HEGEMONY AND SOCIALISM:
An Interview with Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau
In
the early to middle eighties, Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau co-authored a
book called, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic
Politics [London and New York: Verso, 1985], which has been
translated into many languages and become influential in the theory of new
social movements and their influence on contemporary societies.
Chantal, what were your formative political
experiences, and how did you first come to start to think about social and
political theory?
Mouffe:
Well, my formative political experiences were as a student in the 1960's, and
it was very much the time of the imperialist struggle. I studied both in the
University of Fluvain and in Paris; it was the time of the Algerian War in
Paris. It was the time of the Cuban Revolution; it was the time of imperialist
struggle. That's what really was important for me and I was very involved in
that. And in fact, that's the reason why, at the end of the sixties, I went to
Colombia, in Latin America, because all my generation, we went away to the
so-called Third World - some people went to Algeria, some people took Africa,
and I went to Latin America. Intellectually, I should say, that the main
influence at that time was that I was a student of Althusser. And that,
obviously, there was a very important link between my political commitment and
my intellectual interest at that moment.
Was feminism important for you at that time?
I know that later, you've written quite widely on feminist theory.
Mouffe:
Well, feminism did not exist, really, at that time, because feminism, as you
know, was something that was a consequence of the student movement at the end
of the sixties. But, in the beginning of the sixties, in fact, there was no
feminist movement. Obviously, I know that there was a very important feminist
movement at the beginning of the century. But I became a feminist later. I
first went through socialism, Marxism, and at the beginning of the seventies,
that's when I began to know about feminism because that's the moment when
feminism began to be organized, really.
Ernesto, what were your first political
experiences?
Laclau:
Well, my first political experiences were in Argentina. In fact, I only went to
Europe in 1969. So, my first approach to Marxism, to socialism, took place both
in the student movements and in the political struggles of the 1960's in
Argentina. At that moment, these were the years immediately after the Cuban
Revolution, when there was a radicalization of the student movement all over
Latin America, and I was very active in it. I was a student representative to
the Central Council of the University of Buenos Aires, president of the Center
of the Student Union of Philosophy. And later on, I joined various left-wing
movements in Argentina. Especially, I was part of the leadership of the
Socialist Party of the National Left which was very active in Argentina in the
1960's. In terms of intellectual influences, I must say that I was never a
dogmatic Marxist. I always tried to, even in those early days, to mix Marxism
with something else. And a major influence at some point became Gramsci and
Althusser, who, each of them in a different way, tried to recast Marxism in
terms which approached more, the central issues of
contemporary politics.
One of the themes of your early work that's
been quite influential, perhaps, primarily in Latin America, but also more
widely, is your analysis of populism. How does that entail a revision of
Marxist theory of the time?
Laclau:
Well, let me say in the first place, that my interest in populism arose out of
the experience of the Peronist movement in Argentina. The 1960's have been a
period in Argentina of rapid radicalization and disintegration of the state
apparatuses controlled by an oligarchy which had run the country since 1955.
Now, it was perfectly clear, in that context, that when more and more popular
demands coalesce around certain political poles, that this process of mass
mobilization and mass ideological formation could not be conceived simply in
class terms. So, the question of what we call the popular democratic, or
national popular interpolation, became central in my preoccupation. Now, in
terms of what you were asking me, about in what way this put into question some
of the categories of Marxism, I would say that it did so in the sense that
popular identities were never conceived as being organized around a class core,
but on the contrary, were widely open. They could move in different ideological
directions, and they could give a place to movements whose ideological
characteristics were not determined from the beginning. So, it put into question
in that sense, some of the tenets of classical Marxism.
So, both of you have actually mentioned the
influence of Louis Althusser, the French Structuralist-Marxist, and Antonio
Gramsci, the founder of the thinking about hegemony in contemporary society as
a reformation of common sense. These are really quite distinct influences, at
least it seems to me that they are quite distinct currents of Marxist theory.
And they seem to imply a very different attitude towards liberal democracy.
Would you agree that an Althusserian position tends to regard liberal democracy
in not a very positive light, whereas a Gramscian line of thought would,
perhaps, see Marxism or socialism as more in continuity, or as an extension of
liberal democracy? How did you work with these two influences?
Mouffe:
Well, I must say, that the influences were not, for me at least, at the same
time. I became a Gramscian when I ceased to be an Althusserian. And, in fact,
Gramsci was for me, away to find a different approach, because I became very
dissatisfied with the Althusserian kind of dogmatism which, I say of people
that had been influenced by Althusser at that time, were putting into practice.
And I must say, that the most important influence there was when I was in
Colombia. I began to realize there, that all those categories that I had
learned from Althusser, did not really quite fit with the Colombian situation.
And there I began to look for something different. That's where I
re-encountered Gramsci, because I had encountered Gramsci before, but it was a
moment when I was not ready to accept it, because I was too much an
Althusserian. So, it is something I agree with you, that make me change very
much my outlook, with respect to liberal democracy. And that was also important
in the context of the new conjuncture that was - we were meeting in the 1970's.
Because you were asking before about the question of
feminism. I say
feminism is something that I encountered when I came back from Colombia, in
Europe at the beginning of the seventies, and then I found that the panorama
had changed very much and there were all those important new social movements. And
that, of course, was something which by then I was already interested in
Gramsci, and I was able to begin to understand and look at that in a
very different way. And that's when we began, well I began, at that time, to
work about the question of the conception of hegemony in Gramsci. And my first
work that you mentioned was concerned with trying to show that we find in
Gramsci a form of Marxism that was non-reductionist and that will give us
theoretical tools to understand precisely the novelty of those movements which
were beginning to develop in the seventies. But I think that at that moment, I
already was very dissatisfied with the Althusserian model.
Ernesto, you mentioned before that you were
very early dissatisfied with the emphasis on class in Marxist theory. Does that
dissatisfaction for you, connect to the appropriation of Gramsci in your own
work, and the category, particularly, of common sense in Gramsci? There's an
attempt in Gramsci to not to dismiss the ordinary understandings of people in
an everyday sense.
Laclau:
Yes. Definitely with Gramsci. And let me also say something, in this
connection about Althusser. Because in fact, I think,
there are two sides
in Althusser who work. On the one hand,
there is the notion
of over-determination, which is very central
in his book for Marx,
which in fact allows, to a certain extent,
one to break with
classical reductionism because the class
contradiction is an
ultimate contradiction which never arrives.
So, this idea of an
over-determined contradiction was something which allows us, very much, to
start moving in a non-reductionist direction. But, Althusser
later on closed his system, starting with reading Capital into a
much more structuralist framework and some of the base intuitions of his initial work,
I think, were lost. But, this is precisely what we
found in Gramsci,
because, through the category of hegemony - not only common sense - we could
see that the process of political re-aggregation is
conceived as the process of linking around a certain core,
which for Gramsci, still remains a class core, but should not be
necessarily so, a plurality of element we do not have any kind
of straight class connotation. 'Teguro Position' is conceived
by him as a type of antagonistic struggle in which different
forces try to articulate into their project a set of social
elements whose class belonging is not determined from the
beginning. This meant, on the one hand, a privileging of the
political moment over the moment of structural determinism,
which is something which helped to move away from the reductionism of classical
Marxism. And, on the other hand, permitted to
arrive to a theory of
common sense as something which is constantly shaped and reshaped by the
operation of these forces whose class belonging is not
determined from the beginning.
So there was an emphasis on the political
moment, which started to come together with the influence of
Gramsci. And in the early 1980's, I suppose, you started to
write
Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy, which, I believe, appeared for the first time in 1985. How would you look back, from the standpoint you have today, on this project of writing Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, what you wanted to achieve, and what you think you have achieved with it?
Mouffe:
Well, it was a moment when, I don't know if you remember, there was a
lot a talk about the crisis of Marxism. Of course,
there has been a lot
of talk about that since the beginning of
the century really,
but it was a particularly important moment,
precisely because of
the development of the new social movement, there was a feeling on the left,
that there was a problem with Marxist theory. Marxist theory
was not able to allow us to understand those movements. Also,
it was politically, a moment when the critique of the Soviet model, and what was
called totalitarianism began to emerge. So
there was a very
specific conjuncture, I will say, in which
people felt that
there was a need to reformulate the project of
the left. That it was
not only Marxism, but the project of the
left, which was in
crisis. It is in very much in that context that
we began to think
about this new project of the left, how it
could be reformulated.
We can take from Marxism, what was still valid and, in fact, we felt very much
that a Gramscian approach to Marxism needed to be saved
because there was a tendency to reject all of Marxism because
of this dissatisfaction. So we wanted to take what was important in Gramsci and
try to see how we could, on that basis,
reformulate the
left-wing project. I think there was two sides to
that. There was,
certainly, a theoretical aspect, which was
concerning with the
critique of economism, the critique of essentialism because, we felt that,
obviously, the main impediment in Marxism was it was an
economistic or, mainly an economistic view. And in fact, the
interest in Gramsci that we found, was that Gramsci was allowing us to
elaborate a non-economistic Marxism. And in fact, much of my first work on Gramsci
was concerned with that. And there was also the
other, more political
aspect, which was to offer a left wing project, not only the theory, but to
reformulate the left-wing project that would allow to articulate, to
link together, the struggle of the working class with the
struggle of the new social movement. And that, of course, is the
part of the book which is concerned with radical and plural
democracy, because there are the two aspects in the book, which is both reformulation,
in terms of theory, and also reformulation in
terms of the
political project.
The shift from a more classical Marxist
theory, perhaps we can call it, towards a Gramscian influence
then, allowed you to develop a theory of the new social
movements that would be both in continuity with Marxism but also
involved a critique of Marxism. One of the things that came to be
a central idea in this critique, is the concept of identity.
I wonder if you could explain the importance that the concept of
identity had in the theory of Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy?
Laclau:
Yes. Concerning the question of the new social movement, I would
question the assertion that we were simply moving
from class analysis
to new social movements. Because that would have been simply to change the
privileged agent of history, which was conceived originally, in
class terms, from one group to another group. So, what we did,
and this is central for your point concerning identity, is to put into question the
notion of an identifiable agency. That is to say,
what we conceived is
that the subject is constructed through a
plurality of subject
position, that there is an essential unevenness between this position and, that
there are constant practices of re-articulation. So, the social movements
were simply a symptom; a symptom of a dispersion of the position from which
politics started and a transition to a situation in which a variety
of issues were organized around relatively homogenous social
agencies, to a moment in which there was some kind of
dispersion of identities and the process of political
articulation became more and more important. For instance, the
social movements of which people spoke so much about in the 1980's have
become comparatively less important in the
1990's. But this does
not change the validity of our approach,
because our approach
was not concerned with finding a new privileged agent of historical change. It was
concerned with how to conceive politics when you start from
fragmented social identities. Now, in this is connected with the question of identity.
Political identities, for us, are never immediately
given. Political
identities are always constructed on the basis
of complex discursive
practices. That is a reason why the psychoanalytic category of identification is
central for us. Let's suppose if you have something like there was
in America some years ago, the Rainbow Coalition of Jesse Jackson, there you see
an attempt to put together a dispersion of
social positions, an
issue politics, around some kind of unified
historical-political
intervention. It didn't work. But, it gives
some picture of what
we have, into account. So, to summarize the point, I think what we are
dealing with is a retreat from agency as a homogeneous identity
to conceive agency as a result of a pragmatic articulation of a plurality of issue
politics and political intervention, and as a result of this required
political identification, which profoundly changed the
notion of agency and
identity.
So while identity appears as a kind of a
solution, perhaps initially, it's actually a name for a whole
series of problems.
Laclau: I
think so. No simple notion of identity can be accepted today in any, more
or less, sophisticated analysis of contemporary
politics.
Well, Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy attempted to deconstruct the received political
categories, on the one hand, of Marxism, but also of liberal
democratic thought, and to allow a reinterpretation of these
categories in a way that could allow you to comprehend contemporary
politics
somewhat better, and also to understand the
different kinds of interventions that seem to be going on
through the 1980's and also the 1990's. I notice that one way in
which this
reconceptualization takes place, is that you
tend to speak of what you call 'political space.' And I
wonder, it seems to me that the traditional political category would
be the public sphere, or something like that - 'the
public.' Do you see your concept of political space as a reformulation
of the traditional concept of the public sphere?
Mouffe:
Well, I should point out that, at the moment when we began to develop
that, we were not thinking, so much, in terms of
the relation with the
liberal view. When we are speaking of the
need to multiply the
political space, I think it is very much
linked to what is the
central approach in hegemony, to which Ernesto has already referred, the need to
understand that there are different sides of antagonism; that
one cannot just think that class antagonism is the only one.
In fact, the older struggle, around the new social movement,
indicate that there are many other forms of domination or forms
of oppression and that those need to be put into a question
too, and because they are also a sight in which specific forms of identities are
constructed in subordination. And in fact, the
way in which we were
imagining this project of radical and plural democracy, which was to extend the
democratic struggle to all those areas in which the relation of domination existed, was
why, by multiplying what we call the political
space, and thinking
that it was not, for instance, strictly limited
to either the
traditional public sphere or, as Marxists will have
it, around the
question of class, but that there was, in fact, a
multiplicity of locus
of power in society that needed to be put
into question. And I
must say that, at least as far as I am concerned, it’s only later on that I began to
think about what the liberals were saying about that and try
to see what was the relation between our view and the one of
the liberal. And I began, probably at that time, to valorize
more this liberal 'art of separation' - the distinction between the
public and the private - because, I think probably there,
the most important aspect has been the way in which, at least in
France, the critique of totalitarianism, by people on the left, has showed that it was
very important to maintain this distinction between
the public and the
private, because any attempt to blur the
distinction was, in
fact, opening the way to some kind of complete control of society by, for instance,
the state, and the liberal tradition provided us with a
possibility to, at least, establish barriers in order to impede that.
Of course, once I say that, the question is, what are the
limitations of this liberal conception? I think that the limitations, for
instance, has been very well put to the fore by the feminist
critique. I think that the feminist critique has shown that the way the
public/private distinction was created by the liberals had
been by relegating sayers of issues to the sphere of the
private, and impeding, precisely by that move, that many forms of
domination would be put into question. So, then, of course,
one can see why the idea of a multiplicity of political space
is important to correct this liberal way in which the
public/private have been constructed. So, I think that probably, we'll
need to insist that, contrary to some feminism who believes that
because it has been constructed in that way, by relegating
for instance, all the questions which have got to do with women subordination,
to the private, this distinction need to be
abandoned. I don't
think so. I think that it is a very important
distinction, but it
needs to be redrawn. It needs to be problematized, in the sense that we need to
think of a multiplicity of public sphere or political space, and a multiplicity
that will allow precisely not to have all
particularities kept
in the private, and then the creation of
some kind of public
sphere in which consensus or a more rational agent or more homogeneous agent
could be created.
So, you see contemporary politics as
involving a multiplicity of struggles and a multiplicity of political
identities. On the other hand, the traditional concept of the citizen
has tended to be a rather unified, or unifying conception. So,
what rethinking of the concept of the citizen and citizenship is
implied in this new conception of politics?
Mouffe:
Well, I will say two things with respect to the concept of the citizen.
First, the way in which I began to think about that,
because once we had
finished writing Hegemony and Socialist Strategy and we had put into
question the idea of the class subject as the unifying subject.
Nevertheless, we began to insist on the fact that this
critique of the class did not mean that we were going to ask some kind of
extreme postmodern diversified position in which we were putting into question any
need for some kind of common identity. And of
course, I will say
the very project of hegemony, the project of
articulation, implied
that there was some kind of collective subject that was needed or collective form of
identity that was needed. And then I began to wonder, where
could we find this? I became interested in examining how
the concept of the citizen could be reformulated in a way in
which it could provide this common identity. And part of my
work, in fact, has been concerned with that. For instance,
what I've tried to do is propose the idea of what I call a
'radical democratic conception' of citizenship. Because the point
I think I want to emphasize here is that there are many
problems with liberalism. One, obviously, is the fact that
it's not a citizen which is going to act to participate; it’s
very much a citizen which has got rights which it's going to use
against the state. So, there is something there basically
lacking. But from the point of view that we are discussing here,
probably the main problem is that the citizen is seen as being
abstracted from all its other determinations, and then it’s the
way we act in the public but without taking account at all of
our other insertion. And also, the idea that once we act as
'citizen', we should act all in the same way. And I think that this is
the main problem. I think that we should accept that the category
of citizenship is a very disputed one and there are many
different ways in which the relationship is going to be
conceived: there is a neo-liberal, a neo-conservative, a social
democratic way. And I was proposing to think, also, about the
possibility of a radical democratic citizenship, which means that, if
it is a relationship in which we are going to try to articulate in
a common identity this multiplicity of political space, and,
for instance, when we are acting as a radical democratic citizen,
we will automatically be concerned about the struggle of feminism, the struggle
against racism, and so on, not just a citizen which
is not concerned
about all the other struggles.
Yes. Through the conception of hegemony then,
you try to
rethink the political as a realm of antagonism,
a realm of a
plurality of struggles. And this seems to
imply, on a more philosophical level, a rethinking of the
relationship between particularity and universality, which,
Ernesto, the recent essays you've been writing, a lot of them
have focused on this problem. How do you suggest that a new
conception or a new relationship between particularity and human
universality
might be involved with a conception of the
public?
Laclau:
Ok. Two things. Firstly, I think the notion of universality is linked, basically,
to the expansion of logic of equality within
society, through the
logic of equivalence - what we have called logic of equivalence - which
presupposes the extension of the principle of equality to a larger
variety of social relations that the certain relative, pragmatic
universality is created in society. For instance, the notion of human
equality started with Christianity in religious discourses:
all men are equal before God. The achievement of the
Enlightenment was the extension of this logic of equivalence of
equality, to the public sphere. And there is where the public space
of citizenship was created. Now, I see, since that point,
the art of the democratic revolution as the progressive
extension of the principle of equality to a larger area. For instance,
in socialist discourses in the 19 century, this pure
equality in the public space of citizenship is extended to economic
relations, and we can see the social movements of our
present age as the extension of this principle to the areas of
racial relations, sexual relations, institutional relations,
and so on. So, I see in the first movement, this hegemonic process of
extension of the logic of equality as the very condition
for creating new forms of universality. Now, in the second
movement, I would say that this always depends on the extension
of democratic power in society. I think this is not simply
the recognition of something which was always there, but is a
process of actual creation. If we are breaking with the
essentialist conception of the subject, we are not saying that the
social movements are discovering an idea ­ an
inequality - which was always there, they are actually creating the terrain of
that equality, and the equality as such. In this sense, I think that
we have to break with purely representational theories of
human equality and we have to insist much more in this
performative dimension, which is the very condition of equality.
So, the history of human universality is a
logic of extension, or the moving of the idea of to whom this
universality applies, to larger and larger spheres. But each time it
expands, this is a creative movement, it’s not something that is
given
beforehand.
Laclau:
That's it. Even more. I would say that this creation starts from an increasing
plurality. Let's compare the notion of equality
that you can find in
Marxism with the one we can find in radical democracy. In Marxism, human equality
had as a precondition the obliteration of all differences. That is to say, the
historical process of capitalism was leading towards the proletarization
of the middle classes and the peasantry, so
that there was an
increasing unification in the sense of homogenization of the vast mass of the
exploited that would carry out, finally, the social revolution.
So, the precondition of human equality for Marxism was the increasing
simplification of social structure under capitalism. In the
sense that we are advocating, what happens is the opposite.
That is to say, equalization starts from an increasing
diversity, recognition of plurality, difference, and so on and so
forth. But in that case, the logic of equality cannot be a logic of
homogenization. It has to be a logic of what we call
'equivalence,' because in a relation of equivalence, you are not simply
discovering identity, you are discovering something which is identical within the
realm of differences. This alludes to a much more
subtle form of
political logic.
So, there's a rethinking of the relationship
between the
particular and the universal, and we've
really placed the emphasis on the expansion of the notion of
universality. Is there an implication for the other side of
this relationship, for how we conceive of the particular, which was
probably
traditionally conceived of simply that which
was left out, and perhaps personal, or idiosyncratic? Do you
conceive of the particular in a different way also?
Laclau:
Well, let me differentiate in the first place, the particular from the private,
because you can have many identities which are
particular and they
are very public in their type of intervention.
For instance, many
movements created around ethnicity are extremely particularistic, but on the other
hand, they are definitely not private. What I would say, and
this is something which I think Chantal can develop some of the
dimensions - she has worked on that more than I did - is
the following. We have, as against universalism today, an
ideology of extreme particularism. Now, I think extreme
particularism is something which is self defeating because let's
suppose, you have a particularity within society - an ethnic
group, a national minority, a sexual minority, et cetera, et
cetera - that is defending its right within global society. If
they say, for instance, the right of nation to self
determination, what are they doing but enunciating a universal
principle? The very discourse of rights on which the defense of
particularity is based, presupposes some kind of universal
difference. Now, when you say the right of national minorities
to self determination, there you are presenting a principle in which the logic of
equivalence is operating, because you have the
particularities of
all these demands, and on the other hand,
you have a right
which has to be formulated in universal
terms. Now, how this
universality can be conceived, which is
no longer the
universality of an instance, of an underlying
ground, as in
classical philosophy, is one of the main
problems of
contemporary political theory.
So, Ernesto has suggested, Chantal, that you
regard the
particularisms that have traditionally been
left out of the public as potentially capable of influencing the
public in the contemporary sphere, or as involving some
kind of new
relationship between the public right and a
particular position. How have you worked on this problem recently?
Mouffe:
Well, the question, I will pose it in a slightly different way. Because, it
is true that I have been interested in this, what I
call this new
articulation between the universal and the
particular, but it
has come in the context of my reflection
about citizenship. My
reflection about how can we think of a form of commonality that does not erase
differences. But I feel today, we are faced with a false
dilemma. On one side, there are those who, because they realize
that something is basically wrong and missing in the liberal
conception – which is the idea of a common bond and, of course,
that's a reflection of the communitarians - one to reintroduce this commonality,
but they introduce it in a way which tends to not
leave space for
differences for particularities. On the other
side, there are those
who, because they want to make room for differences for particularity, believe
they cannot accept any form of commonality because any form of
commonality is, in fact, a different form of violence. I
think that what we should really try to find is a way of conceiving
commonality that leaves space for differences and for
particularities. Because that's the way in which we could, today, take
account and reformulate, in a way which is compatible with the radical democratic
project, what I take to be the most important
contribution of
liberalism to modern democracy, which is the
idea of pluralism.
But of course, the problem is that the liberals insist on pluralism, but they are
very bad about thinking about community. The communitarians
are good about thinking about community, but they are bad at thinking about
pluralism. In a sense, my position will be to try to take the best of
the communitarians and the liberals and try to
imagine a way in
which we can have a form of commonality
that does not erase
differences. That's very much what the idea of radical and plural citizenship is
concerned, because, of course, the idea of citizenship basically
implies commonality - we are in it together as members of a political community.
But, of course, we are in it together, but we are
different. You know,
and this togetherness cannot be just limited to what we have in common. There must
be a way in which our particularities also are going to be taken into account in
that common bond. But I think it's really not an
easy thing to
imagine. I'm not certainly able to give you the
solution already, but
that's the way in which we need to be thinking about those questions. And I think
that's very important, in fact, for the problems that are posed today in contemporary
societies - the whole question of multi-culturalism or political identity, and
all that - that are the question that they really pose.
Laclau:
If I can add something to that. Also, we have to be very sensitive to
the way in which the emphasis on universality and
on particularity is
present in different political cultures. For
instance, in America
today, many democratic struggles have taken the form of a struggle against the
cannon, in the characteristic of multiculturalist struggle,
in which the emphasis on particularism has been very much
at the forefront. If we move to a country like South Africa, which I have visited
recently, you find there a completely different
type of discourse,
because discourses of ethnicity are immediately suspicious. For instance, are the
discourses of Quazulu, the Brutalesi discourse and so. And
the official ideology of Apartheid was the notion of
separate development and respect for cultural identities, while the demand of the
resistance movement was a demand for equalization of conditions, and the idea of
non-racialism took a Universalist dimension which was much more
present. So, I would take universalism and particularism as
the two extremes in a relation of tension which allows many different political
projects to take place within it.
That's a very good point. One of the things
I've noticed is that quite often with foreign visitors coming to
Canada and talking about multiculturalism, there is a tendency
to assume that any talk about ethnicity necessarily leads in the
direction of ethnic particularism, or ethnic cleansing, something
of that sort. Of course it depends very much on the way in
which these things have come together in a particular history.
This reworking of the relationship between the particular and
the universal can take many different forms. You've mentioned
Chantal, in your working through these problems, with regards
to a critical appropriation of the liberal tradition,
you've tried to avoid the liberal individualism on the one side, and
liberal
communitarianism on the other side, and are
in the process of developing a theory of your own which you
call radical
democracy. What does the term 'radical' mean
when applied
to democracy in this way? What is it,
particularly, about this theory that distinguishes it from liberalism
of the normal variety?
Mouffe:
Well, you probably need to reach a distinction between
radical democracy and
what I call agonistic pluralism. Because, in fact, the project of radical
democracy is a political project. In that sense, the term 'radical'
means the radicalization of the democratic revolution by its extension to more and more
areas of social life. Because I stand from the
point of view that,
in fact, if we take the ethical political
principal of modern democracy,
which for me is pluralist democracy, liberal democracy, and that those
principals are the assertion of liberty and equality for
all, I don't think there is anything wrong with those principles. I can't
imagine how we could find more radical principles than that.
I feel that the problem with those principles is not their
nature, but the fact that they are not implemented, or they are
very little implemented in societies that claim to put those ideas into practice. So,
in fact, the project of radical democracy consists
of taking those
ideals and radicalizing them by giving a more
radical
interpretation of liberty, of democracy, of equality, and of the whole.
Because, I think that much of the struggle which
is taking place in
politics, in liberal democratic society, is
concerned with what I
call the interpretation of those principles. Because, of course, liberty,
equality, and the whole, can be interpreted in many different
ways. And by the way, I think that the struggle that I
envisaged around different forms of citizenship, I was mentioning before
a neo-liberal one, a neo-conservative, a social democratic,
is about different interpretations of those principles. And I take it that a really
vibrant democratic society needs to have this debate
and confrontation
about those interpretations. And that's
where the conception
of agonistic pluralism comes in to its full
development. Because
what I am trying to oppose to the liberal conception is a model of agonistic
pluralism. It's not opposing radical democracy to liberalism,
because in fact, radical democracy we could also have called
"radical liberal democracy." In fact, the idea of radical
and plural democracy does not imply to take into question the
constitutional principal of liberal democracy, but radicalizing them
by applying them, really, and to more and more areas. But there
is also a more theoretical problem and that's where, I
think, that the liberal conception of politics has also been very
defective. Because liberals understand politics mainly, either
under the model of economics, or under the model of ethics. That
is, when I speak in terms of economics - and that's the dominant model of interest
group pluralism, for instance - they conceive the
political terrain as
if it was a market, a political market, in
which there are
people with their different interests and which
compete and we are
going to make, you know, kind of deals.
But basically it's in
terms of economics. Recently, there have
been a series of
liberals, like John Rawls and all the so-called
ontological liberals,
who have become very dissatisfied with this model, which is, obviously, very
instrumentalist view of politics. And they have proposed to develop
what is now called a model of deliberative democracy, which, basically, tried to reintroduce
morality into it. So it's not only about a
question of interest.
There are things which are more important to that.
Chantal, you've described your critique of
liberalism as leading towards a theory of agonistic
pluralism. How would you explain that?
Mouffe:
What I have in mind here is a critique of the way in which politics is
conceived in liberalism, either, as I was just saying,
in terms of economy,
or in terms of ethics. But in both cases,
the dimension of what
I call "the political", that is, a dimension
of antagonism, is
erased from liberalism. In fact, I will say that
there is no theory of
politics in liberalism, and that even the
recent, so-called
political liberalism, there really is nothing
political about that
because it's an attempt to apply, to introduce, morality in the sphere of the
public, but the dimension of conflict and antagonism is, in
fact, erased. So, against that, what I am proposing is to see
the struggle which should take place inside a moral democratic
society in terms of what I call agonistic pluralism. A
pluralism that is not like, in the case of Rawls or Habermas, relegated to
the sphere of the private in order for a rational political
consensus to be possible in the sphere of the public, but
recognizing that it is very important for people to have a
possibility to identify in the public sphere with really different
positions. One of the problems, which has happened recently in
Europe, but I suppose to some extent here in North America
too, is that with the blurring of the left-right
distinction, there has been some kind of consensus model in which there
is not really much difference between the right wing
democratic parties and the socialist parties. So, there is no
real agonism, there is no possibility for people to identify with
other positions – there is no real alternative which is offered to
them. And that, I think, has lead to some kind of lack of
interest in politics, or passivity, which is not good for vibrant democratic
life. And I think that it's important to realize that it's not by proposing a model of
deliberative democracy and say that people should
sit together and
discuss and try to understand an argument
that we are going to
put back a real participatory level in politics. I think that in order to have a
vibrant democratic life, we need to have a real struggle against
different positions. And that's what I call agonistic pluralism.
And of course, radical democracy will be one of the forms in
which the struggle could take place, because this agonistic pluralism, I see as taking
place between different conceptions of citizenship. The radical democratic project
is just one way which strives to become hegemonic in this
agonistic pluralism. But the difference at that level is not so
much in terms of different political projects, how far we are
going to extend the principal of liberty and equality, but the
way in which politics is conceived in a liberal democratic society and
the place that antagonism occupies in that theoretical
project.
This concept of antagonism that you've
introduced here in the context of radical democracy is a key
concept, both in the work that you've written together and in the
recent work of both of you. How would you explain the
concept of
antagonism?
Laclau:
Well, I would say that antagonism had been considered by classical
sociological theory as something to be explained
within the social,
within society. The way we conceive antagonism is that antagonism is the limit of
social objectivity. What I mean by this, for instance, there is an
antagonism between two social forces, we can find that these none of these two
forces have a discourse which is commensurable
with the other. Now,
there are two ways of reacting, vis-à-vis,
and this antagonism.
Either to say, well, the antagonism is a mere
appearance of some
kind of objective underlying process which can be explained in its own terms. Or,
we can say antagonism goes down to the bottom: any kind of social objectivity
is reached simply by limiting antagonism. Now,
what we have to do in
our work is to give to antagonism this fundamental constitutive role in establishing
the limits of the social, while most sociological theories, on
the contrary, present antagonism as something which has to
be explained in terms of something different. To give you
an example, classical Marxism said, well, history is a history of struggle. In antagonistic
societies you have suffering, social process for
the social agents is
conceived of as irrational. But, if we see
history from the
privileged point of the end of history, the
rationality of all
these processes is shown. For instance, we
see that passing
through the hell of all the antagonistic
societies was
necessary in order to reach a higher form,
which is communism.
In this case, the moment of distress, opposition, and so on, is reduced to a mere
superstructure the way people live this. For example, Hegel
used to say, "Universal history is not the terrain of
happiness." Now, on the contrary, you can say antagonism is actually
constitutive: there is no underlying logic of history which
is expressed through itself, it goes down to the bottom.
Now, this second view, which I think, can in many ways lead to
more democratic outcomes, because it takes more into account the actual
feelings and perceptions of historical actors, is closer to our view.
Mouffe:
Yeah, I want to add something here because I think that it's more
political aspect of antagonism and its link with the
problem of liberalism
but also of Marxism. I think that, there is
something, even if,
as Ernesto was saying, theoretically, Marxism was not really adequately grasped by
Marxists, but they at least, recognized the space of
antagonism in society, but they located it exclusively at the level
of the classes. While, of course, for liberalism, there is no
antagonism in society. So, Marxism was a process, with
respect to liberalism on that aspect, they recognized the place of
antagonism but, they limited it to the question of class. So,
they believed that eventually, antagonism could be eradicated
once the class struggle will have finished. In a sense, what
we are doing is to radicalize Marxism, so to speak. To say,
well, the question of antagonism, first, cannot be located
exclusively at the level of class; there are many more antagonisms. And,
of course, that's where the question of social movements is important, because they
are an expression of antagonism. And also, we
are saying, and those
antagonisms, well, certain antagonisms can be eradicated, but Antagonism can never
be eradicated of society. So, while Marxism and liberalism
believe the possibility of society without antagonism, of course, you know, there are
different kinds of societies, but there is this
possibility, we are
saying that there is no possibility of society
without antagonism.
But isn't there a problem here? The project
of socialism is to relieve the systemic suffering of the working
classes, to do away with hunger and poverty. If you say that
antagonism is systemic and constitutive of human society
and it can't be done away with, does that mean that we can't
involve
ourselves in struggles against poverty and
suffering and inhumane working conditions and things of
this sort?
Laclau: I
don't think one has to simply reduce antagonism to
economic
exploitation. I think you can supersede economic
exploitation in a
variety of ways. This does not mean that
antagonism, as some
basic ontological condition of society,
will be ultimately
eliminated. And I think that it's good that its
not ultimately
eliminated. Because if antagonism was eliminated, if the principal of social
division was no longer there, we would have reached a fully
reconciled society. And in this fully reconciled society there would
be no freedom at all, because everybody would think exactly
the same kind of thing. The very notion of a plurality of
point of view requires the presence of antagonism. Now, this does
not mean that economic exploitation will have always to be
there. Antagonism can take many forms. But, the basic point is that the
supersession of a particular antagonistic form does not, as Chantal
said, involve the supersession of Antagonism, as
such. And in this
connection, I would say, Marxism presents
two perfectly
contradictory theories. The first one, according
to which, history is
the process of development of the contradiction between forces and relation of
production, and objective processes, which reduce antagonism
to superstructure. The other theory, according to which, the mortar of
history is class struggle. Now, these two theories
are incompatible
because, if class struggle is the actual
engine of historical
change, in that case, there cannot be a
rational positive
logic, which is what the first theory presented.
There is where
Chantal, I think, has quite rightly characterized our intellectual project as
the radicalization of these antagonistic moments which, I think,
retrieves the best dimensions within Marxism.
Is there a new conception of politics in what
you're proposing here through the notion of antagonism? There
seems to be a sense in which political struggles still have
a point and a purpose, but yet the notion of a goal, the
final goal of political activity, seems to be reconceptualized. Is
that close to the mark?
Mouffe:
Well, probably I will say what we are abandoning is the idea of a final
goal that could ever be realized. Because, the idea
of radical and plural
democracy implies that this fully reconciled society, that was the goal of
Marxism and of many socialist struggles, can never be reached.
And as I was saying, this in fact, is not something that
we should see as negative, and there is no reason to be sad
about that. In fact, it's something to celebrate, because it means
that it's the guarantee that the democratic pluralist
process will be kept alive. Because if we start from the idea that
there is a possibility of realizing an harmonious society – completely harmonious
society - even when that is conceived as a
regulative idea,
there is some danger in it. Because it means
that, in fact, the
ideal of a democratic society will be a society
in which there will
not be any more pluralism, because pluralism implies the possibility of putting
into question the existing arrangement of contesting,
constantly, the relation of power. But if you accept that there is a
possibility of an end point, of a goal, in which there will not be
any more form of power or of domination, I mean, at that
moment people cannot, of course, put into question the
existing institutions, because those institutions will be the
instantiation of justice or of democracy. I think that is precisely what
I have been criticizing, for instance, in liberals like John Rawls or in the work of
Habermas, showing that, contrary to their goal, which
in fact, is to try to
think of the condition of pluralism, they in
fact, are presenting
a self-defeating argument, because by postulating the possibility of a rational
consensus, they are undermining the very conception of the
democratic pluralist process. And of course, they are also, and
that's a point which is theoretically important, imagining a
society from which relation of power will have
disappeared, in fact, is impossible because if we, as we have argued,
must accept that relations of power are constitutive of the social, you cannot
imagine a society in which there will be no relation of
power. And this, in
fact, is a very important aspect of our
argument about
antagonism and about politics – this recognition that power is constitutive of the
social.
Your theory of antagonism, then, is a
radicalization of the focus on conflict in Marxism, and suggests
that there is no final point at which conflict will be
eliminated. The question I'd like to ask you, how do you, you theorize
antagonism through the notion of the limit of the social. Can
you give me an example of how the limit of the social can
become an actual phenomenon within someone's experience?
Laclau:
Ok. Let me pose the problem in the following terms. There are many
social situations in which some kinds of decision about the collective life of
the community have to be taken. Now, these decisions, I would argue, are
never decisions which are entirely rational, because if they
were decisions which are entirely rational, they would be
totally obvious, and no decision, actually, would be needed. If a
decision is needed, this means that one has to determine the course of events by
less than fully rational motives. Now, in that case,
many people would
have taken decisions which are different
ones. In that case,
when a decision is taken, this decision will
conflict,
necessarily, with the decision of other groups. So,
you cannot say that
society as a whole, the social process as
a whole, is moving in
one direction, which is determined by its
underlying
structures. What you have is that an external
intervention is there
needed. So, social objectivity there finds
its limits. And I
would argue that the limits of the social are the
political. Because we
have had a perverted notion of society,
which is the result
of almost one century of sociological approaches to the social. Since the decline
of political philosophy at the end of the 18th century, we
have a tendency which goes in the direction of explaining the political as a moment
within the social - the political would by either a
superstructure, a
sub-system, depending on the theoretical
view point, and so on
- but society is considered as some kind
of universal
explaining principal according to its own laws. If
you are speaking
about the limit of the social as being internal
to society, we are
creating the basis for a re-emergence of
the political as the
institutive moment of the social. And this
requires, as I said
before, that the antagonistic moment is
present there -
social conflict is there, as a grounding
moment, it's not a
result of anything else.
Mouffe:
Yeah, it is in that context, in fact, that I have proposed to distinguish
between "the political" and politics. And that takes to what you
were asking before, I think, if there is a new
theory of politics in
our work. Well, in fact, I will argue that, for
the first time in
many contexts of liberal theory, there is a
theory of politics -
I wouldn't say it’s a new one, because there
was not an old one,
and that has been the problem with liberalism. This distinction consists in, one
thing, to make room for the recognition of this antagonistic
dimension that we were speaking about before. Because by the
political, I propose that we understand this dimension of
antagonism that is an ever-present possibility in social relations. I'm not saying that
all social relations are always constructed
antagonistically.
That's certainly not the case, but it's always
an ever-present
possibility. And this is this dimension which is
called "the
political." And "politics" consists, then, in trying to create an
order, organize human coexistence, in conditions
which are always
potentially conflictual, because there is this
dimension of the
antagonism. I think once you begin to pose
the question in that
way, of course, it requires to understand
democratic struggle
in a very different way, because democratic struggle will be, as I say
sometime, trying to see how one can transform an antagonism into an
agonism. By that I mean, in fact, how can we tame an antagonism, how can we make
it compatible with a democratic struggle. Or,
another way to say
it, will be how can we transform a friend-enemy relation into an adversarial
relation, because the adversary is the one which is considered,
in a certain respect, equal in the sense that we will not
put into question his right or her right to defend their own
position. They are part of the democratic community and they are
part of the confrontation, while an enemy, of course, is somebody to which you
negate the right to express his differences. That, of
course, is also
linked to the idea of agonistic pluralism:
agonistic pluralism
being something that takes place among adversaries.
Your own work has been developed partly as a
critique of
Marxism, partly as an appropriation and
radicalization of Marxism through the notion of antagonism,
yet, in recent years, the great political success stories
are not success stories of the left, but of the right. I'm
wondering if the recent successes of the right, both in Europe and in
America, have caused you to revise your thinking. How do
you understand the rise of the right? Do you see it as a
social movement?
Mouffe:
Well, here I want to, in fact, deconstruct so to speak, this category of
the right, because I'm not sure that we are
meaning the same
thing. What I am concerned with today is
not the right, but
the extreme right. I think this is really the
danger in Europe
today. And I will not see the recent situation
in Europe as a
victory for the right. It's true that in many
countries the right
is in power - the right has just come to
power in France after
a long period of socialism, it’s in power
in many more
countries, in probably it is going to come power
in Spain, it is in
power in Italy, fortunately it might get out of
power in Britain. But
anyway, the question seems to me is that, what I call the democratic right, is
not, I think, in much better shape than the left. Because, the
model of Thatcher - those triumphant years of the right - I think
they are finished. Because, in fact, the right, the democratic
right, is confronted with a problem for which they don't have a
solution. Their neo-liberal model is not working. The case of
Britain is very interesting from that point of view, because
the Thatcher experiment has failed. This is absolutely
recognized. There is no alternative on the right for that. In many
of the European countries, right-wing parties are facing the
same situation. So, I find both the left and the right, really,
not knowing how to address the present situation. And that's why
the extreme right is the one which is today occupying the terrain. If you see the movement
which is in expansion, it is extreme right.
In France, in Italy,
in Austria, in Belgium, in Denmark, this is
the trend which is
being put in place. And that, of course, is
extremely dangerous,
because this is something which put into question the very basis of the liberal
democratic model as we have learned it so far. So, in fact, I
find the situation, in a sense, more worrying that what a simple
victory of the right over the left will have implied.
In the terms of your political theory, the
right would take the adversarial relationship of, say, the
conservative party and the Labor Party in Britain and turn it into a
friend-enemy
relationship, in fact, that would threaten
the foundation of the liberal political order. So you would see
that as the biggest danger?
Mouffe:
Yes, because I don't think there is a possibility of an adversarial relation
with the extreme right. Those are enemies, while the adversarial relation can
only take place between left and democratic right. But, I think that, I've been
trying to interpret that because, for me it is a phenomenon which is extremely
important. There is a real urgency today in trying to understand the rights of
the right in order to be able to offer an alternative. I think that one of the
reasons why there is such a popular mobilization around extreme right parties
is because the democratic left and right have not been able to put in place
what I call this agonistic pluralism. They've been, in fact, drawn towards some
kind of consensus model and the idea that politics should take place at the
center. This was very clear in France when the socialists came to power because
they actively abandoned their Jacobean type of politics which was very much in
terms of friend-enemy. And that was something positive. But they were not able to
think in terms of adversary; they fell completely into the traditional liberal
model of competitors. So it was a question, "well, you know, we've got our
interests, our bureaucratic system, our elites that we want to put into
power," but there was no attempt at all to transform the hegemony, to
transform power relations. So, it has very much been some kind of struggle located
at the center between different parties which were not offering any kind of
alternative. There was no confrontation. And I think that explains, to a large
extent, on one part, the disaffection of many people in France with those
parties, the growth of fundamentalist movements, movements in which, what I
call the passions are not mobilized toward democratic design, and also, the
fact that the extreme right is the one which is mobilizing passion because they
are offering an alternative. And I think that's why it's so important to recognize
that if we want to offer democratic channels, democratic ways for passion to
express themselves, one needs to abandon this consensus-centric model of
politics and revive the agonistic adversarial relation. I think that this blurring
of the left-right distinction which we have witnessed in Europe, and which has
been celebrated by many people by saying how we are now coming to maturity, how
this is progress for democracy, I think this is disastrous for democracy,
because this creates the terrain in which the extreme right is beginning to
make inroads.
Laclau:
Yes, because what happens is that whenever you have unfulfilled demands of
people and the need of a discourse of opposition, and this discourse is not
present - is replaced by some kind of politics of piecemeal engineer,
consensus, and so on - the need for a radical confrontation through the system
is more important than the terms in which this confrontation is carried out.
So, for instance, many social forces which were the classical constituency of
the communist party in France, have become supporters of Lepen simply because
the old radicalism of the Purple de Gauche, as they call it, have not been
replaced by anything. So, what we have, I think, in Northern Europe is a
whirl-wind phenomenon today. It is some kind of exhaustion of the ideologies
which, during some period, had represented left-wing or progressive courses.
They have disintegrated because the historical assumptions are no longer there,
and some kind of a new fundamentalist type of discourse is occupying that
place. In the case of the Middle East, it's perfectly clear. In the years after
the Second World War, the dominant progressive ideology was Arab nationalism.
Now, Arab nationalism was constructed around the nation state, the new nation
states which were emerging in the Middle East. For instance, when Pakistan
emerged there as an Islamic nation, it was criticized by the whole because they
said an Islamic nation state is a contradiction in terms. Now, with the
stalemate in the Middle East, Arab nationalism collapses everywhere as a
dominant ideology and this space has to be taken by Islamic fundamentalism
simply because there were many unfulfilled demands which require some kind of
radical answer.
So, opposition to the system as a whole has
tended to be, in recent years, from the right rather than from the left. How do
you fit the corporatist agenda, or the neo-liberal fiscal responsibility agenda
into this picture of contemporary politics?
Laclau:
Well, I would say the corporatist model, or the neo-liberal model, to a large
extent, has failed as an attempt to galvanize the political system. The years
of the 1980's were the years of a movement, to the right, of the established
parties. They were the years of Reganism, the years of Thacherism, and so on
and so forth. Now, in some sense, these were the last utopian years because,
the idea of an utopian politics not only belongs to the left, it belongs also
to the right. We had some kind of blueprint of society, created by
neo-liberalism, which had to be applied. Now, today people are much more blasé.
The idea of a blueprint of society and utopian politics along these lines,
either through the right or through the left, are very much put into question.
And they are being replaced by some kind of issue politics, micro politics, in
some respects, all by emergence of the new fundamentalism that we are referring
to. But the big designs like the Great Society, or the New Deal, or the
neo-liberal model, and so on, are no longer there.
Mouffe:
But speaking of comparativism, which is the best model, maybe, of this kind of
consensus approach, I think this is clearly what has also created the terrain
in many places for the extreme right. I'm thinking of Austria, for instance,
which was the corporatist model par excellance, where, for many years, we had
this cohabitation between conservative and social democrats, and where, of
course, the party of Gork Idor is, today, extremely important precisely because
they are the only one offering a radical alternative. Of course, with the recent
election given to the socialists, it will increase. That situation might have
been worse, but clearly, the party which is today on the move in Austria, is
the Freedom Party of Idor, and it¹s very much articulating the discontent with
the corporatist model that had been in place in Austria.
Underlying your analysis of contemporary
political events is the theory of hegemony that you've been developing for a number
of years. I wonder if you could explain to me, in more general terms now, the
contribution you think political philosophy and philosophy in general can make
to political issues or political movements.
Laclau:
Yes. Well, a hegemonic model of politics, which I think is, finally, all
politics are hegemonic to some extent, consists in a process of pragmatically
putting together things or occurrences which do not necessarily have to
coalesce in that way. It involves a contingent intervention. To give you an example,
at the end of the Second World War, there was a discussion within the Italian
Communist Party about how the party was going to be constructed in the post-war
period. And there were two currents: one which said the party is the party of
the working class. So, it had to be the party representing an enclave in the
industrial north and they had to live totally outside of the world of the
Mizsiogiorno and everything connected with it. The other position, which was
more Gramscian, and finally adopted through the leadership of Palmido Atoliati,
said no, we are going to build up the party in the south. How the working class
is weak in the south. They said the premises of the Party and the premises of
the Trade Union are going to be the center of a plurality of social initiative:
the struggle against the Mafia, the struggle for school cooperatives, and so
on. So, that communism, in the end, became the coalescing symbol of a plurality
of struggles, which, in themselves, didn't have any need to coincide in that way
- there was no structural law pushing them in that way. The proof is that in
some other areas, there was the Christian democrat lawyer who produced this role
of articulation. But once this role of articulation has succeeded, it manages
to produce for a whole historical period, a certain configuration of alliance
forces and so on. This is an example of what hegemonic politics is about. Now,
this, as you see, goes very much against the notion of a strict interest determining
what form of politics is going to show. It involves a strategic movement which
is always transient, unstable and negotiated.
Mouffe:
Here, it is important, I think, to insist on the fact that this hegemonic
politics, of course, can be put into practice by the right as much as by the
left. For instance, the example Ernesto was giving referring to Italy, is
precisely what we are seeing now about the growth of the Islamic fundamentalist
movement. In many countries, for instance, to take the case of Turkey, where
the rise of the Reza Reform Party has been very important, is articulating a
similar type of hegemony that the communists did in Italy, you know, offering
organizations, creating in civic society, a series of links. But because they were
offering an alternative to the government, they have been able to really
establish a very serious basis in civic society following exactly that model.
That¹s the same, to a certain extent, for Algeria. The growth of the [Š] in
Algeria has been following exactly the same model. So, that's why it's important
for the left to really understand that that's the way they can create some kind
of democratic alliance, because if they don't do that, it’s the other parties
which are doing it.
Laclau:
Traditionally, for instance, the Mas Limbrada became a mass movement, not
simply on the basis of agitation, but on the basis of organizing a plurality of
institutions which were the basis for social security, cultural participation,
recreation, and so on, for people so that, in the end, they had become a state within
the state. Later on they were destroyed by Nazar, but whenever a fundamentalism
has expanded in the Islamic countries, it has been on the basis of this model.
And I have seen this model also operating very much in the plurality of populist
movements in Latin America, like in Peru, perronism in Argetnina in the forties
and so on.
So, if hegemony is putting together a number
of different political elements which are not necessarily connected together,
but are put together through an articulation. At the level of philosophy,
you've been interested, recently, to theorize this through the concept of undecidability.
What could you say to us quickly about the concept of undecidability in
philosophy and how it might relate to the theory of hegemony?
Laclau:
Well, in fact, the concept of undecidability has been developed from a variety
of occurrences with the general spectrum of what has been called
post-structuralism. But let's suppose we take the deconstructionist
alternative. What deconstruction is doing is to show that many structures, many
categories which present themselves as closed categories are, in fact,
penetrated by internal aporias [difficulties],
so that the actual configuration that they show is, in fact, concealing many different
alternatives which are repressed. Now, once you bring this to light, you are
also showing a plurality of strategic development which becomes thinkable. So,
what I would say deconstruction is doing, is to enlarge the area of undecidability
in social relations, which require political intervention, but at the same
time, this requires a theory of the decision; how to take a decision within an
undecidable terrain. And that is what the theory of hegemony attempts to do.
For example, Gramsci, we were speaking about before, Gramsci advanced a great
deal, I think, in terms of showing social elements as having only contingent
articulation. In this sense, he was enlarging the field of structure and undecidability,
and conceived hegemony as the moment of the decision. But he was limited by a
classical ontology by which this dimension of undecidability could be extended
only so far. But in contemporary society with the phenomenon of globalization,
with the phenomenon of combined and uneven development, with the phenomenon of
social fragmentation, we need definitely a much radical conception of
undecidability than what was present at the time Gramsci. And I think deconstruction
and post-structuralism are pushing in that direction.
(From Conflicting
Publics, Simon Fraser University, 1998.)
