Resisting foundations
Politics between determinate negation and the ultimate double bind
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11340950 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nicolas Schneider (0009-0006-6190-4830, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-02-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Philosophy & Social Criticism (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0191-4537 • E-ISSN: 1461-734X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/01914537241308104 |
| OpenAlex | W4407681000 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 12 |
This article develops a critique of the post-foundationalist conception of politics put forward by Oliver Marchart. Confronting the depoliticizations that follow from both the foundationalist insistence on transhistorical foundations and the anti-foundationalist rejection of all foundations as fictions, post-foundationalism casts resistance as determinate negation of concrete political institutions rather than as opposition to phantasmatic totalities. I argue that this precludes the possibility to consider phantasmatic referents (be they divine right, natural law, the nation or the demos ) as neither transhistorical/fictional nor exclusively political but to interpret them in terms of a conflict between competing modes of presencing. I elucidate this claim with reference to the work of Reiner Schürmann, which Marchart introduces as an exponent of post-foundationalism but which is better grasped as outlining a ‘para-foundational’ view. In focusing on the ultimate double bind that subtends foundations, Schürmann affords a more comprehensive perspective on the life and afterlife of the Western political and philosophical tradition
Epistemology · Linguistics · Negation · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |