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In this interview, Ernesto Laclau discusses his theoretico-political endeavour from the publication of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy; questions of radical democratic subjectivity; the social order, sedimentation and change; and finally... more
In this interview, Ernesto Laclau discusses his theoretico-political endeavour from the publication of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy; questions of radical democratic subjectivity; the social order, sedimentation and change; and finally his relationship to the work of Michel Foucault.
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A central claim of Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory (Laclau & Mouffe 1985) is the need of any identity to delimit itself from a constitutive Other. When it comes to the articulation of a national political identity – a People explicit... more
A central claim of Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory (Laclau & Mouffe 1985) is the need of any identity to delimit itself from a constitutive Other. When it comes to the articulation of a national political identity – a People explicit attempts of such articulations are relatively rare: in day to day politics, agonistic relations tend to dominate the political landscape. However, the public debates following the terrorist attacks in France (January 2015) and Denmark (February 2015) several political leaders addressed this very question in explicit antagonistic terms: one of the central issues of these debates were exactly that of the identification of a particular national People in relation to the Other. The two events took place within few days, and triggered equivalent, yet different, articulations in the two countries. Apart from that France and Denmark are interesting cases since they belong to different tradition of stateand nationhood, the republican, universalist and the ...
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This contribution replies to a set of articles by Paula Biglieri, Allan Dreyer Hansen, Vassilios Paipais, David Payne, Gloria Perelló and Dimitris Vardoulakis about the book ‘Thinking Antagonism. Political Ontology after Laclau’... more
This contribution replies to a set of articles by Paula Biglieri, Allan Dreyer Hansen, Vassilios Paipais, David Payne, Gloria Perelló and Dimitris Vardoulakis about the book ‘Thinking Antagonism. Political Ontology after Laclau’ (Edinburgh University Press 2018) by Oliver Marchart. The author positions his own ontology of the political, i.e. of antagonism, in relation to the work of Ernesto Laclau and within the intellectual context of the Essex School. He thereby reflects on the role of the university, the transferential relationship between academic ‘master’ and ‘disciple’, the question of what is ‘proper’ to a given thought, agonistic democracy, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and what ‘thinking’ could mean from a political perspective.
14. The workings of political discoursesDescription This section invites papers from the post-structuralist and anti/post-foundationalist approach to politics. Submissions may include case studies ...
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Over the recent years, a so-called 'ontological turn' has gained prominence, not only in connection with new materialisms, posthumanism, or within the discipline of anthropology, but also in political theory. But what does such an... more
Over the recent years, a so-called 'ontological turn' has gained prominence, not only in connection with new materialisms, posthumanism, or within the discipline of anthropology, but also in political theory. But what does such an 'ontological turn' stand for within political thought? It first of all means that politics should not be conceptualized in any narrow sense of the term, that is, neither with respect to current political systems nor as a particular kind of action. The turn toward ontology thus implies a turn away from politics-as-we-know-it toward 'the political'. Yet secondly, it becomes important to specify what 'the political' consists in. Should the political be conceived in terms of a political ontology of the multitude (Antonio Negri), of 'being-with' (Jean-Luc Nancy), of 'the social imaginary' (Cornelius Castoriadis), or of precarity (Butler)? As Oliver Marchart argues, 'the political' means conflict, and confl...
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In this paper, we compare the political anatomy of two distinct enactments of (leftist) radical politics: Occupy Wall Street and The Alternative, a recently elected political party in Denmark. Departing from Ernesto Laclau’s... more
In this paper, we compare the political anatomy of two distinct enactments of (leftist) radical politics: Occupy Wall Street and The Alternative, a recently elected political party in Denmark. Departing from Ernesto Laclau’s conceptualization of ‘the universal’ and ‘the particular’, we show how the institutionalization of radical politics (as carried out by The Alternative) entails a move from universality towards particularity. This move, however, comes with the risk of cutting-off supporters who no longer feel represented by the project. We refer to this problem as ‘the problem of particularization’. In conclusion, we use the analysis to propose a conceptual distinction between radical movements and radical parties: While the former is constituted by an infinite chain of equivalent grievances, the latter is constituted by a prioritized set of differential demands. While both are important, we argue, they must remain distinct in order to preserve the universal spirit of contemporar...
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The ontological primacy of the political? Some critical remarks
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An obvious example of the use of metaphors is the recent debate on ‘networks in the shadow of hierarchy’. As Lakoff and Johnson (2003) fairly quickly would notice, all the parts of this concept – ‘networks’ ‘in the shadow of’ ‘hierarchy’... more
An obvious example of the use of metaphors is the recent debate on ‘networks in the shadow of hierarchy’. As Lakoff and Johnson (2003) fairly quickly would notice, all the parts of this concept – ‘networks’ ‘in the shadow of’ ‘hierarchy’ is metaphorical. ‘In the shadow’ is obviously metaphorical, what they call ‘metaphorical extension in new directions’, but also networks and hierarchy are metaphors, what they call ‘literal expressions structured by metaphorical concepts’ (Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 51 and 53).
Laclauian discourse theory, as well as its main source of inspiration, deconstruction, aims to underline change, instability, process. If the theoretical “foundation ” can be put to a single line, it would be the affirmation of... more
Laclauian discourse theory, as well as its main source of inspiration, deconstruction, aims to underline change, instability, process. If the theoretical “foundation ” can be put to a single line, it would be the affirmation of un-limitability of the productivity of a signifying chain. However, as both Laclau and Derrida have pointed out several times, dissemination only takes place on the background of some kind of stability, some kind of fixity. The question is how to conceive of this fixity or reproduction. Within social science one traditional answer has been to affirm institutions as some sort of middle layer between (social) structure and agency. Discourse theory offers a conceptualisation where institutions are concieved of as a moment or a logic working at the same time as destabilising or de-institutionalising moments or logics. The prime concept in Laclau’s discourse theory for thinking fixations and stabilisations is (a reinterpretation of the Husserlian concept of) sedim...