DOCSLIB.ORG

Hegemony and Socialist Strategy Towards a Radical Democratic Politics Second Edition

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy Towards a Radical Democratic Politics Second Edition Hegemony and Socialist Strategy Towards a Radical Democratic Politics Second Edition ERNESTO LACLAU and CHANTAL MOUFFE VERSO London • New York First published by Verso 1985 © Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe 1985 This second edition first published by Verso 2001 © Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe 2001 All rights reserved The moral rights of the authors have been asserted 3579 10 864 Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG US: 180 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014-4606 Verso is the imprint of New Left Books www.versobooks.com ISBN 1-85984-621-1 ISBN 1-85984-330-1 (pbk) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, King's Lynn, Norfolk Contents Preface to the Second Edition vii Introduction 1 1 Hegemony: the Genealogy of a Concept 7 2 Hegemony: the Difficult Emergence of a New Political Logic 47 3 Beyond the Positivity of the Social: Antagonisms and Hegemony 93 4 Hegemony and Radical Democracy 149 Index 195 Preface to the Second Edition Hegemony and Socialist Strategy vtzs originally published in 1985, and since then it has been at the centre of many important theoretico- political discussions, both in the Anglo-Saxon world and elsewhere. Many things have changed in the contemporary scene since that time. To refer just to the most important developments, it is enough to mention the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of tne Soviet system. To this we should add drastic transformations of the social structure, which are at the root of new paradigms in the con• stitution of social and political identities. To perceive the epochal distance between the early 1980s, when this book was originally written, and the present, we have only to remember that, at that time, Eurocommunism was still seen as a viable political project, going beyond both Leninism and social democracy; and that, since then, the major debates which have absorbed the intellectual reflec• tion of the Left have been those around the new social movements, multiculturalism, the globalization and deterritorialization of the economy and the ensemble of issues linked to the question of post- modernity. We could say — paraphrasing Hobsbawm — that the 'short twentieth century' ended at some point in the early 1990s, and that today we have to face problems of a substantially new order. Given the magnitude of these epochal changes, we were surprised, in going through the pages of this not-so-recent book again, at how little we have to put into question the intellectual and political per• spective developed therein. Most of what has happened since then has closely followed the pattern suggested in our book, and those issues which were central to our concerns at that moment have become ever more prominent in contemporary discussions. We could even say that we see the theoretical perspective developed then — rooted as it was in the Gramscian matrix and in the cen- trality of the category of hegemony — as a far more adequate approach to contemporary issues than the intellectual apparatus via which has often accompanied recent discussions on political subjec• tivity, on democracy, and on the trends and political consequences of a globalized economy. This is why we want to recapitulate, as a way of introducing this second edition, some central points of our theo• retical intervention, and to counterpose some of its political conclusions to recent trends in the discussion about democracy. Let us start by saying something about the intellectual project of Hegemony and tne theoretical perspective from which it was written. In the mid-1970s, Marxist theorization had clearly reached an impasse. After an exceptionally rich and creative period in the 1960s, the limits of that expansion — which had its epicentre in Althusserianism, but also in a renewed interest in Gramsci and in the theoreticians of the Frankfurt School — were only too visible. There was an increasing gap between the realities of contemporary capital• ism and what Marxism could legitimately subsume under its own categories. It is enough to remember the increasingly desperate con• tortions which took place around notions such as 'determination in the last instance' and 'relative autonomy. This situation, on the whole, provoked two types of attitude: either to negate the changes, and to retreat unconvincingly to an orthodox bunker; or to add, in an ad hoc way, descriptive analyses of the new trends which were simply juxtaposed — without integration — to a theoretical body which remained largely unchanged. Our way of dealing with the Marxist tradition was entirely differ• ent and could, perhaps, be expressed in terms of the Husserlian distinction between 'sedimentation and 'reactivation. Sedimented theoretical categories are those which conceal the acts of their orig• inal institution, while the reactivating moment makes those acts visible again. For us — as opposed to Husserl — that reactivation had to show the original contingency of the synthesis that the Marxian categories attempted to establish. Instead of dealing with notions such as 'class', the triad of levels (the economic, the political and the ideological) or the contradiction between forces and rela• tions of production as sedimented fetishes, we tried to revive the preconditions which make their discursive operation possible, and asked ourselves questions concerning their continuity or disconti• nuity in contemporary capitalism. The result of this exercise was the realization that the field of Marxist theorization had been far more ambivalent and diversified than the monolithic transvestite that Marxism—Leninism presented as the history of Marxism. It has to be clearly stated: the lasting theoreticaleffect of Leninism has been an appalling impoverishment of the field of Marxian diversity. While, at Preface to the Second Edition ix the end of the period of the Second International, the fields in which Marxist discursivity was operating were becoming increasingly diver• sified — ranging, especially in Austro-Marxism, from the problem of the intellectuals to the national question, and from the internal inconsistencies of the labour theory of value to the relationship between socialism and ethics — the division of the international workers' movement, and the reorganization of its revolutionary wing around the Soviet experience, led to a discontinuity of this creative process. The pathetic case of a Lukacs, who contributed his undeni• able intellectual skills to the consolidation of a theoretico-political horizon which did not transcend the whole gamut of shibboleths of the Third International, is an extreme but far from isolated example. It is worth pointing out that many of the problems confronted by a socialist strategy in the conditions of late capitalism are already con• tained in nucem the theorization of Austro-Marxism, but had little continuity in the inter-war period. Only the isolated example of Gramsci, writing from the Mussolinian jails, can be quoted as a new departure producing a new arsenal of concepts — war of position, historical bloc, collective will, hegemony, intellectual and moral leadership — which are the starting point of our reflections in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Revisiting (reactivating) the Marxist categories in the light of these series of new problems and development had to lead, necessarily, to deconstructing the former — that is, to displacing some of their conditions of possibility and developing new possibilities which transcend anything which could be characterized as the application of a category. We know from Wittgenstein that there is no such thing as the application of a rule' — the instance of application becomes part of the rule itself. To reread Marxist theory in the light of contemporary problems necessarily involves deconstructing the central categories of that theory. This is what has been called our post-Marxism'. We did not invent this label — it only marginally appears (not as a label) in the Introduction to our book. But since it has become generalized in characterizing our work, we can say that we do not oppose it insofar as it is properly understood: as the process of reappropriation of an intellectual tradition, as well as the process of going beyond it. And in developing this task, it is impor• tant to point out that it cannot be conceived just as an internal history of Marxism. Many social antagonisms, many issues which are crucial to the understanding of contemporary societies, belong to fields of discursivity which are external to Marxism, and cannot be reconceptualized in terms of Marxist categories — given, especially, X that their very presence is what puts Marxism as a closed theoretical system into question, and leads to the postulation of new starting points for social analysis. There is one aspect in particular that we want to underline at this point. Any substantial change in the ontic content of a field of research leads also to a new ontological paradigm. Althusser used to say that behind Plato's philosophy, there was Greek mathematics; behind seventeenth-century rationalism, Galilean physics; and behind Kant s philosophy, Newtonian theory. To put the argument in a transcendental fashion: the strictly ontological question asks how entities have to be, so that the objectivity ofa particular field is possible. There is a process of mutual feedback between the incor• poration of new fields of objects and the general ontological categories governing, at a certain time, what is thinkable within the general field of objectivity. The ontology implicit in Freudianism, for instance, is different and incompatible with a biologist paradigm. From this point of view, it is our conviction that in the transition from Marxism to post-Marxism, the change is not only ontic but also ontological. The problems of a globalized and information- ruled society are unthinkable within the two ontological paradigms fgoverning the field of Marxist discursivity: first the Hegelian, and ater the naturalistic.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Confucian Marxism and Its Implications in the Current Age of Globalization
    CONFUCIAN MARXISM AND ITS IMPLICATIONS IN THE CURRENT AGE OF GLOBALIZATION Chen Weigang I. The Issue: Culture and Peripheral Justice One does not need to embrace Samuel Huntington’s theory of the clash of civilizations to recognize the increasing salience of cultural and ethnic confl ict in the post-Cold War world.1 Indeed, recent major trends in the developing world, from the spectacular growth of Islamic fundamentalism in Muslim countries to the rapid ascendancy of Confucian nationalism in East Asia,2 all demonstrate clearly that cul- ture and cultural identities have become the driving force in global politics today. How, then, do we explain the intriguing fact that precisely at the moment when the West scores a decisive victory over all political and economic alternatives, when capitalism is universally accepted as the only feasible way to rationally organize a modern economy, and when Third-World industrialization tears down the traditional North-South structure thereby marking the beginning of an age of capitalist global- ization, there has emerged across non-Western societies an ever more powerful anti-Western backlash and an ever stronger aspiration for 1 Huntington, Samuel, The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone, 1996). 2 In 1993, Hanoi published, at great expense, a romanized Vietnamese translation (in fi fteen volumes with almost eight thousand pages) of “The Imperially Authorized Compendium of Institutions and Institutional Cases of the Great South” (“The Great South” was the Vietnamese imperial name for Vietnam, adopted in the late 1830s). The “Compendium of Institutions” had been compiled originally in classical Chinese by senior mandarins of the Vietnamese court at Hue in the 1840s.
    [Show full text]
  • Masses, Turbo-Capitalism and Power in Jean Baudrillard's Social
    International Journal of Theology, Philosophy and Science No. 3, Year 2/2018 MASSES, TURBO-CAPITALISM AND POWER IN JEAN BAUDRILLARD’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ONTOTHEOLOGY PhD. Prof. Spiros MAKRIS Assistant Professor in Political Theory University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, GREECE Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT If postmodern Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) could be defined as a theorist of power - to the extent that for some this is a contradiction by definition, although something very similar takes place in the case of Michel Foucault, he could be defined as a theorist of meta-power in the globalized era of turbo-capitalism. In his late texts (2005), which were published in 2010, the eminent French philosopher builds a provocative theory about power by using the classic concepts of domination and hegemony within the contemporary social, economic, political and ideological context of neoliberal globalization. In these papers, he analyzes in-depth the meta- power of hegemony in comparison with the power of domination. Actually, by signifying the critical passage of postwar capitalism from the phase of production to the phase of consumption, as Zygmunt Bauman does in his relevant work, Baudrillard formulates a meta-power theory as the equivalent of what he defines as turbo-capitalism. What is at stake is no longer the conventional issues of state sovereignty, Marx-inspired concept of alienation and Critical Theory-like negative dialectics but the crucial questions of hegemony, hostage and evilness. In short, Jean Baudrillard builds a new ontological and by extension disciplinary and theoretical field concerning global power, where the ‘Empire of Good’, or turbo-capitalism in his own terminology, is reborn in a totally catastrophic way (see simulation in the sense of a capitalist hypocrisy) either as an ‘Axis of Evil’ or as the ‘problem of terror’ (see simulacrum in the sense of a Lacanian stage of image within which turbo-capitalism represses, through a Freudian process of repelling, its unfamiliar self/i.e.
    [Show full text]
  • Post-Politics and the Aesthetic Imagination,” Edited Collection (DEADLINE: MAY 20)
    H-Democracy CFP: “Post-Politics and the Aesthetic Imagination,” Edited Collection (DEADLINE: MAY 20) Discussion published by Juan Meneses on Sunday, May 16, 2021 “Post-Politics and the Aesthetic Imagination” CFP for Edited Collection This Call for Papers seeks abstracts for essays that reflect on the analytical bridges that might exist between post-political theory and the study of aesthetics broadly conceived. The main question the project aims to answer is the following: Decades after everything was declared to be political, what are the affordances, triumphs, and pitfalls of a post-political theory of aesthetics? The work of theorists of post-politics such as Jacques Rancière, Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, and Erik Swyngedouw among others has exposed the processes by which political action is currently being eroded, sites for its practice are increasingly disappearing, and political agency is in need of urgent revitalization. At the same time, much post-political critical discourse has concentrated on connecting the saturation of the practice of politics, as well as its subsequent evacuation, with the need to formulate new and alternative ways to generate meaningful political change. While post-political theory has featured in analyses traditionally labelled “political,” a more explicit reflection on the contours, scope, and interpretive value of post- political theory for the study of aesthetics is absent in the critical theory corpus and it can offer a crucial contribution. At the core are questions: What does the post- political stand for exactly, and how can issues concerning representation (textual, visual, aural, etc. as well as political) be rethought through this lens? Related Citation: Juan Meneses.
    [Show full text]
  • Democracia Y Conflicto En Contextos Pluralistas DEPOIMENTO
    Democracia y conflicto en contextos pluralistas DEPOIMENTO Democracia y conflicto en contextos pluralistas: entrevista con Chantal Mouffe Democracy and conflict in pluralist contexts: an interview with Chantal Mouffe Entrevista con: Chantal Mouffe Profesora e investigadora, Centre for the Study of Democracy/ RAMOS, Aura Helena et al. Democracia y conflicto en contextos University of Westminster. pluralistas: entrevista con Chantal Mouffe. História, Ciências, Saúde – [email protected] Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro, v.21, n.2, abr.-jun. 2014, p.749-763. Concedida a: Resumen Aura Helena Ramos Chantal Mouffe, junto al teórico político argentino Ernesto Laclau Profesora, Faculdade de Educação (1935-2014), lanzó, en 1985, las bases de la teoría del discurso. Luego, e Programa de Pós-graduação em desarrolló su trabajo en el sentido de profundizar como influyen las Educação, Cultura e Comunicação formulaciones de la teoría del discurso en el análisis de las democracias em Periferias Urbanas/Universidade contemporáneas. Abordando el conflicto como una producción del do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Rua São Francisco Xavier, 524 encuentro de la diferencia, Mouffe lo comprende como un aspecto 20550-900 – Rio de Janeiro – RJ indeleble en la constitución del social. En este encuentro con la autora, – Brasil buscamos reflexionar algunos temas y problemáticas centrales de [email protected] su trabajo, y las implicaciones de su teoría en el campo educacional contemporáneo. Anna Luiza A. R. Martins de Oliveira Palabras clave: Chantal Mouffe (1943- ); teoría del discurso; democracia pluralista; derechos humanos; cultura. Profesora, Programa de Pós- graduação em Educação Contemporânea/Universidade Abstract Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE). Av. Professor Moraes Rego, 1235 Chantal Mouffe, along with Argentinian political theorist Ernesto Laclau (1935- 50670-901 – Recife – PE – Brasil 2014), laid down the bases of discourse theory in 1985.
    [Show full text]
  • A Focus on Chantal Mouffe's “Agonistic Democracy”
    Educational Studies in Japan: International Yearbook No. 13, March, 2019. pp. 111-121 Rethinking of the Signifi cance of Passions in Political Education: A Focus on Chantal Mouff e’s “Agonistic Democracy” Sho Yamanaka* This paper discusses the significance of passions in political education through the consideration of Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic democracy. Mouffe points out the role of the passions that facilitate organizing political identities, and presents the risks of eliminating passions. The liberal interpretation of de- mocracy intends to eliminate passions that prevent people achieving a rational consensus. On the other hand, the emphasis on rationality makes it easy for right-wing populism to mobilize people’s passions. In other words, the elimina- tion of passions creates a situation in which dialogue with other political iden- tities is diffi cult: this is the contradiction of the liberal interpretation of democ- racy. To avoid this, Mouff e suggests channels that express collective passions as democratic designs to disarm antagonistic passions. Mouffe’s democratic theory indicates the risk of a too optimistic understanding of the passions in political education which takes deliberative approaches. Also, this result sug- gests the necessity of reconsidering the position of passions in the political ed- ucation. From the perspective of Mouff e’s agonistic democracy, the role of po- litical education should be regarded as not elimination of passions but sublimation of antagonistic passions. To achieve this sublimation, we should fa- cilitate participation in democratic practices. However, sublimation of antago- nistic passions through democratic institutions is not always successful. If an- tagonistic passions are expressed in destructive forms, what should we do? This paper touches only briefl y on this point.
    [Show full text]
  • El Conflicto En Chantal Mouffe: Diálogos Entre Psicoanálisis Y Teoría Política the Conflict in Chantal Mouffe: Dialogues Between Psychoanalysis and Political Theory
    El conflicto en Chantal Mouffe: diálogos entre psicoanálisis y teoría política The conflict in Chantal Mouffe: dialogues between psychoanalysis and political theory Lucas Lucero [email protected] Enviado: 06/10/2017 - Aceptado: 12/03/2018 “Lucas Lucero/“El conflicto en Chantal Mouffe: diálogos entre psicoanálisis y teoría política” en Revista de Estudios Sociales Contemporáneos N° 18, IMESC-IDEHESI/CONICET, Universidad Nacional De Cuyo, junio 2018, pp. 105-115” Estudios Sociales Contemporáneos 18 | Junio 2018 El conflicto en Chantal Mouffe: diálogos entre psicoanálisis y teoría política Resumen El presente artículo indagará sobre la noción de conflicto en la obra de Chantal Mouffe y la influencia del psicoanálisis en la posición teórica de la autora. Al afirmar que no es posible erradicar la dimensión conflictual de la sociedad, Mouffe realiza un aporte novedoso a la reflexión política en torno a las condiciones de posibilidad de la democracia. A partir del planteo de la autora, el texto propone una mirada crítica acerca del origen y lugar que ocupa el conflicto tanto en la de cosmovisión liberal como en la visión marxista, con el fin de reflexionar acerca de los discursos sobre la política y la democracia que se encuentran actualmente en boga. Palabras claves: Mouffe, Psicoanálisis, Democracia, Hegemonía, Liberalismo Abstract This article will investigate the notion of conflict in Chantal Mouffe's work and the influence of psychoanalysis on the author's theoretical position. By stating that it is not possible to eradicate the conflictive dimension of society, Mouffe makes a novel contribution to political reflection on the conditions of the possibility of democracy.
    [Show full text]
  • Fall 2012-2013 Electives
    FALL 2012-2013 ELECTIVES COURSE # CR LV COURSE TITLE SCHEDULE INSTRUCTOR PL11601 3 1 MEDIEVAL RELIGION&THOUGHT T TH 9* BROWN CULTURAL DIVERSITY *ALTID 3 U TH11601: MEDIEVAL RELIGION&THOUGHT T TH 9* BROWN CULTURAL DIVERSITY PL16001 3 1 CHALLENGE OF JUSTICE T TH 3* POPE *ALTID 3 U TH16001: CHALLENGE OF JUSTICE T TH 3* POPE PL16002 3 1 CHALLENGE OF JUSTICE M W 3* SWEENEY *ALTID 3 U TH16002: CHALLENGE OF JUSTICE M W 3* SWEENEY PL23301 3 1 VALUES/SOC SERV/HLTH CARE TH 4 30-6 50 MANZO PL25901 3 1 PERSP:WAR/AGGRESSION T TH 12* MULLANE *ALTID 3 U TH32701: PERSPECT:WAR/AGGRES I T TH 12* MULLANE *ALTID 3 U SC25001: PERSP:WAR/AGGRESSION T TH 12* MULLANE PL26101 3 1 TELLING TRUTHS I W 3-4 50 HIRSCH PL26401 3 1 LOGIC M W F 2 SARCA PL26402 3 1 LOGIC M W F 3 SARCA PL26403 3 1 LOGIC M W F 12 ANDERSON PL29101 3 1 PHILOS OF COMMUNITY I T 4 30-6 20 MC MENAMIN PL31401 3 1 MIND AND BODY M W F 11 TACELLI PL37701 3 1 ETHICAL THEORY T TH 12* GARCIA PL40301 3 1 DOES GOD EXIST? M W 3* TACELLI PL40501 3 1 GREEK PHILOSOPHY M W F 11 BYERS PL40601 3 1 MODERN PHILOSOPHY T TH 10 30* SOLERE PL44201 3 1 ROMANTICISM & IDEALISM T TH 1 30* RUMBLE PL47001 3 1 PHIL OF WORLD RELIGIONS T TH 3* KREEFT CULTURAL DIVERSITY PL49301 3 1 BIOETHICS:ISS/HEALTHCARE M W F 2 STAN PL50001 3 3 PHILOSOPHY OF LAW T TH 1 30* TREJO-MATHYS *ALTID 3 G LL66901: PHILOSOPHY OF LAW T TH 1 30* TREJO-MATHYS PL51201 3 3 PHILOSOPHY OF EXISTENCE T TH 3* KEARNEY PL51701 3 3 KANT&KANTIANS MORAL LAW T TH 3* LOTT PL53101 3 3 DISC&METAPHYSICS ETHICS T TH 4 30* GARCIA PL55001 3 1 CAPSTONE:BUILDING A LIFE M 3-5
    [Show full text]
  • Hegemony, Democracy, Agonism and Journalism: an Interview with Chantal Mouffe
    Nico Carpentier and Bart Cammaerts Hegemony, democracy, agonism and journalism: an interview with Chantal Mouffe Article (Accepted version) (Refereed) Original citation: Carpentier, Nico and Cammaerts, Bart (2006) Hegemony, democracy, agonism and journalism: an interview with Chantal Mouffe. Journalism studies, 7 (6). pp. 964-975. DOI: 10.1080/14616700600980728 © 2006 Taylor & Francis This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/3020/ Available in LSE Research Online: June 2008 LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. This document is the author’s final manuscript accepted version of the journal article, incorporating any revisions agreed during the peer review process. Some differences between this version and the published version may remain. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it. Published in: Journalism Studies, Journalism Studies 7(6): 964-75. Bringing hegemony, agonism and the political into journalism and media studies. An interview with Chantal Mouffe. Nico Carpentier (VUB & KUB, Belgium) & Bart Cammaerts (LSE, UK) Introduction Chantal Mouffe is currently a Professor of Political Theory at the University of Westminster in the UK.
    [Show full text]
  • Contemporary Political Theory As an Anti-Enlightenment Project
    Dennis C. Rasmussen Brown University Contemporary Political Theory as an Anti-Enlightenment Project [NB: I am aware that the argument of this paper – that the majority of contemporary political theorists seek to dissociate themselves from the Enlightenment – isn’t actually much of an argument. I am currently beginning a book project that will seek to defend the Enlightenment (to some extent or another) from the attacks of its contemporary critics; the material gathered here includes part of the introduction and the introductions to each of the five substantive chapters, along with a few underdeveloped remarks at the beginning and end that seek to tie things together. In other words, this material wasn’t written as a stand-alone paper, so I apologize if it seems incomplete – it is! I also apologize for the length; for those who don’t have the time or desire to read it all, the main line of argument comes in the first 18 pages, with the rest fleshing out some details. I will, however, be eager to hear your thoughts about the charges I have outlined, and especially if I have missed any major critics or criticisms of the Enlightenment.] Like it or not, we are all children of the Enlightenment, utterly incapable of escaping the clutches of ideals and arguments put forth over two centuries ago. Or so, at least, many critics of the Enlightenment seem to believe. Michel Foucault claims, for instance, that the Enlightenment has largely determined “what we are, what we think, and what we do today,”1 and John Gray insists that “all schools of contemporary political thought are variations on the Enlightenment project.”2 There is, of course, something to such claims: given the number of values, practices, and institutions that we have inherited from the eighteenth century, it is difficult to imagine what our world would look like without its Enlightenment heritage.
    [Show full text]
  • Pursuing the International Relations of Islam: a Critique of IR Theory
    Pursuing the International Relations of Islam: A critique of IR theory Faiz Ahmed Sheikh Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Politics and International Studies September 2013 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that the appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement © 2013 The University of Leeds and Faiz Ahmed Sheikh The right of Faiz Ahmed Sheikh to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. ii Acknowledgements The PhD has been a long journey which could only be completed thanks to the input of innumerable people over the years, be it discussions about the research, or morale boosting company when it was most needed. So, mentioning no names (*cough* Levon Ouzounian, Gordon Clubb, Aree Phothiyarom, Terry Hathaway, Egle Cesnulyte, Simonida Kacarska, James Worrall, Dan Watson, Anne Flaspoeler *cough*), many thanks to my friends, past and present, at the University of Leeds and elsewhere. To my supervisors, Clive Jones and Jonathan Dean, and earlier Brad Evans also, I owe a huge debt of gratitude for keeping me on the straight and narrow in regards to both my PhD work and wider career prospects. Who knows what dark corner of the library I would have found myself in, rocking back and forth and mumbling to passers by about Foucaultian ideas, if it were not for the clear, consistent, and always beneficial guidance of my supervisors, Clive Jones especially.
    [Show full text]
  • Laclau and Mouffe's Radical Democracy in School
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by PhilPapers ETHICS AND EDUCATION, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2017.1356680 Education and articulation: Laclau and Mouffe’s radical democracy in school Itay Snir The Open University of Israel and Minerva Humanities Center, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel ABSTRACT KEYWORDS This paper outlines a theory of radical democratic education Democratic education; by addressing a key concept in Laclau and Mouffe’s Hegemony articulation; intellectuals; and Socialist Strategy: articulation. Through their concept of Ernesto Laclau; Chantal articulation, Laclau and Mouffe attempt to liberate Gramsci’s Mouffe theory of hegemony from Marxist economism, and adapt it to a political sphere inhabited by a plurality of struggles and agents none of which is predominant. However, while for Gramsci the political process of hegemony formation has an explicit educational dimension, Laclau and Mouffe ignore this dimension altogether. My discussion starts with elaborating the concept of articulation and analysing it in terms of three dimensions: performance, connection and transformation. I then address the role of education in Gramsci’s politics, in which the figure of the intellectual is central, and argue that radical democratic education requires renouncing that figure. In the final section, I offer a theory of such education, in which both teacher and students articulate their political differences and identities. Introduction Democratic education, like democracy in general, seems to have fallen into a deep crisis in both theory and practice. The foundation upon which classical democracy is presumed to rest is torn by tensions between the principles of equality and individual rights, between the nation-state and indigenous and migrant cultures, between identities and differences.
    [Show full text]
  • Reclaiming Public Life, Building Public Spheres: Contemporary Art, Exhibitions and Institutions in Post-1989 Europe
    RECLAIMING PUBLIC LIFE, BUILDING PUBLIC SPHERES: CONTEMPORARY ART, EXHIBITIONS AND INSTITUTIONS IN POST-1989 EUROPE by Izabel Anca Galliera B.A., Troy University, 2001 M.A., University of South Florida, 2005 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Izabel Anca Galliera It was defended on April 4, 2013 and approved by Barbara McCloskey, Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh Kirk Savage, Professor, University of Pittsburgh Grant Kester, Professor, University of California, San Diego Committee Chair: Terence Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professor, University of Pittsburgh ii RECLAIMING PUBLIC LIFE, BUILDING PUBLIC SPHERES: CONTEMPORARY ART, EXHIBITIONS AND INSTITUTIONS IN POST-1989 EUROPE Izabel Anca Galliera, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2013 Copyright © by Izabel Anca Galliera 2013 iii RECLAIMING PUBLIC LIFE, BUILDING PUBLIC SPHERES: CONTEMPORARY ART, EXHIBITIONS AND INSTITUTIONS IN POST-1989 EUROPE Izabel Anca Galliera, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2013 This Ph.D. dissertation traces the emergence and development of an important current of socially engaged art in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. It examines various participatory, collaborative and dialogic projects in public spaces by contemporary artists, working in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. These works often directly engaged marginalized communities, such as the homeless, members of immigrant groups and the Roma. In various ways, these artworks revived leftist traditions in a local context where, as political ideologies and economic orders, socialism had become equated with authoritarianism and democracy with neoliberalism.
    [Show full text]