6 - Plural Agonistics

Summary

Introduction

This chapter presents Chantal Mouffe’s theory of plural agonistics with a focus on its relevance to information literacy research. Plural agonistics is positioned on the radical strand of democratic theories (see also Chapter 1 by Buschman). But, contrary to other radical theories, it does support the representative liberal form of democratic rule (Mouffe, 2013, xiii). The theory builds on the collaborative work of Ernesto Laclau and Mouffe (2014), in which they set out to inquire into why left politics was unable to take account of social movements not based on class. They suggested a radicalisation of democracy as a response to the essentialist view of class they identified as dominating the left: ‘What we stressed was the need for a left politics to articulate the struggles about different forms of subordination without attributing any a priori centrality to any of them’ (Mouffe, 2018, 3).

It has been pointed out that both information literacy practice and research suffer from a lack of theoretical awareness when connecting the concept to democracy (see also Chapter 1 by Buschman). James Elmborg has stated (2006, 196) that ‘[m]uch of the conflict inherent in information literacy as a critical project can be traced to contested definitions of “democracy”’. Plural agonistics is here suggested as a democracy theory that can help us to elaborate the possible connection between information literacy and democracy. However, neither information literacy nor libraries are specifically mentioned by Mouffe. Before moving on to why and how this theory is proposed for understanding information literacy, it can be helpful to present the basic tenets of the theory.

Outline of the chapter

Next, antagonism and hegemony will be introduced, two important concepts that Laclau and Mouffe developed and from which Mouffe’s theory of plural agonistics was built. The democratic paradox will then be presented, followed by the role institutions have when addressing the democratic paradox. A second part follows with a focus on plural agonistics and information literacy. Passionate decisions and democratic institutions constitute the first topic, followed by a discussion of an agonistic view on consensus and compromises, how politics and ethics should be understood and the impossibility of neutrality when advocating democracy. A closer look at an agonistic view of identity and a description of how chains of equivalences should be formed follows before suggesting what an agonistic take on information literacy research would entail.