Of citizens and plebeians: Postnational political figures in Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Rancière

• Date: 01 September 2019
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/eulj.12344

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Of citizens and plebeians: Postnational political

figures in Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Rancière

Matthias Flatscher* | Sergej Seitz*

Abstract

This paper focuses on Habermas's notion of cosmopolitan democracy. Reconfiguring the basic ideas

of democracy in postnational terms is inevitable if social and political integration is to succeed on a

supranational level. In exploring Habermas's ideas, we draw on Rancière, whose thought stands in a

complex relationship to Habermas. On the one hand, Rancière largely shares Habermas's diagnosis

of the present. Both bemoan the erosion of the political caused by post-democracy and censure the

rise of right-wing extremism in Western societies. On the other hand, and in contrast to Habermas,

Rancière holds that these problems should be addressed not primarily by strengthening political

institutions and reaching a consensus between conflicting parties, but by rethinking conflict and

resistance. We show that Habermas's and Rancière's propositions can be productively brought in

dialogue by focusing on the paradigmatic types of political subjectivity involved in their accounts:

the citizen (Habermas) and the plebeian (Rancière).

1|INTRODUCTION

Even more than twenty years after its first publication, Jürgen Habermas's The Postnational Constellation

1

may

deepen our understanding of the contemporary political situation. His diagnosis of the ramifications of globalisation

at the end of the 1990s helps us grasp today's many challenges: the rule of neoliberalism not only involves a danger-

ous rejection of political creative power, but also gives rise to processes of social de-solidarisation and a resurgence

of nationalistic policies; right-wing populism, xenophobia, and antisemitism corrode democratic institutions and do

their part to increase the wealth gap between the Global North and South. Crucially, however, Habermas's reflec-

tions offer more than a thorough analysis of problems that have only become more prominent over the last two

decades. They also indicate how we might tackle them. It is necessary, so Habermas argues, that we sever the tenets

of democracy—liberty, equality, solidarity and popular sovereignty—from the nation-state and rethink them in post-

national terms. Thus, rather than just defensively preserving social and liberal achievements, critical theory needs to

view these threats to democracy as challenges that force us to rethink it.

*

University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

1

J. Habermas, The Postnational Constellation (MIT Press, 2001).

Received: 11 September 2019 Accepted: 14 September 2019

DOI: 10.1111/eulj.12344

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which

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modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2019 The Authors. European Law Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

502 Eur Law J. 2019;25:502–507.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/eulj