ABSTRACT
In recent years, many theorists have sought to appropriate an agonistic conception of politics from Arendt as a way to thematize the possibility of transforming reductive social identities (e.g. Honig 1995; Tully 1999; Markell 2003). On this account agonistic politics concerns the ‘striving for distinction’ (that is the competition amongst equals to define and implement the common good). The virtue of this approach is that it redeems the very name of politics in an age of utter political cynicism. First, because it restores the notion of politics as true transformative action. But also because Arendt’s insistence on the equality of those who take part in politics immediately translates into a critique of oppressive social identities. And finally, because she shows how political participation provides the opportunity to develop a true self, that is a self emancipated from such identities. However, this approach treats political participation as the solution to problems which in fact are the very obstacles that make political participation problematic in the first place. Is political participation threatened solely by the destruction of the political sphere (in particular by totalitarian forces, as in Arendt’s diagnosis)? Or is there not another factor just as significant, namely exclusion from politics?
