Instituierende Praxis

Abstract Merleau-Ponty’s political philosophy has lately garnered renewed attention. While the kind of political tradition this philosophy belongs to remains a highly contested topic, the paper would like to make a twofold claim. Firstly, that Merleau-Ponty shares elementary assumptions with the tradition known as “postfoundationalism”. Secondly, that historically speaking, his thinking has influenced some of the figures associated with postfoundationalism today and should thus be acknowledged as an integral part of this tradition. In a sense, though, the awareness that all social and political orders are built upon contingency is not a rebuttal of institutions, but rather forces us to rethink their logic. As the paper argues, Merleau-Ponty sketches an alternative way to analyse democratic processes, by holding together both the ‘instituent’ and the ‘instituted’ moment of politics. In that respect, his writings contain what could be described a theory of ‘instituent practice’ inspired by Machiavelli and Marx, that overcomes the traditional dichotomy between force and form still present in contemporary theories of ‘constituent’ and of ‘destituent power’.