Over the past few decades democratic theory has been reinvigorated by the idea of deliberative democracy. Emphasising engagement in public dialogue, the turn to deliberation promises to provide democratic theory with a renewed sense of legitimacy and critical potential. However, friends and critics alike worry that deliberative theory works with conceptions of deliberation that are too ide-alised or demanding, leading to the danger of democratic theory either losing touch with our everyday democratic practices, and thus having no real political purchase on our non-ideal world, or attaching so many conditions to deliberation that political discussion becomes unnecessarily constrained and exclusive. Theorists of agonistic democracy have emerged as some of the most vocal critics of the deliberative approach. Chantal Mouffe has been at the forefront of this approach, and it is her sustained critique of deliberative theory that has shaped much of the debate. Discussing Mouffe's critique of Habermas will prove useful in setting out some of the key issues in the debate between consensus and conflict-orientated democratic theory and, through this, help us better understand, and respond to, the demand to do justice to the other as other.

I shall focus on two aspects of Mouffe's critique of Habermas's deliberative theory. The first, informed by Freud's observations on affective libidinal bonds, I shall call the elimination of the passions argument. The second, drawing on Carl Schmitt's insistence on the irreducible political distinction of friend/enemy, I shall call the antagonistic exclusion thesis. While these are inextricably intertwined in Mouffe's approach, for analytic purposes I shall treat them separately in order to bring out the underlying issues more clearly. While Mouffe's elimination of the passions argument yields important insights concerning collective forms of identification and the dangers that emerge if we do not take the affective dimension of politics seriously, I argue that her criticism of Habermas offers an overly narrow reading of what entering practical discourse entails, overlooks Habermas's two-track model of democracy, and provides an inadequate account of the role of the passions and fantasy in political life. Despite these shortcomings, Mouffe's critique does point to problems in Habermas's account, particularly the demand for impartiality and universality, and the lack of any detailed account of the role the passions play in democratic politics.