A Postcolonial Schmitt? Ontology, ethnography, and “more-than-liberal” democracy

The ghost of illiberalism is haunting liberal democracy. In the shadow of debates about illiberalism stands - as éminence grise - Carl Schmitt. Schmitt's ontology of the political as antagonism not only inspires illiberal thinkers, but equally informs radical democratic theory as it does postcolonial studies of democracy in South Asia. In this paper, we propose the term “more-than-liberal” democracy to turn attention to political practices and tactics that do not fit into sanitized conceptions of “liberal” democracy, nor are they necessarily illiberal in the sense of anti-democratic. Studying these practices requires what Clive Barnett calls an “ethnographically emergent” theory, which he juxtaposes against an “ontological style of theorizing”. Barnett's juxtaposition, while helpful, is also problematic, however. We illustrate this by looking at Partha Chatterjee's “ethnographically emergent” conceptualization of political society as expression of “more-than-liberal” practices in India's democracy. Paradoxically, in describing political society as a “thuggish” terrain, Chatterjee's work speaks to Schmitt's ontology of antagonism (taken up by Chantal Mouffe for radical democratic theory). Similarly, anthropologists saw an affinity between their ethnography of local politics in South Asia and Schmitt's conception of antagonism. Here, we notice the blurring of ontology and ethnography: This affinity does not necessarily confirm Schmitt's “ontology” of the political, however. It may rather be the outcome of pragmatic tactics of voters to make themselves visible in the space of democratic politics.