Akrivoulis DE. "Preserving the tension: radical thought as an expression of political re-imagining"

Excavations and Dialogues: Radical Theory and Politics at the Millennium th th Edge Hill College, Lancashire, UK - 9 and 10 September 2002 Time 8.30- 10.00am 10.00-10.15am 10.15- 11.30am 11.30- 11.45am 11.45am – 1.00pm 1.00 - 2.00pm 2.00 - 3.15pm 3.15 - 3.45pm 3.45 - 5.00pm 5.00 - Stream 1 Stream 2 Stream 3 Breakfast (In Terrace Café) & Registration (in Room M39) Introduction to the Conference and Administrative Details Paul Reynolds - Room M39 Opening Plenary Post-Modern Marx? Terrell Carver, Univ. Bristol, UK Chair: Paul Reynolds - Room M39 Coffee - in Room M39 The Unknown Marx Animal Liberation a After Lyotard: Towards an Reflections Bourgeois Diversion? Anti-reductionist Sociology Takahisa Oishi Tim Owen Reflections on the Prospects Takushoku University, Liverpool John Moores for a Non-Speciesist Marxism Univ, UK Japan Renzo Llorente & Saint Louis University, & Discussant: Madrid Campus, Spain Reconsidering Praxis Mark Cowling, Gideon Calder & University of Teesside, UK University of Cardiff, UK The Becoming-Other Of (Mark Cowling wrote a Politics: A Post-Liberal Chair: Alan Finlayson Room M38 review of Oishi's book The Archipelago Unknown Marx in Studies in Benjamin Arditi Marxism and will bring copies UNAM, Mexico of the review for reference Chair: Alan Johnson Room 42 Oishi's paper is partly a response to this) Chair: Paul Reynolds Room M43 Lunch - In Sages Restaurant Laclau and Mouffe's The Intoxicating Optimism of 'The Author and Political Hegemonic Project: The Empire Theory' Alan Johnson Shane Mulligan, UK Story So Far & Jules Townsend Edge Hill College UK Creating the wor(l)ds of Manchester Metropolitan & theory. Univ, UK Imperialism or Empire: Susan McManus & Competing Paradigms in the Nottingham University, UK Contemporary World 'Laclau & Mouffe and the Chair: Gideon Calder Disorder Problem of Inclusion and Room M38 Matthew Caygill Exclusion. Lasse A Thomassen Leeds Metropolitan University, UK University of Essex, UK Chair: Allison Moore Chair: Jim Martin Room M42 Room M43 Coffee - in Room M39 Post-Marxism: A Debate Global Commerce; Local Preserving the Tension: Radical Theory as an Defending Laclau and Mouffe Idioms: the McDonaldization Jim Martin of the Falafel Expression of Political Uri Ram Goldsmiths College, UK Reimagining Ben Gurion Univ, Israel Dimitrios E. Akrivoulis & University of Kent, UK & Criticising Laclau and Mouffe - Paul Reynolds Edge Hill Monetary Explanation & College, UK Distribution: Intellectual Labour and (This is a roundtable New/Neo/Classical-Marxian Proletarian Selfdiscussion introduced by the Approach and Emancipation two speakers) David Bates the Laws of Motion Under Christ Church Capitalism Chair: Gideon Calder Room M43 University College, UK Chitro MajumdarI, India Chair: Alan Johnson Chair: Mark Cowling Room M42 Room M38 Reception - Edge Hill College Club (marked as Bar on the Map) Sponsored By the PSA Post-Structuralism Specialist Group Conference Sponsored by the PSA Marxism Specialist Group, PSA PostStructuralism and Radical Politics Specialist Group and the Social Movements Research Group Excavations and Dialogues: Radical Theory and Politics at the Millennium Tuesday 10th September Time 8.30am 10.00am Stream 1 - 10.00am 11.15am - 11.15am 11.45pm 11.45am 1.00pm - 1.00 - 2.30pm 2.30pm 4.00pm 4.00pm - Fredric Jameson: Between Marxism and PostModernism? Neil Curry St Martins College, UK & 'Radical Democracy and the Ethics of Media: A Platonic Intervention' Alan Finlayson Univ Swansea, UK Chair: Jim Martin Room M43 Stream 2 Breakfast Stream 3 Badiou: Critical Reflections Jason Barker, UK & Deconstruction and Depoliticisation Alex Thomson University of Edinburgh, UK Chair: Gideon Calder Room M42 Marxism, Postmodernism and Criminological Theory Mark Cowling, University of Teesside, UK & The Problem With Marx’s Justification Of His Ethics Stephen A Brown University of Sussex, UK Chair: Allison Moore Room M38 Coffee - in Room M39 ‘New Individualism’, Welfare Postmodernisation of Reform and Equality of postmodern”: contemporary Opportunity – a Critique of political theory to face the Third Way Theory post-Soviet ‘reality’ Paul Wetherley Tatiana Aldyn-Kherel Leeds Metropolitan Univ, University of Essex, UK UK & & "The last social division: The Third Way, Identity and taking sedentarism / antiDifference: Performance, noamdism seriously" Colin Clark Rhetoric or Change Allison Moore and Paul University of Newcastle, UK Reynolds Chair: Alan Finlayson Room M38 Edge Hill College, UK Chair: Mark Cowling Room M42 Lunch - in Sages Restaurant And PSA Group Meetings 2.00pm to 2.30pm Marxism Specialist Group - M43 Post-Structuralism and Radical Politics Group - M42 (Whether these meetings take place will be notified to delegates at the Reception. The Left, Marxism and Postmodernism: The Problem of the State John Hoffman University of Leicester, UK & What is Critical about Critical Realism? Justin Cruikshank Nottingham Trent Univ, uk Chair: Paul Reynolds Room M43 Closing Plenary: Some Thoughts on the Politics of Deconstruction Christopher Norris, Univ of Cardiff, UK Chair: Paul Reynolds & Closing Comments Room M39 Close Conference Sponsored by the PSA Marxism Specialist Group, PSA PostStructuralism and Radical Politics Specialist Group and the Social Movements Research Group Preserving the tension: radical thought as an expression of political reimagining Dimitrios E. Akrivoulis, PhD Candidate in IR, Dept of Politics and IR, UKC Please note: Paper presented at the Excavations and Dialogues Conference. Akrivoulis, D.E. (2002). "Preserving the tension: radical thought as an expression of political reimagining." Paper presented at the Excavations and Dialogues Conference, "Radical Theory and Politics at the Millennium." Edge Hill College, Lancashire, UK, September 9-10, 2002. Abstract Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s discussion of ideology and utopia and his hermeneutics of time, we investigate the social functions of and the paradoxical relationship sustained between the radical democratic and neoliberal imaginaries. These functions are discussed in parallel as being complementary to each other and bound in tension, having both positive and pathological traits in their constitutive relation to political reality. In an attempt to delve beyond and beneath the surface-level functions of these two imaginaries, we suggest that reimagining the political through a radical democratic imaginary pertains to a double reinscription of this reimagining in our present and past institutions and practices. In that sense, the polemics between a radical democratic imaginary and a neoliberal one are understood as a form of tensional dialectics. [T]he call to thought makes itself heard in that strange inbetween period which sometimes inserts itself into historical time when not only the later historians but actors and witnesses, the living themselves, become conscious of an interval in time which is entirely determined by things which are no longer and are not yet. History has often shown that it is such intervals which may contain the moment of truth. – Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future This article is primarily devoted to the following question: How does a radical democratic imaginary relate to the social imaginary it seeks to destabilize? To put the same question otherwise, how does the horizon of the future possibilities of democracy opened up by radically reimagining democratic politics relate to its past and present? In still other terms, Reinhart Koselleck’s own (1985), how does our ‘horizon of expectations’ relate to our ‘space of experience’ when radically reimagining democratic politics? The kind of questioning set forth above already indicates that our answer would reflect on the extent and limits of the very radicalness involved. What is at stake here, we think, is exactly whether it is meaningful to think and talk about the future possibilities disclosed by a radical democratic imaginary 1 without a reference to our political past and present, from which such a reimagining both springs and strives to depart. Deriving from the Latin radix (root), the word ‘radical’ etymologically bears the traces of its past. Being radical does not simply or solely mean departing markedly from the usual or the customary; favouring or effecting fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions. Being radical also and foremost means arising from or even going to the root or the source.1 A further lexical inquiry into the meanings of the respective Ancient and Modern Greek words used might prove suggestive for our purposes, to the extent that it could help us denaturalize the meaning nowadays ascribed to the word ‘radical’.2 The Ancients, on the one hand, used the word ε (rēxikelefthos), meaning the innovator and, literally, the one who opens up ( γ ύε ) a course ( word for the radical, on the other hand, is π ε ). The Modern Greek (rizospastēs), literally meaning the one who breaks ( π ε ) with one’s root ( ί α).3 Hence the noematic metamorphosis of radicalness: its literal, lexicalized meaning is marked by a certain passage of its central idea from the opening-up to the breaking-with; from disclosing a future to wholly departing from the past. Modern radicalness still registers the future, but only after and through a divorce with the past. The core rift involved is less an opening from our political past and present towards an imagined future, than a severe rupture between our future expectations and our past and present experience. How then are we to count on and value contemporary radical democratic thought and politics and what are we allowed to hope for its future? Indeed, a critical excavation of the available radical democratic theories and politics, as well as an engagement in critical dialogues between their contrasting views could invite a constructive debate about the future of radical democratic thought. Indeed, moreover, a critical re-engagement with the theoretical resources and imaginary variations of the contemporary Left could give rise to potent political hybrids able to question the much-acclaimed post-Cold War neoliberal triumph. But there is something more always already involved here than a theoretical exchange within the boundaries of the Left. This something more concerns the relationship sustained between radical democratic thought as an expression of political reimagining, and the social imaginary associated with neoliberal thought and practice. 2 Ranging from (post-)Marxism to feminism and poststructuralism, the theoretical variants of the radical democratic imaginary are marked less by a thematic unity than by a diversity of claims. Yet this diversity at the level of content does not preclude an affinity at the level of function, at least to the extent that they are all united by their common aim of destabilising the given order, which is symbolically mediated by the neoliberal imaginary. We could say that their content is prescribed in similar terms by their shared functions, meaning both the challenges they pose and the possibilities they disclose. Here we will attempt to suggest that they are also united in a rather paradoxical manner by virtue of the confrontational yet complementary relation they maintain towards the imaginary they oppose. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s discussion of the ideological and utopian functions of imagination, the neoliberal and the radical democratic imaginaries will be discussed here as ideological and utopian social imaginaries caught in this paradoxical interplay.4 Reading the Lectures First delivered at the University of Chicago in 1975, Ricoeur’s Lectures on Ideology and Utopia offer detailed analyses of Mannheim, Weber, and Geertz, close encounters with the philosophies of Althusser and Habermas, a discussion of the nineteenthcentury utopian socialist thinkers Saint-Simon and Fourier, and his first systematic exploration of Marx. Contrary to traditional approaches that distance ideology and utopia from reality, by contrasting the former to science and reducing the latter to wishful dreaming, Ricoeur discusses them together within a single conceptual framework and their powerful relation to sociopolitical reality. Ideology and utopia are thus approached as cultural expressions of sociopolitical imagination. Instead of offering concrete analyses of specific instances of ideologies and utopias, Ricoeur chooses to treat them as concepts rather than as phenomena. The vaulting horse for the unfolding of Ricoeur’s thought through the lectures is Marx’s appreciation of ideology as distortion, an inverted image of reality. The lectures promise to offer, as he says, a ‘regressive analysis of meaning’, delving beyond and beneath the surface of the apparent to the more fundamental meanings of ideology and utopia: My claim is that this approach is not an ideal typical analysis but rather a genetic phenomenology in the sense proposed by Husserl in his Cartesian Meditations. This method allows us to reach a level of description without 3 being outside the interconnections between ideology and utopia. … The effort is to recognize the claim of a concept which is at first sight merely a polemical tool. I attempt to make the concept more honest. (Ricoeur 1986, 311) For Ricoeur, Marx’s concept of ideology as distortion is exactly a definition of ideology at the surface level, which needs to be genetically explored at more profound levels, so that its range of possibilities would be disclosed. To attain his goal Ricoeur discusses ideology as relating to the plane of both representation and praxis. Although ideology can make authoritative claims as the only valid representation of reality and thus function as distortion, it never ceases to function as such, that is, in representational terms. It seems, as he notes (1986, 136), that ‘to give an account of ideology we must speak the language of ideology; we must speak of individuals constructing dreams instead of living their real life.’ It is this representational function of ideology that Ricoeur chooses to focus on. Thus seen, distortion is simply a phase, a paradigmatic explication, a function or a mere level of ideology and not the model of ideology per se. Against Marx, Ricoeur suggests that ideology is related to praxis by virtue of ideology’s representational function. Consequently, representation and praxis could not be seen as opposed, but rather representation should be regarded as a constitutive dimension of the realm of praxis. Ricoeur here makes use of Mannheim’s critique of ideology as both a starting and a departure point.5 On the one hand, Ricoeur’s approach to ideology starts from Mannheim’s ‘sociology of knowledge’ as an alternative to the traditional ideology critique. As in the case of Mannheim, his ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ aims at ‘unmasking’ ideology by exposing its assertions as deceptions or illusions. On the other hand, although Ricoeur, like Mannheim, fully embraces the representational qualities of ideology and utopia and investigates them as concepts under a common conceptual framework, he rejects Mannheim’s claim that ideology and utopia are forms of noncongruence and hence that ideology is a mere deviation from reality. Ideology, for Ricoeur, should be judged not from the point of reality or science but from that of a utopia. As he notes (Ricoeur 1986, 172-173, emphasis in original), what we must assume is that the judgement on ideology is always the judgement from a utopia. This is my conviction: the only way to get out of the circularity in which ideology engulf us is to assume a utopia, declare it, and judge an ideology on this basis. Because the absolute onlooker is impossible, then it is someone within the process itself who takes the responsibility for 4 judgement. … It is to the extent finally that the correlation ideology-utopia replaces the impossible correlation ideology-science that a certain solution to the problem of judgement may be found, a solution … itself congruent with the claim that no point of view exists outside the game. Therefore, if there can be no transcendent onlooker, then a practical concept is what must be assumed. If the function of distortion defines ideology at the surface level, what is the next level that should be explored according to Ricoeur’s genetic phenomenology? Drawing on Weber’s motivational model, Ricoeur proceeds from the distorting to the legitimating function of ideology. Weber had already pointed out that any legitimating process involves an interrelation between a claim to and a belief in legitimacy. He had not addressed, though, what is for Ricoeur the most crucial aspect of this interrelation, namely the discrepancy between claim and belief. Ricoeur’s syllogism is threefold: First, he affirms the existence of a gap between claim and belief. Second, ideology’s legitimating function is to fill this very gap. Third, the demand for this legitimating role necessitates a new theory of surplus value that relates not to work, as in Marx’s case, but to power. Belief is always in need of a supplement and it is the role of ideology to provide it. The third level of Ricoeur’s exploration of the concept of ideology is that of integration. Following Clifford Geertz, Ricoeur asserts that ideology integrates society by symbolically mediating social action. At this deepest level, it is only because of its integrating function that the distorting and legitimating functions of ideology can be disclosed. It is only because ideology always already functions symbolically that it can function as distortion; and this occurs ‘when the integrative function becomes frozen … when schematization and rationalization prevail’ (Ricoeur 1986, 266). This leads Ricoeur to the irreverent function of ideology. As symbolic mediation, ideology is constitutive of social existence: ‘The distinction between superstructure and infrastructure completely disappears, because symbolic systems belong already to the infrastructure, to the basic constitution of human being.’ (Ricoeur 1986, 258) Having defined ideology in its relation to sociopolitical reality as distortion, legitimation, integration and finally constitution, Ricoeur then shifts his focus on utopia. Similarly to the oppositional structuring of ideology towards either reality (Marx of the German Ideology) or science (orthodox Marxism), utopia has been so far 5 identified as either unreal or unscientific. It is this similar oppositional structuring of utopia that Ricoeur attempts to upset, drawing once again on and, at the same time, departing from Mannheim’s approach. The reason why Mannheim could not appreciate the positive qualities of ideology and utopia should be found, according to Ricoeur, in his leaving aside their symbolic element from his analysis. Yet if ideology’s positive trait is integration, what would be utopia’s own? Ricoeur’s answer is that utopia’s positive function lies in its rendering feasible the exploration of the possible; it puts in question what exists to offer an alternative imaginary variation of the real. Hence utopia is not merely something unreal, but the unreal that makes a claim to reality, the unreal that wants to be realized. This is what Ricoeur (1986, 310) calls utopia’s ‘function of the nowhere’ that is dialectically related to Dasein: ‘To be here, Da-sein, I must also be able to be nowhere. There is a dialectic of Dasein and nowhere.’ Applying his genetic phenomenology in the definition of the concept of utopia as well, Ricoeur moves from the surface level (utopia as possibility) to a deeper level of definition, that of utopia as a challenge to the present authority, the given order. There, utopia meets the problem of power, the meeting space in its interrelation with ideology: ‘If … ideology is the surplus-value added to the lack of belief in authority, utopia is what finally unmasks this surplus-value.’ (Ricoeur 1986, 298) The above mentioned gap that ideology tends to supplement, utopia tends to expose. At that level utopia encounters the problem of authority, as a manifestation of power, calling for either the de-institutionalization or the re-institutionalization of human relationships. This is the point where utopia becomes an imaginary variation of power itself. Besides providing a possibility and a challenge to authority, utopia may function at a third, deeper level. It may lead to a form of escapism, concerning both the means of its achievement and the ends to be achieved, a complete denial of the real and a full embrace of the unrealizable. It then becomes completely indifferent to its realization and the possible transition from the present and existing to the future and possible. For Ricoeur, this pathology is rooted in what he calls the ‘eccentric’ function of utopia, offering a parody of an ambiguous phenomenon that fluctuates between fantasy and creativity. This final, pathological level of utopia is addressed by Ricoeur (1986, 296) as ‘the magic of thought’. Ideology and utopia are bound together, for Ricoeur, interacting in the form of a practical circle. Nevertheless, this circle is different from that offered by traditional 6 accounts. It is a circle that transcends the oppositional structuring of ideology and utopia versus either science or reality. We find ourselves within this circle, entangled yet not helplessly entrapped in the positive and negative traits of both ideology and utopia, for the circle should not be conceived as merely continuous. It is our task, Ricoeur concludes (1986, 312), to turn it into a spiral: ‘[W]e must try to cure the illnesses of utopias by what is wholesome in ideology – by its element of identity … – and try to cure the rigidity, the petrification, of ideologies by the utopian element.’ Ricoeur approaches ideology and utopia, as we have seen, as two opposed, yet complementary functions of the social imaginary. Whereas ideology functions towards continuity, homogeneity and the preservation of the present social order, utopia operates towards its destabilization, discontinuity and rupture. If we are to demarcate their relation to sociopolitical reality in representational terms, we might speak with Ricoeur of ideology as the mimetic representation of reality (imagepicture) and of utopia as its fictional construction (image-fiction), to the extent that whereas ideology repeats reality by providing for its justification, utopia fictionally re-describes it. Fusing the Kantian distinction between productive and reproductive imagination with his phenomenological approach, Ricoeur talks about ideology as offering a reproductive imaginary that neutralizes perception and utopia as constituting a productive, free, alternative imaginary, an immanent critique of the existing as well as a constant anticipation of future possibilities. Utopia ‘has a constitutive role in helping us rethink the nature of our social life’; it is ‘the way in which we radically rethink’ the nature of any form of social practice or institution; it is ‘the fantasy of an alternative society and its exteriorization ‘nowhere’’ that functions ‘as one of the most formidable contestations of what is’ (Ricoeur 1986, 16, emphases in original). Both the ideological and the utopian imaginary are for Ricoeur expressions of a constitutive imaginary for any durable society. On the one hand, the ideological imaginary is not fundamentally destructive, but plays a constructive and necessary role in establishing and maintaining a sociopolitical order. Although it may contribute to the integration of society, it may also lead to an endless repetition of sociopolitical stereotypes that ideology itself legitimates. Thus, while its main function is to preserve this order, it inevitably tends to canonize the existing system leading to ‘a stagnation of politics’. (Ricoeur 1981, 229) Ricoeur’s warning is adamant: 7 The danger is that this reaffirmation can be perverted, usually by monopolistic elites, into a mystificatory discourse which serves to uncritically vindicate or glorify the established political powers. In such instances, the symbols of a community become fixed and fetishized; they serve as lies. (Ricoeur 1995, 230) On the other hand, the utopian imaginary functions in a destabilising, yet countervailing manner, enabling a critical re-examination of the given sociopolitical order. As Ricoeur (1982, 117-118) graphically remarks, ‘the shadow of the forces capable of shattering a given order are already the shadow of an alternative order that could be opposed to the given order. It is the function of utopia to give the force of discourse to this possibility.’ It is this view from nowhere, the u-topos of utopia, the society that is not yet, that puts ideology in question. Functioning as a Husserlean purely mental experiment, an epoché, it calls for a suspension of our assumptions about reality. Nevertheless, no matter how attractive a utopian social imaginary might be, Ricoeur is right to warn us about its inherent dangers of constituting a new ideological orthodoxy itself, sharing the dogmatism of the ideological one it seeks to destabilize. Unless it provides the conditions for its own realization, all a utopian imaginary could do is ‘project a static future’ thus coming to function itself as ideology. (Ricoeur 1995, 230) The complementarity between ideology and utopia does not simply imply a necessity of coexistence in terms of polarity. It should be read in terms of pathology, to the extent that their positive sides stand in complementary relation to the negative and pathological ones. The utopian imaginary is a promise and as such remains unfulfilled until finally realized. The not-yet-realized horizon of its promise may function both as an ongoing sociopolitical critique and as the integrating imaginary ground of human emancipation. (see Koselleck 2002, 261-264) It is when utopia brings together this horizon of expectation with the actual field of experience, when the ought does not ‘float free from the is’ (Kearney 1991, 160, emphasis in original), that its imaginary could function positively. Ricoeur’s warning (1995, 231, emphasis in original), thus, seems to be of relevance to any radical reimagining of democratic politics that attempts to destabilize the given neoliberal order: The problem today is the apparent impossibility of unifying world politics, of mediating between the polycentricity of our everyday political practice and the utopian horizon of a universally liberated humanity. It is not that we are 8 without utopia, but that we are without paths to utopia. And without a path towards it, without concrete and practical mediation in our field of experience, utopia becomes a sickness. In this section, we have talked with Ricoeur of ideology and utopia as related to the symbolic mediation of sociopolitical reality. The point was made that Ricoeur’s social imagination, typified by the dialectic between the symbolic systems of ideology and utopia, is constitutive of social reality itself. Hence it comes as our hermeneutical task to first disclose what we have come to accept as real in contemporary democratic politics, how this real has been ideologically constituted by the neoliberal imaginary, and finally attempt to subvert this imaginary by employing an alternative one that would function in a utopian manner. Yet, as we will see below, the importance of such a task stems less from proposing an alternative imaginary of democratic politics that would replace the neoliberal one, than from keeping the tension between these imaginaries alive. Beyond the Surface of the Apparent In this section we will treat the neoliberal imaginary as an ideological imaginary to the extent that in its symbolic mediation of sociopolitical reality the neoliberal imaginary pertains to the ideological functions of distortion, integration, and legitimation. If we are to accept Ricoeur’s claim (1986, 258) that a symbolic system always already belongs to ‘the basic constitution of human being’, then we could hardly deny that by symbolically mediating social (inter-)action the neoliberal imaginary both integrates society and constitutes social existence. It is due to its integrating function that this imaginary can also function at the level of legitimation. In the symbolic mediation of sociopolitical order a certain gap is created between the claim made for a specific ordering and the belief in such a correspondence. In other words, there is created a gap between a sociopolitical ordering that provides society with a specific neoliberal pattern or gestalt (Ordnung) and the individual intellectual representations of this order (Vorstellung). In still other words, the representation of the sociopolitical ordering is in need for a supplement, a surplus value, and it is the role of the neoliberal imaginary to provide it through its legitimating function. It is due to its integrating function that the neoliberal imaginary functions at the level of ‘distortion’ as well. We refer to this ideological function as distortion following Ricoeur’s own treatment of the term, that is, as the process in which the 9 established sociopolitical order is uncritically vindicated and the community’s symbols become ideologically fixed and fetishized. In that sense, the herewith references to distortion will not imply the pre-existence of a real, correct social and political structure that becomes ideologically dissimulated. Instead, the reality of sociopolitical life is understood in the light of Ricoeur’s reading of Marx’s German Ideology, where the real is equated with the actual and the material, as individuals are put together with their material conditions, the way they operate.6 As we have already seen in the previous section, we can meaningfully talk about the distortion of sociopolitical life only if we first accept that this life is always already symbolically mediated. It is through this symbolic mediation that ideology as distortion relates to praxis. In our case, this moment of distortion should be traced in what could be called the ‘becoming frozen’ of the integrating function of the neoliberal imaginary, a process characterized by the prevalence of schematization and rationalization. This very moment is marked by the perpetual duplication of certain sociopolitical stereotypes that due to their conformity to the agenda of neoliberalism appear as legitimate and true. The becoming frozen of integration finally leads to a stagnation of politics through the reaffirmation of the existing order and the canonization of the existing sociopolitical system. This reaffirmation is perverted through the fixed and fetishized symbols of community offered by the neoliberal discourse, aiming at an uncritical vindication and glorification of the established political powers. Hence the neoliberal imaginary representation of political reality becomes intrinsically related to the discourses of political ontology. Their meeting point is no other than the point where the imaginary brings ‘being as actuality and as potentiality into play.’ It hence becomes an argumentative device that justifies and legitimates what politics came to be. Its goal is less the mobilization of society than the justification of what society has become. We could say in Ricoeur’s own terms (1997, 307) that the neoliberal imaginary ceases ‘to be mobilising in order to become justificatory; or rather, it continues to be mobilising only insofar as it is justificatory.’ It hence reveals its own capacity of dynamism, in the sense that it provides the necessary forms for social motivation. It animates society through a justificatory belief in the neoliberal ordering of society, so that the righteousness, justness, and necessity of the society’s existence and organization in neoliberal terms would be affirmed. 10 Through the schematising and codifying function of the modes of its representation, the neoliberal imaginary is maintained by the conveyance of the ideas it enhances about society and politics into commonly shared opinions. It is through this process of schematization that it empowers, on the one hand, the idealization of contemporary forms of social, political and economic organization and interaction and, on the other, the perpetuation of this idealized image in the future. With this mutation of thought into doxa, the neoliberal imaginary functions at the level of rationalization, as its political representations are gradually added in the political rhetorics as maxims or slogans. Hence it comes to function as a non-reflective image of the sociopolitical reality and, by virtue of its being so, it facilitates the social efficacy of its implicit ideas along with the integration of society. Thus everything novice becomes assimilated and accommodated, only insofar as it fits in the typologies of the original schema. The process of assimilation becomes an aspect of the processes of legitimation and regularization. This is how the discourses associated with the neoliberal imaginary serve as expressions of political ontology: Whatever assimilable is legitimate and whatever legitimate, in turn, exists. By thus representing what is thought as real in politics and ascribed with political existence, and by deterring the possible, it comes to function through a certain ideological ‘blindness’ and ‘closure’.7 As we suggested above with Ricoeur, we have to move beyond or look beneath the surface function (distortion) of the neoliberal imaginary. We have to investigate its deeper layers, its integrating and legitimating functions exercised by the symbolic articulation of sociopolitical interaction. Otherwise our aim would be merely limited to the unmasking of its intellectual malfeasance. Although such a therapeutic venture might be important in its own right, it is fairly incomplete for what would be missed is the very ideological relating of ‘the mask to the face’ (Ricoeur 1982, 116). Both this relating would be impossible and the ‘unmasking’ would be meaningless if we fail to acknowledge the ways the neoliberal imaginary is related to the symbolic systems that constitute and integrate a specific community. By acknowledging the strong linkage between neoliberal tropology and ideology, we are not far from acknowledging that the neoliberal representation of political reality also involves a claim to legitimacy of the given system that symbolically mediates and constitutes the processes of sociopolitical organization and interaction, as well as the conduct of politics (see Geertz 1973, 209). Then we will be able, on the one hand, to fully explore the 11 pathology of the neoliberal imaginary in terms of its symbolic articulation. On the other hand, and more crucially, we will be able to better relate this pathology to the utopian functions of a radical democratic imaginary and the symbolic forms of its expression. An attempt to radically reimagine the future of democratic politics could be read as a venture proposing an alternative imaginary that could destabilize the ideological functions of the neoliberal one discussed above, thus opening up a new vista of political possibilities. Following Ricoeur’s discussion of the functions of social imagination, we will refer to and treat this radical democratic imaginary as a ‘utopian’ one. His analytical framework could prove both useful and relevant for our purposes, in the sense that it could help us appreciate the possibilities and limitations of any excavations and dialogues within radical democratic thought, as well as the political significance of a radical democratic imaginary. The issue involves an investigation of the functions and social dimensions of the radical democratic imaginary and its relationship to the ideological imaginary it seeks to destabilize. The Mode and Spirit of the Radical Democratic Imaginary One would normally expect that an exploration of the impact of utopian imagination in politics would have to be restricted in the area of utopian fiction. After all, utopia is usually understood in its strict sense as a literary genre. Yet, as Ricoeur has pointed out, it is exactly this limited appreciation of utopia, this ‘literary criterion’ that hinders us from recognising the connection between ideology and utopia. In order to initiate a parallelism between utopia and ideology, in our case a parallelism between a radical democratic and the neoliberal imaginary, we thus have to shift our focus away from the literary genre to the ‘utopian mode’ and then to the ‘spirit of utopia’. This shift, according to Ricoeur (1991b, 184), implies ‘that we forget the literary structure of utopia and also that we overcome the specific contents of proposed utopias.’ In that sense, any radical reimagining of democratic politics, albeit not having the form of utopian fictional narrative, would function as a utopian imaginary. In this section, we are going to suggest that the functions of a radical democratic imaginary intrinsically relate to the ones exercised by the ideological imaginary it seeks to destabilize. This relationship is marked by a paradoxical propinquity characterized not only by confrontation but also by complementarity. By setting these functional variations alongside one another, we could come closer to the realization 12 not only of the subtle relationship sustained between them but also that the levels of meaning inherent in them have to be uncovered ‘with the same sense of complexity and paradox’ (Ricoeur 1991b, 184). One cannot appreciate, that is, the functions of such a utopian political imaginary without considering the functions of the ideological schematization of sociopolitical organization and interaction provided by the neoliberal imaginary. We have suggested above that through its distorting, integrating and legitimating functions, the neoliberal imaginary plays a fundamental role in patterning, empowering, and finally conserving a specific order of sociopolitical organization and interaction. The possibility of shattering this neoliberal order becomes meaningful through a distant gaze at this order from the nowhere (u-topos) of utopia. As Ricoeur (1991a, 318) has put it, ‘[t]he shadow of the forces capable of shattering a given order is already the shadow of an alternative order that could be opposed to the given order. It is the function of utopia to give the force of discourse to this possibility.’ We could say that this glance from nowhere is metacritical in the sense not of some form of detachment from the historical and cultural specificities of the ideological schematization at work, but of its self-awareness as a utopian gaze. In other words, whereas utopia understands itself as such, ideology has no knowledge of itself whatsoever. In order to bring the neoliberal and the radical democratic imaginaries closer together so that their subtle, complementary relationship can be highlighted, our primary analytical focus must be shifted from the noematic content of the radical democratic imaginaries proposed towards what Ricoeur, following Raymond Ruyer (1950), has called the ‘mode’ and the ‘spirit’ of utopia. On the one hand, the utopian mode is related to the existence of society in a way similar to the one invention relates to scientific knowledge: The utopian mode may be defined as the imaginary project of another kind of society, of another reality of another world. Imagination is here constitutive in an inventive rather than an integrative manner, to use an expression of Henri Desroche. (Ricoeur 1982, 118-119) To relate this definition to the imaginary conceptualization of politics, we could say that the utopian mode of a radical democratic imaginary is the imaginary project of another kind of politics, a way of radically rethinking what democratic politics is, who 13 the agents of this politics are, as well as where and how this politics takes place; another way of political existence and relating altogether. On the other hand, the spirit of utopia encompasses the internal contradictions of utopia affecting its social function. At this level we discover ‘a range of functional variations which may be paralleled with those of ideology and which sometimes intersect those functions which earlier we described as ranging from the integrative to the distorting’ (Ricoeur 1982, 119). Whereas with the utopian mode we could come closer to the realization of the more general inventive function of a radical democratic imaginary, once we take this second step towards the spirit of utopia we could first ascribe a more meaningful content to this inventiveness. For by treating a radical democratic imaginary as a utopian imaginary we situate our gazing spot in the noplace of utopia, from where a radical rethinking of democratic politics would be possible. Taking this further step means both a moving-beyond the field of the actual and an opening-up of the field of the possible. If Ricoeur (1991b, 184) is right to note that the question is ‘whether imagination can have a ‘constitutive’ role without this leap outside’, then the inventive function of a radical democratic imaginary would not be hard to assess. Appreciated as a form of inventiveness, this constitutive function of the radical democratic imaginary involves not only the invention of a new order, but also the subversion of the given one that the neoliberal imaginary tries to conserve. Hence what becomes more evident is the second dimension of our step towards the spirit of utopia, concerning the possible parallelism of the whole set of functions of our utopian imaginary with the ideological functions of the neoliberal one. It is here that the ‘fundamental ambiguities’ of a radical democratic imaginary could be placed beside, juxtaposed with and contrasted to the ones of the neoliberal imaginary. And here the regressive analysis of meaning that we have followed while examining the positive and negative traits of the neoliberal ideology (integration, legitimation, distortion), could also prove helpful in the exploration of the respective traits of a radical democratic ‘utopia’ (challenge, possibility, and escapism). But let us see how exactly they relate to the ideological functions of the neoliberal imaginary. From what we have said so far, it is perhaps not difficult to assess that, first, whereas the neoliberal imaginary functions in an integrating manner establishing a kind of social bond and reaffirming a sociopolitical order that is taken as given, a radical democratic imaginary would aim at denaturalizing this order by subverting or 14 challenging the given forms of social bond and political relating. It would pave the way towards what is not yet, as well as what it could be. Moving to the second, intermediate level, we could say that a radical democratic imaginary could also appear as a counterpart of the legitimating function of the neoliberal one. By challenging the giveness of the neoliberal order, what is questioned is exactly the legitimating process that sustains it. And here what is provided by a radical democratic imaginary is a series of possible political futures. By divulging the undeclared surplus value of the neoliberal schematization, a radical democratic imaginary could thus propose an alternative way of political relating that exceeds the forms of power relations provided by the neoliberal imaginary. The propensity and efficacy of such a radical democratic imaginary could be evaluated, for instance, by its ability less to provide a concrete political content to the meaning of political power, than to disclose its paradoxical gist, manifestations and practices. This would require not merely a symbolization of power in other-than-neoliberal terms, but a requestioning of where this power is located. Our relating between the neoliberal and the radical democratic imaginaries could also bring forth a parallelism of their own pathologies, for in both cases their negative traits intrinsically relate to and originate from their positive functions. In the case of the neoliberal imaginary, as we have suggested, the distortion of sociopolitical reality is possible because it functions in an integrating and conservative manner. In a similar way, the negative function of a radical democratic imaginary could emerge out of its most positive trait, that is, its implicit leaping outside from where the reimagination of society and politics is possible. This pathology could lead to a form of ‘escapism’ defined by Ricoeur (1991a, 322) as ‘the eclipse of praxis, the denial of the logic of action which inevitably ties undesirable evils to preferred means and which forces us to choose between equally desirable but incompatible goals.’ To render the danger of such an escapism more intelligible with respect to a reimagination of democratic politics, we could say that this pathology could reveal its negative traits, once our imaginary variations of political spatiotemporality or of a political relating in a new form of order remain mere idealized models of the future, while no consideration is taken as to how their realization would be possible. In that case, we are perhaps in a position no different to the one in which the distorting function of the neoliberal imaginary has already placed us. 15 But what exactly is the relationship between the ideological and utopian ambiguities and variations of the neoliberal and the radical democratic imaginary disclosed by our step towards the spirit of utopia? From what we have said so far it appears that these traits are placed as opposed to each other, integration contra challenge, legitimation contra possibility, distortion contra escapism. Yet, as we have already suggested with Ricoeur, this subtle relationship is one not only of conflict but also of complementarity. And this complementarity involves a dialectical relating or, better, a dialectical implicating of each other. Let us start once again with their positive traits, that is, their integrative and challenging respective functions. Indeed they seem opposed to each other; more accurately the one appears to be the inverse of the other. On the one hand, the neoliberal imaginary struggles to sustain and empower through its ideological schematizations the existing forms of political ordering. On the other hand, a radical democratic imaginary in its subversive and challenging exertion would seem but erratic or eccentric. Nevertheless, this eccentricity is but a manifestation of utopia’s double move and the paradoxical, Janus face of the social imagination. To question the given we have to be elsewhere; but what gets us elsewhere also leads us back to the here and now. Thus, the relationship between these two imaginaries could be expressed in terms of the dialectical interplay between ideology and utopia, the first leading towards integration, the second towards an eccentric subversion. Hence, whereas the neoliberal imaginary tends to integrate, repeat and mirror the given political order, a radical democratic imaginary would tend towards its subversion, rupture and unmasking. But this eccentricity is the potential result of the gap introduced by the ideological symbolic mediation of sociopolitical reality through a neoliberal tropology. Conversely, it is this eccentricity that the neoliberal imaginary aims at taming by filling the ideological gap through its imaginary schematizations. We hence see that both the existence and the functions of these imaginaries are caught into an unsurpassable, tensional interplay. They are complementary expressions of social imagination reflecting the paradoxical effects of the political phenomenon itself. The Janus face of imagination is also reflected at the level of pathology, which in our case corresponds not only to the subtle relationship between the dysfunctions of the neoliberal and the radical democratic imaginaries, but also between these specific dysfunctions and the fundamental directions of the social imagination. The pathology of the neoliberal imaginary, on the one hand, corresponds to the distortion and 16 dissimulation of political reality. This dysfunction becomes meaningful only due to the integrating function of the ideological schematization. To be more precise, its meaning is attained within the symbolic constitution of the political order reflecting one of the fundamental directions of the social imagination, that is, the integrating function. On the other hand, the dysfunctioning of a radical democratic imaginary should be appreciated as a reflection of the other fundamental direction of the social imagination. The possible pathology of such a radical democratic imaginary, that is, a form of escapism, is rooted in the eccentric function of utopia. Yet if this is so, why should one insist in imaging alternative forms of political life? If our utopian imagination does not manage to fully escape its own pathology, to what extent are we to count on and value such an imaginary? Our answer would be twofold, concerning a double pondering first on the potential of such an imaginary (challenge, possibility), and second on the dialectical relationship between such an imaginary and the neoliberal one. Then we would be not that far from realising that an alternative imaginary is the aptest medium for rejecting the given one and destabilising the imaginary schematization of the given forms of sociopolitical organization and interaction. Most crucially, by being aware of its complementary relationship with the neoliberal imaginary, our venture would have to both ‘flight from’ and ‘return to’ the specificities and necessities of our current imaginary schematizations. Finally, it is in the very pathological traits of such an erratic imaginary that perhaps one should trace its most positive function as well. For as Ricoeur (1982, 124) has asked who knows whether such and such an erratic mode of existence may not prophesy the man to come? Who even knows if a certain degree of individual pathology is not the condition of social change, at least to the extent that such pathology brings to light the sclerosis of dead institutions? To put it more paradoxically, who knows whether the illness is not at the same time a part of the required therapy? Conclusion In the preceding paragraphs we have attempted to point out the significance of delving beyond and beneath the surface-level functions of the neoliberal and the radical democratic imaginaries, and then exploring the paradoxical relationship sustained between them. We have also noted with Ricoeur that once we move from the literary 17 criterion of utopia to its mode and then to the spirit of utopia, we could come closer to the realization that the political significance of radically reimagining the future of democratic politics stems from the capacity of our radical democratic imaginary a) to destabilize the given order that is symbolically mediated by the ideological schematizations of the neoliberal imaginary, and b) to open up a horizon of future possibilities for democratic politics. Yet there is something more involved here pertaining neither to the content of our imaginary nor even to its destabilising function as an alternative, ‘utopian’ re-presentation of political reality. To be more explicit, there is something more involved in the horizon opened up by our radical democratic reimagining. Let us then attempt to demonstrate in these concluding remarks how this ‘more’ could render intelligible the final aim of our hermeneutical task with respect to the preservation of tension between these two social imaginaries (neoliberal and radical democratic). By referring to this horizon as one of possibilities, we already presuppose that it is always already a horizon of expectations, a horizon of anticipations aimed at the future of democratic politics. But these anticipations are also always already inscribed in the present. In Ricoeur’s words (1998, 208), they are ‘the future-become-present (vergegenwärtigte Zukunft), turned toward the not-yet.’ This point is suggestive in two respects: On the one hand, it could remind us that the radical democratic imaginary in question is not only a self-aware glance from the u-topos of our aspired future towards our historical present, but also a projection towards our political future from this present. It is a projection that by being always already inscribed in the present should respond to the necessities, callings and commitments of present political experience.8 In that sense, there has to be sustained a certain relevance between our political experiences and expectations within our radical democratic imaginary, in order to avoid our utopian gaze ending up as a form of escapism. We have to make sure that this relevance preserves its tensional character and does not end up creating a schism; ‘we have to keep our horizon of expectation from running away from us.’ (Ricoeur 1998, 215) On the other hand, and perhaps most importantly, the point made above could help us realize that the horizon of future possibilities and expectations opened up by the radical democratic imaginary should not only relate to the present but also to our past, which has to be disclosed not as distant and finished but as a living tradition. Even if we were to resort to a radical democratic imaginary we would still be the heirs 18 of liberal democratic discourses and practices, for the temporal distance that would separate us from this past ‘is not a dead interval but a transmission that is generative of meaning.’ Of course this does not mean that we should make this past and present (neo-)liberal imaginary a criterion of truth. It is to connote instead that no matter how distant our future anticipations might be (once disclosed through a radical democratic imaginary), we would never be in the position of being ‘absolute innovators’, but rather we would be ‘always first of all in the situation of being heirs’ (Ricoeur 1998, 221). Hence the paradox: We cannot reimagine democratic politics in other-thanneoliberal terms and anticipate an alternative political future without breaking with the neoliberal imaginary. But equally we cannot suppose that our hopes about this political future become more meaningful in deficit of any historical household. There must be a double inscription of our radical democratic reimagining in both the present and the past. In that sense, we could say that what we have been so keen on overcoming, rejecting and substituting, the (neo-)liberal imaginary schematization of politics, is finally what has constituted and continues to underpin what we allow ourselves to hope for through a radical democratic reimagining. By insisting that all we have to effectuate is a paradigmatic shift at the level of our sociopolitical imaginaries, meaning our total rejection of the ‘symbolic resources of the liberal democratic tradition’ (Mouffe 1996, 20), and at the same time our finding unconditional refuge in an alternative utopian imaginary of a totally different kind of society, we simply reaffirm that our historical present is in Ricoeur’s words wholly a ‘crisis’, to the extent that ‘expectation takes refuge in utopia and … tradition becomes only a dead deposit of the past.’ (Ricoeur 1998, 235) Perhaps then it is far more useful to acknowledge the significance of placing any radical democratic imaginary in parallel with the neoliberal one it longs to overcome. This in-parallelsituating could then demonstrate better that the opposing imaginaries are caught, as we have noted, in a tensional yet paradoxical relationship characterized by both conflict and complementarity; that their polemics is also a form of dialectics. The question that comes forth is demanding: What imaginary variations or hybrids might such a dialectics bear in our excavations and dialogues for the future of democratic politics? Indeed, providing an answer appears both timely and demanding. But even our mere posing the question is always already pregnant, pregnant less of answers than of more, newer questions. It presupposes a certain act of instanciation 19 that leads us to a state of aporia. As history becomes temporalized, as time becomes thematized into historical past, present and future, there comes forth the issue of legitimacy of both our lived experiences and our aspired futures. And with the question of legitimation there emerges the need for an ahistorical transcendental, a new ethical standard, a criterion of reason and truth. On the one hand, the critique of the neoliberal imaginary would be possible, as we have seen, from the critical space opened up by our reimagining politics through a radical democratic imaginary. On the other hand, though, we also need a criterion for the critique of critique; our utopian gaze has to be metacritical. But what is going to provide this metacriticality? What is going to validate our future aspirations? How could we avert the danger of returning to a principle of radically monological truth? This is a political moment, a moment of risk and fragility. Our criteria of truth and legitimacy need a dialogical dimension rooted in history. We have to ensure that both our horizon of future expectations opened up by our radical democratic imaginary and its validation are articulated on the basis of thinking about history as historicality, the future-being-affected-by-the-past. In that sense, our anticipations would be conditioned by a ‘fusion of horizons’ rather than a multitude of distinct, incommensurable ones. (Ricoeur 1998, 220) In this fusion of horizons the historical past, present and future are bound together in a form of dialectics. It is our task to keep this dialectics alive by preserving the tension between the radical democratic and neoliberal imaginaries. Perhaps then we could come closer to the realization that the utmost significance of our radical reimagining of democratic politics is one of an intrinsically political essence. Perhaps then we could speak of politics as always open and unfinished; we could speak with Ricoeur (1986, 179) of politics as ‘not a descriptive concept but a polemical concept provided by the dialectics between utopia and ideology.’ Notes 1 In botany, for example, ‘radical leaves’ are called those leaves arising from their roots or crowns. In linguistics, the adjective ‘radical’ is even used to connote being a root (i.e. radical form). 2 Yet, this is not to suggest that such a lexical intervention could reveal any originary meanings or unimpaired strengths of the word. Instead, we refer to the literal senses of ‘radical’ not as the origins of the word, but as the results of its usage having become 20 customary and lexicalized. Following Ricoeur (1997, 290, 291), our reference to the literal sense of the word ‘radical’ neither involves a conflation of the literal with the originary, nor implies that the word possesses in itself ‘a proper, i.e. primitive, natural, original (etymon) meaning’; because literal ‘does not mean proper in the sense of originary, but simply current, ‘usual’.’ 3 Interestingly enough, Ρ π is the title of the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Greece. 4 Although the present paper draws almost exclusively on Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of imagination, its reflections on the social imaginary are also influenced by Castoriadis’ respective work (1998). 5 This choice is crucial in appreciating Ricoeur’s overall approach to how the unmasking of ideology is possible, as well as his own treatment of ideology per se. Here, we would concur with Terry Eagleton’s assertion (1992, 109) that the ideological function of Mannheim’s ‘sociology of knowledge’ is in fact ‘to defuse the whole Marxist conception of ideology, replacing it with the less embattled, contentious conception of a ‘world view’.’ Indeed, such a reading of ideology may repress the Marxist class-related connotations of the concept. In both Ricoeur’s and Mannheim’s critiques of ideology the notion is treated more as a form of socially constructed world view, than as a system of ideas solely relating to the interests of the bourgeoisie. It might be also the case that, as Eagleton again has noted (2000, 194), the drift of Mannheim’s work comes to downplay concepts of mystification, rationalization, legitimation and the power-function of ideas ‘in the name of some synoptic survey of the evolution of forms of historical consciousness’, thus returning ideology to its pre-Marxist conceptualization. Yet, this could hardly be the case with Ricoeur’s own account due to the centrality not only of the distorting but also of the rationalising, legitimating, power-related and mystificatory manifestations of ideology in his analysis. 6 ‘The social structure and the State are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they may appear [erscheinen] in their own or other people’s imagination [Vorstellung], but as they really are [wirklich]; i.e. as they operate [wirken], produce materially, and hence as they work under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will.’ (Marx and Engels 1970, 46-47). 7 This is not to suggest, of course, that there exists a political reality the meaning of which is autonomous, unrelated to the imaginary that represents and symbolically mediates it. 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