This article critically explores Oliver Marchart’s recent and notable book, Thinking Antagonism by way of the ideas of ‘the proper’ and appropriation. After presenting a broad overview of the post-Marxism of Laclau and Mouffe, and the specific ways Marchart further develops their arguments, the paper goes onto explore in what ways the thinking of antagonism, as Marchart discusses it, implies a rethinking of the political significance of appropriation and ‘the proper’, two terms that are not without ontological implications for post-Marxist and post-foundational political thought. In order to demonstrate this, the article seeks to show three things: (i) that the novelty of Marchart’s thinking, as set out in Thinking Antagonism, is already engaged in a series of interpretive-appropriative acts, and it is as the outcome of these appropriations that Marchart’s thinking on antagonism, alongside the traditions within which his thinking operates, and the idea of antagonism itself, show themselves in their proper light; (ii) that, while remaining unthematised, ‘appropriation’ nonetheless operates in significant ways in the process of Marchart elucidating central features of ‘being-in-the-political’ (the politics of naming serves as a test-case for this) and (iii) ontologically, Marchart opens up the possibility for thinking ‘generalised appropriation’ on the basis of de-propriation (or, as Marchart himself puts it, ‘disowning’), though this is never explicated by Marchart. The article presented here thus invites a discussion surrounding the ontological synergy between antagonism and appropriation.
