Deepening democracy through contestation? Lefort and Gauchet on May 1968 and its legacy
(2020) Tocqueville Review — (2020)
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- Authors
Weymans, Wim 
- Abstract
- Which forms of contestation are beneficial for democracies, and which are not? This essay responds to this question by looking at writings on political contestation during 1968 by the French political theorist Claude Lefort. Although Lefort is now seen as a major theorist of democracy, I show that in 1968 he made almost no reference to democracy. Only from the 1970s onwards he developed an elaborate theory of democracy which allowed him to better explain the role that democracy and its symbolic principles may play in fostering contestation and also changed what Lefort saw as proper forms of contestation. While in 1968 he had been enthusiastic about self-management and was critical of traditional structures, in the 1970s almost the reverse was true. This essay ends with a brief comparison with Gauchet, which shows that Lefort, unlike Gauchet, continued to believe that democracies need contestation to flourish. In spite of all the changes in his theory post-1968, Lefort thus held on to 1968’s spirit of contestation.
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Weymans, W. (2020). Deepening democracy through contestation? Lefort and Gauchet on May 1968 and its legacy. Tocqueville Review. Published. https://doi.org/10.3138/ttr.41.1.121 (Original work published 2020)