Social ontology: Butler via Arendt via Loidolt

This short contribution is written on the occasion of the book discussion of Sophie Loidolt?s Phenomenology of Plurality: Hannah Arendt on Political Intersubjectivity (2018) at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. It presents an attempt to read the two key notions Loidolt elaborates in her book - spaces of meaning and spaces of the public and private - from a critical perspective offered by Judith Butler?s taking up of Arendt?s work. Offering Butler?s conception of social ontology through several major points of contestation with Arendt, I argue against an all too simple reduction of her understanding of the political and normativity to poststructuralist ones.