![]() ![]() “Rejection of the thought/reality dichotomy,” they propose, “must go together with a re-thinking and interpenetration of the categories which have up until now been considered exclusive of one another”.Ĭritically, this means a fusion of the hitherto distinct categories of (subjective) discourse and (objective) structure in the concept of “hegemonic articulation”. By reinscribing the concept of praxis within a deconstruction of Marxism, Laclau and Mouffe theorise a new concept of discursive practice that “must pierce the entire material density of the multifarious institutions” upon which it operates, since it has as its objective a decisive break with the material/mental dichotomy. ![]() Laclau and Mouffe’s concept of discursive practice has the same effect – with this difference, that Laclau and Mouffe deny that discursive practices can become wholly transparent to social agents ( Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe Hegemony and Socialist Strategy Towards a Radical Democratic Politics). This enables Lukács to emphasise the revolutionary character of class conscious as coextensive with revolutionary action. The subject of history is therefore the creator of the contents of the social totality, and to the extent that this subject attains self-reflexivity, it is also the conscious generator of social forms. “Radical and plural democracy,” Laclau and Mouffe contend, represents a translation of socialist strategy into the detotalising paradigm of postmodern culture.įor Lukács, the objective of a new conception of praxis is to establish the dialectical unity of theory and practice, so as to demonstrate that the proletariat, as the operator of a transparent praxis, is the identical subject-object of the historical process. The proliferation of democratic forms of struggle by the new social movements is thereby integrated into a pluralistic conception of the social field that emphasises the negativity and dispersion underlying all social identities. By contrast, Laclau and Mouffe insist that the social field is an incomplete totality consisting of a multitude of transitory hegemonic “epicentres” and characterised by a plurality of competing discourses. For Lukács, a single principle is “expressed” in all social phenomena, so that every aspect of the social formation is integrated into a closed system that connects the forces and social relations of production to politics and the juridical apparatus, cultural forms and class-consciousness. In this context – which is theoretically and politically hostile to the concept of totality – Laclau and Mouffe’s recasting of the Gramscian concept of hegemony is designed to avoid the Lukácsian conception of society as an “expressive totality”. Lukács would be the condensation of everything that is deemed politically regressive about the social theory of “the rationalist ‘dictatorship’ of Enlightenment” ( Ernesto Laclau New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time), of just about everything that the new social logic of postmodern culture brings into crisis. ![]()
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