RADICAL DEMOCRACY AND THE ANTIESSENTIAL CONDITION OF ITS COUNTER-HEGEMONY

Abstract

The model of liberal democracy embraces contingency, allowing coexistence between different but equal subjects, as well as the dissent of opposing but freely vocalized ideals. As long as these subjects and discourses do not obstruct such pluralism, tomorrow will always be open to increasingly democratic proposals, because they are founded on anti-essentialism. In practice, however, the search for the essence, for the normative center of the structure, was – and, for many, still is – the guiding principle of science, even impacting democratic theories with the idea of the only possible path. Precisely for this reason, Radical Democracy, a theory by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, starts from the multiplication of spaces in which members of civil society and political society would develop heterogeneous articulations, in order to maximize freedom and equality in a pluralism that recognizes the ineradicability of the conflict. Therefore, the objective of this exploratory research is to debate ways in which anti-essentialist counter-hegemony can radicalize liberal democracy. The method used was historical-deductive, while data collection took place via bibliographic review and indirect documentary. The analysis of these data, in turn, was based on a propositional hermeneutics. The results point to Brazil's potential to implement this proposal, as it has thousands of participatory tools, such as Management Councils and Public Policy Conferences, but which have never had their counter-hegemonic potential activated. In the end, we believe that democratic radicalization involves strengthening these spaces, in a direction opposite to that implemented by the Bolsonaro Government, which promoted attacks on these bodies with clearly authoritarian intentions.