Ernesto Laclau: "Politics and the Limits of Modernity"

1 de 5

http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/postmodernism/Laclau.html

Postmodern Theories and Texts

"Politics and the Limits of Modernity"

Ernesto Laclau
from Docherty, Thomas, ed. Postmodernism: A Reader. New York: Harvester, 1993.
Introduction

Laclau's view of
postmodernity

Language and Reality

Capitalism, Uneven
Development, and Hegemony

The Process of Arguing and

Common Sense

Global Emancipation and

Empty Signifiers

Questions
Julia Kuo
Jan. 07, 1999
Thesis: Laclau's focal point of the theory centers on anti-foundationalism, which derives from
Heidegger's conception of the dissolution of categories. The emphasis on radical contingence
provides a way to 'weaken' the contents of the project of modernity.
I. Introduction:

Generally speaking, Laclau deals with postmodernity from a positive

viewpoint. As for him, postmodernity can manifest its radical
contingence to challenge the foundations of modernity. That is to say,
postmodernity focuses on anti-foundationalism and it attempts to
weaken the logic of the construction between social and cultural
identities.
A. Laclau's view of postmodernity:
1. "Postmodernity has advanced by means of two converging intellectual operations. . .
which share one characteristic: the attempt to establish boundaries, that is to say, to
separate an ensemble of historical features and phenomena (postmodern) from others
also appertaining to the past and that can be grouped under the rubric of modernity."
(329)
What's the importance of these two operations? Both of them serve as radical ways to
establish the boundaries of modernity
a). "The first announces a weakening of the metaphysical and rationalist pretensions of
modernity, by way of challenging the foundational status of certain narratives." (329)
a. . "The second challenges not the ontological status of narrative as such, but rather the
current validity of metanarratives, which unified the totality of the historical experience
of modernity within the project of global, human emancipation
2. Postmodernity is an ensemble of pre-theoretical references that establish certain 'family
resemblance's' among its diverse manifestations, that is suggested by the process of
erosion and disintegration of such categories as 'foundation,' 'new,' 'identity,' 'vanguard,' and
so on. (330)
02/08/2011 21:30

Ernesto Laclau: "Politics and the Limits of Modernity"

2 de 5

http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/postmodernism/Laclau.html

3. Postmodernity cannot be a simple rejection of modernity, rather, it involves a different

modulation of its themes and categories, a greater proliferation of its language-games. (330)
4. It is precisely the ontological status of the central categories of the discourses of modernity,
and not their content, this is at stake; that the erosion of this this status is expressed through
the 'postmodern sensibility; and that this erosion, far from being a negative phenomenon,
represents an enormous amplification of the content and operability of the values of
modernity, making it possible to ground them on foundations much more solid than those of
the Enlightenment project. (332)
II. Language and Reality:
This part is very significant, for it unfolds Laclau's central idea and it is also
in relation to the following sections of discussion. First, Laclau deconstructs
traditional structuralism. Saussurean theory of linguistics is the target of his
argument. Laclau shows us the analysis of the ambiguities between the
signifier and the signified. There is no fixed character of the signifier/the
signified relation.
And then, he generalizes this analysis into two points: context is changeable and every identity is
relational. Second, in this sense, Laclau skillfully applies the ambiguous feature of language to
the explanation of the social action.
As for him, the 'social' itself is a discourse and it is in the form of discursive sequences that
articulate linguistic and extra linguistic elements, which leads the society to plurality.
A. The crisis of linguistic model in structuralism:
1. Where is the crisis?
"The crisis consisted precisely in the increasing difficulty of defining the limits of
language, or, more accurately, of defining the specific identity of
the linguistic object." (332)
2. Saussurean theory of linguistics as an example: it exposes a set of ambiguities
between the signifier and the signified. (333)
3. three moments to transcend the ambiguities: (333)
a. . [O]ne of the fundamental oppositions of this system was required to be externally
defined, thus confining linguistic formalism within a new limits. Beyond this point, it was
impossible to posit a 'linguistics of discourse', if by discourse we mean a linguistic unit
greater than the sentence."
a. . "In this second moment of the radicalization of structuralism, the stable character of
the relation between signifier and the signified had not, however, been questioned;
only the structural isomorphism between the two had been broken. The boundaries of
linguistics had been expanded, but the immediacy and the characteristic of full
presence of its objects were only reaffirmed." (333)
. "The quasi-Cartesian transparency that structural formalism had established between
the purely relational identities of the linguistic system served only to make them more
vulnerable to any new system of relations." (334) A double movement in the crisis of
the immediacy of the sign: "While the signified was less closed within itself and could
be defined only in relation to a specific context, the limits of that context were
02/08/2011 21:30

Ernesto Laclau: "Politics and the Limits of Modernity"

3 de 5

http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/postmodernism/Laclau.html

increasing less well defined." (334)

C. The unfixed character of all identities:
1. Example: Democracy is a floating signifier. (335)
The term 'democracy' has a radical ambiguity, which subverts the fixity of the
sign. This ambiguity is precisely what gives the context its openness.
2. Three consequences come after a floating signifier.
a. . The concept of discourse is not linguistic but prior to the distinction between the
linguistic and extralinguistic.
a. . The relational character of discourse is precisely what permits the generalization of
the linguistic model within the ensemble of social relations.
a. . The radical relationalism of social identities increases their vulnerability to new
relations and introduces within them the effect of ambiguity.
D. The difference of discourses between modernity and postmodernity (335-36)
1. Modernity: The discourses of modernity characterize their pretension is to dominate the
foundation of the social, to give a rational context to the notion of the totality of history,
and to base in the project of a global human emancipation.
2. Postmodernity: The fully present identity is threatened by an ungraspable exterior that
introduces a dimension of opacity and pragmatism into the pretended immediacy and
transparency of its categories. It weakens the absolutist pretensions of concepts.
However, this 'weakening.' does not in any way negate the contents of the project of
modernity; it shows only the radical vulnerability of those contents to a plurality of
contexts that redefine them in an unpredictable way.
III. Capitalism, Uneven Development, and Hegemony

Laclau continues his assertion of radically relational character of identity

and further employs this conception to analyze politics. In this part, he
takes Marxism for an example and challenges the logic of foundations in
the Marxist tradition.
A. Weaknesses/Limits of a central tenet of Marxism (336-337)
1. Capitalism exists only by dint of the constant transformation of the means of production
and the increasing dissolution of preexisting social relations.
2. The history of capitalism is, on the one hand, the history of the progressive destruction
of the social relations generated by it and, on the other, the history of its border with
social forms exterior to it.
3. The relation of exteriority can be internally defined, since every exterior relation is
destined a priori to succumb as a result of capitalist expansion.
4. The internal logic of capital comes to constitute the relational substrate of History, and
the advent of socialism is thought to be made possible only by the results of the
internal contradictions of capitalism.
5. Nodal moments of ambiguity in the history of Marxism (Laclau's views)

02/08/2011 21:30

Ernesto Laclau: "Politics and the Limits of Modernity"

4 de 5

http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/postmodernism/Laclau.html

a. . Uneven and combined development

b. . Hegemony
B. Employment of post-Marxism to deconstruct Marxist tradition:
1. Two examples: Sorel and Gramsci
2. The stance of post-Marxism: Basically, 'post-Marxism' is not an 'ex-Marxism', for it entails
an active involvement in its history and in the discussion of its categories. (339)
3. Declarations:
a. . The abandonment of the faith in the "universal class" and in the unity of Marxism.
b. . The rejection of the myth of foundations.
c. . To construct a radical imaginary: it means trying to insert the isolated struggles within
a wider horizon that 'totalizes' an ensemble of an experience.
c. To establish a radical political discourse.
IV. The Process of Arguing and Common Sense (341-42)

Laclau tries to redefine the categories, such as common sense and

tradition, which we take it for granted.
A. Society can then be understood as a vast argumentative texture
through which people construct their own identity.
B. Abandonment of the myth of foundations does not lead to nihilism; it
leads to a proliferation of discursive interventions and arguments that
are necessary, because there is no extradiscursive reality that discourse
might simply reflect.
C. Argument and discourse constitute the social, their open-ended character becomes the
source of a greater activism and a more radical libertarianism.
A. The dissolution of the myth of foundations - and the concomitant dissolution of the category
'subject' - further radicalizes the emancipatory possibilities offered by the Enlightenment and
Marxism.
B. Social agents are never 'humans' in general. They appear in concrete situations and are
constituted by precise and limited discursive networks, In this sense, lack of grounding does
not abolish the meaning of human beings' acts, it only affirms their limits, their finitude, and
their historicity.
V. Global Emancipation and Empty Signifiers (342-43)

Laclau makes the concept of empty signifiers clearer and redefines the global emancipation by
telling from the difference between the foundation and the horizon.
A. Empty signifiers:
1. Any identity is ambiguous insofar as it is unable to constitute itself as a precise
difference within a closed totality.
2. The degree of fixity of a signifier varies in inverse proportion to the extent of its

02/08/2011 21:30

Ernesto Laclau: "Politics and the Limits of Modernity"

5 de 5

http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/postmodernism/Laclau.html

circulation in a given discursive formation.

3. A signifier is emptied when it is disengaged from a particular signified and comes to
symbolize a long chain of equivalent signifieds.
B. The difference between the foundation and the horizon:
1. The foundation:
It is a relation of delimitation and determination.
It is unified or totalized.
It suffices to posit an egalitarian logic whose limits of operation are given by the
concrete argumentative practices existing in a society.
1. The horizon:
It is open-ended.
It is a formation without foundation.
It is an empty locus, a point in which society symbolizes its very groundlessness, in
which concrete argumentative practices operate over a backdrop of radical freedom, or
radical contingency.'
VI. Questions:
1. What's the difference between 'democracy' and 'radical democracy'?
2. Do you agree Laclau's opinion that democracy is impossible without the abandonment of the
universal discourse?

02/08/2011 21:30