Towards a political ontology of violence: Laclau, Nietzsche and the ontological difference

Herman Siemens

doi:10.4396/20240610S

Herman Siemens

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4396/20240610S

Parole chiave: political violence, ontological difference, conflict, agon, Laclau, Marchart, Nietzsche

Abstract

This paper calls for a political ontology of violence addressing violence as a specifically political reality. Through a critical engagement with the “ontological turn” in
political theory and the political ontologies of conflict and violence in Laclau and Marchart, it asks what the notion of the “ontological difference” brings to our
understanding of political violence. By putting the ontological assumptions of political thought in question, this notion offers a critical alternative to the stand-off between
ideal-theoretical/proceduralist and realist/empiricist approaches that dominate mainstream political theory. But it is unclear whether it has resources for a constructive
ontology of antagonism of use for conceptualising political violence. The experiment is therefore to cross-fertilise these political ontologies with a processual post-Nietzschean ontology modelled on the formation of labile, living unities in relations of tension with others, such that political violence erupts when relations of tension descend into total negation.

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