Does antagonism precede agonism in challenging neoliberalism: The Gezi resistance in Turkey

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F25940082%3A_____%2F14%3AN0000001" target="_blank" >RIV/25940082:_____/14:N0000001 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://acpo.vedeckecasopisy.cz/publicFiles/00786.pdf" target="_blank" >https://acpo.vedeckecasopisy.cz/publicFiles/00786.pdf</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Does antagonism precede agonism in challenging neoliberalism: The Gezi resistance in Turkey

Original language description

Mouffe argues that the effective way of challenging the power relations in liberal democratic capitalism is to embrace agonism, not antagonism. That is, the left should acknowledge the contingent character of the hegemonic configurations in liberal democracies, and in order to put liberty and equality into practice, it should similarly adopt hegemonic tactics. Such tactics include the disarticulation of existing practices as well as the creation of new discourses and institutions. Yet, by stating that ‘the task of democracy is to transform the antagonism into agonism,’ Mouffe also implies that antagonism should precede agonism and thus contradicts her very position of how to challenge the neoliberal order. Indeed, the anti-neoliberal movements that occurred in Latin American countries in the 1990s as well as in New York, Greece, Spain, and elsewhere during the occupy movement in 2010s show that without the emergence of antagonism, there is no room for the development of democracy in an agonistic way. In defense of this argument, this article conducts a within case research in Turkey in order to attain a deeper analysis of how the rise of a social movement can transform the conflicts and power relationships in neoliberalism from being hidden to being visible: The social movement in Turkey helped in the discursive construction of a left-wing identity that represented ‘everything but the repressive and authoritarian government’ and thus acted as the neoliberal government’s constitutive other. Prior to the appearance of the social movement, yet, the hegemonic articulations of the neoliberal order prevented agonistic politics from arising in the first place. This article thus argues that the agonistic approach of democracy can only emerge following an open antagonistic construction of we/they relation in a neoliberal order.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_ost - Miscellaneous article in a specialist periodical

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50601 - Political science

Project

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Continuities

N - Vyzkumna aktivita podporovana z neverejnych zdroju

Publication year

2014

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Acta Politologica

ISSN

1804-1302

e-ISSN

1803-8220

Volume of the periodical

6

Issue of the periodical within the volume

3

Country of publishing house

CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC

Number of pages

17

Pages from-to

326-342

UT code for WoS article

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EID of the result in the Scopus database

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