Political Horizons in America

MARTIN PLOT

Social Imaginaries

Rowman & Littlefield

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2018 vol. 4 p. 71 - 86

2393-2503

French philosopher Claude Lefort, an author inscribed in a tradition that could be called ?political phenomenology?, is one of the central figures of contemporary political theory?s attempt to distinguish ?politics? from ?the political.? Against those who rush to idealize the latter and despise the former, however, he used to assert that it is not a fact lacking in signification that modern societies have identified a field of action, together with a series of institutions and practices, as something to be called ?politics.? But, what is that signification? Or, better put, what does it mean that it does not ?lack signification?? The phenomenon of modern society?s identification of a sphere of social life as politics does not lack signification because the gesture signals in the direction of a historical contingency that reveals the appearance of a general form of the institution of society, i.e. the appearance of a form of the political as such. The intertwining of politics and the political that is characteristic of modern democratic societies for Lefort shows a particular way of society?s confrontation with the enigma of its own institution, but a particular way of doing so that acquires a very important general meaning. Taking as a point of departure the recent and current American political experience, here I will offer a theoretical perspective that will attempt to give new life to this intertwining of politics and the political.