Ernesto Laclau

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Ernesto Laclau

Ernesto Laclau (born October 6, 1935 in Buenos Aires , † April 13, 2014 in Seville ) was an Argentine political theorist . He was Professor of Political Theory at Essex University and founder of the Essex School . He counted himself the post Marxism to and represented theoretical positions of post-structuralism and the post-foundationalism .

Life

In 1958 Laclau became a member of the Socialist Party (PSA). In 1963 he joined the Partido Socialista de la Izquierda Nacional , which had emerged as a splinter group from the PSA. Until 1968 Laclau was active in the political leadership of this party. As an editor he was involved for a while at the party weekly newspaper Lucha Obrera . As a scientist, he has taught at numerous universities in South America , Europe , Australia , North America and South Africa . In 1969 he was invited to Oxford by Eric Hobsbawm . There he spent most of his academic life in England.

Laclau was Professor of Political Theory at the University of Essex from 1986 to 2008, where he also worked as the director of the Master's and PhD program in ideology and discourse analysis that he instituted . From 1990 to 1997 he was also director of the Center for Theoretical Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Essex. His best-known doctoral students include Oliver Marchart , Yannis Stavrakakis , Urs Stäheli, Torben Bech Dyrberg, Shu-fen Lin, Mark Devenney, Alleta Norval, David Howarth, Jeremy Valentine, Benjamin Arditi, Jacob Torfing and Jason Glynos.

Ernesto Laclau was married to the Belgian political scientist Chantal Mouffe . He died of complications from a stroke at the age of 78. Other sources speak of a heart attack.

Works and theory

Together with Chantal Mouffe , his wife, he published his most important work, Hegemony and Radical Democracy , in 1985 . On the deconstruction of Marxism , which first appeared in German in 1991. The reception of this work is often limited to its post-Marxist line of argument because of its criticism of Marxist economism . However, Laclau and Mouffe develop on the one hand Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony and on the other hand formulate the project of a radical and plural democracy . The work is thus divided into a hegemony and a democracy-theoretical part, with Mouffe in particular devoting himself to the further elaboration of the democracy concept. Laclau takes a different path: in New Reflections on the Revolutions of our Time, among others, he systematizes his theory of cultural hegemony , making strong reference to Jacques Lacan . This influence is particularly due to the meeting with the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek . In addition to the theory of hegemony and the concept of radical democracy , the theory of discourse analysis is also important in Laclaus' work , which goes beyond a purely linguistic analysis and describes the political logic of signification .

Starting from the general question of creating the connection between discursive formations, Laclaus' central concern is to expose the cultural techniques that are responsible for the equivalence of a complex political system that can no longer rely on essentialist justifications, but rather as an ensemble differential positions presented. Laclau asks about the conditions under which a stabilization of the significance of the internal discursive differences that are responsible for the formation of modern social systems can become possible.

To this end, Laclau first describes the ambivalent mechanism on which every political identity is based:

“On the one hand, each element of the system only has an identity insofar as it is different from the others. Difference equals identity . On the other hand, however, all these differences are equivalent to one another in so far as they all belong to this side of the limit of exclusion. "

Just as the localization of the individual system element is guaranteed in two ways, the dynamic of political formation also performs a double movement in that it defines its identity as a play of its internal differences on the one hand and levels these differences at the moment when it is antagonistic from an outside world on the other Community and thus ensures the equivalence of the system.

The question of an inner identity of the political can no longer be distinguished from that of the margins of the discourse. The self-description of such a differentially composed identity is only possible under the conditions that what is excluded from the system (which precisely guarantees its equivalence) is articulated and the act of signification itself, which has always been differential, is undermined:

“If we want to define the limits of the designation […], there is no direct way open to us. The only possibility is the subversion of the labeling process itself. Through psychoanalysis we know how something that cannot be represented - the unconscious - can only find the subversion of the labeling process as a means of representation. [...] However, if all means of representation are differential in nature, then such a signification is only possible if the differential nature of the designation units is subverted when the signifiers of their links with individual signified empty and take on the role, pure being of the system to represent. [...] Only by giving privileges to the equivalence dimension to the point at which its differential nature has almost been completely erased - that is, only by emptying its differential nature - can the system designate itself as a totality . "

If every discourse wants to constitute itself as an attempt “to master the field of discursiveness, to stop the flow of differences, to construct a center”, then, according to Laclau, it is those - with no connection to individual signifieds and thus - empty signifiers - that do that be able to convert unrepresentable differentials of political identity into material perception. They erase the internal differences of the system by opposing them equivalently to an outside of the discourse whose designation - which at the same time represents the “limits of designability” - cannot be distinguished from the self-description of the system.

reception

In the last two decades, Laclaus' works have been increasingly received in the cultural and social sciences theories. His theory of empty signifiers, which in an antagonistic relationship conceives the logics of equivalence and difference as opposing and at the same time conditioning forces of the discursive, has recently been called the “general ontology of being”. Furthermore, Laclau is considered one of the most important theorists of populism and especially of left- wing populism .

Selected publications

  • Politics and Ideology in Marxism. Capitalism, fascism, populism. ("Politics and ideology in Marxist theory" 1977). Argument-Verlag, Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-88619-028-5 .
  • Politics as a construction of the unthinkable. In: kultuRRevolution. No. 17/18, 1988, pp. 54-57.
  • New Reflections on the Revolutions of our Time . (Phronesis). Verso Books, London 1990, ISBN 0-86091-202-7 .
  • Emancipation and Difference. Turia + Kant, Vienna / Berlin, 4th edition 2017, ISBN 978-3-85132-704-5 . Original edition: Emancipation (s). Verso, London 1996.
  • On populist reason . Verso Books, London 2005, ISBN 978-1844671861 .
  • with Chantal Mouffe: Hegemony and radical democracy. To the deconstruction of Marxism. ("Hegemony and socialist strategy"). Translated from English and edited by Michael Hintz and Gerd Vorwallner. 4th edition. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7092-0035-3 .
  • with Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek : Contingency - Hegemony - Universality. Current dialogues on the left . Turia + Kant, Vienna / Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-85132-720-5 . Original edition: Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. Contemporary Dialogues on the Left. Verso, London 2000.
  • The Rhetorical Foundations of Society . Verso Books, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-78168-170-1 .

literature

  • Aristotelis Agridopoulos: The Imaginary and the Political. Post-Marxist social ontology with Cornelius Castoriadis and Ernesto Laclau, in: kultuRRevolution. Journal for Applied Discourse Theory 71. 2. 2016, pp. 45–52.
  • Warren Breckman: Žižek, Laclau and the end of post-Marxism. Translated by Dirk Hommrich. In: Reinhard Heil, Andreas Hetzel, Dirk Hommrich (eds.): Unconditional democracy. Questions to the classics of modern political thought. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2011, ISBN 978-3-8329-6238-8 , pp. 199-214.
  • Warren Breckman: Adventures of the Symbolic. Postmarxism and Radical Democracy . Columbia University Press, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-231-14394-3 .
  • Simon Critchley / Oliver Marchart (eds.): Laclau: A Critical Reader . Routledge: London 2004.
  • Lars Distelhorst: Contested difference. Hegemony-theoretical perspectives of gender politics with Butler and Laclau . Edition Parodos, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-938880-12-8 .
  • Reinhard Heil, Andreas Hetzel: Radical Democracy . In: New Society for Fine Art (ed.): Democracy in the new society. Information from the depths of the disputed space . Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-938515-15-0 .
  • Andreas Hetzel: Democracy for no reason. Ernesto Laclau . In: Reinhard Heil, Andreas Hetzel (eds.): The return of the political. Democracy Theories Today . Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-534-17435-6 .
  • Andreas Hetzel (Ed.): Radical Democracy. On the understanding of the state of Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau . Baden-Baden 2017, ISBN 978-3-8487-4191-5 .
  • Oliver Marchart: (Ed.): The unrepresentable of politics. On Ernesto Laclaus' theory of hegemony . Turia + Kant publishing house, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-85132-155-3 .
  • Oliver Marchart: The political difference. On the thinking of the political in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, Laclau and Agamben . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-518-29556-4 .
  • Oliver Marchart: The impossible object. A post-fundamentalist theory of society . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-518-29655-4 .
  • Oliver Marchart: Thinking Antagonism. Political Ontology after Laclau . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2018, ISBN 9781474413312 .
  • Michael Hintz, Gerd Vorwallner: Marxism as radical relationism. Notes on political philosophy by E. Laclau and Ch. Mouffe. In: kultuRRevolution. No. 17/18, 1988, pp. 58-63.
  • Michael Hintz, Gerd Vorwallner: Socialism will be democratic or not at all. In: Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe: Hegemony and radical democracy. To the deconstruction of Marxism. ("Hegemony and socialist strategy"). Translated from English and edited by Michael Hintz and Gerd Vorwallner. 2nd Edition. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-85165-453-6 .
  • Michael Hintz: Marx - Marxism - Post-Marxism: “Radical Democracy” in Crisis . In: Reinhard Heil, Andreas Hetzel, Dirk Hommrich (eds.): Unconditional democracy. Questions to the classics of modern political thought . Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden 2011, ISBN 978-3-8329-6238-8 , pp. 151-173.
  • Martin Nonhoff : Discourse - Radical Democracy - Hegemony. On the political thinking of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe . Transcript, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-494-2 .
  • Martin Nonhoff : Political Discourse and Hegemony. The social market economy project . Transcript, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 3-89942-424-7 .
  • Andreas Reckwitz: Ernesto Laclau . In: Stephan Moebius , Dirk Quadflieg (Ed.): Culture. Present theories . VS- Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-531-14519-3 .
  • Anja Rüdiger: Deconstruction and Democratization. Emancipatory Political Theory in the Context of Postmodernism . Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1996, ISBN 3-8100-1710-8 .
  • Rahel Sophia Süß : collective agency. Gramsci - Holzkamp - Laclau / Mouffe. Foreword by Oliver Marchart. Turia + Kant, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-85132-767-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ infobae.com, accessed April 13, 2014
  2. ↑ Oliver Marchart: Society without a reason. Laclaus' political theory of post-fundamentalism. In: Ernesto Laclau, 2002: Emancipation and Difference. Turia and Kant Verlag, Vienna 2002, p. 7.
  3. ^ Ernesto Laclau: New Reflections on The Revolution of Our Time. London 1990, pp. 197f.
  4. ↑ Sebastian Schoepp: Peronism from Essex . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of May 20, 2015, p. 8.
  5. ^ Obituaries on spiegel.de, accessed on April 16, 2014
  6. ↑ buenosairesherald.com, accessed April 14, 2014
  7. ↑ obituary versobooks.com, accessed on April 15, 2014
  8. ^ Obituaries on spiegel.de, accessed on April 16, 2014
  9. ↑ Oliver Marchart: Society without a reason. Laclaus' political theory of post-fundamentalism. In: Ernesto Laclau: Emancipation and Difference. Turia and Kant Verlag, Vienna 2002.
  10. ↑ Michael Bergunder : What is religion? Cultural studies considerations on the subject of religious studies. In: Christoph Auffarth et al. (Ed.): Journal for religious studies. Berlin 2011.
  11. ↑ Ernesto Laclaut: On populist reason. Verso: London 2005.

Web links

Commons : Ernesto Laclau  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Laclau, Ernesto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Argentine political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Buenos Aires
DATE OF DEATH April 13, 2014
Place of death Seville , Spain