First, by privileging radical critique, it is difficult to identify, much less justify, reconciliation’s constitutive elements in agonistic terms. In agonism, reconciliation is treated as the outcome of power relations but otherwise has no substantive normative content. Mouffe herself admits this; for her, basic norms such as equality and liberty cannot be justified through appeals to human reason or natural law, but are wholly the product of particular political struggles, with their own historical specificities and contingencies (Mouffe, 2005: 2–12). And yet she also claims, correctly, that those who reject these basic democratic norms threaten the possibility of shared political life. As there can be no compelling rational grounds (on her terms) for adopting these norms, she is left with making an affective claim for their relevance, arguing for a “passionate commitment to a system of reference [i.e. shared democratic norms]” (Mouffe, 2000: 95). Taking up this challenge, Muldoon has further radicalized Mouffe’s theory by advocating a Nietzschean agonist reconciliation that respects the democratic values of peaceful contestation but defends the use of agonistic struggle by indigenous groups against the state. He writes, “…indigenous people need to appreciate the rules of the game [i.e. rules of democratic contestation] and… need to engage agonistically in it in order to expand and protect indigenous-specific rights” (Muldoon, 2010: 134). However, it is not apparent why the “rules of the game” should be respected in the first place; a theoretical perspective that treats normative claims as expressions of power will struggle with justifying various desirable normative concepts, such as reconciliation (or equality, liberty, and indigenous rights in the examples above). This leads to a second, more serious concern: the reduction of reconciliation to power relations undermines the possibility of establishing a critical position from which to examine responses to the past. For instance, how does one distinguish between normatively defensible versions of reconciliation that advance the claims of indigenous groups versus those that privilege state power and majority culture? Certainly, some transformative relations are more desirable than others, especially from the perspective of indigenous actors. Agonist theorists recognize the need for normative criteria—they are, almost unanimously, motivated by concerns over oppressed groups (see contributions in Hirsch, 2012a). However, the agonist perspective, which reduces norms and values to expressions of power, risks undermining the possibility of defending any normative criteria for political reconciliation. As Adrian Little has argued, “the problem with agonistic accounts is the difficulty of establishing a founding order of reconciliation which can act as an agreed basis on which to conduct a more inclusive but conflictual form of political engagement” (Little, 2012: 67). Of course, any account of reconciliation must be subjected to revision, reflection and evaluation, and not formulated as transcending politics or remaining outside the bounds of contestation. But some criteria are required if reconciliation, no matter how agonistic and thin, is to avoid undermining its very possibility and collapsing into normative indeterminacy. In the following sections, I outline an account of reconciliation that takes seriously the charges leveled by agonistic theorists but also provides some minimally defensible elements that go beyond agonism.
by privileging radical critique, it is difficult to identify, much less justify, reconciliation’s constitutive elements in agonistic terms. reconciliation is treated as the outcome of power relations but otherwise has no substantive normative content those who reject these basic democratic norms threaten the possibility of shared political life there can be no compelling rational grounds for adopting these norms she is left with making an affective claim for their relevance arguing for a “passionate commitment to a system of reference [i.e. shared democratic norms]” indigenous people need to appreciate the rules of the ga and… need to engage agonistically in it in order to expand and protect indigenous-specific rights” However, it is not apparent why the “rules of the game” should be respected in the first place; a theoretical perspective that treats normative claims as expressions of power will struggle with justifying various desirable normative concepts, such as reconciliation the reduction of reconciliation to power relations undermines the possibility of establishing a critical position from which to examine responses to the past , how does one distinguish between normatively defensible versions of reconciliation that advance the claims of indigenous groups versus those that privilege state power and majority culture? the agonist perspective risks undermining the possibility of defending any normative criteria for political reconciliation “the problem with agonistic accounts is the difficulty of establishing a founding order of reconciliation which can act as an agreed basis on which to conduct a more inclusive but conflictual form of political engagement some criteria are required if reconciliation is to avoid undermining its very possibility and collapsing into normative indeterminacy