Antagonism forever. On conservative left-wing philosophy in Mouffe,Žižek,and Kristeva

Abstract

Chantal Mouffe, Slavoj Žižek, and Julia Kristeva contribute in a problematic manner to the ontologizing of political antagonisms and hence also to the cementing of unfreedom. While showing how contradictions are not possible to be sublated in societal unities, all three of them disregard the effect on the other end of the question: if antagonisms or revolts are found to be permanent, then problems which antagonisms contain, or which revolts address, become permanent as well. In contrast, Theodor W. Adornos’ understanding of societal antagonisms is that while social contradictions point towards the falsity of the whole and therefore must be acknowledged critically, they should not be considered unhistorical and permanent. This article aims at showing how Mouffe, Žižek and Kristeva end up in essentializing antagonisms and offers Adorno’s notion of antagonism as an alternative.

I. Introduction

The intentions may be good and sincerely critical, yet the consequences are unfortunate and problematic. In their theories, Chantal Mouffe, Slavoj Žižek, and Julia Kristeva alike, so I argue, contribute (unintentionally, as it seems) to the ontologizing of political antagonisms and hence also to the fortifying of unfreedom. If the conflictual and antagonistic dimensions of modern Western societies intricately are connected to different forms of social inequalities and hierarchies, then these conflictual dimensions should not be taken as an essential and basic feature of society. They should rather be critiqued fundamentally, even though the political struggles of marginalized social groups are highly just. But while importantly showing how contradictions of various kinds are not possible to sublate or level entirely in societal unities, all three of them disregard the effect on the other end of the question: if antagonisms or revolts are found to be ineradicable and permanent, then the problems which societal conflicts contain, or which revolts address (even if they may vary), become permanent as well. Thus, by way of romanticizing societal conflictuality, their theories end up in conservatism. The theoreticians have the problem in common that they are critiquing capitalism in different ways (which arguably is inseparable from the critique of class society) but abandon the perspective of entirely dissolving societal antagonisms, that is, they criticize class society but remodel class differences into social invariants.

In contrast, Theodor W. Adornos’ understanding of societal antagonisms is that while contradictions crucially point towards the falsity of the whole and therefore must be acknowledged critically, they should not be viewed as an endpoint or be considered unhistorical. The critical significance of antagonisms as both being a symptom of and unmasking oppressive unities does not contain the possibility to essentialize them. They are at best a visible symptom of a problem, not its solution. In the following, I will show how Mouffe, Žižek, and Kristeva end up in this difficulty, and I will subsequently offer Adorno’s notion of antagonism as an alternative.

Ultimately, the following argument can be viewed as a contribution to the questioning of the possibility to ontologize the political. Such ontologizing is, for instance, represented in the commentary literature by Ricardo Camargo, who defends Žižek’s account of a constitutive and ontological antagonism fundamentally informing the political. ¹ In the case of Mouffe, Nikolai Roskamm underlines her understanding of the political as an “ontological category.” ² And lastly, regarding Kristeva, the normative claim of the need for a permanency of revolt is accentuated by Surti Singh. ³ Even if the aim is to strengthen an open and unrestrained character of the political, the risks of political ontology consist precisely in turning the political into an endless struggle: a fight that can never be won. And this makes the project backfire: openness turns into a cage.

II. Mouffe: Antagonism cemented in agonism

The ambition in Mouffe’s book On the Political (2005) is to formulate a concept of the political which warns both of neglecting societal contradictions and of letting them evolve into forms of unreasonable political hostilities. According to Mouffe, (potential) societal antagonisms must be transformed into politically manageable and agonistic forms of politics. She thus opposes the perspective that we have entered a certain post-political situation after the fall of Communism, which allegedly is beyond opposing collective identities and social antagonisms. But precisely in her attempt—by way of turning a disarmed Carl Schmitt against Jürgen Habermas and liberalism—to simultaneously acknowledge societal antagonisms and propose a transformation of them into a domesticated political form of agonism, Mouffe arguably eternalizes social conflicts as well as the societal hierarchies they lead to. Even if Mouffe thinks of antagonisms as not necessarily actualized, but potentially antagonistic and hopefully tamed agonistically, the conflicts of interest at the core of social relations are ineradicable. But it is not entirely clear whether antagonisms are ineradicable ⁴ (on an ontological level) or rather should be seen as a result (on an ontic level), since the political “we/they relation,” as Mouffe states, “can become antagonistic.” ⁵

Nevertheless, one can conclude that capitalist power relations remain latent in Mouffe’s conception of the political, regardless of whether they are potentially antagonistic or have become an actualized antagonism. This also goes for democratic and agonistic struggles, which, as taken to be a form of endpoint, ultimately are unable to transcend class structures. Is it even the case that Mouffe is safeguarding them? This is significant, because while class conflicts do not cover all forms of societal contradictions for Mouffe, ⁶ the parameter of class is substantial. ⁷ But even though trying to leave the more uncompromising duality between friend and enemy behind, and instead choosing the label of adversary, the inherent hierarchies produced through society and potentially taking the shape of antagonisms, remain fundamentally unsolved in the shape of agonisms. The issues at stake in political conflicts can hereby only be addressed shallowly, never at their core. While contrasting her model of a “conflictual consensus” ⁸ against Habermasian forms of political deliberation, she seemingly both is closer to Habermas than expected and turn societal conflicts into an essential dimension of human life.

Mouffe’s central claim in respect of my question is that of “the ineradicability of antagonism,” ⁹ denoting “the dimension of antagonism which” she takes “to be constitutive of human societies.” ¹⁰ And regarding both Ernesto Laclau and Mouffe, Camargo concludes: “antagonism would be the witness of the impossible final suture of society.” ¹¹ And Mouffe’s criticism towards liberalism thus points at its highly questionable “negation of the ineradicable character of antagonism.” ¹² This problem comes from liberalism being “unable to adequately grasp the pluralistic nature of the social world, with the conflicts that pluralism entails; conflicts for which no rational solution could ever exist.” ¹³ But as important as it is to not cover up societal conflicts, to say that it is “an illusion to believe in the advent of a society from which antagonism would have been eradicated” is also to claim that the societal conflicts which produce phenomenon such as gender inequality, economic injustice and ethnic hegemonies, are essential to human life. Regardless how difficult it would be to overcome such problems, to claim their “undecidability” ¹⁴ is something else (and arguably counterproductive).

And if we would follow Mouffe’s vision of agonisms, what kind of scenario are we to imagine? A situation where the undecidable conflict between classes is to be acknowledged but that the class parties still are willing to negotiate in agonistic forms? Mouffe writes:

Conflict, in order to be accepted as legitimate, needs to take a form that does not destroy the political association. This means that some kind of common bond must exist between the parties in conflict, so that they will not treat their opponents as enemies to be eradicated, seeing their demands as illegitimate, which is precisely what happens with the antagonistic friend/enemy relation. However, the opponents cannot be seen simply as competitors whose interests can be dealt with through mere negotiation, or reconciled through deliberation, because in that case the antagonistic element would simply have been eliminated. If we want to acknowledge on one side the permanence of the antagonistic dimension of the conflict, while on the other side allowing for the possibility of its ‘taming’, we need to envisage a third type of relation. This is the type of relation which I have proposed to call ‘agonism.’ ¹⁵

Yet, if the demands of the political positions are to be considered legitimate in this tamed and agonistic form of conflict, then many things may happen, but the end of class oppression as such could not even be thematized. And would a debate between class enemies be anything else than a farce, for instance between hedge fund owners and workers? Thus, Roskamm’s observation seems reasonable, namely that the antagonisms disappear in Mouffe’s concept of agonism, ¹⁶ and one can therefore conclude that the latter is unable to account for them. Even if the potential antagonisms and their political content are at stake in the democratic struggles of agonism, and therefore this non-uniform understanding of the political is essential for Mouffe, this form of agonism seems unable to even address the political questions at their core level. The agonistic method of political engagement arguably impacts the level of content: just as tamed as the discussion becomes, the thematization of political conflict becomes shallow. Additionally (and symptomatically), Mouffe underlines the need to exclude those fractions not agreeing on the offered agonistic platform for negotiation:

The pluralism that I advocate requires discriminating between demands which are to be accepted as part of the agonistic debate and those which are to be excluded. A democratic society cannot treat those who put its basic institutions into question as legitimate adversaries. The agonistic approach does not pretend to encompass all differences and to overcome all forms of exclusions. ¹⁷

Mouffe’s model therefore runs the risk of being unable to account for the entire conflict-spectrum of modern society, thus also dismissing antagonisms. Hereby not only authoritarian threats are prevented, but all radically critical positions. And it remains unclear how severe the antagonistic conflicts are which Mouffe’s conceptuality can master. Can the agonism only shelter those forms of antagonism which are not acute and permit domestication, and not others? To sum up, Mouffe’s theory simultaneously turns antagonisms into something permanent and is unable to deal with the harshest social conflicts. The antagonisms, and the hierarchies connected to them, are hypostasized instead of fought.

III. Žižek: The inescapable antagonism

In The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Žižek constructs his concept of social antagonism, on the one hand, via psychoanalysis, especially founding his political theory on Lacan’s thinking, and, on the other hand, on a controversial reinterpretation of Hegel’s thought. And most importantly in this context, he formulates a negative judgment regarding the possibility of sublating social antagonisms, but rather brings forth the argument that social antagonisms are impossible to supersede. In line with this, Žižek claims that psychoanalysis “presents the real break with essentialist logic,” ¹⁸ and goes deeper than a “post-Marxism” which is unable to grasp the hidden and unsolvable kernel or cause, which lies behind all social conflicts. ¹⁹ In addition, Žižek recruits Hegel as an ally in his quest by way of a significant re-reading of his work.

In this context, Žižek claims “that the most consistent model of such an acknowledgement of antagonism is offered by Hegelian dialectics: far from being a story of its progressive overcoming, dialectics is for Hegel a systematic notation of the failure of all such attempts – ‘absolute knowledge’ denotes a subjective position which finally accepts ‘contradiction’ as an internal condition of every identity.” ²⁰ This is to say that Hegel just wanted to show how his project, which explicitly claims to achieve absolute knowledge, was indeed impossible. For Žižek, in Hegel’s philosophy the human comes forth as an “animal” burdened with and “extorted by an insatiable parasite (reason, logos, language).” ²¹ Through reason itself, that is, the human is forever engulfed in a never-ending fight to get rid of this a certain inherent contradiction which it cannot defeat. Žižek continues:

In this perspective, the ‘death drive’, this dimension of radical negativity, cannot be reduced to an expression of alienated social conditions, it defines la condition humaine as such: there is no solution, no escape from it; the thing to do is not to ‘overcome’, to ‘abolish’ it, but to come to terms with it, to learn to recognize it in its terrifying dimension and then, on the basis of this fundamental recognition, to try to articulate a modus vivendi with it. ²²

Žižek thus maintains that the human cannot “overcome” this inherent negativity, and this assertion also spills over into the question of the cultural and social. For Žižek, culture per definition incorporates the attempt to “abolish” this inner “traumatic kernel,” but it fails to do so, which is positive since this hinders totalitarian projects to control society: “All ‘culture’ is in a way a reaction-formation, an attempt to limit, canalize – to cultivate this imbalance, this traumatic kernel, this radical antagonism through which man cuts his umbilical cord with nature, with animal homeostasis. It is not only that the aim is no longer to abolish this drive antagonism, but the aspiration to abolish it is precisely the source of totalitarian temptation: the greatest mass murders and holocausts have always been perpetrated in the name of man as harmonious being, of a New Man without antagonistic tension.” ²³ In this light, for Žižek, it becomes highly important to maintain and acknowledge the antagonistic character of society and let no one mispresent it in harmonious disguises. And for Camargo, this will precisely defend “the notion of the political as a constitutive antagonism” ²⁴ as well as “prevent politics from becoming an absolute totality.” ²⁵ But does this not leave us with the unfortunate choice between an ontological antagonism (class oppression) and totalitarianism?

Žižek arrives at the conclusion that “antagonism is precisely such an impossible kernel, a certain limit which is in itself nothing; it is only to be constructed retroactively, from a series of its effects, as the traumatic point which escapes them; it prevents a closure of the social field.” ²⁶ And accordingly, the “‘class struggle’ is present only in its effects, in the fact that every attempt to totalize the social field, to assign to social phenomena a definite place in the social structure, is always doomed to failure.” ²⁷ Therefore, an upheaval of class society is “doomed to failure” and antagonism is “something that cannot be negated.” ²⁸ Žižek’s conception hereby contains the questionable combination of a fundamental capitalism critique and the maintaining of social antagonism, based on the fundamental negativity inherent in sociality. Antagonism is thus unsolvable both on an ontological and as emerging on a societal level. In favor, arguably, of capitalist hegemony, Žižek models this negativity into an ontological principle, while still underlining the importance of the class question. ²⁹ And interestingly, Žižek turns to Adorno’s understanding of “the antagonistic character of society” to underpin his argument:

Adorno starts from the fact that today it is not possible to formulate one appropriate definition of Society: as soon as we set to work, a number of opposing, mutually excluding determinations present themselves: on the one hand those which lay stress upon Society as an organic whole encompassing individuals; on the other those which conceive Society as a bond, a kind of contract between atomized individuals - in short, we find ourselves caught in the opposition between ‘organicism’ and ‘individualism.’ ³⁰

It is correct that Adorno points at the difficulty inherent in the attempts to conceptualize society, but he does not stop at an ahistorical and conservative position like Žižek’s. We cannot lose sight of the fundamental motive of Marxian philosophy, that is, the need to overcome class society once entirely. And it would be problematic for every capitalist critique to let go of this aim: critique of capitalism and critique of class society are inseparable.

In line with this, Andrew Robinson and Simon Tormey criticize Žižek in a similar way, writing that his work is “the development of an (…) politically reactionary position, of the sort Marx himself was critical of.” ³¹ They continue: “Žižek similarly denounces equality as both a ‘fantasy’ and a reaffirmation of capitalist ideology. He also praises Hegel, against Marx, for locating alienation ontologically rather than socio-historically.” ³² In sum, “Žižek’s concept of class struggle is (…) a reference to an allegedly irreducible antagonism between people.” ³³ When the political problem of antagonisms is formulated in ontological terms, political oppression is being reframed as something which one must accept. Yet, the rather retrospective and traditional viewpoint of Robinson and Tormey is unsatisfactory as well, although it seems important to dissolve the doubtful alliance of Žižek and Marx.

IV. Kristeva: The need for permanent revolt

Kristeva offers a theory of revolt, which in different shapes—such as political, aesthetical, and psychological—plays a significant critical part in modern societies. Only by way of engaging in different revolting activities can freedom and happiness be achieved. But Kristeva’ argument about the societal role of revolt differs from Mouffe’s and Žižek’s understandings of ontological antagonisms in the way that she does not focus on the existence of an undecidable and everlasting social conflict, but rather makes a normative claim about a need for permanent revolts, which are essential both for the individual and society. For Kristeva, the existence of revolt is not something we can rely on, but rather a phenomenon we must cherish. But importantly, the “political domain must be displaced from the public to the intimate, and radicality is a negativity of movement and change, a heterogeneity of drive, body, language, and meaning.” ³⁴ And this contains replacing “the analysis of capitalism and class struggle with an affirmation of the workings of the unconscious.” ³⁵ The social conflicts are still urgent, but “the important conflicts do not take place in the social sphere, but rather in the subject itself, which will interiorise these conflicts. The subject will present itself as a bundle of conflicts, of desires and drives, and social relations as well as personal ones will create an ecstatic form of subjectivity where conflicts of class as well as conflicts in relation to more intimate objects of desire will play themselves out.” ³⁶ The important connection to Mouffe and Žižek is precisely the permanent character of political friction which she is stressing: “revolt, as I understand it – psychic revolt, analytic revolt, artistic revolt – refers to a state of permanent questioning, of transformation, change, an endless probing of appearances.” But, as she continues, the “history of political revolts shows that the process of questioning has ceased.” ³⁷ An important reason for this is, according to Kristeva, that the revolt has been betrayed in the aftermath of the big revolutions, for instance, the French and Russian ones. ³⁸

In The Sense and Non-sense of Revolt (1996)—and as part of her ambition “to evoke the current political state and the lack of revolt that characterizes it ³⁹ ”—Kristeva speaks of the current revolt-undermining society as “the society of the image, or of the spectacle” which also can be described as a “power vacuum” and “anarchy,” essentially comprising of a double character of being “normalizing” and “falsifiable.” The “new world order normalizes and corrupts” and is as oppressive as it is ungraspable, and thus, for Kristeva, is beyond fascism and totalitarianism. ⁴⁰ But even if the society seems to have an ability to “exclude the possibility” of revolt, ⁴¹ it is in this “depressing” ⁴² context that the importance and possibility of revolt resides. With the words of Sarah F. Hansen and Rebecca Tuvel, this situation “requires restoring our capacity for revolt and reinvigorating humanism and humanistic questioning.” ⁴³

Although it is important for Kristeva to theorize the issue of revolt in relation to a certain point in time, the need for revolt seemingly receives an ahistorical character. While connecting to the European critical philosophical tradition spanning from Descartes and onwards as a resource to be continued precisely with the aim to reinforce and find new forms for a “Culture of revolt,” ⁴⁴ Kristeva turns revolt into an essential human trait and writes that “happiness exists only at the price of a revolt.” ⁴⁵ She continues:

None of us has pleasure without confronting an obstacle, prohibition, authority, or law that allows us to realize ourselves as autonomous and free. The revolt revealed to accompany the private experience of happiness is an integral part of the pleasure principle. ⁴⁶

This almost classical Hegelian line of thought, pointing towards the need for productive negativity, and the underlining of the necessity of authority for the possibility to “keep our inner lives alive” ⁴⁷ through revolt, appears to be problematic. Not least because we are led to view this as a way to prevent societal turmoil: “When the excluded have no culture of revolt and must content themselves with regressive ideologies, with shows and entertainments that far from satisfy the demand of pleasure, they become rioters.” ⁴⁸ This brings Kristeva close to Mouffe since both end up in neglecting uncompromising forms of the political. If Kristeva seeks to examine “the necessity of a culture of revolt in a society that is alive and developing, not stagnating,” ⁴⁹ then she also risks turning revolt into a factor which productively stabilizes society.

As highlighted by, for instance both Bert Olivier (2007) and Michelle Boulous Walker (2022), the notion of revolt in Kristeva contains both the aspects of necessity and permanency. And in her text “New Forms of Revolt” (2014), Kristeva writes that in “contrast with certainties and beliefs, permanent revolt is this questioning of the self, of everything and of nothingness, which no longer seems to have any place to occur.” ⁵⁰ And parallelly to the “permanence of contradiction,” ⁵¹ however, threatened, it is “necessary to have men and women who know how to pass on and share a language of revolt.” ⁵² In a text with the same title (from 2017), Kristeva writes that the work of revolt, is, on the one hand, “endless,” “infinite,” and contains a “permanent questioning,” and what is at stake is, on the other hand, “human identity in general.” ⁵³ Even though warning revolt from being lured by society—“could it just be a trick played on us so that the culture of spectacle can last longer?” ⁵⁴ —Kristeva thus holds on to these dialectical and obstacle-dependent (and arguably Hegelian) notions of revolt and happiness.

In sum, Kristeva turns revolt into a questionable normative concept and into an essential part of human life and psychology. The flipside of this is that problematic dimensions (i.e., authoritarian, and oppressing structures) in society, although changing in character, are claimed to be crucial for human development. But hereby revolt risks turning into a welcomed ally to authoritarian or other more subtler forms of power, since it will never attack them at their core.

V. Adorno: The finite antagonism

In contrast to the theories above, I will now present Adorno’s concept of social antagonism, as being part of his negative dialectics. In Negative Dialectics (1966)—which contains Adorno’s quest to protect and mobilize what he calls the non-identical against the subsuming and oppressing principle of identity both epistemologically and politically—, he explicitly and critically holds on to the notion of social antagonisms as an indicator of the oppressive character of modern society. The conflict between the leveling identity of society and its counterparts, such as non-identical individuality, must be acknowledged, and in this sense, he is close to Mouffe, Žižek, and Kristeva. But Adorno goes further than this by way of claiming social antagonisms to be historical and not permanent features of society and human life. Thus, and crucially, social contradictions must not be hypostasized as essentials, and Adorno warns against turning the critical dimension of the non-identical into a positive principle within this endeavor, since this would only replace one ruler with another. The non-identical relation between the common and the singular of society cannot be turned into an invariant. And here a criticism against Mouffe, Žižek, and Kristeva can be developed.

In more abstract terms, Adorno insists on that a critique of social identity and its ontological structures should not aim at constructing alternative “principles” to put in the place of identity or ontology. For instance, if one criticizes a problematic form of ontology, this should not be substituted by another form of ontology: “In criticizing ontology we do not aim at another ontology, not even at one of being nonontological. If that were our purpose we would be merely positing another downright ‘first’ not absolute identity, this time, not the concept, not Being, but nonidentity, facticity, entity. We would be hypostatizing the concept of nonconceptuality and thus acting counter to its meaning.” ⁵⁵ Against this background, Adorno subsequently turns against all forms of essentializing antagonism as a counterforce against the totalizing principle of identity. Rather we need to get rid of both the societal identity-principle, which turns every individual into a mere example of socioeconomic rules, and the societal antagonism, that is, class conflict, which the identity principle reproduces precisely while trying to curb it: “It is precisely the insatiable identity principle that perpetuates antagonism by suppressing contradiction. What tolerates nothing that is not like itself thwarts the reconcilement for which it mistakes itself. The violence of equality-mongering reproduces the contradiction it eliminates.” ⁵⁶ A possible reconciliation lies beyond antagonism and identity.

In the text on “Society” (1965), which is central in this respect, Adorno addresses the question of what role antagonisms play in modern societies:

The process of increasing social rationalization, of universal extension of the market system, is not something that takes place beyond the specific social conflicts and antagonisms, or in spite of them. It works through those antagonisms themselves, the latter, at the same time tearing society apart in the process. For in the institution of exchange there is created and reproduced that antagonism which could at any time bring organized society to ultimate catastrophe end destroy it. ⁵⁷

Antagonisms thus are a crucial and constitutive element of modern societies, but which is not to say that they are a stable or stabilizing factor, rather, they stand for the threat of ripping society into pieces. Modern societies, that is, not all possible forms of human social existence, are built upon exploitation, power, and alienation. But most importantly, for Adorno, societal antagonisms are historical, and hence finite, and they could perish. Adorno writes in Negative Dialectics:

It is not idle to speculate whether antagonism was inherited in the origin of human society as a principle of homo homini lupus, a piece of prolonged natural history, or whether it evolved θέσει – and whether, even if evolved, it followed from the necessities of the survival of the species and not contingently, as it were, from archaic arbitrary acts of seizing power. With that, of course, the construction of the world spirit would fall apart. The historic universal, the logic of things that is compacted in the necessity of the overall trend, would rest on something accidental, on something extraneous to it; it need not have been. ⁵⁸

Accordingly, in a joint text with the title “Remarks on social conflict today” (1968), Adorno and Ursula Jaerisch criticize certain social theories which, while acknowledging social conflicts, also turn them into societal invariants. But for Adorno and Jaerisch, this hides the historical character of antagonisms, and they problematize, for instance, how Ralf Dahrendorf is hypostasizing the social structures which produce conflicts. In addition, they question the concept of social conflict as such since it has the tendency to divert from its horrendous character. And by doing this, such theory counteracts a critical theory of society. ⁵⁹ This hypostasis of social conflicts and the social structures behind them also occurs in the case of Mouffe.

In line with this it is not enough to only acknowledge social conflicts, they must be attacked in depth. In the words of Afshar, “Adorno pointed out, even if the combination of maximal efficiency and minimal social conflict proved to have a successful outcome, the structural wounds of society would not be healed; they would merely be plastered over. The threat of disintegration, each day sharper in our societies, cannot be responded to with the neutralization of structural contradictions anymore.” ⁶⁰ Therefore, “the conflict within the liberal democracy leads to the simple reproduction of the same (…), since it always expresses and reproduces the fundamental antagonism in the capitalist society.” ⁶¹ Instead, with Bonefeld’s words, the “reality in which the social individuals move day in and day out has no invariant character, that is, something which exists independently from them.” ⁶² Hence, it is not out of reach for them.

Thus, from Adorno’s perspective, it is crucial to address the theme of social antagonisms in an absolutely non-accepting way. While not hiding them as long as they exist, antagonisms must be overcome, not concealed and domesticated. And according to Afshar, Adorno “argues that, from a critical standpoint, the antagonistic social structure leads to the possibility of society tearing itself apart and, for that reason, must be overcome. That is to say that the antagonistic character is not essential to sociability in general.” ⁶³ And if it could have happened otherwise, then the current state of society can in principle be changed, regardless how difficult this may be:

Only if things might have gone differently; if the totality is recognized as a socially necessary semblance, as the hypostasis of the universal pressed out of individual human beings; if its claim to be absolute is broken –only then will a critical social consciousness retain its freedom to think that things might be different some day. ⁶⁴

Society could be different someday, and this change includes the end of antagonism. Adorno states, therefore, that “dialectics is the ontology of the wrong state of things. The right state of things would be free of it: neither a system nor a contradiction.” ⁶⁵ As long as we have contradictions in the shape of societal antagonisms, we have not achieved freedom. Adorno would agree that it is crucial to never hide societal antagonisms as long as they are predominant, but they are at the same time an expression of a political state of inequality. For Adorno, dialectical thinking makes critically visible the character of “the wrong state of things,” but its aim is ultimately to point beyond dialectical confrontations. This includes criticizing the self-aggrandizement of the subject and transcending “the fallacy of constitutive subjectivity.” ⁶⁶ Adorno would defend the non-identical against the (subjectivistic) identity principle to the death, but the non-identical will not be entirely free until it’s released from this negative relation to identity and to itself (it lacks a positive determination). Adorno writes:

Dialectics unfolds the difference between the particular and the universal, dictated by the universal. As the subject-object dichotomy is brought to mind it becomes inescapable for the subject, furrowing whatever the subject thinks, even objectively – but it would come to an end in reconcilement. Reconcilement would release the nonidentical, would rid it of coercion, including spiritualized coercion; it would open the road to the multiplicity of different things and strip dialectics of its power over them. ⁶⁷

We have, for now, no clue about how to achieve this ‘post-dialectical’ scenario, but romanticizing societal conflictuality is nevertheless the wrong path forward. With the words of Bonefeld: “class struggle is not a positive category. (…) The critique of class society finds its positive resolution only in the classless society, not in a ‘fairer’ class society.” ⁶⁸ Antagonisms should never be covered up as long as they exist, rather the ultimate goal must be for them to truly perish.

VI. Conclusion

To summarize: Mouffe, Žižek, and Kristeva share a common problem, which consists in that the hierarchies and inequalities which social conflicts and antagonisms contain, and those problems which revolts turn against, respectively, remain untouched in their foundation. And this is, in addition, presented as a critical necessity: the antagonisms and revolts ensure that the society will not be able to become closed in totalitarian ways. There can never be a society without antagonism (Mouffe and Žižek) and there should never be a society without revolt (Kristeva), which also in turn legitimizes authority as a needed target for revolt and as a steppingstone for personal development. In contrast, Adorno’s critical but significantly historical account of modern bourgeois society is mastering the balancing act of both critically highlighting and problematizing societal antagonisms and the problem they incorporate on the one hand and envisioning the need for overcoming them on the other hand. For sure, Adorno as well warned for closed political and social structures, but for him this does not speak in favor of conserving social antagonisms or dressing them up in ontological terms as a defense against totalitarianism and other forms of power. For him, real freedom can only be achieved by way of transcending the dialectics of antagonism, not by holding on to societal conflictuality, even though such a scenario of freedom is very vulnerable to new forms of oppression, especially if the dialectical form of criticality and its making visible of power is abandoned.