Three Concepts of The Political : A Comparative Study of The Political in the Works of Hannah Arendt, Jacques Rancière and Chantal Mouffe

What it is that makes an action or an institution political is difficult to grasp, and the contemporary situation in politics seems to mirror the difficulty of succesfully theorizing politics. This essay investigates the concept of the political in Hannah Arendt, Jacques Rancière and Chantal Mouffe through a comparative reading. These three thinkers are connected, especially in the relation of the two latter to the ground breaking work of Arendt. But this essay also tries to augment the lack of comparative readings of Rancière and Mouffe.The eauthor believes that this can further a deeper understanding of what questions a theory of the political needs to answer.The essay is concluded with a discussion of three aspects of the political that a theory needs to engage with: the excess of politics, the self-referring quality of the political and then ormativity of the political