caa a22 4500 44582252X CHVBK 20180317145248.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170323e20110901xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s11186-011-9151-7 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s11186-011-9151-7 Koczanowicz Leszek The Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Wroclaw Faculty, ul. Grunwaldzka 96, 50-357, Wroclaw, Poland aut Beyond dialogue and antagonism: a Bakhtinian perspective on the controversy in political theory [Elektronische Daten] [Leszek Koczanowicz] The aim of the article is to show that the contradiction between dialogue and antagonism can be overcome with the help of the idea of dialogue as developed by the Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin. The lack of such theory led to the rejection of liberalism or to the introduction of dialogical principle into the body of liberal politics. It was Jürgen Habermas who first understood the necessity of dialogical consensus as the basis of liberal democracy. On the other hand, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe developed the concept of agonistic democracy, claiming that conflict is inevitable in liberal democracy because consensual relations cannot harmonize contradictory political identities. The second part of the article is the elaboration of Bakhtin's theory of dialogue and its relevance for political theory. The main point is that dialogue leads to better understanding but not necessarily to consensus. If this is so, then both conceptions of the political are moments in never-ending dialogical relations. The significance of Bakhtin's idea of dialogue for political theory consists thus in the recognition of the inevitable dialogical nature of society. However, this dialogical concept also has a normative character. Society has to find a balance between two extremes: excessive dialogue, which leads to anarchy, and the lack of dialogue, which leads to totalitarianism. The Author(s), 2011 Democracy nationallicence Hegemony nationallicence Liberalism nationallicence Bakhtin nationallicence The political nationallicence Theory and Society Springer Netherlands 40/5(2011-09-01), 553-566 0304-2421 40:5<553 2011 40 11186 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-011-9151-7 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-011-9151-7 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Koczanowicz Leszek The Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Wroclaw Faculty, ul. Grunwaldzka 96, 50-357, Wroclaw, Poland aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Theory and Society Springer Netherlands 40/5(2011-09-01), 553-566 0304-2421 40:5<553 2011 40 11186 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer