Irony in the Age of Empire: Comic Perspectives on Democracy and Freedom

Four Engage the Enemy: Cavell, Comedies of Remarriage, and the Politics of Friendship

[ Ω≤ ] f o u r Engage the Enemy cavell, comedies of remarriage, and the politics of friendship Contemporary Democratic Theory and the Friend-Enemy Distinction Life, liberty, and, not property per se, but the pursuit of happiness name our fundamental sense of rights in this country. But are we at all clear on what happiness, or at least its pursuit, entails? Certainly we might say that of all the good things that lead to individual happiness, few are as important as friendship. This is not only true on a personal level. As Aristotle argues, cooperative bonds in the household and among citizens ground thriving political communities. Of course, modern-day liberals rightly reject Aristotle’s tight, conflict-free communitarianism for a more fluid, egalitarian, and multicultural society, but it is di≈cult to envision the ideals of politics, including citizenship and justice, apart from some strong sense of solidarity that comes from social bonds. The ontologically detached and excessively rational agent proposed by some liberal theorists obscures the attachments that bind us to others. These attachments give us our depth as persons. It would be hard to live without them. But then it’s also hard to live with them. As any casual study of politics e n g a g e t h e e n e m y [ Ω≥ ] reminds us, passionate attachments can fuel fierce alliances and tragic conflicts. Post–cold war tensions in Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East have led to the downfall of states and the rise of global terror. The relentless tensions of the post–cold war era may have divided the world along unpredictable lines, but they have also given rise to a curious convergence among otherwise opposed political perspectives. Leftist democracy theorists influenced by deconstruction and democratic imperialists of the Bush administration may not have much in common, but they do agree on at least one thing: the vital role of the friend-enemy distinction for democratic politics.1 Mou√e and LaClau argue that rationalists such as Habermas who aim to eliminate conflict as the basis for democracy ignore the subtle forms of coercion behind any appearance of consensus.2 These radical democrats lack faith not only in reason but also in the old left’s revolutionary fervor for a perfect utopian world. Instead of reaching out for a romanticized world beyond conflict and politics, Mou√e and LaClau call upon new left movements to form alliances (what they term ‘‘equivalences’’) to displace the hegemony of neoliberal capitalism. This forging of a leftist hegemony would entail (via the logic of deconstruction) the exclusion of those who do not share equivalent ideas of freedom and equality. There is no politics without the potential for enemies. The radical democracy theorists may be right to point out as part of their political realism the persistence of irrational conflict, and to expose the usual appeals for resolving conflict through common reason as the ploy of some emerging hegemon. But these deconstructive democrats have di≈culty locating any clear way out of political tensions that are potentially deadly. Mou√e is fully aware of the problem. As she explains, once we accept the necessity of the political and the impossibility of a world without exclusion and antagonism, what needs to be envisaged is how a pluralistic democratic order is possible.3 Such an order could be based only, she argues, on a distinction between an ‘‘enemy’’ and an ‘‘adversary ’’ whose existence is legitimate and must be tolerated. A pluralistic democracy would transform a deadly and antagonistic politics based on enemies to an agonistic politics, which allows opponents to be treated as tolerable adversaries who belong to a ‘‘common symbolic space’’ in a ‘‘multipolar’’ world. The question she leaves us with is what kind of political ethics could define this common symbolic space and restrain conflict in a multipolar world so that inevitable conflict does not turn deadly. The conservative liberal theorist Michael Ignatie√ puts forth claims on behalf of spreading American-style freedom and democracy that are arguably even more bereft of sound ethical limits. Ignatie√ defends the i r o n y i n t h e a g e o f e m p i r e [ Ω∂ ] moral idealism in the foreign policy goals of the Bush administration against the relativism of leftists.4 He acknowledges that such imperial intervention might very...