Laclau’s Revolutionary Political Theology

Abstract

One of the ways of thinking God in contemporary philosophy is reflecting on violence. In fact, reflecting on violence implies always at the same time to refer to the difficulty of thinking about the co-implication of law and violence, a typical prerogative of divine action. From this perspec-tive, political theology is concerned with the status and the possibilities or impossibilities of rep-resenting violence in a given political order. Three are the classical texts in the backdrop of this reflection on the hiatus between law and violence: Walter Benjamin Critique of Violence of 1921, Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology of 1922 and Derrida’s Force of Law of 1989. The article exam-ines another paradigm, that of Ernesto Laclau. The article concludes that only a non-presentable idea of God as a negative fundament allows for a non-authoritarian political idea. But this non-presentable character is only made possible by revolutionary politics.

Keywords

• political theology
• anti-foundationalism
• revolutionary politics
• violence
• laclau