William Eamon Connolly

1. Introduction

William Eamon Connolly (b. 1938) is an American political theorist known for rethinking democracy, pluralism, and political judgment under late‑20th‑ and early‑21st‑century conditions. Working at the intersection of political science, continental philosophy, and the environmental humanities, he has been especially influential in debates about agonistic pluralism, political ontology, and the role of affect and embodiment in public life.

Connolly’s work is often situated among post‑foundational and critical theorists who question fixed moral or rational foundations for politics. He does so, however, not by rejecting normativity, but by tracing how political concepts and identities emerge historically, are shaped by power, and remain essentially contestable. This approach has made his early writings on political language, such as The Terms of Political Discourse, canonical within political theory.

Over several decades, Connolly’s focus has shifted from conceptual analysis to questions of identity and pluralism, then to neuropolitics and affect, and more recently to planetary politics in the context of the climate crisis. Across these phases, he develops a distinctive vision of democracy as an experimental, conflict‑laden practice rather than a settled consensus, and of human beings as embedded within complex cultural, biological, and ecological processes.

Connolly’s influence extends across political theory, religious studies, media and cultural studies, and environmental thought. Supporters credit him with helping to open English‑language political philosophy to Nietzsche, Foucault, and Deleuze, while critics sometimes question the practicality or coherence of his post‑foundational stance. The following sections trace his life, major works, evolving ideas, and the debates they have generated.

2. Life and Historical Context

Connolly was born on 3 June 1938 in Presque Isle, Maine, and trained as a political scientist at the University of Minnesota, where he completed his PhD in 1965. His early career unfolded at universities such as the University of Massachusetts and the University of Kentucky before he became a prominent figure in American political theory, later holding positions in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Details of his private life have remained relatively reserved in published sources, with most attention focused on his intellectual trajectory.

Connolly’s formation coincided with the dominance of behavioralism and positivism in postwar American political science. These approaches emphasized quantitative methods and value‑neutral analysis, often marginalizing normative theory and continental philosophy. Connolly’s early work arose partly in tension with this context, seeking to reintroduce conceptual reflection and historical sensitivity into political analysis.

Historically, his career spans major shifts in global and domestic politics: the Cold War, civil rights movements, decolonization, the rise of neoliberalism, the end of the Cold War, and expanding concern about climate change. Commentators often note that his successive projects align with these transformations: identity politics and culture wars in the 1980s–1990s, neuroscientific and media revolutions in the 1990s–2000s, and the Anthropocene and planetary crises since the 2010s.

A simplified timeline of key contextual coordinates is:

3. Intellectual Development

Connolly’s intellectual development is often described in overlapping phases rather than sharp breaks, with each stage reworking and extending earlier concerns.

Early Conceptual and Linguistic Turn

In the late 1960s and 1970s, Connolly engaged analytic philosophy of language and conceptual history. The Terms of Political Discourse framed political concepts as essentially contestable and historically variable, challenging behavioralist assumptions that political science could work with fixed, neutral categories. This period foregrounds how language structures political argument and power.

Pluralism, Identity, and Agonistic Democracy

From the mid‑1980s through the 1990s, Connolly drew more explicitly on Nietzsche, Foucault, and later Deleuze. Works such as Identity and The Ethos of Pluralization develop an agonistic view of democracy and interrogate how identities (religious, national, secular, sexual) are formed and defended. He criticized both liberal rationalism and certain strands of identity politics for underestimating ambiguity, contingency, and the depth of pluralism.

Affect, Neuroscience, and Embodiment

In the late 1990s and 2000s, Connolly incorporated insights from neuroscience and affect theory. Neuropolitics explores how pre‑reflective affects and neural dispositions condition reasoning and political judgment. This stage shifts focus from discursive contestation alone to the bodily and temporal dimensions of political life.

Planetary Politics and Ecological Ontology

From the 2010s onward, Connolly extended his process ontology to planetary scales. In The Fragility of Things and Facing the Planetary he examines entanglements among capitalism, state power, and earth systems. Here his longstanding themes—contingency, complexity, and pluralism—are rearticulated as an ecological and planetary problematic, linking democratic activism to climate and earth system dynamics.

4. Major Works

Connolly’s major works are often grouped according to the themes that dominate each period of his thought.

Conceptual Analysis and Early Political Theory

• The Terms of Political Discourse (1974; expanded 1983, 1993): Analyses key political concepts (e.g., democracy, freedom, justice) as essentially contestable, arguing that their meanings are bound up with historical struggles and power relations. Widely cited as a classic in conceptual political theory.
• Appearance and Reality in Politics (1981): Investigates how political life involves layers of perception, representation, and ambiguity, preparing the way for his later interest in ontology and ambiguity.

Pluralism, Identity, and Secularism

• Identity (1991), revised as The Ethos of Pluralization (1995): Critiques rigid identity formations and proposes an ethos that affirms ongoing pluralization and self‑revision.
• Why I Am Not a Secularist (1999): Challenges strong models of secularism and public reason, advocating a reflexive, modest secularism open to mutual critique between religious and non‑religious perspectives.

Neuropolitics and Affect

• Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed (2002): Introduces neuropolitics, integrating neuroscience with Deleuzian philosophy to show how affects and rapid cultural signals shape political dispositions.

Planetary Politics and Neoliberalism

• The Fragility of Things: Self‑Organizing Processes, Neoliberal Fantasies, and Democratic Activism (2013): Connects complexity theory, neoliberalism, and democratic activism, emphasizing the vulnerability of interconnected systems.
• Facing the Planetary: Entangled Humanism and the Politics of Swarming (2017): Develops entangled humanism and the politics of swarming as responses to the Anthropocene and climate disruption.

A simplified overview:

5. Core Ideas and Political Ontology

Connolly’s core ideas revolve around a distinctive political ontology—a view of what kinds of entities and processes constitute political reality—and its implications for democracy and pluralism.

Processual and Pluralist Ontology

Drawing on Nietzsche, Foucault, and Deleuze, Connolly portrays the world as composed of self‑organizing, processual assemblages rather than stable substances. Human subjects, institutions, economies, and ecological systems are seen as interdependent, evolving constellations. Proponents emphasize that this ontology accommodates contingency, emergence, and non‑human agency. Critics argue that it can be difficult to translate into clear institutional prescriptions.

Essential Contestability and Anti‑Foundationalism

Connolly extends the thesis of essentially contestable concepts into an ontological register. Political principles, identities, and moralities lack ultimate foundations; they rest on historically sedimented, revisable commitments. He associates democratic life with acknowledging such fragility:

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“To be a pluralist is to affirm the contestability of fundamental principles and the fragility of the settlements we forge around them.”
— William E. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization

Supporters see this as a sophisticated post‑foundationalism that avoids both relativism and dogmatism by cultivating ongoing critical reflection. Detractors contend that it may undercut robust normative critique or enable a “politics of ambiguity” insufficiently decisive.

Agonistic Democracy and Ethos

Connolly’s ontology underpins his version of agonistic pluralism. Because conflicts among ultimate values are ineradicable, democracy is defined less by consensus than by how it organizes enduring disputes. Central to this is an ethos of critical responsiveness—habits of humility, openness to challenge, and readiness to revise one’s own identity in light of others’ claims and new events.

Relations between this ethos and institutional design are debated: some readers stress Connolly’s affinities with radical democratic movements and experimental governance; others argue that his focus on ethos and ontology under‑specifies legal and constitutional structures.

6. Pluralism, Secularism, and Religion

Connolly is widely discussed for his contributions to debates on pluralism, secularism, and the public role of religion, especially in Identity, The Ethos of Pluralization, and Why I Am Not a Secularist.

Deep Pluralism and Identity

Connolly distinguishes “deep” pluralism—conflicts among basic metaphysical or ethical commitments—from more surface disagreements. He argues that modern societies contain multiple, incommensurable visions of the good (religious and secular) that cannot be harmonized by a single rational standard. He contends that identities are historically constituted and often maintained through exclusion and ressentiment.

Proponents claim this diagnosis helps explain cultural and religious conflicts beyond what liberal tolerance can handle. Critics worry that emphasizing incommensurability risks overstating the impossibility of shared reasons.

Critique of Strong Secularism

In Why I Am Not a Secularist, Connolly criticizes strong secularism—models that portray secular reasoning as neutral and require religious citizens to translate or privatize their commitments. He argues that secular outlooks themselves rest on contestable metaphysical assumptions and can become hegemonic when they deny this.

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“Secularism becomes most dangerous when it forgets its own contestability and presents itself as a universal, neutral standpoint.”
— William E. Connolly, Why I Am Not a Secularist

He advocates a modest secularism in which both religious and non‑religious perspectives enter public life openly, subject to reciprocal critique under democratic conditions.

Comparative overview:

Some theorists sympathetic to Rawls or Habermas argue that Connolly mischaracterizes public reason, while supporters see his approach as opening richer spaces for religious‑secular interaction.

Ethos of Pluralization

Linking pluralism and secularism, Connolly proposes an ethos of pluralization—ongoing efforts to widen the range of identities and faiths that can coexist without final reconciliation. This ethos emphasizes mutual respect, critical engagement, and institutional protections. Debate centers on whether such an ethos is achievable under deep structural inequalities and whether Connolly’s framework grants sufficient tools to contest domination by powerful religious or secular blocs.

7. Affect, Embodiment, and Neuropolitics

Connolly’s notion of neuropolitics integrates neuroscience, affect theory, and political philosophy to analyze how bodily, pre‑conscious processes shape political life.

Affects and Pre‑Cognitive Judgments

In Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed, Connolly argues that affects—non‑cognitive intensities of attraction, aversion, fear, and excitement—move faster than deliberative reasoning and help configure what later appears rational or plausible in politics.

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“Affects move faster than words; they condition the field upon which arguments, interests, and identities come to seem reasonable or unreasonable.”
— William E. Connolly, Neuropolitics

He links these processes to media flows, economic rhythms, and technologies that operate at high speeds, suggesting that political subjectivity is continuously modulated by such environments.

Embodiment and Neural Plasticity

Connolly draws on research into neural plasticity to claim that brains and bodies are shaped over time by cultural practices, rituals, and institutions. He contends that political ideologies are not only sets of beliefs but also embodied dispositions etched into neural circuits. Proponents see this as a fruitful bridge between biology and political theory; some neuroscientists and philosophers caution, however, that he extrapolates from limited empirical findings.

Neuropolitics and Democracy

Neuropolitics has implications for democratic theory. Connolly argues that appeals to purely rational deliberation overlook how affective atmospheres and embodied habits influence citizens’ receptivity to arguments. He calls for practices that cultivate more generous, self‑reflexive affective dispositions, such as exposure to diverse media, arts, and cross‑cultural interactions.

Critics raise several concerns:

• Some deliberative democrats worry that emphasizing affect risks undermining the ideal of reason‑giving justification.
• Others suggest that neuropolitical insights could be used for manipulation (e.g., targeted propaganda), and question whether Connolly’s framework sufficiently guards against such dangers.
• A further debate concerns whether neuropolitics can be operationalized in concrete institutional reforms or remains largely diagnostic and ethical in orientation.

Despite disagreements, Connolly’s work is widely cited as an early and influential attempt to incorporate embodiment and affect into normative political theory.

8. Planetary Politics and the Anthropocene

In his later work, Connolly extends his pluralist, process‑oriented ontology to the scale of planetary politics, addressing climate change and the Anthropocene.

Entangled Humanism

In Facing the Planetary, Connolly proposes entangled humanism, rejecting strict human exceptionalism and emphasizing that humans are enmeshed with animals, technologies, and earth systems. He portrays the planet as a set of interacting self‑organizing processes—climate patterns, ocean currents, capitalist economies—whose couplings have become dangerously intensified.

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“We inhabit a planetary assemblage in which human designs, capitalist intensities, and self‑organizing earth processes now fold dangerously into one another.”
— William E. Connolly, Facing the Planetary

Supporters argue that this framework helps move beyond anthropocentric models and encourages cross‑species and cross‑border solidarities. Critics question whether “entangled humanism” can supply sufficiently determinate ethical guidance or whether it dilutes specifically human responsibilities.

Neoliberalism, Fragility, and Crisis

In The Fragility of Things, Connolly analyzes how neoliberal capitalism interacts with complex systems, amplifying volatility and risk. He contends that market logics, fossil‑fuel dependence, and state practices together destabilize ecological and economic regimes, increasing the likelihood of crises. Some political economists find this account illuminating but suggest it underplays class analysis; others see it as a valuable supplement to more traditional critiques.

Politics of Swarming

Connolly introduces the politics of swarming to describe dispersed, networked forms of activism—climate movements, indigenous struggles, urban protests—that respond flexibly to fast‑moving crises. Unlike hierarchical organizations, “swarms” are multi‑centered and capable of rapid reconfiguration.

Comparative features:

Some theorists welcome this emphasis on decentralized activism, while skeptics worry about coordination problems, accountability, and interface with formal institutions.

Overall, Connolly positions planetary politics as a multi‑scalar effort: revising energy regimes, rethinking global capitalism, and cultivating new sensibilities toward non‑human processes, without presuming a single global sovereign solution.

9. Methodology and Style of Political Theory

Connolly’s methodology combines conceptual analysis, genealogy, and speculative ontology, giving his work a distinctive style within Anglophone political theory.

Conceptual and Genealogical Analysis

From The Terms of Political Discourse onward, Connolly examines how key political concepts are used, contested, and transformed over time. Influenced by both analytic philosophy of language and Foucaultian genealogy, he treats concepts as tools that organize reality, not as neutral descriptors.

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“Political concepts are not mere reflections of a reality that exists independently of them; they are themselves instruments through which that reality is organized and contested.”
— William E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse

Methodologically, this leads him to:

• Track shifts in meanings across historical episodes.
• Relate conceptual change to power struggles and institutional developments.
• Highlight ambiguities and paradoxes rather than eliminating them.

Interdisciplinarity and Speculative Ontology

Connolly often weaves together philosophy, political science, neuroscience, complexity theory, and literary or cinematic examples. He engages empirical research but also advances speculative ontological claims about processes, emergence, and affect. Admirers view this interdisciplinarity as innovative and generative; critics sometimes find it eclectic or question the empirical grounding of his speculations.

Rhetorical Style and Ethos

Stylistically, Connolly writes in a dense but often vivid prose, employing neologisms (e.g., “entangled humanism,” “neuropolitics”) and metaphors (“swarms,” “fragility”). He advocates an ethos of critical responsiveness, modeling it by disclosing his own normative commitments and inviting contestation.

Debates about his methodology include:

• Some analytic theorists argue that his arguments would benefit from clearer definitions and more formal structure.
• Others, influenced by continental and critical theory, regard his style as appropriate to the complexity and uncertainty of his subject matter.
• There is ongoing discussion about how far speculative ontology should inform normative political prescriptions, and whether Connolly’s approach adequately distinguishes descriptive from prescriptive claims.

10. Impact on Political Philosophy and Related Fields

Connolly has had substantial impact across political philosophy and adjoining disciplines, though assessments of his influence vary.

Agonistic and Post‑Foundational Political Theory

His work is frequently cited within agonistic democracy and post‑foundational thought. The analysis of essentially contestable concepts influenced methodological debates about normative theory, while his version of agonistic pluralism has been discussed alongside theorists such as Chantal Mouffe and Bonnie Honig. Some commentators credit him with helping to legitimize Nietzschean and Deleuzian currents in Anglophone political theory; others regard his influence as more specialized, confined to certain subfields.

Religion, Secularism, and Public Reason

In debates on religion and public life, Why I Am Not a Secularist has been a touchstone. It has influenced scholars in religious studies, theology, and philosophy who explore alternatives to strict liberal secularism. Supporters see his arguments as expanding models of public reason; critics aligned with Rawlsian or Habermasian frameworks contend that his critique overstates the exclusionary nature of their positions.

Affect, Media, and Cultural Studies

Connolly’s notion of neuropolitics has been taken up in media studies, cultural studies, and critical security studies. Researchers have used his ideas to analyze how affect circulates through digital media, film, and popular culture, shaping political identification. Some scholars, however, question whether his reliance on neuroscience is sufficiently precise for detailed empirical work.

Environmental Humanities and Anthropocene Studies

In the environmental humanities, Connolly’s concepts of entangled humanism and planetary assemblages have informed discussions about the Anthropocene, non‑human agency, and climate justice. His work is often cited alongside thinkers such as Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett. Critics sometimes argue that his focus on ontology and ethos may underemphasize legal, economic, or geopolitical levers of change.

Cross‑Disciplinary Reach

Connolly’s writings appear in syllabi across political science, philosophy, religious studies, and environmental studies. While some scholars see his influence as transformative, others regard his contributions as one strand within a broader turn toward pluralism, affect, and ecology rather than a singularly defining force.

11. Legacy and Historical Significance

Assessments of Connolly’s legacy emphasize his role in reshaping late‑20th‑ and early‑21st‑century political theory around questions of pluralism, ontology, and embodiment.

Reorientation of Political Theory

Many commentators credit Connolly with helping move Anglophone political theory beyond both behavioralist positivism and purely formal normative argument. His insistence on conceptual contestability, agonistic pluralism, and political ontology is seen as contributing to a broader post‑foundational shift. In this view, his legacy lies in demonstrating that political theory can be both normatively engaged and attuned to historical contingency, power, and affect.

Institutional and Generational Influence

Connolly has supervised and influenced multiple generations of political theorists who work across critical theory, democratic theory, and environmental politics. His presence in departments bridging political science and philosophy has been cited as important for maintaining theoretical pluralism within political science, particularly in the United States.

Debates over Coherence and Practicality

His long‑term significance remains debated. Supporters argue that his work provides indispensable tools for thinking through cultural conflict, neoliberalism, and the climate crisis. They highlight his early attention to affect and planetary entanglements as prescient. Critics maintain that his post‑foundationalism and speculative ontology may hinder concrete institutional design or clear standards of justice, potentially limiting his impact on policy‑oriented debates.

Position within Intellectual History

Historically, Connolly is often grouped with late‑20th‑century theorists who brought continental philosophy into Anglo‑American political thought, alongside figures such as Charles Taylor and Judith Butler, though his emphases are distinct. Some historians of ideas regard him as a key contributor to an emerging ecological and affective turn in political theory; others treat him as an important but more specialized voice within broader transformations.

As scholarship on neuropolitics, secularism, and the Anthropocene evolves, Connolly’s writings continue to serve as reference points, ensuring an ongoing—if contested—place in the history of political thought.