The Alternative to Occupy: Radical Politics Between Protest and Parliament

Abstract

In this paper, we compare the political anatomy of two distinct enactments of (leftist) radical politics: Occupy Wall Street and The Alternative, a recently elected political party in Denmark. Departing from Ernesto Laclau’s conceptualization of ‘the universal’ and ‘the particular’, we show how the institutionalization of radical politics (as carried out by The Alternative) entails a move from universality towards particularity. This move, however, comes with the risk of cutting-off supporters who no longer feel represented by the project. We refer to this problem as ‘the problem of particularization’. In conclusion, we use the analysis to propose a conceptual distinction between radical movements and radical parties: While the former is constituted by an infinite chain of equivalent grievances, the latter is constituted by a prioritized set of differential demands. While both are important, we argue, they must remain distinct in order to preserve the universal spirit of contemporary radical politics