coming out into the worldalso marks the commencement of a lifetime of inse-curity and melancholy. For Sloterdijk, the function ofculture is both the provision of a spatial sense ofsecurity and compensation for the loss of ontologicalsecurity. Hence, culture is conceived as a boundedspace that encloses and nests the individual. Whilethe space of culture as a sphere is defined at first interritorial terms, it is also imbued with the negativeidentity: it marks the double absence of biological andcosmological claims of belonging. Yet, it is the nexusbetween culture and territory that is given priority inshaping the “first order” formations of collective con-sciousness. According to Sloterdijk, all cultures arelike cocoons for developing human consciousness. Inthis enclosure, meaning is formed through the perpe-tuation of a repertoire of symbols and the adherenceto an internal evaluative logic. Cultures, he insists, aredistinctive from each other and are defined in oppo-sition to each other. From this view of culture as afragile sphere and the construction of the other as alife-threatening rival, then it follows that the inclu-sion of the other can only be accommodated after theliquidation of their agency. Similarly, the promise of acosmopolitan journey in a globalizing world is con-demned as just “parochialism on its travels”.24 Thus,as a public policy, multiculturalism is not seen as thebenign stimulus for cultural innovation, but isreduced to a malignant facet of globalization thatdepletes subjectivity until it is reduced to a “splin-tered para-subject in a universal history of thecoincidental”.25

The primacy that Sloterdijk attributes to culture asa bounded territory means that membership is alsodefined in the vigilante binary: either with us, oragainst us. Sloterdijk avers that the primary focus ofhumanity is never directed towards open-ended uni-versalist self-image, but always remains fixated on a

particularistic sense of self, that is, on its own ethnicgroup, and therefore the authentic attitude towardsthe rest of humanity ranges from polite indifferenceto outright hostility. In his view, the cosmopolitanideal of compassion in the whole of humanity isblocked by “an inevitable finitude of human interestin others”.26 This universal claim on the human con-dition is then backed up by an even more sweepingcomment that there is no society that has developedthe necessary “misanthropy inhibiting measures”.27

Human consciousness is confined to a defensive for-mation, not as being open to everyone and every-where, but as bound to a small group and enclosedwithin a specific sphere. Self-consciousness is, in hisview, formed in relation to a particular group, andtherefore humans are incapable of grasping them-selves as “ontologically unified as members of a spe-cies that share a single world”.28

According to Sloterdijk, humanity is incapable ofliving in a state of worldly fellowship, for even aspeople throughout the world have come to recognisethat they increasingly face a common predicament inrelation to issues such as global warming, transna-tional terrorist networks and refugee flows, thisawareness is interpreted by him as just anotherexpression of the instrumentalization of the idea ofthe common. This shared awareness is merely evi-dence of an already commodified knowledge of theplanet, in which the meaning of being human is notposed in terms of sharing the physis with the cosmos.Instead of looking upwards at what holds us together,he argues that people live in little spheres, and merelyseek the benefits that come from deeper engagementswith their own place and the development of thickersocial ties. Hence, like many critics against multicul-turalism, Sloterdijk promotes the view that there areinherent thresholds of tolerance, limits to humancuriosity and predetermined constraints on moralobligations. The appeal for security and self-preserva-tion is therefore put forward not just as a primalhuman need that is reluctantly prioritized over thesentiment of humanitarian compassion and the aes-thetic interests in difference, but rather as a regulativesystem that is mobilized to exclude the latter so that itdoes not impact on the former. Hospitality for theother is not only kept in the balance, but also pre-vented from disrupting the prior and non-negotiablenexus between cultural autonomy and territorialsovereignty.

From this perspective, the sign of the other isnever neutral. The other is not just a carrier of aforeign cultural value system, but according toSloterdijk their entry is an infraction of what hecalls the cultural “immunity” system to the chaos ofthe world. The other thus poses a risk to the capacityof culture to serve as a discrete protective and nurtur-ing sphere. The mere presence of the other is in itself

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interpreted as a demand—not just an innocent beingthat sets forth a series of interactions, but as a hungryrival that competes for space and launches an assaulton the prevailing cultural meanings. To retain itsimmunity from infection and bolster its defencemechanisms, a culture must both eliminate this rivaland also cultivate a belief in its inherent superiorityover all other cultures. The relation between self andother, which in his eyes is most powerfully exempli-fied in the clash of civilizations between the West andIslam, is nothing less than struggle for total domina-tion. There are no bridges across which mediationcan occur, no shared space from which new direc-tions can be formed, just a perpetual conflict untilone eliminates the other. The battle becomes a zero-sum game, where one side must not only gain ascen-dancy over the other, but also obliterate the other.

Providing evidence of either humanity’s inbuiltmisanthropy, or philosophy’s track record for tamingthe beast within human nature, is not part ofSloterdijk’s project. While he claims that the bestialtendencies are everywhere to be seen in the mediareports, he does little to explain whether this misan-thropic condition is derived from an inner psychicdrive, or a consequence of social institutions. For thepurposes of this article, such historical and sociologicalqueries can be put to the side, as the focus is directedtowards Sloterdijk’s assertion of misanthropy as the“first order” experience of humanity. My response toSloterdijk’s conception of cultural difference will reston an inherent contradiction within his definition ofmisanthropy and on the identification of alternativesources on what it means to be human, and finally,whether these alternate philosophical sources alsobring us back to the cosmos in cosmopolitanism.

First, we will track the uneven way in which affectis represented in Sloterdijk’s writing. There is eitheran unacknowledged contradiction that runs through-out Sloterdijk’s writing, or perhaps, more tellingly,there is a disavowal of the ethical precepts and socio-logical perspectives that he uses to debunk and rejectzealotry in others.29 In his book God’s Zeal, Sloterdijkcondemns monotheistic religion for promoting a falsesense of exclusivity and its inherent tendency forgenerating conflict. In this diagnosis, Sloterdijk placesspecial emphasis on the organizing function of“either/or” logic and its propensity towards absolut-ism. This mode of thinking is at the core of antagon-ism. In this book he proposes an alternativeworldview that embraces “grey areas”, a polyvalentorder that is shaded by the relational order of “both/and” thinking, or what he calls the “reality ofthirdness”.30 A similar antidote for antagonisticthinking was also proposed in the conclusion toRage and Time, where he also advocated for a “postzealotic” ethical perspective where one sees “oneselfalways through the eyes of the other”, and in the

same book he acknowledged the need to build anew world culture that is both founded on “rationallybuilt second order observations” and sustained by a“new set of interculturally binding disciplines”.31

Two problems immediately follow from these see-mingly cosmopolitan comments. There is the matterof consistency. For when it comes to entertaining adialogue between Islam and the West, Sloterdijkreverts back to his antagonistic dispositions and vigi-lante binarisms. He misses no opportunity to complainof the “undeniable existence of a lack of will [by theTurks] to integrate [into Berlin]”, or even more gen-erally to condemn Islam as a container of “bitternessand resentment”, and finally to describe radical Islamas a “desperate movement of economically superfluousand socially unusable individuals”.32 There is no poly-semic tinting here! Only zealous righteousness can beheard in his stigmatic linking of migrants, Muslimsand terrorists into a singular waste disposal proposal.These rivals are not people worthy of entry into con-versation or rational persuasion, but are all lumpedinto the category of useless zombies imbued with whatthe former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbottdescribed as a “death cult”.

Then there is the deeper problem of ranking theaesthetic, ethical and institutional response to culturaldifference as a “second order observation”. This impliesthat, even with the most sincere Kantian type of cosmo-politanism, there is the implicit retention of violenttendencies in human nature and exclusive social for-mations as “first order experiences”. In Sloterdijk’svision of human nature, the capacity to hate the otheris a primary experience and the defensive formation ofsocial structures is the first defence mechanism. Havingestablished structures for survival, he also argues thatthe capacity for caring for others is limited to those inour immediate proximity. This hierarchy rests on aglaring contradiction: on the one hand, attachmentand care is fostered by the proximity and particularityof face-to-face relations, whereas, on the other hand,hate and urge for the destruction expands as it movesoutwardly and thrives on abstractions. Sloterdijk givesno explanation as to why a violent and hateful emotioncan thrive in the very circumstances in which caringand humanitarian sentiments wither. However, thisalready pessimistic view is compounded by his accountof the triumph of bestializing over caring tendencies inthe globalizing discourse. In this embattled scenario,cosmopolitanism is disembowelled of both its cosmosand its polity. It should come as no surprise that cos-mopolitanism can only arise after the suppression ofthis “first order” hateful disposition towards others.

Cosmopolitanism is therefore not seen as a con-stitutive feature of human consciousness, but a learntsocial construct, or, as Sloterdijk put it, a “secondorder” observation, a belated lesson that philosophycan impart to “tame” the beast that is first and

JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 17

foremost always inside the citizen. As a “second orderobservation”, a cosmopolitan response is already atone step removed from action, it is, at best, a belatedand partial response mechanism. However, in a morerecent book of essays, In the World Interior ofCapital, Sloterdijk distances himself even furtherfrom these cornerstones of normative cosmopolitan-ism, as he now regards it as a “hubristic belief”.33 Themore Sloterdijk examines globalization, the moreconvinced he becomes that not only is the philoso-phical tradition on cosmopolitanism and the politicaldiscourse on multiculturalism a mere smokescreenfor a bland and homogenized global culture, but italso reinforces his conviction in the primordial antag-onism in human nature. His scepticism towards theethical and aesthetic interest in the other is com-pounded by a fear that the endgame of globalizationis a dreadful slide towards mediocrity and a fear thatthe rights of the self will have to be subordinated tothe other. What seems to motivate his passionatedistanciation from the other is what ArjunAppadurai calls the “fear of small differences” andan “anxiety of incompleteness” that culminates in theproduction of an apocalyptic vision.34

This antagonistic perspective on the relationshipbetween culture and difference shapes Sloterdijk’smanic primordialism, justifies his dismissal of thearchives of hybrid creativity, allows him to revel in theidea of the cosmos but then take refuge in the tinynested spheres of culture, and, ultimately, it feeds thefantasy that society can be controlled, or, as he put it,become an “air-conditioned” nation. What lurks withinmany of his neologisms are the fears of linking identitywith mobility, as well as the anxieties over the durabilityof borders and institutions in a globalizing world.Sloterdijk’s articulation of these fears cannot be dis-missed as mere idiosyncratic flaws. They deserve closerscrutiny because they expose the extent to which thepolitics of fear, or what I have previously called an“invasion complex”, are embedded in a specific andpowerful philosophical outlook. If we were to remainin the grip of this worldview, what space is there forcross-cultural exchange, let alone a dialogue betweencivilizations? Sloterdijk’s philosophical perspective is nodifferent to Samuel Huntington’s thesis on the clash ofcivilizations.35 The clash results in a zero-sum game:winners eliminate rather than co-exist with losers.When different civilizations cross paths, do they reallyclash like violent antagonists, or is creative and rationaldialogue the hallmark of civilized encounters?

Towards an agonistic theory of culturalinterplay

If migrants are not all dangerous, difference does notdestroy culture, and, despite the demagogy of somephilosophers and politicians, ordinary people from

different cultures can find vivid ways to interact, co-exist and produce new forms of belonging, then surelythis is a moment to explore alternative philosophicalframeworks. In order to capture the extent to whichirenic tendencies, ethical relations, aesthetic interestsand cosmopolitan capacities operate in everyday scenes,I will now shift my focus onto Chantal Mouffe’s theoryof agonism.36 Mouffe has been engaged in a longstand-ing project to explain the process by which power andcritique are interwoven and how social transformationoccurs. Mouffe claims that, while power is registered asa coercive force that is separate to reason and aesthetics,the grip of power in a social order or a cultural form isnever permanent and absolute. Power cannot seal itselffrom resistance, rather it assembles around specificintersections and partial networks. This process ofassemblage is anti-essentialist and contingent: “Everyorder is the temporary and precarious articulation ofcontingent practices.”37 Mouffe defines this formationof power as hegemony. The struggle with hegemonicmanifestations is also seen as an ongoing process, andMouffe claims that those who are excluded forge theirown counter-hegemonic struggles. Not unlike theantagonist perspective, this theory of agonism alsoemphasizes the constitutive role of conflict, and theperpetual struggle with difference. However, unlikeSloterdijk’s antagonistic perspective, the agonistic view-point stresses that differences are not problems to beeliminated, but are the starting points for dialogue withthe other, and also the status of difference is interpretedas the driving force in cultural renewal and socialtransformation.

At the heart of the agonistic perspective is a faithin the productive role of dialogue with your adver-sary. It is through dialogue with the other that ahegemonic order or consensus can be reached.However, Mouffe also points out that agreement isnever fixed permanently. It is always subject tofurther critique and contestation. Hence, we can seethat consensus in the agonistic conception of cultureis always pregnant with dissensus. It is the emergentagreement that holds the culture together, keeps anorder in place, but also the residual disagreement thatlevers open change and invites an alternative order toemerge. In this framework of agreement and dis-agreement, Mouffe stresses that adversaries have alegitimate right to express their counter-hegemonicworldviews. A key element of the adversarial relation-ship that Mouffe advocates is defined around itsacceptance of the right to the right of difference.Adversaries might not agree with each other, butthey defend each other’s right to have differentideas. Thus contestation over difference with theother does not presume the elimination of the other.

Mouffe repeatedly claims that an agonistic per-spective is the most appropriate perspective forunderstanding the process of social transformation

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in a liberal democratic framework. She also arguesthat the benefit of agonism over other perspectives isthat it distinguishes itself in its capacity to listen tothose who have been rendered voiceless and excludedfrom the hegemonic spheres.38 In short, the theory ofagonistic politics is distinguished from antagonisticperspectives in that it constructs an arena wheredeliberation and contestation are at the heart of poli-tical critique and social transformation. Mouffe’smost recent collection of essays, Agonistics, takesthese arguments one step further as she addressesboth the specific role artists play as counter-hegemo-nic agents, and the more general function of affectand symbolic production in a globalizing world.39

Mouffe pays particular attention to the way artistsreshape what is taken as common sense in everydaylife. She expresses admiration for the way artists notonly produce images that can reconfigure symbolicrelations, but also intervene in the definition of publicspaces, and transform the modes of culturalinteractions.40 From Mouffe’s agonistic perspective,the formation of culture is defined through an anti-essentialist prism and also perpetually entangled in astruggle for power over others. Hence, all cultures areseen as being in a continuous and incomplete processof development and transformation. There is no defi-nitive origin or totalizing framework that defines anycultural formation. This partial shape and ongoingdynamic imply that culture is also seen as a site ofcontestation. Despite this seemingly open-ended fra-mework, Mouffe’s focus on the work of art is directedto overt acts of resistance, and her understanding ofcreativity is highly rationalist and instrumentalist.41 Itpresents the affective work of art as if it were a moreastute form of rational critique and a sharper inter-vention in public culture. In effect, Mouffe holds backfrom exploring the aesthetic and affective transforma-tion, and retains the primacy of conflict in subjectiveand collective formations.

Throughout her writings, Mouffe is adamant thatantagonism is not something that can be wishedaway. Antagonism is considered to be an existentialfeature of social being, and, as Lois McNay notes, oneof Mouffe’s most staunch critics, its primacy isasserted with a “mysterious density and vitalism”.42

It remains unclear whether conflict is constituted by aspecific social order, or all social order is formedthrough conflict. So, how will an agonistic politicsenvelop and “tame” this force? If antagonism pre-cedes the politics of agonism, then surely antagonismwill also determine the political conditions for its ownregulation? Or, put the other way, will any politicalprocess and cultural intervention that is agonistic inits nature, have the capacity to both restrain theviolent urges in human nature and impose a moralsocial order? Mouffe does not have direct answers tothese questions, but her general argument appears to

rest on the belief that “second order observations”and the institutional frameworks of liberal democracyhave the capacity to override brute power.

This preliminary critique suggests that agonismsuffers the same limitations that Sloterdijk noted inrelation to cosmopolitanism, that is, that reasoneddebate, ethical relations and aesthetic interests arenot “first order” rivals that co-exist with the destruc-tive forces of antagonism, but are to be relegated to amere second-order construct. In this belated andsubordinate role, it is also almost impossible for cos-mopolitanism to leap ahead of the violent urges inhuman nature, and serve as either a retraining force,or provide an alternate moral outlook thatencourages integration. Given that the agonistic per-spective identifies conflict as a constitutive force inthe social order, then this suggests that all otheraffects, such as curiosity and empathy, are also sub-ordinate to hate and rage, and that the function ofengaging with difference in a liberal democratic fra-mework is confined to a belated brake mechanism.However, this untested assumption on the primaryforce of antagonism and conflict also skews the inter-play between culture and difference. For, if antagon-ism and conflict is the wellspring of culture, then howwould the agonistic articulation of difference ascendwithin a hegemonic formation of culture? The hege-monic order would only permit entry to differencesthat have been authorized and validated by its ownnormative order. This in itself would strip othercultures of any critical difference.

Such conceptual problems in the theory of agon-ism are also evident in Mouffe’s understanding of thematerial conditions in which conflict is negotiated.For instance, the claim that liberal democratic proce-dures are the necessary principles for the negotiationof cultural differences presumes that either this fra-mework is already universally accepted, or that thepeople who are opposed to it can be converted intoadherents. In Mouffe’s account of the role of liberaldemocratic procedures, she acknowledges that con-flict can lead to violence when the channels of dialo-gue are blocked or perverted,43 but she does not haveany explanation of how an enemy, that is, one who iseither outside of, or fundamentally opposed to, liberaldemocracy, will be convinced to enter as an adversarywithin, let alone as an adherent to it. This appears tobe a major stumbling block to the prospects of dia-logue in an agonistic arena.

For dialogue to commence in an agonistic arena,and its outcomes to be accepted as productive, Mouffeclaims that it is necessary that both parties share liberaldemocratic procedural assumption and values. Thisstarting point is itself an insurmountable barrier forits opponents and enemies. The two vital startingpoints to Mouffe’s image of the agona—emphasis onindividual liberty over collective conceptions of

JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 19

culture, and the presumption that democratic proce-dures are superior to all other political structures—arein themselves barriers to dialogue. There is no indica-tion in Mouffe’s theory of agonism on how the twocentral ideas of liberal democracy are subject to thesame degree of critique that all other perspectives aresubjected to. Mouffe rightly states that “society is per-meated by contingency and any order is of an hege-monic nature”.44 Yet, she has nothing to say about theprocess for questioning the priority of a liberal demo-cratic framework. There is no engagement with thedispute between political ideologies that rest on secularand sacred worldviews, let alone any direct response tocompeting claims on state institutions made by reli-gious communities. Mouffe’s account of the conver-sion of social antagonism into political agonismpresupposes the voluntary and consensual adoptionof two ethico-political standpoints.45 First, the enemiesconvert themselves into adversaries as they voluntarilydisarm and adopt a non-coercive adversarial stance.Second, the adversaries agree to share the principles ofliberal democratic as a common framework forengagement. But how does such a voluntary conver-sion occur?46 By what means of intervention—divineedict, rational deduction, aesthetic persuasion—doenemies agree to behave as adversaries and abide bythe irenic rules of liberal democracy? Mouffe gives noexplanation as to how this conversion actually hap-pens. It is inconceivable that Mouffe would endorsethe vigilante attitude of the antagonists and their wastedisposal policies. However, the silence towards anopponent’s claims over the starting points of dialoguepresents a deep flaw in the model, as it suggests that acertain degree of violence—the elimination of dis-agreement over the priority of liberal democraticassumptions and values—is necessary before an ago-nistic worldview can be established. If dialogue isconfined to those who already agree with liberal demo-cratic values and procedures, then the preconditions ofparticipation will exclude many of the people thatagonism purports to include.47

Given these limitations, it is clear that a morenuanced philosophical perspective is necessary. Adeeper engagement with the concept of pluralism inliberal democratic theory and a more transparentapplication in multicultural discourses would also bewelcome. While most of the defenders of the liberaldemocratic tradition have moved on from the defen-sive reaction against multiculturalism as if it were athreat to national unity,48 there is still uncertaintyover the limits of pluralism and the persistence of ablind spot within the framework. Pluralism is a valuethat is celebrated, but in the liberal democratic frame-work it is also balanced against the needs for socialcohesion. Hence, the limits that are placed on plur-alism can vary significantly. It ranges from a mini-mum commitment to co-existence with the other,

insofar as tolerance can remain within the spectrumof benign indifference and tacit awareness of eachother,49 to a more robust dialogue on mutual recog-nition and collective wellbeing.50 Critics of liberalconceptions of pluralism were also quick to pointout a fundamental racial blind spot that is evidentwhenever particularistic values are promoted as uni-versal norms. As a consequence, there still remains anunresolved “struggle at the heart of liberal theory,where a genuine desire for equality as a universalnorm is tethered to a tenacious ethnocentric provin-cialism in matters of cultural judgment andrecognition”.51 While an agonistic framework of lib-eral democracy is distinct from the antagonisticforms that aim to eliminate the other, there is stillthe risk that the assumptions embedded in liberalconcepts of pluralism, tolerance and recognition canrender the other impotent, and foreclose the counter-hegemonic struggle against the dominant order. If theplaying field is perceived as uneven and there isanticipation of the experience of diminishment andmarginality, then there is the risk, as predicted byMouffe, that frustration will only encourage newforms of violence. Neither the vigilante binarism ofantagonistic politics, nor the presumed neutrality ofagonistic liberalism, seems adequate to the task ofaddressing the cultures of difference in everyday life.Against this xenophobic nationalism and beyond theblind spots of liberal provincialism, there needs to bea more robust vision of cosmopolitanism.52

Conclusion

At first glance, Mouffe’s agonistic cultural politicswould appear to be the counter to the antagonisticcultural perspective of Sloterdijk. The agonist wouldreject the racist demarcations in antagonistic politics,and the antagonist would accuse the agonist of pro-moting a blind relativism that surrenders sovereignty.The agonist stresses the interplay between the inter-nal cultural formations and the constitutive outside,while the antagonist sees interaction and exchange asa zero-sum game. The agonist does not seek to turnthe enemy into a friend, but insists that as adversariesthey must respect shared rule, whereas the antagonistscorns this naive faith in the other and sees theadversary as an enemy in sheep’s clothing. However,on closer scrutiny there are some disturbing points ofconvergence in these two perspectives.

While Sloterdijk is explicit in his promotion of anethno-cultural system, Mouffe’s model asserts theinherent superiority of liberal democracy withoutspelling out the steps towards the conversion to thehigher ground of agonism. In both perspectives, thereis the problem of the unconverted. What kind ofdialogue is possible when the opponent is alreadystripped of the power to be an interlocutor? What

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do we do with those for whom the framework ofliberal democracy is experienced as a mechanism forhumiliation, marginalization and domination ratherthan the neutral platform for negotiating conflict?

These questions bring us to face the violence in bothperspectives. Sloterdijk and Mouffe both assume thatgenuine dialogue is confined to adversaries, but onlySloterdijk is prepared to speak of the consequences offacing enemies. For Sloterdijk, the space for adversariesis thin and the space for engagement with adversaries ispredetermined by the receiving culture. It is not neces-sarily a paranoid projection, for it follows from thecultural construction, that those who do not shareyour values are prejudged as being outside the spheresof comprehensible subjectivity and culturation. Mouffewould recoil from this violent de-subjectification andde-culturalization of a rival, but at the same time, thesilence over how to disarm the enemy and define theneutrality of the arena for the agona leaves us in aparalysis. The agonistic perspective sets out to openthe channels of negotiation to include the excluded,but it fails to demonstrate how this can be achieved ina context that is already loaded with resentment andresistance. The effective breadth of the agonistic per-spective that Mouffe proposes is only as wide as theliberal democratic gate. It can only admit an adversaryonce they have agreed to play by its rules. If dialogue isconfined to those who are already in agreement with theframework of liberal democracy, we are left with aconundrum and risk disqualifying the vast majority ofpeople.

Despite the media hysterics and populist politicaldiscourse, there is evidence that cross-cultural exchangeis alive in contexts that the antagonistic theory hadalready defined as a dead space, and it is moving inways that do not neatly fit into Mouffe’s outline of theagonistic perspective. This suggests that, at the veryleast, an expanded conception of agonism is necessary.Such a viewpoint is now being developed in feministcritiques of culture and agency.53 From this perspective,culture is not seen as a defensive formation against theworld, but as a relatively open process of sense-makingthrough the incorporation of difference. Similarly, wecould excavate more affirmative philosophicalapproaches towards culture, such as the arguments oncreativity developed by Felix Guattari, Jean-Luc Nancyand Cornelius Castoriadis.54 From these perspectives,we could consider how identity, both at the inter-sub-jective and institutional levels, proceeds from the con-dition of being-open. Being-open, to the trans-forces ofsubjectivity and the collective dynamics in social for-mation, is neither a belated response, nor a learnt con-struct, but rather, it is a constitutive force in identity andculture. Through the openness of curiosity and empa-thy, differences are folded together and this aestheticand ethical engagement is as primary as any misanthro-pic urge to hate and destroy the other.

These counter-traditions shift the ground from aninextricable antagonism and open new lines of connec-tion towards the other that are also closer to the “folds”of aesthetic cosmopolitanism.55 Rather than seeing ethi-cal empathy as a product of moral pedagogy, or culturalcuriosity as a secondary derivative of normative cosmo-politanism, being-open is expressive of a fundamentalcapacity for human connectedness. In the everydayscenes of multiculturalism, there is good reason tobelieve that antagonism is not the only reflex responseto the other. For instance, in Australia, multiculturalismwas not born from the benevolence of state-sponsoredmanagerial programmes. It sprang from the grounds-well of political and cultural activism from within theethnic communities. To think of it purely within thenormative discourse of policy impact is to miss thepoint. It is a lived experience, a modality of being thatgives form to complexity.

One of the explanations of the sustained politicalattack on multiculturalism is that it amounts to a defer-ral of the acknowledgement of both the residual racismand ascendance of heterogeneity. Hence, the disavowalof multiculturalism in relation to its supposed perpe-tuation of the three evils—ethnic ghettoization, gen-dered exploitation and the incubation of terrorism—was an attempt to avoid the more difficult task oftransforming public institutions so that they could actu-ally engage with the existing heterogeneity. Instead,national leaders around the world preferred to rewritetheir own social scripts in the mode of reclaiming thenationalist fantasy of transcendental homogeneity. Inthis article, I have shifted the focus from ideologicalclaims on the costs and contributions of multicultural-ism, to a reflection on the conceptual frameworks ofdifference that entrench the cultural defensiveness andmisanthropy as a natural state of being. I have arguedthat the emphasis should be on an expanded version ofthe agonistics in everyday scenes where difference isboth constructed and negotiated. The agonism ofmulti-culturalism is most evident in the process of folding theforeign in with the familiar, the criss-crossing of differ-ences that announce new convergences and creativetransformations. This process of folding makes newborders as it produces creases. It generates new linesof connection as it knots together divergent threads. Italso validates the role of artists as mediators that canbridge differences, bend surfaces and translate lan-guages. Mediators extend communication by openingup the points of interaction. In the sphere of culture thisrequires a disposition towards the diversity of culturalsources and the fluidity in the demarcation of publicculture. The articulation of cultural differences withinthe public domain not only extends the sources fromwhich cultural identity can be formed, but also opens athird terrain. Dialogue over rival forms of public culturealso requires a space for imagining new forms. In thismodel different cultures are not already adjudged as

JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 21

possessing equal value and therefore equal rights topublic resources, rather they have a right to contestthe definition of symbolic values, to evaluate the equityin the distribution of material resources and deliberateon the form of public culture.

Notes

1. Chrisafis, “Nicolas Sarkozy.” For a broader discus-sion on Europe and multiculturalism see Joppke,“Retreat of Multiculturalism.”

2. Weaver, “Angela Merkel.”3. Sparrow, “Cameron Attacks ‘State Multiculturalism’.”4. Papastergiadis, “Invasion Complex.”5. Vertovec and Wessendorf, Multiculturalism Backlash.6. Cox, “You Don’t Migrate. . .’.”7. Kozial, “Brussels Explosions.” For an extended jour-

nalistic account of this antagonistic perspective seePhillips, Londonistan.

8. Medhora, “Asylum Seekers.” Also see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNws4wNcVQs, accessedNovember 20, 2016.

9. Griffiths, “George Brandis.”10. Noble, “Everyday Cosmopolitanism.”11. Joppke, “European Looking Glass.”12. Robinson, Multiculturalism and the Foundations, 29.13. Hartweig, “Politics of Identity.”14. The 2014 Scanlon Report found that Australians

expressed broad support for multiculturalism andhad positive attitudes towards its role in ensuringsocial cohesion; however, there was the residualcontradiction in that the same research showed con-siderable concern that immigration from a widediversity of places and ethnic groups that “stick totheir old ways” weaken Australia. Markus, MappingSocial Cohesion; Dunk, “Attitudes to MulticulturalValues”; Jakubowicz, “Empires of the Sun.”

15. Roose and Harris, “Muslim Citizenship,” 481.16. Yue and Khan, “New Approaches”; Khan, Wyatt,

and Yue, “Making and Re-making”; Khan, “NewCommunities, New Attachments”; Khan et al.,“Creative Australia.”

17. “Britain ‘Sleepwalking to Segregation’.”18. Finney and Simpson, ‘Sleepwalking to Segregation’?19. Peter Sloterdijk’s commentary is stretched across the

whole spectrum of his writing practice, from hisweighty theoretical trilogy, Spheres, the polemicaltexts God’s Zeal and Rage and Time, as well as thecollection of essays, In the World Interior of Capital.

20. See Kraidy, Hybridity; Hazan, Against Hybridity.21. Sloterdijk, World Interior of Capital, 151.22. Sloterdijk, Rage and Time, 229.23. Sloterdijk, World Interior of Capital, 141.24. Ibid., 196.25. Ibid., 142.26. Ibid., 141.27. Ibid., 177.28. Ibid., 144.29. Sloterdijk would probably argue that his conception

of culture is neither a symptom of political paranoia,nor a pandering to the narcissism of cultural nation-alists. While Sloterdijk may intend to widen theframe beyond national parameters, this does notprevent his arguments from landing in the veryplace he is seeking to depart from. See his weak

defence in the debate with Habermas over the replayof racist ideologies: Sloterdijk, “Rules.” See alsoFisher, “Flirting with Fascism.”

30. Sloterdijk, God’s Zeal, 112.31. Sloterdijk, Rage and Time, 229.32. Ibid., 223.33. Sloterdijk, World Interior of Capital, 148.34. Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers, 53.35. Huntington, “Clash of Civilizations.”36. Mouffe, Democratic Paradox; Mouffe, On the

Political; Mouffe, Agonistics.37. Mouffe, On the Political, 18.38. Mouffe, Democratic Paradox, 105.39. Mouffe, Agonistics, 85–105.40. Ibid., xiv.41. Ibid., 84–105.42. McNay, Misguided Search, 91.43. Mouffe, Agonistics, 122.44. Ibid., xi.45. Mouffe, Democratic Paradox, 102.46. McNay goes even deeper in her critique: “Mouffe

lacks any mechanism to explain how the consensualmove from antagonism to agonism is achieved.”McNay, Misguided Search, 74. Owing to its lack ofa “theory of embodiment” (88) and its failure todirectly engage with the voice of the excluded, itproduces a “socially weightless paradigm” (79).

47. Mouffe, Democratic Paradox, 105.48. Galligan and Roberts, Australian Citizenship.49. Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging.50. Taylor, “Politics of Recognition.”51. Pollock et al., “Cosmopolitanisms.”52. Beck, Cosmopolitan Vision.53. Strathern, Gender of the Gift; Barad, Meeting the

Universe Halfway.54. Felix Guattari makes an explicit link between creativity

and cosmopolitanism. He defines art as a “creation in anascent state, perpetually in advance of itself”, that is, agesture that does not intersect with the preset rhythmsor fall into the available spaces of its own time and place.This movement, he adds, “becomes, at the same time,homeland, self-belonging, attachment to clan and cos-mic effusion”. Guattari, Chaosmosis, 107. See alsoNancy, Creation of the World; Castoriadis, Crossroadsin the Labyrinth.

55. Papastergiadis, Turbulence of Migration; Papastergiadis,Cosmopolitanism and Culture; Papastergiadis andTrimboli, “Fold in Diasporic Intimacy.”

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Nikos Papastergiadis is Professor atthe School of Culture andCommunication at the University ofMelbourne. His publications includeModernity as Exile (1993), Dialoguesin the Diaspora (1998), TheTurbulence of Migration (2000),Metaphor and Tension (2004),Spatial Aesthetics: Art Place and theEveryday (2006), Cosmopolitanism

22 N. PAPASTERGIADIS

and Culture (2012) as well as numerous essays which havebeen translated into over a dozen languages and appearedin major catalogues such as the Sydney, Liverpool, Istanbul,Gwanju, Taipei, Lyon and Thessaloniki Biennales.

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