Abstract
Since their joint publication of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe are mostly read as contributors to one collaborative theory. However, Mouffe’s and Laclau’s further enhancement of their theoretical structure differ in significant aspects. Laclau hones his political ontology and provocatively pleads for an ethically reluctant position based on a consequent post-foundationalism. On the contrary, Mouffe develops a normative framework for democratic pluralism. Thus, we argue, their work exemplifies variations in post-foundationalist thought and critique. The tension between Mouffe’s and Laclau’s theoretical continuations unveils a deeper lying ethical commitment of political ontology in general.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
With this distinction, Laclau and Mouffe follow the French philosophers Paul Ricoeur and Claude Lefort, who distinguish le politique(the political) from la politique (politics) (see, e.g., Lefort 1988).
- 3.
For Laclau’s political ontology, see Laclau (1990a), and Laclau (2007a). Politics is seen as ‘the ensemble of decisions made on an undecidable terrain’ (Laclau 2007a: 103) and introduced as a definite field-specific overlapping practice of ‘disarticulation’ and ‘re-articulation’ (Mouffe 2008b) of the social.
- 4.
By framing it as decisionistic, we follow Greven’s (1992) plea for a democratic decisionism. Those who read hegemony theory as a leftist relapse of Schmitt’s decisionism forget that Laclau and Mouffe think of the social in a difference-theoretical way and therefore—unlike Schmitt—cannot assume a politicization of a prior collective entity (Flügel-Martinsen 2003; Mouffe 2000).
- 5.
- 6.
The term clarifies how subjectivization and disciplining intertwine.
- 7.
In contrast to Butler, Laclau does not contend that subjects are often passionately attached to their identities, because they are only fully acknowledged when cultivating and incorporating hegemonic identities. For a comparison between Butler and Laclau, see Diestelhorst (2007).
- 8.
Laclau (2005a, b) often alludes to the Solidarność movement fighting against Soviet rule and to Juan and Eva Perón fighting against the oligarchic caudillo system to explain the functioning of the empty signifier; but similarities can also be drawn to successful key political concepts, like nation, good governance, democracy and justice, that likewise accomplish integration.
- 9.
This can be linked to the ‘heartland,’ which Paul Taggart (2004: 275) views as a fundamental feature of populist politics.
- 10.
Populism reflects both the antagonistic constitution of the social and also the desire for a non-reachable full identity. Hence, for Laclau, analyzing its functional logic provides a privileged access to the ontological constitution of the political. This is because on the one hand the popular ‘us’ only evolves along the binary splitting of the social space and the friend-foe differentiation that comes with it; on the other hand, the same antagonistic ‘them’ prevents the full realization, the self-identity, of this popular collective.
- 11.
Populism reflects both the antagonistic constitution of the social and also the desire for a non-reachable full identity. Hence, for Laclau, analyzing its functional logic provides a privileged access to the ontological constitution of the political. This is because on the one hand the popular ‘us’ only evolves along the binary splitting of the social space and the friend-foe differentiation that comes with it; on the other hand, the same antagonistic ‘them’ prevents the full realization, the self-identity, of this popular collective.
- 12.
- 13.
Thus, Mouffe does not follow Carl Schmitt (see Sigglow 2012: 179).
- 14.
On this, see also Jacques Rancière’s use of the term ‘people’ (Rancière and Höller 2007).
- 15.
For example, Critchley (2004) argues that Laclauian post-structuralist discourse suffers from a ‘normative deficit.’
- 16.
Laclau (2005a: 151) assigns a crucial role to underdogs: ‘historical actors will be the outsiders of the system – those we have called the heterogeneous – who are decisive for the establishment of an antagonistic frontier.’
- 17.
Post-foundationalism views the moment of the empty universal as a consequence of modernity since democracy discourse can no longer claim transcendental legitimacy. Following Žižek, one can criticize authors like Laclau and Mouffe for not being able to grasp this argument as a decisive a priori due to their implicit theory of history. However, the theoretical decision for a politically empty center is itself a hegemony that excludes fullness, the invisibility of power or a reconciled society (see Heil 2006: 247).
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Hildebrand, M., Séville, A. (2019). Post-foundationalism and the Possibility of Critique: Comparing Laclau and Mouffe. In: Marttila, T. (eds) Discourse, Culture and Organization. Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94123-3_14
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