ABSTRACT
The problem of depoliticization has been introduced by Marx already in 1844 in his book On the Jewish Question (Marx 2012). One might go further into the past and argue that “[d]epoliticization is the oldest task of politics” and that “[p]olitics is the art of suppressing the political” (Rancière 1995: 19, 11). The problem of removing conflicting issues from the political field has been dealt with by a number of scholars (Bourdieu 2002; Crouch 2004; Flinders and Buller 2006; Foucault 2002: 403-417; Mouffe 2005; Pettit 2004; Rancière 1999; Rose 2004; Simmel 2009; Wilson and Swyngedouw 2014a; Žižek 1999). In connection with depoliticization, one could speak about a small sub-field of political science that stretches out to various social issues such as law (Shihata 1986), environment (Swyngedouw 2011), economy (Swanson 2008), or development cooperation. It is possible to encounter depoliticization in all these and many other fields (for a list of relevant sources see Flinders and Buller 2006: 294).
