Dear All,

Things have heated up between Ajay and me... I do not want to replicate the tone of Ajay’s response to my intervention (especially because I see it as a clear indication that ideological zeal is indeed a factor here on his part). I will channel further exchanges on the more personal aspects of his retort to a private e-mail. 
Although the real point of this message is not to answer hem, there are a few points I need to set straight here. I need them on record – for potential future reference. (Those who are not interested in this bickering can jump straight to the fourth paragraph.) First, I do not assume that my position is outside an ideological frame. Naturally, I am well aware that my position allows for an ideological interpretation (and criticism). What I claim is that I do not have an ideological agenda for this particular conversation, and I do not assume that this conversation must have a particular ideological tendency. That is the big difference between us. Secondly, and more importantly, my objection prompted Ajay to contextualise my intervention with an embarrassingly crude picture of liberalism. It is instructive how he does it. He identifies liberal and institutional frames, and willy-nilly proceeds to assume that they all imply a kind of universalism and a justificatory framework based on consent. How is this all implied by my worries about taking it for granted that our job is to subvert power relations? And who is out there still believing in such crude equivocations? Actually, I did not argue from a universalist position, and I do not know what consent has to do with my intervention. I did not assume that mere ‘procedures of institutions work well for everyone.’ I actually consistently argue the opposite. It is unfair to describe me as someone who would just sweep aside the problems of those who lose out in the processes that generate particular constructions of political community. Some might remember that I was the one who emphasised the darker side of political community in my introductory remarks right at the beginning of the workshop. Treating people as members of distinct political communities is an exclusionary practice, and formulating the membership in political communities in terms of substantive political principles can contribute to silencing and disempowering individuals and entire communities. So, if the question is what my position is ‘on those who do not stand to benefit by imaginations of political community,’ I say that they must perceive it as a political challenge, and they should fight to change power relations to their advantage. But it still does not mean that I must conflate my forays into political theory with political activism. Thirdly, I do not know where I denied that politics is about power. I do not (even though Ajay’s particular formulation is too essentialist for my taste, and I would be tempted to say that it is not just any kind of power we talk about here). I think we can all appreciate the difference between saying that politics is about power, and saying that the engagement of scholarship with political phenomena must be generally about subverting existing power relations. 
This might be enough to indicate that Ajay must mistake me for someone else who might fit his outlandish caricature of liberalism. The points I have raised come down to the claim that any sophisticated analysis of the issues we are discussing (e.g. about political community) will open up many possibilities of critical engagement. (I have made use of some of them myself during the workshop.) However, turning it into a methodological premise that we are here to subvert power relations is a wholly different ballgame. And I think this is what Ajay sought to bring into the discussion almost as a matter of course – not worthy of any qualification or argument. I believe that casually going along with that assumption can have devastating consequences on our methodological perspectives as scholars. It can make the critical engagement one-dimensional, prejudiced and predictable. I wanted to highlight this point because preserving the theoretical sophistication of our conversations is important to me (in order to be able to handle empirical realities better).

Now, to the actual message… I happily admit that I had an agenda with taking on Ajay on in relation to a specific point. Let me formulate the point on a more general level. On the CISRUL website, we proudly declare the emphasis we put on conceptual analysis in our conversations. This has left us with the recurrent challenge of accommodating practices of contestation. It is not just that we have to live with the plurality of opinions and perspectives in and out of CISRUL. Far more importantly, we have to develop a sense for understanding what qualifies as appropriate objects of conceptual analysis. How much can we reasonably try to settle on the level of conceptual analysis, and how much shall we leave to contestation (that can never be contained by the academic discourse)? In an earlier response to Andrea, I have already hinted at the nature of the dilemma. We cannot leave everything to contestation because a measure of conceptual clarity is a prerequisite to meaningful contestation (guaranteeing, at the bare minimum, that we can identify what we disagree on). This is the core of the methodological challenge our CISRUL discussions have faced, and also the challenge our present conversation faces. We can hold our debates together only if, over time, we become capable of outlining a methodological framework that facilitates the kind of theoretical sophistication that makes us want to come back to the website again and again. Otherwise, the debate will fragment, and more and more people will sign off. (Actually, this may already be happening.) It is impossible to know in advance what the right methodological framing for this group of scholars will be. We have to develop it. I would say that we can be reasonably certain of two things. The first is that foreclosing much of the useful methodological reflection by casually assuming some ideological common ground (‘we are all here to fight the existing power relations, right?’) is unhelpful. The second is that catapulting the analysis to a higher level of abstraction where only speculation can flourish (‘let us speak of the overall purposes and values of human association first’) is not really fit for interdisciplinary engagement. 
Inevitably, our discussions on this forum have moved towards methodological issues. That is a step forward from our sessions at the workshop and the summer school. Now, we have all the three main challenges laid out: the problem of the methodological framework that can keep us interested in talking to each other, the problem of figuring out how much fruitful conceptual analysis we can undertake about political community (i.e. how much we can achieve together in terms of improved understanding), and the problem of the fields of contestation we are ready to reflect on (i.e. what specific topics are appropriate for the conversation of this group of scholars). As to the third challenge, I declare that I have much sympathy for Gurpreet’s suggestion that democracy is what we can appropriately engage with (in its varied manifestations). What we have done so far to work on the concept of political community is a good starting point, and there is some mileage in it. 

Best,
Mátyás