From missed opportunities to future possibilities: towards an improper politics

Abstract

The democratic theory proposed in Mark Devenney’s Towards an Improper Politics begins with the questions of why political theorists have abandoned the critique of property, what this means for our understanding of the relationship between property and inequality, and whether it is possible to redeem such a critical understanding of inequality ‘without resorting to the prescriptive politics of propriety so characteristic of Marxism’ (p. 1). As we shall see, the semantic and etymological resonance between ‘property’ and ‘propriety’ – both of which have made their way into the English language through the linguistic genealogy of the Latin word prōprietās – serves in his work as an aperture for identifying a dual theoretical problem, related on the one hand to ownership and on the other to ‘propriety’ (as in ‘being right’, ‘appropriate’). Returning to a number of ‘questions bequeathed to us by Marx’ (p. 53) but offering a set of responses that are not ‘strictly Marxist’, Devenney raises a few challenges for post-foundationalist theorists, probing us to think again about how property structures and reproduces inequalities, and how to resist the hegemonic force of property in ways that are not reducible to representation, signification and identification. Considering how central property is to every facet of politics, from previous financial crises and the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic to colonial violence and climate change, the task of reinvigorating this debate is urgent. These questions deserve, and require, continued debate. In this Critical Exchange we have gathered five scholars, all engaged in post-Marxist and post-foundationalist traditions in different corners of the world (Argentina, South Korea, Sweden, UK and USA), to take up this challenge – and raise some challenges for the author, to which he has had the opportunity to respond. The result is best described as a transnational theoretical plurilogue in which the contributors do not always agree, but that may hopefully mark the beginning of future discussions on hegemony, property and post-foundationalism.