RECOGNIZING THE ANTAGONISMS

Please Don’t Try to Argue Your Way Out of This

Conflict is part of life, and part of congregational life as well. In fact, conflict, the way it is walked through, shapes the very character of congregations. For pastors, church leaders of any kind, how you understand a congregation’s social dynamics shapes the way you lead your congregation in conflict, engaging injustices, and cultivating the Spirit’s work among you. This in turn shapes your congregations.

In this regard, I’ve learned much from political theorist Chantal Mouffe. A post-Marxist, known to elicit some controversy, she writes on the theoretical foundations of democracy. With words like antagonism, agonism, hegemony, dialectic, she’s taught me a bit on how social groups work, form and relate to one another. Most of all, she’s taught me the limits of rational deliberation in politics. Leaders cannot merely argue rationally their congregations out of conflict. Read what follows and see what you think. The two books in the picture are two of her more accessible works. I’ll be drawing from them.

Mouffe’s Three Models of Democratic Politics

Mouffe describes three models of democratic politics: The Aggregative, the Deliberative, and her own proposal, the Agonistic. The Aggregative model sees the social world in economic terms. For Aggregatives, the social is driven by the self-interests of persons and the organization of these interests by/within markets. Democracy, in other words, is determined by (so-called) market-based capitalism. The Deliberative model sees the social world as a collective deliberation conducted rationally and fairly among free and equal individuals. Democracy requires an ethics of coming together on agreed terms for relational deliberation. Think Habermas and his “ideal speech situation” or Rawls’ “original position.” In this world, we can come together, if we just do deliberation right according to ethical guidelines (rules).

For Mouffe, these two political models of conflict resolution are deeply flawed. They ignore a core reality of the way social groups work: “collective identities” are formed via exclusion, the creation of an enemy (she’s playing on Carl Schmitt here). This antagonistic dimension is inherent to all human societies. It is what drives “the political.” And in this collective process, the “passions” of individuals are shaped into identity, the affects of which shape the very constitution of individual selves (Agonistics, p.6). The very identity and passion of individuals is woven into the ideological construction of reality. And so it is impossible to establish a consensus merely on rational terms. You cannot argue your way to consensus.

She proposes instead an agonistic model of society which distinguishes between antagonism and agonism. For Mouffe, the agonistic model moves people from (Schmitt’s) friend/enemy distinction to a distinction of “adversaries.” The friend/enemy distinction, a negation which cannot be overcome dialectically, is reimagined into a relation of adversaries that accepts a set of rules which organizes conflict differently. Such an “Agonistic” model still recognizes the role of passions in the creation of the collective identities, (Agonistics 139), still recognizes the power of groups to form social identities, still even recognizes the role of enemy in forming a political position, but we are able to somehow live alongside one another within groups in an "agonistic pluralism.” Our ways of life and ways of thinking and living can now contest one another in ways that each can challenge one another and grow within a pluralism that recognizes groups social identities but in relation to one another. 

There’s Alot to Learn from Mouffe About How We Lead Congregations?

I take Mouffe’s theory to be atheistic. That is, I read her as explaining how social groups work when God is not in the picture. Her theory assumes Jesus to be irrelevant (never mentioned) to the way social realities form. She’s not doing (or interested in doing) political theology in any way. Nonetheless, Mouffe’s analysis can inform us on how the world works socially, when God is excluded, and what new possibilities open for politics when God in Christ comes into our social worlds. So I learn from her in two ways. How groups work without God. And what lacks in these groups workings that God in Christ changes when He enters our social worlds. Here’s a few things I learn from her.

1.)   Conflict is generative. Mouffe, along with other Marxist/post-Marxist political theorists, show how conflict is a permanent feature of social reality. It is what moves politics forward. It is part of the dialectic at work within social life (ala Marx/Hegel, etc.).

To see and understand conflictual dynamics in this way changes the way I approach them in my congregation. Conflict is not something to be muzzled, stuffed, and brought under control by power or rational deliberation. Rather, by the Spirit, conflict is generative, the space where God can work, through reconciliation and discernment to take the congregation forward. For “when two or three agree, I (Jesus) am there in the midst, whatever is bound on earth is bound is heaven and what is loosed on earth is loosed in heaven.” (Matt 18:18-20).

Can you as a pastor, leader, see conflict as opportunity for the Spirit to work?

2.) Discern the Antagonism. Mouffe’s description of antagonism helps us see how a conflict can become a “conflict for which there is no rational solution.” When groups form (“collective identities) around positions in a conflict, they can get dug in. There is an “enemy” which drives the forming around of people around a position. And so, for Mouffe, ‘antagonisms’ cannot sustain life together as a democracy. There must be an agreed upon pluralism which allows for these various collectives to live side by side and see each other as adversaries (instead of evemies) within a “agonistic pluralism” where over time a better world results.

Rational arguments won’t resolve antagonisms. Arguing rationally gets us no where. Going on twitter banging away on the irrationality of a position accomplishes nothing. In fact, it makes things worse, as it moves people further into digging into their group against the enemy.

I must confess, however, that for me Mouffe’s solution to the antagonism – agonistic pluralism – is unconvincing? She has been critiqued for advocating solutions in her Agonistic pluralism that she herself critiques deliberative democracy for. Agonistic pluralism seems to require an agreed upon set of transcendent principles to navigate conflict between groups so as to live together just the same as with deliberative democracy and individuals. Furthermore, it’s hard to understand her process for converting the “friend/enemy” relation to a relation of “adversaries”. (read articles of Andrew Knops, Eva Erman, more recently Oliver Eagleton’s piece here.

This is where I see Jesus as the way in which the hold of the friend/enemy distinction is broken. As I’ve argued in The Church of Us vs Them, recognizing the social dynamic of antagonism is helpful for the pastor/leader/Christian. It enables us to refuse to enter into its exclusionary violence, making space for the presence of Christ and reconciliation, in a way not possible in the world of coercive power and hegemony. Through a practice of presence, a submission to one another in the space of His authority, Jesus makes way for politics to be transformed, a space where a truly revolutionary way of life can take shape.

But too often, pastors are caught in the old modernist confidences of the Deliberative approach. We are caught in the confidence of our knowledge and argumentative abilities. Twitter, social media will save the world!! For sure, these activities may accomplish some awarenesses among the open minds, but I suggest, only presence among, listening, discerning, prophetic word, forgiveness and transformation can work in the social spheres for dramatic transformations. This is the gift of Jesus activated in the church.

3.) Third Way? In a chapter entitled “A Politics Without Adversary?” (The Democratic Paradox 2005), Mouffe rejects the possibility of a way through conflict that mitigates the role of the enemy (or adversary). Arguing against political figures of that time, like Tony Blair and other neoliberal politicians of the time, she says we need adversaries, confrontation, collective identities around very differentiated positions to be able to confront hegemonic power, and have options, and move forward. To which I agree.

I have always had a problem with a church politic that tries to navigate through a compromise, a mitigation of differences, through a third way, a so-called middle way. It sounds like compromise. But at the same time, if we are to escape the mere human possibilities within the immediate hegemonic frames as offered, we must have something that moves us into and beyond the alternatives as presented. This, I contend, is what is made possible in the reign of Jesus manifesting his Kingdom among us. By His presence among us, could it be that what comes forth is not yet within the given frame? “beyond what we could think or imagine”?(Ephesians  3:20).

Could it be that, in Christ, a politics is made possible by coming together in our conflicts, submitting one to another, for an apocalyptic Spirit-moving transforming encounter? Here, the worldly power of hegemonic frames is busted, and we are able to live anew under new (eschatological) understandings of economics, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, marriage, leadership etc., that are not possible within the current world as it’s formed within coercive power. This I contend is what a foretaste of the Kingdom looks like. This is the church. And it all starts with the way we enter, cultivate and lead in conflict.

If you’re a pastor, or leader, How do you see the shaping of conflict in your church? Aggregative, Deliberative, or Agonistic Transformative? Do you discern the antagonism? Or play into it? Do you make space for “The Way Beyond” versus middle way or just compromise?

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