The People as Hegemonic Construction: Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Radical Democracy

Abstract

AbstractErnesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s post-Marxist framework, which places centrality upon the concept of political hegemony as a form of “failed totality”, is the object of in this chapter. Laclau and Mouffe’s theoretical endeavour is addressed starting from their powerful critique of Marxism, through which economic determinism is undermined, and the space is left open for a social ontology marked by contingency and heterogeneity. In this context, Laclau and Mouffe argue, social and political construction is only possible antagonistically, through discursive-symbolic articulation of heterogeneous demands affectively unified by their shared opposition to the constructed ‘other’. According to Laclau and Mouffe, the hegemonic logic becomes predominant with the end of theologically structured socio-political orders, and the modern rise of an “egalitarian imaginary”. In the context of this discussion, Laclau and Mouffe’s argument on the contingent nature of liberal democracy is introduced and called into question. In the final sections of the chapter, the notion of the people as a “plurality of ruptural points” unified by the symbolic force of equivalential chains and empty signifiers is critically discussed. Finally, a hypothesis is provided which seeks to account for why it is that Laclau and Mouffe’s demise of Hegelian-Marxian teleology brings with itself a staunch rejection of normativity.KeywordsAgonistic democracyLaclauMouffeLeft populismEquivalential chainEmpty signifierDiscourseAntagonismEgalitarian imaginaryHegemony