CHANTAL MOUFFEence, which impedes the establishment of a total system of identifications. But I consider
precisely the existence of such a tension between the logic of identity and the logic of
difference to define the specificity of pluralist democracy and make it a regime particularly
suited to the undecidability that is the specific character of modern politics. To be sure,
the liberal logic that aims to construct every identity as positivity and difference necessar-
ily subverts the project of totalization inscribed in the democratic logic of equivalence.
But far from complaining about it, this is something that we should see as very positive.
Indeed, it is the existence of such a tension, which also manifests itself between the princi-
ples of equality and liberty, and between our identities as ‘‘citizens’’ and our identities as
‘‘individuals,’’ that constitutes the best guarantee against the dangers of final closure or
of total dissemination that would be the consequence of the exclusive dominance of one
of the two logics. Far from aiming at its suppression—that would lead to the elimination
of the political and the end of democracy—we must preserve and enhance it. Between the
project of a complete equivalence and the opposite one of pure difference, the experience
of modern democracy consists in acknowledging the existence of those contradictory log-
ics as well as the necessity of their articulation—an articulation that constantly needs to
be recreated and negotiated, with no final point of equilibrium where a final harmony
could be reached. Only in that precarious space ‘‘in-between’’ can pluralist democracy
exist. To believe that a final resolution of conflicts is eventually possible, even if this is
seen as an asymptotic approach to the regulative ideal of a free, unconstrained communi-
cation, as in Habermas, does not provide the necessary horizon of the democratic project.
Rather, this belief is something that puts it at risk. Indeed, it implicitly carries the desire
for a reconciled society, where pluralism would have been superseded.
Once liberal democracy is seen as a regime whose political principles are the assertion of
liberty and equality for all, we must acknowledge that the consensus required for a plural-
ist democracy to function well and to reproduce itself cannot be envisaged as merely an
agreement concerning procedures. Those who conceive the pluralism of modern democ-
racy as needing only to restrict an agreement aboutproceduresdo not realize that there
can never be pure procedural rules without reference to normative concerns.
Wittgenstein’s conception of practices and languages games can help us to clarify this
point. For Wittgenstein, to have agreement about opinions there must first be an agree-
ment about the language used. He also alerted us to the fact that agreements concerning
opinions are in fact agreements concerning forms of life. As he says: ‘‘So you are saying
that human agreement decides what is true and what is false. It is what human beingssay
that is true and false; and they agree in thelanguagethey use. That is not agreement in
opinions but in form of life.’’^1 With respect to the problem that interests us here, this
points to the fact that a considerable number of ‘‘agreements in judgments’’ must already
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