LIBERTY, EQUALITY, RECEPTIVE GENEROSITY - NEO-NIETZSCHEAN REFLECTIONSON THE ETHICS AND POLITICS OF COALITION

Recently there has been a movement to embrace coalition politics both as an historically fundamental mode of action and as ethically desirab le. Yet, as Bernice Johnson Reagon illustrates, coalition politics pre sents many profound difficulties, both in terms of its possible direct ions and the type of self capable of engaging in such activity. Laclau and Mouffe, embracing an open-ended development of equality and liber ty, expand and clarify the possibilities that a radically democratic l iberalism has available for envisioning and sustaining coalition polit ics. Yet, they illustrate the limits of such a project insofar as they are unable to address adequately the problems posed by Reagon. I argu e that only by supplementing (and transfiguring) equality and liberty with an ethic of receptive generosity, suggested by an idiosyncratic r eading of Nietzsche's gift-giving virtue, would coalition politics lik ely be sustainable and ethically desirable. The gift-giving virtue all ows us to formulate a vision of the possible grandness of plurality th at is ethically more compelling than the logics of identity and differ ence offered by Laclau and Mouffe.