cover "Diskurs radikale Demokratie Hegemonie"

Few political thinkers have influenced the international political and social science theory discourse of recent years as much as Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau – across paradigm boundaries. Both combine neo-Gramscian, (post-)structuralist and psychoanalytical theoretical elements and thus enable an explanation of political-discursive events, in particular the formation of hegemonies, on the one hand, and a normative theory of agonal democracy on the other.
The contributions in this volume provide an overview of Laclau’s and Mouffe’s key figures of thought, critically examine them and point out methodological and empirical connections.
This volume contains original texts by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, among others.


In the series: Edition Moderne Postmoderne

DOI: 10.1515/9783839404942

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coherence in thought

“The imperative of non-contradiction generally produces a coherence in thought that is often at odds with social complexities.”

Yan Suarsana
Afterlife of colonialism

“Contradiction comes in many different forms. None is so debilitating than when the coloniser transitions, textually not politically, to decoloniality without taking the responsibility for the afterlife of colonialism, which they continue to benefit from. Self-examination and self-interrogation of the relations of coloniality, a necessity, seem nearly impossible for the coloniser who continues to act as beneficiary, masked in the new-found language of White fragility, devoid of an ethical responsibility of the very system of White domination they claim to be against.” (Black Consciousness and the Politics of the Flesh)

Rozena Maart
problem to be solved

“Contradiction is not primarily a problem to be solved but a motor we cannot do without.”

Martin Nonhoff
prison of difference

“‘Contradiction is the prison of difference‘ writes the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Worlds of Contradiction asks: how can we explain and describe the world without making it more coherent and systematic than it is?”

Michi Knecht
power and resistance

“Michel Foucault says: “Where there is power, there is resistance, and […] this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (History of Sexuality I, The Will to Knowledge, 1976, p. 95)”

Gisela Febel