Unconditional Agonistics: Sam Weber’s Afterword to Jean-François Lyotard’s Just Gaming

Abstract: A number of scholars have criticized deconstruction for what they see as its de-politicizing implications. Despite its influence on political theorists, these scholars claim that the commitment to difference and relation characteristic of deconstruction undermines the possibility of transformative political projects. This article reads Sam Weber’s Afterword to Jean-François Lyotard’s Just Gaming as an attempt to reconcile a deconstructive perspective with a political philosophy. I proceed by contrasting Lyotard’s and Weber’s views on discursive heterogeneity. While Lyotard’s political thought shares a deconstructive commitment to affirming the difference between discourses in tension with one another, he believes that this difference in itself serves as the foundation of a political ethics. For Weber, this turn to an ethical foundation is theoretically inconsistent and politically unnecessary. In his view, discursive difference cannot be an ethical foundation, because the form and even the existence of this difference is generated by the dynamic interrelation between discourses. Following Weber’s insight, politics does not presuppose difference as its ground, but takes place rather in the very interplay by which discourses differentiate themselves from one another.