Performing Politics: Foucault, Habermas, and Postmodern Participation

The contemporary world presents a serious challenge to the traditional liberal understanding of political participation. While both Jürgen Habermas and Michel Foucault have provided strong philosophical impetus for reconceptualizing participation, neither provides a fully satisfying solution to the difficulties of understanding political action in this postmodern world. However combining Habermas's vision of discursive politics with Foucault's focus on the micropolitics of resistance provides the basis for developing a more satisfying conception that defines political participation as performance and its purpose as resistance. Such a performative understanding of political participation not only enriches our understanding of discourse and resistance; it also makes better sense of the variety of political activities prevalent and efficacious today.