Radical Realism in Political Theory: The Case of ‘The People’

• In Event: Radical, Utopian and Transformative Thought in Political Realism

Abstract

What would make realist political theory a better, not just different approach to providing orientation in politics? This paper argues that the answer lies in a radical form of realism that provides comprehensive and self-reflexive orientation. The first part of the paper outlines its main features: Radical realism is driven by the goal to understand and evaluate from within a social order how people distinguish authority from power - that is, how people in this social order construe politics and how they limit it. Achieving this goal requires mutually reinforcing interpretive and critical turns within realism. The former is about finding a way to interrogate social orders philosophically through interpreting concrete practices (and thus to make good on the realist promise to theorize from the ground up). Radical realism thus turns away from ontological stipulations about the nature of politics. Instead it turns to struggles from below to gain understanding of the forms and limits of politics, including the role of criticism within such struggles. The latter, critical turn is about devising a basis for critical purchase rooted in the interpretations of the social order. Here the challenge is to contribute to people’s self-interpretations without paternalism. A focal area of critical concern is the relationship between social practices and concepts in the collective production of meaning. The second part of the paper interrogates the claims to being ‘the people’, which are so central to current political struggles, through the lens of radical realism. The paper will interpret concrete claims to being ‘the people’ with regard the understandings they contain of what politics is and what it should be. Then the transformative potential of these understandings against the background of power relations will be considered. The paper will close with suggestions for how its findings can be contribute to the self-understandings of people engaged in current political struggles.

Author

• Janosch Prinz, University of East Anglia