scholarly journals Segnico, simbolico, politico

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo De Toffoli
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ernesto Laclau ◽  
Chantal Mouffe ◽  
Empty Signifier

This article explores some central features of the theory of signification put forward by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, taking into account both Hegemony and Socialist Strategy and some further reflections developed by Laclau alone. Through the analysis of the concepts of discourse, empty signifier, dislocation and antagonism it is argued that, in the discourse-theoretical framework, the Saussurean “arbitrariness of the sign” can be limited only through the symbolic unification of a discourse and the drawing of antagonistic frontiers, and that these latter processes rest on contingent decisions, that is operations pertaining to the order of the political.

Populism and ‘People’: Precarities and Polarizations as a Challenge and Task for a Public Theology

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-368
Author(s):  
Rudolf von Sinner ◽  
Celso Gabatz
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Ernesto Laclau ◽  
Chantal Mouffe ◽  
The People ◽  
And Task

Abstract Two main elements pervade the argument. First, we argue that both ‘populism” and ‘the people’ are precarious concepts that can neither easily be defined, nor easily be claimed by any representative. We hold this to be true both in political and in theological terms, empirically referring to the civil and the religious population and their construction as ‘a people’, respectively. Second, in view of a common disregard for the people, namely as plebs, we reaffirm the importance of participatory popular subjects as a necessary part of both the political system and Christian communities. This bibliographical and conceptual essay contextualizes and explains the precariousness of realities and concepts, then analyses the concepts of populism and ‘people’. It seeks to deepen the discussion of populism by means of dialogue with Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, and then through a theological reflection by way of a public theology.

Radical Democracy with what Demos?

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Alan Busk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Ernesto Laclau ◽  
Chantal Mouffe ◽  
Right Wing Populism

This paper considers the radical democratic theory of Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau with reference to the recent rise of Right-wing populism. I argue that even as Mouffe and Laclau develop a critical political ontology that regards democracy as an end in itself, they simultaneously exclude certain elements of the demos. In other words, they appeal to formal categories but decide the political content in advance, disqualifying Right-wing movements and discourses without justification. This ambivalence between form and content reveals the limits of Mouffe and Laclau’s brand of radical democracy for understanding and critiquing the present political conjuncture.

scholarly journals Affinity and antagonism: Structuralism, comparison and transformation in pluralist political ontology

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-49
Author(s):  
Ben Turner
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Ontological Commitments ◽  
Ernesto Laclau ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Chantal Mouffe ◽  
Ontological Turn

This article develops a comparative and recursive approach to political ontology by drawing on the ontological turn in anthropology. It claims that if ontological commitments define reality, then the use of ontology by recent pluralist political theorists must undercut pluralism. By charting contemporary anthropology’s rereading of structuralism as part of a plural understanding of ontology, it will be shown that any political ontology places limits on the political, and thus cannot exhaust political experience. This position will be established through an analysis of the role of Claude Lévi-Strauss in the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and a comparison with the political ontology represented by perspectivism and potential affinity. Anthropology’s lesson for political theory is that ontology cannot simply be revised and treated in the singular, but that political ontologies must be analysed comparatively to reveal the shortcomings of, and recursively alter, one’s own political frame of reference.

scholarly journals On Truth and Emancipation

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Hjort Bundgaard
Keyword(s):  
First Principles ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ernesto Laclau ◽  
Chantal Mouffe ◽  
The Status ◽  
Point Of Departure

This article has two main currents. First, it argues that an affinity or similarity can be identified between the philosophy of Gianni Vattimo (the so-called “Weak Thinking”) and the “Discourse Theory” of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The two theorizations are engaged with related problems, but have conceptualized them differently; they share central insights, but understand them with different vocabularies. The article furthermore illuminates in what this affinity consists in, and it discusses the differences and similarities between the two theoretical positions. The second current of the article takes the ‘postmodern’ philosophical problems of anti-foundationalism and nihilism as its point of departure. It raises the questions of: 1) how it is possible at the same time to take the critique of universality and objectivity seriously and still believe in the value of ethics and science; and, 2) how we are to understand emancipation if there is no necessary relationship between truth and freedom. The article investigates the status, meaning and interconnection of the categories of truth, knowledge, ethics, politics and emancipation in the light of the absence of metaphysical first principles. The article concludes that: A) faith can constitute a “weak foundation” of knowledge and ethics; and, B) nihilism can be combined with the political and ethical ambitions of universal human emancipation and radical democracy.

scholarly journals Narrativer i Islamisk Stats propagandamagasin, Rumiyah – en digital tilgang til diskursanalyse

2020 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-157
Author(s):  
Emma Elisabeth Kiis
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Text Mining ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
Digital Text ◽  
Ernesto Laclau ◽  
Chantal Mouffe ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Mining Methods

AbstractThis article uses messages communicated through the Islamic State’s propaganda magazine, Rumiyah, to explore the applicability of text mining methods in discourse analysis. The repertoire of narratives used in Rumiyah is examined through the theoretical framework of Narrative Criminology in combination with Discourse Theory, as presented by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Techniques and methods from the field of digital text mining are also applied. The current article therefore has two sections: a quantitatively-deduced discourse analysis and a qualitatively-deduced discourse analysis.

scholarly journals Humanización y deshumanización: de Laclau, Mouffe y Schmitt al conflicto armado en Colombia / Humanization and dehumanization: from Laclau, Mouffe and Schmitt to the Colombian armed conflict

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-20
Author(s):  
Daniel Arturo Palma Álvarez
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
The Other ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ernesto Laclau ◽  
Chantal Mouffe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Siglo Xx

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses how dehumanisation presents itself in armed conflicts and tries to demonstrate that, in most cases, the ‘discursive’ and the ‘violent’ coexist so the ‘other’ is a blurred construction that changes according to the context. As a consequence, a clear division between ‘enemy’ and ‘adversary’ cannot be established, so it has to be accepted that this relationship is much more complex. For this analysis, the history of the Colombian armed conflict is revised from the mid-twentieth century, using Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau’s post-structuralist discourse theory, and Carl Schmitt’s concept of the ‘political’.RESUMENEste documento analiza cómo se presenta la deshumanización en los conflictos armados e intenta demostrar que, en la mayoría de los casos, lo ‘discursivo’ y lo ‘violento’ coexisten de modo que el ‘otro’ es una construcción difusa que cambia según el contexto. Como consecuencia, no puede establecerse una división clara entre ‘enemigo’ y ‘adversario’, por lo que debe aceptarse que dicha relación es mucho más compleja. Para esto, se revisa la historia del conflicto armado colombiano desde mediados del siglo XX, usando la teoría posestructuralista del discurso de Chantal Mouffe y Ernesto Laclau, y el concepto de lo ‘político’ de Carl Schmitt.

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe: The Evolution of Post-marxism

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-363
Author(s):  
Philip Goldstein
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
New Right ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Field ◽  
Ernesto Laclau ◽  
Chantal Mouffe ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Masses

In their groundbreaking Hegemony and socialist strategy (1985), Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe develop a new account of radical politics in which the subjective construction of hegemony establishes political conditions, not the objective historical stages and class contexts of traditional Hegelian Marxism. On this basis, they forcefully justify the 'identity politics' of contemporary women's, African-American, gay, and working class groups and organisations and oppose both the hegemony of the new right and the 'classism' and revolutionary orientation of the radical left. In their later work, they elaborate their accounts of hegemony and move in new directions. In On populist reason (2005) and The rhetorical foundations of society (2014), Laclau draws on poststructuralist discourse or rhetoric as well as notions of populism or the masses to show that hegemony involves what he terms antagonism, frontiers or we/they oppositions, equivalential logics, and other elements. By contrast, in On the political (2005) and Agonistics: thinking the world politically (with Wagner, 2013), Mouffe elaborates the notion of the fissured subject which, as she and Laclau argued in Hegemony, was constituted by the antagonisms of diverse social movements or the dislocation of social structures; however, her new accounts of the antagonisms or, as she says, 'agonisms' dividing the political field forcefully oppose universal norms of rationality or democracy in order to establish a genuine pluralism on a national and a global scale.

Religion and the Construction of a Christian Roman Polity

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-113
Author(s):  
Francesco Rotiroti
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Theories Of Religion ◽  
Ancient Christianity

This article seeks to define a theoretical framework for the study of the relation between religion and the political community in the Roman world and to analyze a particular case in point. The first part reviews two prominent theories of religion developed in the last fifty years through the combined efforts of anthropologists and classicists, arguing for their complementary contribution to the understanding of religion's political dimension. It also provides an overview of the approaches of recent scholarship to the relation between religion and the Roman polity, contextualizing the efforts of this article toward a theoretical reframing of the political and institutional elements of ancient Christianity. The second part focuses on the religious legislation of the Theodosian Code, with particular emphasis on the laws against the heretics and their performance in the construction of the political community. With their characteristic language of exclusion, these laws signal the persisting overlap between the borders of the political community and the borders of religion, in a manner that one would expect from pre-Christian civic religions. Nevertheless, the political essence of religion did also adapt to the ecumenical dimension of the empire. Indeed, the religious norms of the Code appear to structure a community whose borders tend to be identical to the borders of the whole inhabited world, within which there is no longer room for alternative affiliations; the only possible identity outside this community is that of the insane, not belonging to any political entity and thus unable to possess any right.

Imperial Presidency and the Neo-patrimonialization of Disorder in post-Authoritarian Nigeria

1970 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-77
Author(s):  
Adeniyi S. Basiru
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Imperial Presidency ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Presidential Democracies ◽  
Data Source ◽  
Public Disorder

The president and the network of offices that are linked to him, in modern presidential democracies, symbolize a neutral state that does not meddle in order-threatening political struggles. It however seems that this liberal ideal is hardly the case in many illiberal democracies. Against this background, this article examines the presidential roots of public disorder in post-military Nigeria. Drawing on documentary data source and deploying neo-patrimonial theory as theoretical framework, it argues that the presidency in Nigeria, given the historical context under which it has emerged as well as the political economy of neo-patrimonialism and prebendalism that has nurtured it, is a central participant in the whole architecture of public disorder. The paper recommends, among others, the fundamental restructuring of the Nigerian neo-colonial state and the political economy that undergird it.Keywords: Imperial Presidency; Neo-patrimonialism; Disorder; Authoritarianism; Nigeria.

scholarly journals The epistemology of democracy: The epistemic virtues of democracy

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-70
Author(s):  
Snjezana Prijic-Samarzija
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social System ◽  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Collective Intelligence ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The Political ◽  
Epistemic Values ◽  
Epistemic Virtues ◽  
Political Justification

The new and vibrant field of the epistemology of democracy, or the inquiry about the epistemic justification of democracy as a social system of procedures, institutions, and practices, as a cross-disciplinary endeavour, necessarily encounters both epistemologists and political philosophers. Despite possible complaints that this kind of discussion is either insufficiently epistemological or insufficiently political, my approach explicitly aims to harmonize the political and epistemic justification of democracy. In this article, I tackle some fundamental issues concerning the nature of the epistemic justification of democracy and the best theoretical framework for harmonizing political and epistemic values. I also inquire whether the proposed division of epistemic labour and the inclusion of experts can indeed improve the epistemic quality of decision-making without jeopardizing political justification. More specifically, I argue in favour of three theses. First, not only democratic procedures but also the outcomes of democracy, as a social system, need to be epistemically virtuous. Second, democracy?s epistemic virtues are more than just a tool for achieving political goals. Third, an appropriate division of epistemic labour has to overcome the limitations of both individual and collective intelligence.

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