The Post-political and its Discontents: Spaces of Depoliticization, Spectres of Radical Politics

This is a theoretical and practical interrogation of how the post-political has come to dominate governance. We are told that we live in a ‘post-ideological’ era – that we have moved ‘beyond Left and Right’ and that we are ‘all in it together’. Democracy has been reduced to the consensual administration of economic necessity. How can we make sense of this form of depoliticisation? How does it manifest itself in different spheres of social life? And in what ways is it being challenged or subverted? Contributors to this volume respond to these questions through a wide-ranging critical engagement with the concept of the post-political developed by Chantal Mouffe, Jacques Ranciere, Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou and others. It gives an overview of the literature on the post-political for people approaching the field for the first time: its value and limits, its internal tensions and the possibility of creative syntheses with other approaches. It empirically analyses the post-political in relation to a diverse set of interconnected themes. It works within 3 key spheres of post-politicisation: urban governance, political ecology and international development.It exposes the constitutive antagonisms and sites of resistance in post-political governance. It assesses the reality and limitations of emancipatory political projects.