ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the influence of phenomenology on political theory in general and radical democratic theory in particular and shows how these, in turn, challenge and reshape some of phenomenology’s most prominent concepts. The connection between post-classical phenomenology and political thought is especially evident in authors such as Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler. The following builds on the work of Oliver Marchart, who has introduced the concept of post-fundamentalism into the discussion and made it the centerpiece of radial democratic debates. However, rather than focusing on the absence of a (final) ground, an idea Marchart takes from Martin Heidegger, it concentrates on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s notion of chiasm.
