The Politics of What Goes Without Saying: Normative Closure and Political Intelligibility

Key Points

• The aim is to elucidate how normative closure in politics affects the intelligibility of dissent and alters public discourse.
• Develops a Wittgensteinian framework for understanding normative closure.
• Analyzes historical examples where political norms have suppressed dissent and reshaped discourse.
• Discusses implications for political theory and public philosophy.
• Demonstrates that normative closure redefines the terms of political engagement and dissent.
• Identifies that when dissent is suppressed, entire questions can be rendered unintelligible.
• Argues that historical norms function as a backdrop that limits political discourse.