The form of contingency: political theory of the particular
La forma de la contingencia: teoría política de lo particular
How to Cite
Download Citation

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Show authors biography
Political judgments are made in uncertainty and with incomplete information; persuasion happens in the realm of probability, and the sedimentation of these judgments and decisions produces a story that it could have been different. Although contingency is the underlying assumption of political theory, theorists in this field they do not always mean the same when they use this concept. This article expands the The distinction between two forms of contingency operates on Gaonkar's (2001) distinction between internal and external contingency. The contingency currently has two possible meanings: 1) the contingency refers to historical / cultural / social phenomena of the past that have settled, or 2) the contingency refers to characteristics of decision-making and human action in the present or in the future. The contingency describes not only the scope of the policy, but also it becomes a political-rhetorical concept in itself. By focusing on these two senses, this article demonstrates how the topic not only focuses on the details of a situation of this nature, but also it transforms our understanding of what a contingent situation is.
Article visits 1055 | PDF visits 389
Downloads
- Bernard-Douglas, M. & Glejzer, R. (Eds.). (1998). Rhetoric in an Antifoundational World: Language, Culture, and
- Pedagogy. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Butler, J. (2000). Restaging the Universal: Hegemony and the Limits of Formalism. In: J. Butler, E. Laclaun & S. Žižek.
- Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. (Pp.19-38). New York: Verso. Butler, J., Laclau, E. & Žižek, S. (2000). Contingency,
- Hegemony, and Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left. New York: Verso.
- Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ:
- Princeton University Press.
- Kahn, V. (1985). Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
- Laclau, E. (2000). Identity and Hegemony: The Role of Universality in the Constitution of Political Logics. In: J.
- Butler, E. Laclau, & S. Žižek. Contingency, Hegemony, and Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left.
- New York: Verso.
- Lyotard, J F. (1988). The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Nussbaum, M. (1986). The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. New York:
- Cambridge University Press.
- Parameshwar-Gaonkar, D. (2001). Contingency and Probability. In: T. Sloane (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Rhetoric. (Pp.
- 156-157). New York: Oxford University Press.
- Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
