Mouffe & Laclau - Hegemony and Socialism

8/22/2019 Mouffe & Laclau - Hegemony and Socialism

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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 ofnew social movements and their influence on contemporary societies.

Chantal, what were your formative political experiences, and how did you first come to start to thinkabout social and political theory?

Mouffe: Well, my formative political experiences were as a student in the 1960's, and it was very muchthe time of the imperialist struggle. I studied both in the University of Fluvain and in Paris; it was thetime of the Algerian War in Paris. It was the time of the Cuban Revolution; it was the time ofimperialist struggle. That's what really was important for me and I was very involved in that. And infact, that's the reason why, at the end of the sixties, I went to Colombia, in Latin America, because allmy generation, we went away to the so-called Third World - some people went to Algeria, some peopletook Africa, and I went to Latin America. Intellectually, I should say, that the main influence at thattime was that I was a student of Althusser. And that, obviously, there was a very important link betweenmy 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 feministtheory.

Mouffe: Well, feminism did not exist, really, at that time, because feminism, as you know, wassomething that was a consequence of the student movement at the end of the sixties. But, in thebeginning of the sixties, in fact, there was no feminist movement. Obviously, I know that there was avery important feminist movement at the beginning of the century. But I became a feminist later. I firstwent through socialism, Marxism, and at the beginning of the seventies, that's when I began to knowabout 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 thepolitical struggles of the 1960's in Argentina. At that moment, these were the years immediately after


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the Cuban Revolution, when there was a radicalization of the student movement all over LatinAmerica, and I was very active in it. I was a student representative to the Central Council of theUniversity of Buenos Aires, president of the Center of the Student Union of Philosophy. And later on, Ijoined various left-wing movements in Argentina. Especially, I was part of the leadership of theSocialist Party of the National Left which was very active in Argentina in the 1960's. In terms ofintellectual 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 Gramsciand Althusser, who, each of them in a different way, tried to recast Marxism in terms which approachedmore, the central issues ofcontemporary 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 ofthe time?

Laclau: Well, let me say in the first place, that my interest in populism arose out of the experience ofthe Peronist movement in Argentina. The 1960's have been a period in Argentina of rapid radicalizationand disintegration of the state apparatuses controlled by an oligarchy which had run the country since1955. Now, it was perfectly clear, in that context, that when more and more popular demands coalescearound certain political poles, that this process of mass mobilization and mass ideological formationcould 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 wereasking me, about in what way this put into question some of the categories of Marxism, I would saythat it did so in the sense that popular identities were never conceived as being organized around a classcore, but on the contrary, were widely open. They could move in different ideological directions, andthey could give a place to movements whose ideological characteristics were not determined from thebeginning. 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 asa reformation of common sense. These are really quite distinct influences, at least it seems to me thatthey are quite distinct currents of Marxist theory. And they seem to imply a very different attitudetowards liberal democracy. Would you agree that an Althusserian position tends to regard liberaldemocracy 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 aGramscian when I ceased to be an Althusserian. And, in fact, Gramsci was for me, away to find adifferent 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


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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 Colombiansituation. 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 changevery 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 aboutthe question offeminism. I say feminism is something that I encountered when I came back from Colombia, in Europeat the beginning of the seventies, and then I found that the panorama hadchanged very much and there was all those important new social movements. And that, of course, wassomething which by then I was already interested in Gramsci, and I was able tobegin to understand and look at that in a very different way. And that's when we began, well I began, atthat time, to work about the question of the conception of hegemony in Gramsci. And my first workthat you mentioned was concerned with trying to show that we find in Gramsci a form of Marxism thatwas non-reductionist and that will give us theoretical tools to understand precisely the novelty of thosemovements which were beginning to develop in the seventies. But I think that at that moment, I alreadywas very dissatisfied with the Althusserian model.

Ernesto, you mentioned before that you were very early dissatisfied with the emphasis on class inMarxist theory. Does that dissatisfaction for you, connect to the appropriation of Gramsci in your ownwork, and the category, particularly, of common sense in Gramsci? There's an attempt in Gramsci to notto 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 centralin his book for Marx, which in fact allows, to a certain extent,one to break with classical reductionism because the classcontradiction is an ultimate contradiction which never arrives.So, this idea of an over-determined contradiction wassomething which allows us, very much, to start moving in anon-reductionist direction. But, Althusser later on closed hissystem, starting with reading Capital into a much morestructuralist framework and some of the base intuitions of hisinitial work, I think, were lost. But, this is precisely what wefound in Gramsci, because, through the category ofhegemony - not only common sense - we could see that theprocess of political re-aggregation is conceived as theprocess of linking around a certain core, which for Gramsci,still remains a class core, but should not be necessarily so, aplurality of element we do not have any kind of straight classconnotation. 'Teguro Position' is conceived by him as a typeof antagonistic struggle in which different forces try to


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articulate into their project a set of social elements whoseclass belonging is not determined from the beginning. Thismeant, on the one hand, a privileging of the political momentover the moment of structural determinism, which issomething which helped to move away from the reductionismof classical Marxism. And, on the other hand, permitted to

arrive to a theory of common sense as something which isconstantly shaped and reshaped by the operation of theseforces whose class belonging is not determined from thebeginning.

So there was an emphasis on the political moment, whichstarted to come together with the influence of Gramsci. And inthe early 1980's, I suppose, you started to write Hegemonyand Socialist Strategy, which, I believe, appeared for the firsttime in 1985. How would you look back, from the standpointyou have today, on this project of writing Hegemony andSocialist Strategy, what you wanted to achieve, and what youthink 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 ofthe century really, but it was a particularly important moment,precisely because of the development of the new socialmovement, there was a feeling on the left, that there was aproblem with Marxist theory. Marxist theory was not able toallow us to understand those movements. Also, it waspolitically, a moment when the critique of the Soviet model,and what was called totalitarianism began to emerge. Sothere was a very specific conjuncture, I will say, in whichpeople felt that there was a need to reformulate the project ofthe left. That it was not only Marxism, but the project of theleft, which was in crisis. It is in very much in that context thatwe began to think about this new project of the left, how itcould be reformulated. We can take from Marxism, what wasstill valid and, in fact, we felt very much that a Gramscianapproach to Marxism needed to be saved because there wasa tendency to reject all of Marxism because of thisdissatisfaction. So we wanted to take what was important inGramsci and try to see how we could, on that basis,reformulate the left-wing project. I think there was two sides tothat. There was, certainly, a theoretical aspect, which wasconcerning with the critique of economism, the critique ofessentialism because, we felt that, obviously, the main


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impediment in Marxism was it was an economistic or, mainlyan economistic view. And in fact, the interest in Gramsci thatwe found, was that Gramsci was allowing us to elaborate anon-economistic Marxism. And in fact, much of my first workon Gramsci was concerned with that. And there was also theother, more political aspect, which was to offer a left wing

project, not only the theory, but to reformulate the left-wingproject that would allow to articulate, to link together, thestruggle of the working class with the struggle of the newsocial movement. And that, of course, is the part of the bookwhich is concerned with radical and plural democracy,because there is the two aspects in the book, which is bothreformulation, in terms of theory, and also reformulation interms of the political project.

The shift from a more classical Marxist theory, perhaps wecan call it, towards a Gramscian influence then, allowed youto develop a theory of the new social movements that wouldbe both in continuity with Marxism but also involved a critiqueof Marxism. One of the things that came to be a central ideain this critique, is the concept of identity. I wonder if you couldexplain the importance that the concept of identity had in thetheory of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy?

Laclau: Yes. Concerning the question of the new social movement, Iwould question the assertion that we were simply movingfrom class analysis to new social movements. Because thatwould have been simply to change the privileged agent ofhistory, which was conceived originally, in class terms, fromone group to another group. So, what we did, and this iscentral for your point concerning identity, is to put intoquestion the notion of an identifiable agency. That is to say,what we conceived is that the subject is constructed through aplurality of subject position, that there is an essentialunevenness between this position and, that there areconstant practices of re-articulation. So, the socialmovements were simply a symptom; a symptom of adispersion of the position from which politics started and atransition to a situation in which a variety of issues wereorganized around relatively homogenous social agencies, to amoment in which there was some kind of dispersion ofidentities and the process of political articulation becamemore and more important. For instance, the socialmovements of which people spoke so much about in the1980's have become comparatively less important in the


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1990's. But this does not change the validity of our approach,because our approach was not concerned with finding a newprivileged agent of historical change. It was concerned withhow to conceive politics when you start from fragmentedsocial identities. Now, in this is connected with the question ofidentity. Political identities, for us, are never immediately

given. Political identities are always constructed on the basisof complex discursive practices. That is a reason why thepsychoanalytic category of identification is central for us. Let'ssuppose if you have something like there was in Americasome years ago, the Rainbow Coalition of Jesse Jackson,there you see an attempt to put together a dispersion ofsocial positions, an issue politics, around some kind of unifiedhistorical-political intervention. It didn't work. But, it givessome picture of what we have, into account. So, tosummarize the point, I think what we are dealing with is aretreat from agency as a homogeneous identity to conceiveagency as a result of a pragmatic articulation of a plurality ofissue politics and political intervention, and as a result of thisrequired political identification, which profoundly changed thenotion of agency and identity.

So while identity appears as a kind of a solution, perhapsinitially, it's actually a name for a whole series of problems.

Laclau: I think so. No simple notion of identity can be accepted todayin any, more or less, sophisticated analysis of contemporarypolitics.

Well, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy attempted todeconstruct the received political categories, on the onehand, of Marxism, but also of liberal democratic thought, andto allow a reinterpretation of these categories in a way thatcould allow you to comprehend contemporary politicssomewhat better, and also to understand the different kindsof interventions that seem to be going on through the 1980'sand also the 1990's. I notice that one way in which thisreconceptualization takes place, is that you tend to speak ofwhat you call 'political space.' And I wonder, it seems to methat the traditional political category would be the publicsphere, or something like that - 'the public.' Do you see yourconcept of political space as a reformulation of the traditionalconcept of the public sphere?


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Mouffe: Well, I should point out that, at the moment when we beganto develop that, we were not thinking, so much, in terms ofthe relation with the liberal view. When we are speaking of the

need to multiply the political space, I think it is very muchlinked to what is the central approach in hegemony, to whichErnesto has already referred, the need to understand thatthere are different sides of antagonism; that one cannot justthink that class antagonism is the only one. In fact, the olderstruggle, around the new social movement, indicate that thereare many other forms of domination or forms of oppressionand that those need to be put into a question too, andbecause they are also a sight in which specific forms ofidentities are constructed in subordination. And in fact, theway in which we were imagining this project of radical andplural democracy, which was to extend the democraticstruggle to all those areas in which the relation of dominationexisted, was why, by multiplying what we call the politicalspace, and thinking that it was not, for instance, strictly limitedto either the traditional public sphere or, as Marxists will haveit, around the question of class, but that there was, in fact, amultiplicity of locus of power in society that needed to be putinto question. And I must say that, at least as far as I amconcerned, its only later on that I began to think about whatthe liberals were saying about that and try to see what wasthe relation between our view and the one of the liberal. And Ibegan, probably at that time, to valorize more this liberal 'artof separation' - the distinction between the public and theprivate - because, I think probably there, the most importantaspect has been the way in which, at least in France, thecritique of totalitarianism, by people on the left, has showedthat it was very important to maintain this distinction betweenthe public and the private, because any attempt to blur thedistinction was, in fact, opening the way to some kind ofcomplete control of society by, for instance, the state, and theliberal tradition provided us with a possibility to, at least,establish barriers in order to impede that. Of course, once Isay that, the question is, what are the limitations of this liberalconception? I think that the limitations, for instance, has beenvery well put to the fore by the feminist critique. I think that thefeminist critique has shown that the way the public/privatedistinction was created by the liberals had been by relegatingsayers of issues to the sphere of the private, and impeding,precisely by that move, that many forms of domination wouldbe put into question. So, then, of course, one can see whythe idea of a multiplicity of political space is important tocorrect this liberal way in which the public/private have been


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constructed. So, I think that probably, we'll need to insist that,contrary to some feminism who believe that because it hasbeen constructed in that way, by relegating for instance, allthe questions which have got to do with womensubordination, to the private, this distinction need to beabandoned. I don't think so. I think that it is a very important

distinction, but it needs to be redrawn. It needs to beproblematized, in the sense that we need to think of amultiplicity of public sphere or political space, and amultiplicity that will allow precisely not to have allparticularities kept in the private, and then the creation ofsome kind of public sphere in which consensus or a morerational agent or more homogeneous agent could be created.

So, you see contemporary politics as involving a multiplicity ofstruggles and a multiplicity of political identities. On the otherhand, the traditional concept of the citizen has tended to be arather unified, or unifying conception. So, what rethinking ofthe concept of the citizen and citizenship is implied in this newconception of politics?

Mouffe: Well, I will say two things with respect to the concept of thecitizen. First, the way in which I began to think about that,because once we had finished writing Hegemony andSocialist Strategy and we had put into question the idea ofthe class subject as the unifying subject. Nevertheless, webegan to insist on the fact that this critique of the class did notmean that we were going to ask some kind of extremepostmodern diversified position in which we were putting intoquestion any need for some kind of common identity. And ofcourse, I will say the very project of hegemony, the project ofarticulation, implied that there was some kind of collectivesubject that was needed or collective form of identity that wasneeded. And then I began to wonder, where could we findthis? I became interested in examining how the concept of thecitizen could be reformulated in a way in which it couldprovide this common identity. And part of my work, in fact,has been concerned with that. For instance, what I've tried todo is propose the idea of what I call a 'radical democraticconception' of citizenship. Because the point I think I want toemphasize here is that there are many problems withliberalism. One, obviously, is the fact that it's not a citizenwhich is going to act to participate; its very much a citizenwhich has got rights which it's going to use against the state.So, there is something there basically lacking. But from the


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point of view that we are discussing here, probably the mainproblem is that the citizen is seen as being abstracted from allits other determinations, and then its the way we act in thepublic but without taking account at all of our other insertion.And also, the idea that once we act as 'citizen', we should actall in the same way. And I think that this is the main problem. I

think that we should accept that the category of citizenship isa very disputed one and there are many different ways inwhich the relationship is going to be conceived: there is aneo-liberal, a neo-conservative, a social democratic way. AndI was proposing to think, also, about the possibility of a radicaldemocratic citizenship, which means that, if it is a relationshipin which we are going to try to articulate in a common identitythis multiplicity of political space, and, for instance, when weare acting as a radical democratic citizen, we willautomatically be concerned about the struggle of feminism,the struggle against racism, and so on, not just a citizen whichis not concerned about all the other struggles.

Yes. Through the conception of hegemony then, you try torethink the political as a realm of antagonism, a realm of aplurality of struggles. And this seems to imply, on a morephilosophical level, a rethinking of the relationship betweenparticularity and universality, which, Ernesto, the recentessays you've been writing, a lot of them have focused on thisproblem. How do you suggest that a new conception or a newrelationship between particularity and human universalitymight be involved with a conception of the public?

Laclau: Ok. Two things. Firstly, I think the notion of universality islinked, basically, to the expansion of logic of equality withinsociety, through the logic of equivalence - what we havecalled logic of equivalence - which presupposes the extensionof the principle of equality to a larger variety of social relationsthat the certain relative, pragmatic universality is created insociety. For instance, the notion of human equality startedwith Christianity in religious discourses: all men are equalbefore God. The achievement of the Enlightenment was theextension of this logic of equivalence of equality, to the publicsphere. And there is where the public space of citizenshipwas created. Now, I see, since that point, the art of thedemocratic revolution as the progressive extension of theprinciple of equality to a larger area. For instance, in socialistdiscourses in the 19 century, this pure equality in the publicspace of citizenship is extended to economic relations, and


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we can see the social movements of our present age as theextension of this principle to the areas of racial relations,sexual relations, institutional relations, and so on. So, I see inthe first movement, this hegemonic process of extension ofthe logic of equality as the very condition for creating newforms of universality. Now, in the second movement, I would

say that this always depends on the extension of democraticpower in society. I think this is not simply the recognition ofsomething which was always there, but is a process of actualcreation. If we are breaking with the essentialist conception ofthe subject, we are not saying that the social movements arediscovering an idea &SHY; an inequality - which was always there,they are actually creating the terrain of that equality, and theequality as such. In this sense, I think that we have to breakwith purely representational theories of human equality andwe 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, orthe moving of the idea of to whom this universality applies, tolarger and larger spheres. But each time it expands, this is acreative movement, its not something that is givenbeforehand.

Laclau: That's it. Even more. I would say that this creation starts froman increasing plurality. Let's compare the notion of equalitythat you can find in Marxism with the one we can find inradical democracy. In Marxism, human equality had as aprecondition the obliteration of all differences. That is to say,the historical process of capitalism was leading towards theproletarization of the middle classes and the peasantry, sothat there was an increasing unification in the sense ofhomogenization of the vast mass of the exploited who wouldcarry out, finally, the social revolution. So, the precondition ofhuman equality for Marxism was the increasing simplificationof social structure under capitalism. In the sense that we areadvocating, what happens is the opposite. That is to say,equalization starts from an increasing diversity, recognition ofplurality, difference, and so on and so forth. But in that case,the logic of equality cannot be a logic of homogenization. Ithas to be a logic of what we call 'equivalence,' because in arelation of equivalence, you are not simply discoveringidentity, you are discovering something which is identicalwithin the realm of differences. This alludes to a much moresubtle form of political logic.


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So, there's a rethinking of the relationship between theparticular and the universal, and we've really placed theemphasis on the expansion of the notion of universality. Is

there an implication for the other side of this relationship, forhow we conceive of the particular, which was probablytraditionally conceived of simply that which was left out, andperhaps personal, or idiosyncratic? Do you conceive of theparticular in a different way also?

Laclau: Well, let me differentiate in the first place, the particular fromthe private, because you can have many identities which areparticular and they are very public in their type of intervention.For instance, many movements created around ethnicity areextremely particularistic, but on the other hand, they aredefinitely not private. What I would say, and this is somethingwhich I think Chantal can develop some of the dimensions -she has worked on that more than I did - is the following. Wehave, as against universalism today, an ideology of extremeparticularism. Now, I think extreme particularism is somethingwhich is self defeating because let's suppose, you have aparticularity within society - an ethnic group, a nationalminority, a sexual minority, et cetera, et cetera - that isdefending its right within global society. If they say, forinstance, the right of nation to self determination, what arethey doing but enunciating a universal principle? The verydiscourse of rights on which the defense of particularity isbased, presupposes some kind of universal difference. Now,when you say the right of national minorities to selfdetermination, there you are presenting a principle in whichthe logic of equivalence is operating, because you have theparticularities of all these demands, and on the other hand,you have a right which has to be formulated in universalterms. Now, how this universality can be conceived, which isno longer the universality of an instance, of an underlyingground, as in classical philosophy, is one of the mainproblems of contemporary political theory.

So, Ernesto has suggested, Chantal, that you regard theparticularisms that have traditionally been left out of the publicas potentially capable of influencing the public in thecontemporary sphere, or as involving some kind of newrelationship between the public right and a particular position.


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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 the I have been interested in this, what I

call this new articulation between the universal and theparticular, but it has come in the context of my reflectionabout citizenship. My reflection about how can we think of aform of commonality that does not erase differences. But Ifeel today, we are faced with a false dilemma. On one side,there are those who, because they realize that something isbasically wrong and missing in the liberal conception - whichis the idea of a common bond and, of course, that's areflection of the communitarians - one to reintroduce thiscommonality, but they introduce it in a way which tends to notleave space for differences for particularities. On the otherside, there are those who, because they want to make roomfor differences for particularity, believe they cannot acceptany form of commonality because any form of commonality is,in fact, a different form of violence. I think that what we shouldreally try to find is a way of conceiving commonality thatleaves space for differences and for particularities. Becausethat's the way in which we could, today, take account andreformulate, in a way which is compatible with the radicaldemocratic project, what I take to be the most importantcontribution of liberalism to modern democracy, which is theidea of pluralism. But of course, the problem is that theliberals insist on pluralism, but they are very bad aboutthinking about community. The communitarians are goodabout thinking about community, but they are bad at thinkingabout pluralism. In a sense, my position will be to try to takethe best of the communitarians and the liberals and try toimagine a way in which we can have a form of commonalitythat does not erase differences. That's very much what theidea of radical and plural citizenship is concerned, because,of course, the idea of citizenship basically impliescommonality - we are in it together as members of a politicalcommunity. But, of course, we are in it together, but we aredifferent. You know, and this togetherness cannot be justlimited to what we have in common. There must be a way inwhich our particularities also are going to be taken intoaccount in that common bond. But I think it's really not aneasy thing to imagine. I'm not certainly able to give you thesolution already, but that's the way in which we need to bethinking about those questions. And I think that's veryimportant, in fact, for the problems that are posed today incontemporary societies - the whole question ofmulti-culturalism or political identity, and all that - that is the


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question that they really pose.

Laclau: If I can add something to that. Also, we have to be verysensitive to the way in which the emphasis on universality and

on particularity is present in different political cultures. Forinstance, in America today, many democratic struggles havetaken the from of a struggle against the cannon, in thecharacteristic of multiculturalist struggle, in which theemphasis on particularism has been very much at theforefront. If we move to a country like South Africa, which Ihave visited recently, you find there a completely differenttype of discourse, because discourse of ethnicity areimmediately suspicious. For instance, are the discourses ofQuazulu, the Brutalesi discourse and so. And the officialideology of Apartheid was the notion of separatedevelopment and respect for cultural identities, while thedemand of the resistance movement was a demand forequalization of conditions, and the idea of non-racialism tooka universalist dimension which was much more present. So, Iwould take universalism and particularism as the twoextremes in a relation of tension which allows many differentpolitical projects to take place within it.

That's a very good point. One of the things I've noticed is thatquite often with foreign visitors coming to Canada and talkingabout multiculturalism, there is a tendency to assume that anytalk about ethnicity necessarily leads in the direction of ethnicparticularism, or ethnic cleansing, something of that sort. Ofcourse it depends very much on the way in which these thingshave come together in a particular history. This reworking ofthe relationship between the particular and the universal cantake many different forms. You've mentioned Chantal, in yourworking through these problems, with regards to a criticalappropriation of the liberal tradition, you've tried to avoid theliberal individualism on the one side, and liberalcommunitarianism on the other side, and are in the processof developing a theory of your own which you call radicaldemocracy. What does the term 'radical' mean when appliedto democracy in this way? What is it, particularly, about thistheory that distinguishes it from liberalism of the normalvariety.

Mouffe: Well, you probably need to reach a distinction between


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radical democracy and what I call agonistic pluralism.Because, in fact, the project of radical democracy is a politicalproject. In that sense, the term 'radical' means theradicalization of the democratic revolution by its extension tomore and more areas of social life. Because I stand from thepoint of view that, in fact, if we take the ethical political

principal of modern democracy, which for me is pluralistdemocracy, liberal democracy, and that those principals arethe assertion of liberty and equality for all, I don't think there isanything wrong with those principles. I can't imagine how wecould find more radical principles than that. I feel that theproblem with those principles is not their nature, but the factthat they are not implemented, or they are very littleimplemented in societies that claim to put those ideas intopractice. So, in fact, the project of radical democracy consistsof taking those ideals and radicalizing them by giving a moreradical interpretation of liberty, of democracy, of equality, andof the whole. Because, I think that much of the struggle whichis taking place in politics, in liberal democratic society, isconcerned with what I call the interpretation of thoseprinciples. Because, of course, liberty, equality, and thewhole, can be interpreted in many different ways. And by theway, I think that the struggle that I envisaged around differentforms of citizenship, I was mentioning before a neo-liberalone, a neo-conservative, a social democratic, is aboutdifferent interpretations of those principles. And I take it that areally vibrant democratic society needs to have this debateand confrontation about those interpretations. And that'swhere the conception of agonistic pluralism comes in to its fulldevelopment. Because what I am trying to oppose to theliberal conception is a model of agonistic pluralism. It's notopposing radical democracy to liberalism, because in fact,radical democracy we could also have called "radical liberaldemocracy." In fact, the idea of radical and plural democracydoes not imply to take into question the constitutional principalof liberal democracy, but radicalizing them by applying them,really, and to more and more areas. But there is also a moretheoretical problem and that's where, I think, that the liberalconception of politics has also been very defective. Becauseliberals understand politics mainly, either under the model ofeconomics, or under the model of ethics. That is, when Ispeak in terms of economics - and that's the dominant modelof interest group pluralism, for instance - they conceive thepolitical terrain as if it was a market, a political market, inwhich there are people with their different interests and whichcompete and we are going to make, you know, kind of deals.But basically it's in terms of economics. Recently, there havebeen a series of liberals, like John Rawls and all the so-calledontological liberals, who have become very dissatisfied with


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this model, which is, obviously, very instrumentalist view ofpolitics. And they have proposed to develop what is nowcalled a model of deliberative democracy, which, basically,tried to reintroduce morality into it. So it's not only about aquestion of interest. There are things which are moreimportant to that.

Chantal, you've described your critique of liberalism asleading towards a theory of agonistic pluralism. How wouldyou explain that?

Mouffe: What I have in mind here is a critique of the way in whichpolitics 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 dimensionof antagonism, is erased from liberalism. In fact, I will say thatthere is no theory of politics in liberalism, and that even therecent, so-called political liberalism, there really is nothingpolitical about that because it's an attempt to apply, tointroduce, morality in the sphere of the public, but thedimension of conflict and antagonism is, in fact, erased. So,against that, what I am proposing is to see the struggle whichshould take place inside a moral democratic society in termsof what I call agonistic pluralism. A pluralism that is not like, inthe case of Rawls or Habermas, relegated to the sphere ofthe private in order for a rational political consensus to bepossible in the sphere of the public, but recognizing that it isvery important for people to have a possibility to identify in thepublic sphere with really different positions. One of theproblems, which has happened recently in Europe, but Isuppose to some extent here in North America too, is thatwith the blurring of the left-right distinction, there has beensome kind of consensus model in which there is not reallymuch difference between the right wing democratic partiesand the socialist parties. So, there is no real agonism, there isno possibility for people to identify with other positions - thereis no real alternative which is offered to them. And that, Ithink, has lead to some kind of lack of interest in politics, or apassivity, which is not good for vibrant democratic life. And Ithink that it's important to realize that it's not by proposing amodel of deliberative democracy and say that people shouldsit together and discuss and try to understand an argumentthat we are going to put back a real participatory level inpolitics. I think that in order to have a vibrant democratic life,we need to have a real struggle against different positions.


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And that's what I call agonistic pluralism. And of course,radical democracy will be one of the forms in which thestruggle could take place, because this agonistic pluralism, Isee as taking place between different conceptions ofcitizenship. The radical democratic project is just one waywhich strives to become hegemonic in this agonistic pluralism.

But the difference at that level is not so much in terms ofdifferent political projects, how far we are going to extend theprincipal of liberty and equality, but the way in which politics isconceived in a liberal democratic society and the place thatantagonism occupies in that theoretical project.

This concept of antagonism that you've introduced here in thecontext of radical democracy is a key concept, both in thework that you've written together and in the recent work ofboth of you. How would you explain the concept ofantagonism?

Laclau: Well, I would say that antagonism had been considered byclassical sociological theory as something to be explainedwithin the social, within society. The way we conceiveantagonism is that antagonism is the limit of social objectivity.What I mean by this, for instance, there is an antagonismbetween two social forces, we can find that these none ofthese two forces have a discourse which is commensurablewith the other. Now, there are two ways of reacting, visavis,this antagonism. Either to say, well, the antagonism is a mereappearance of some kind of objective underlying processwhich can be explained in its own terms. Or, we can sayantagonism goes down to the bottom: any kind of socialobjectivity is reached simply by limiting antagonism. Now,what we have to do in our work is to give to antagonism thisfundamental constitutive role in establishing the limits of thesocial, while most sociological theories, on the contrary,present antagonism as something which has to be explainedin terms of something different. To give you an example,classical Marxism said, well, history is a history of struggle. Inantagonistic societies you have suffering, social process forthe social agents are conceived of as irrational. But, if we seehistory from the privileged point of the end of history, therationality of all these processes is shown. For instance, wesee that passing through the hell of all the antagonisticsocieties 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


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the way people live this. For example, Hegel used to say,"Universal history is not the terrain of happiness." Now, on thecontrary, you can say antagonism is actually constitutive:there is no underlying logic of history which is expressedthrough itself, it goes down to the bottom. Now, this secondview, which I think, can in many ways lead to more

democratic outcomes, because it takes more into account theactual feelings and perceptions of historical actors, is closer toour view.

Mouffe: Yeah, I want to add something here because I think that it'smore political aspect of antagonism and its link with theproblem of liberalism but also of Marxism. I think that, there issomething, even if, as Ernesto was saying, theoretically,Marxism was not really adequately grasped by Marxists, butthey 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 insociety. So, Marxism was a process, with respect to liberalismon that aspect, they recognized the place of antagonism but,they limited it to the question of class. So, they believed thateventually, antagonism could be eradicated once the classstruggle will have finished. In a sense, what we are doing is toradicalize Marxism, so to speak. To say, well, the question ofantagonism, first, cannot be located exclusively at the level ofclass; 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, weare saying, and those antagonisms, well, certain antagonismscan be eradicated, but Antagonism can never be eradicatedof society. So, while Marxism and liberalism believe thepossibility of society without antagonism, of course, you know,there are different kinds of societies, but there is thispossibility, we are saying that there is no possibility of societywithout antagonism.

But isn't there a problem here? The project of socialism is torelieve the systemic suffering of the working classes, to doaway with hunger and poverty. If you say that antagonism issystemic and constitutive of human society and it can't bedone away with, does that mean that we can't involveourselves in struggles against poverty and suffering andinhumane working conditions and things of this sort?


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Laclau: I don't think one has to simply reduce antagonism toeconomic exploitation. I think you can supersede economicexploitation in a variety of ways. This does not mean thatantagonism, 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 waseliminated, if the principal of social division was no longerthere, we would have reached a fully reconciled society. Andin this fully reconciled society there would be no freedom atall, because everybody would think exactly the same kind ofthing. The very notion of a plurality of point of view requiresthe presence of antagonism. Now, this does not mean thateconomic exploitation will have always to be there.Antagonism can take many forms. But, the basic point is thatthe supersession of a particular antagonistic form does not,as Chantal said, involve the supersession of Antagonism, assuch. And in this connection, I would say, Marxism presentstwo perfectly contradictory theories. The first one, accordingto which, history is the process of development of thecontradiction between forces and relation of production, andobjective processes, which reduce antagonism tosuperstructure. The other theory, according to which, themortar of history is class struggle. Now, these two theoriesare incompatible because, if class struggle is the actualengine of historical change, in that case, there can not be arational positive logic, which is what the first theory presented.There is where Chantal, I think, has quite rightly characterizedour intellectual project as the radicalization of theseantagonistic moments which, I think, retrieves the bestdimensions within Marxism.

Is there a new conception of politics in what you're proposinghere through the notion of antagonism? There seems to be asense in which political struggles still have a point and apurpose, but yet the notion of a goal, the final goal of politicalactivity, seems to be reconceptualized. Is that close to themark?

Mouffe: Well, probably I will say what we are abandoning is the ideaof a final goal that could ever be realized. Because, the ideaof radical and plural democracy implies that this fullyreconciled society, that was the goal of Marxism and of manysocialist struggles, can never be reached. And as I wassaying, this in fact, is not something that we should see as


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negative, and there is no reason to be sad about that. In fact,it's something to celebrate, because it means that it's theguarantee that the democratic pluralist process will be keptalive. Because if we start from the idea that there is apossibility of realizing an harmonious society - completelyharmonious society - even when that is conceived as a

regulative idea, there is some danger in it. Because it meansthat, in fact, the ideal of a democratic society will be a societyin which there will not be any more pluralism, becausepluralism implies the possibility of putting into question theexisting arrangement of contesting, constantly, the relation ofpower. But if you accept that there is a possibility of an endpoint, of a goal, in which there will not be any more form ofpower or of domination, I mean, at that moment peoplecannot, of course, put into question the existing institutions,because those institutions will be the instantiation of justice orof democracy. I think that is precisely what I have beencriticizing, for instance, in liberals like John Rawls or in thework of Habermas, showing that, contrary to their goal, whichin fact, is to try to think of the condition of pluralism, they infact, are presenting a self-defeating argument, because bypostulating the possibility of a rational consensus, they areundermining the very conception of the democratic pluralistprocess. And of course, they are also, and that's a pointwhich is theoretically important, imagining a society fromwhich relation of power will have disappeared, in fact, isimpossible because if we, as we have argued, must acceptthat relations of power are constitutive of the social, youcannot imagine a society in which there will be no relation ofpower. And this, in fact, is a very important aspect of ourargument about antagonism and about politics - thisrecognition that power is constitutive of the social.

Your theory of antagonism, then, is a radicalization of thefocus on conflict in Marxism, and suggests that there is nofinal point at which conflict will be eliminated. The question I'dlike to ask you, how do you, you theorize antagonism throughthe notion of the limit of the social. Can you give me anexample of how the limit of the social can become an actualphenomenon within someone's experience?

Laclau: Ok. Let me pose the problem in the following terms. Thereare many social situations in which some kind of decisionabout the collective life of the community have to be taken.Now, these decisions, I would argue, are never decisions


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which are entirely rational, because if they were decisionswhich are entirely rational, they would be totally obvious, andno decision, actually, would be needed. If a decision isneeded, this means that one has to determine the course ofevents 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 willconflict, necessarily, with the decision of other groups. So,you cannot say that society as a whole, the social process asa whole, is moving in one direction, which is determined by itsunderlying structures. What you have is that an externalintervention is there needed. So, social objectivity there findsits limits. And I would argue that the limits of the social are thepolitical. Because we have had a perverted notion of society,which is the result of almost one century of sociologicalapproaches to the social. Since the decline of politicalphilosophy at the end of the 18th century, we have atendency which goes in the direction of explaining the politicalas a moment within the social - the political would by either asuperstructure, a sub-system, depending on the theoreticalview point, and so on - but society is considered as some kindof universal explaining principal according to its own laws. Ifyou are speaking about the limit of the social as being internalto society, we are creating the basis for a re-emergence ofthe political as the institutive moment of the social. And thisrequires, as I said before, that the antagonistic moment ispresent there - social conflict is there, as a groundingmoment, it's not a result of anything else.

Mouffe: Yeah, it is in that context, in fact, that I have proposed todistinguish between "the political" and politics. And that takesto what you were asking before, I think, if there is a newtheory of politics in our work. Well, in fact, I will argue that, forthe first time in many contexts of liberal theory, there is atheory of politics - I wouldn't say its a new one, because therewas not an old one, and that has been the problem withliberalism. This distinction consists in, one thing, to makeroom for the recognition of this antagonistic dimension thatwe were speaking about before. Because by the political, Ipropose that we understand this dimension of antagonismthat is an ever-present possibility in social relations. I'm notsaying that all social relations are always constructedantagonistically. That's certainly not the case, but it's alwaysan ever-present possibility. And this is this dimension which iscalled "the political." And "politics" consists, then, in trying tocreate an order, organize human coexistence, in conditionswhich are always potentially conflictual, because there is this


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dimension of the antagonism. I think once you begin to posethe question in that way, of course, it requires to understanddemocratic struggle in a very different way, becausedemocratic struggle will be, as I say sometime, trying to seehow one can transform an antagonism into an agonism. Bythat 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 afriend-enemy relation into an adversarial relation, becausethe adversary is the one which is considered, in a certainrespect, equal in the sense that we will not put into questionhis right or her right to defend their own position. They arepart of the democratic community and they are part of theconfrontation, while an enemy, of course, is somebody towhich you negate the right to express his differences. That, ofcourse, is also linked to the idea of agonistic pluralism:agonistic pluralism being something that takes place amongadversaries.

Your own work has been developed partly as a critique ofMarxism, partly as an appropriation and radicalization ofMarxism through the notion of antagonism, yet, in recentyears, the great political success stories are not successstories of the left, but of the right. I'm wondering if the recentsuccesses of the right, both in Europe and in America, havecaused you to revise your thinking. How do you understandthe rise of the right? Do you see it as a social movement?

Mouffe: Well, here I want to, in fact, deconstruct so to speak, thiscategory of the right, because I'm not sure that we aremeaning the same thing. What I am concerned with today isnot the right, but the extreme right. I think this is really thedanger in Europe today. And I will not see the recent situationin Europe as a victory for the right. It's true that in manycountries the right is in power - the right has just come topower in France after a long period of socialism, its in powerin many more countries, in probably it is going to come powerin Spain, it is in power in Italy, fortunately it might get out ofpower in Britain. But anyway, the question seems to me isthat, what I call the democratic right, is not, I think, in muchbetter 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 confrontedwith a problem for which they don't have a solution. Theirneo-liberal model is not working. The case of Britain is very


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interesting from that point of view, because the Thatcherexperiment has failed. This is absolutely recognized. There isno alternative on the right for that. In many of the Europeancountries, right-wing parties are facing the same situation. So,I find both the left and the right, really, not knowing how toaddress the present situation. And that's why the extreme

right is the one which is today occupying the terrain. If yousee the movement which are in expansion, it is extreme right.In France, in Italy, in Austria, in Belgium, in Denmark, this isthe trend which is being put in place. And that, of course, isextremely dangerous, because this is something which putinto question the very basis of the liberal democratic model aswe have learned it so far. So, in fact, I find the situation, in asense, more worrying that what a simple victory of the rightover the left will have implied.

In the terms of your political theory, the right would take theadversarial relationship of, say, the conservative party andthe labour party in Britain and turn it into a friend-enemyrelationship, in fact, that would threaten the foundation of theliberal political order. So you would see that as the biggestdanger?

Mouffe: Yes, because I don't think there is a possibility of anadversarial relation with the extreme right. Those areenemies, while the adversarial relation can only take placebetween left and democratic right. But, I think that, I've beentrying to interpret that because, for me it is a phenomenonwhich is extremely important. There is a real urgency today intrying to understand the rights of the right in order to be ableto offer an alternative. I think that one of the reasons whythere is such a popular mobilization around extreme rightparties is because the democratic left and right have not beenable to put in place what I call this agonistic pluralism. They'vebeen, in fact, drawn towards some kind of consensus modeland the idea that politics should take place at the center. Thiswas very clear in France when the socialists came to powerbecause they actively abandoned their Jacobean type ofpolitics which was very much in terms of friend-enemy. Andthat was something positive. But they were not able to think interms of adversary; they fell completely into the traditionalliberal model of competitors. So it was a question, "well, youknow, we've got our interests, our bureaucratic system, ourelites that we want to put into power," but there was noattempt at all to transform the hegemony, to transform power


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relations. So, it has very much been some kind of strugglelocated at the center between different parties which were notoffering any kind of alternative. There was no confrontation.And I think that explains, to a large extent, on one part, thedisaffection of many people in France with those parties, thegrowth of fundamentalist movements, movements in which,

what I call the passions are not mobilized toward democraticdesign, and also, the fact that the extreme right is the onewhich is mobilizing passion because they are offering analternative. And I think that's why it's so important torecognize that if we want to offer democratic channels,democratic ways for passion to express themselves, oneneeds to abandon this consensus-centric model of politicsand revive the agonistic adversarial relation. I think that thisblurring of the left-right distinction which we have witnessed inEurope, and which has been celebrated by many people bysaying how we are now coming to maturity, how this isprogress for democracy, I think this is disastrous fordemocracy, because this creates the terrain in which theextreme right is beginning to make in roads.

Laclau: Yes, because what happens is that whenever you haveunfulfilled demands of people and the need of a discourse ofopposition, and this discourse is not present - is replaced bysome kind of politics of piecemeal engineer, consensus, andso on - the need for a radical confrontation through thesystem is more important than the terms in which thisconfrontation is carried out. So, for instance, many socialforces which were the classical constituency of the communistparty in France, have become supporters of Lepen simplybecause the old radicalism of the Purple de Gauche, as theycall 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, duringsome period, had represented left-wing or progressivecourses. They have disintegrated because the historicalassumptions are no longer there, and some kind of a newfundamentalist type of discourse is occupying that place. Inthe case of the Middle East, it's perfectly clear. In the yearsafter the Second World War, the dominant progressiveideology was Arab nationalism. Now, Arab nationalism wasconstructed around the nation state, the new nation stateswhich were emerging in the Middle East. For instance, whenPakistan emerged there as an Islamic nation, it was criticizedby the whole because they said an Islamic nation state is acontradiction in terms. Now, with the stalemate in the MiddleEast, Arab nationalism collapses everywhere as a dominant


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ideology and this space has to be taken by Islamicfundamentalism simply because there were many unfulfilleddemands which require some kind of radical answer.

So, opposition to the system as a whole has tended to be, inrecent years, from the right rather than from the left. How doyou fit the corporatist agenda, or the neo-liberal fiscalresponsibility agenda into this picture of contemporarypolitics?

Laclau: Well, I would say the corporatist model, or the neo-liberalmodel, to a large extent, has failed as an attempt to galvanizethe political system. The years of the 1980's were the years ofa movement, to the right, of the established parties. Theywere the years of Reganism, the years of Thacherism, and soon and so forth. Now, in some sense, these were the lastutopian years because, the idea of an utopian politics not onlybelongs to the left, it belongs also to the right. We had somekind of blueprint of society, created by neo-liberalism, whichhad to be applied. Now, today people are much more blas.The idea of a blueprint of society and utopian politics alongthese lines, either through the right or through the left, arevery much put into question. And they are being replaced bysome kind of issue politics, micro politics, in some respects,all by emergence of the new fundamentalism that we arereferring to. But the big designs like the Great Society, or theNew Deal, or the neo-liberal model, and so on, are no longerthere.

Mouffe: But speaking of comparativism, which is the best model,maybe, of this kind of consensus approach, I think this isclearly what has also created the terrain in many places forthe extreme right. I'm thinking of Austria, for instance, whichwas the corporatist model par excellance, where, for manyyears, we had this cohabitation between conservative andsocial democrats, and where, of course, the party of GorkIdor is, today, extremely important precisely because they arethe only one offering a radical alternative. Of course, with therecent election given to the socialists, it will increase. Thatsituation might have been worse, but clearly, the party whichis today on the move in Austria, is the Freedom Party of Idor,and its very much articulating the discontent with thecorporatist model that had been in place in Austria.


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Underlying your analysis of contemporary political events isthe theory of hegemony that you've been developing for anumber of years. I wonder if you could explain to me, in more

general terms now, the contribution you think politicalphilosophy and philosophy in general can make to politicalissues 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 aprocess of pragmatically putting together things oroccurrences which do not necessarily have to coalesce in thatway. It involves a contingent intervention. To give you anexample, at the end of the Second World War, there was adiscussion within the Italian Communist Party about how theparty was going to be constructed in the post-war period. Andthere were two currents: one which said the party is the partyof the working class. So, it had to be the party representingan enclave in the industrial north and they had to live totallyoutside of the world of the Mizsiogiorno and everythingconnected with it. The other position, which was moreGramscian, and finally adopted through the leadership ofPalmido Atoliati, said no, we are going to build up the party inthe south. How is the working class is weak in the south. Theysaid the premises of the Party and the premises of the TradeUnion are going to be the center of a plurality of socialinitiative: the struggle against the Mafia, the struggle forschool cooperatives, and so on. So, that communism, in theend, became the coalescing symbol of a plurality of struggles,which, in themselves, didn't have any need to coincide in thatway - there was no structural law pushing them in that way.The proof is that in some other areas, there were theChristian democrat lawyer who produced this role ofarticulation. But once this role of articulation has succeed, itmanages to produce for a whole historical period, a certainconfiguration of alliance forces and so on. This is an exampleof what hegemonic politics is about. Now, this, as you see,goes very much against the notion of a strict interestdetermining what form of politics is going to show. It involvesa strategic movement which is always transient, unstable andnegotiated.

Mouffe: Here, it is important, I think, to insist on the fact that this


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hegemonic politics, of course, can be put into practice by theright as much as by the left. For instance, the exampleErnesto was giving referring to Italy, is precisely what we areseeing now about the growth of the Islamic fundamentalistmovement. In many countries, for instance, to take the caseof Turkey, where the rise of the Reza Reform Party has been

very important, is articulating a similar type of hegemony thatthe communists did in Italy, you know, offering organizations,creating in civic society, a series of links. But because theywere offering an alternative to the government, they havebeen able to really establish a very serious basis in civicsociety following exactly that model. Thats the same, to acertain extent, for Algeria. The growth of the [] in Algeriahas been following exactly the same model. So, that's why it'simportant for the left to really understand that that's the waythey can create some kind of democratic alliance, because ifthey don't do that, its the other parties which are doing it.

Laclau: Traditionally, for instance, the Mas Limbrada became a massmovement, not simply on the basis of agitation, but on thebasis of organizing a plurality of institutions which were thebasis for social security, cultural participation, recreation, andso on, for people so that, in the end, they had become a statewithin the state. Later on they were destroyed by Nazar, butwhenever a fundamentalism has expanded in the Islamiccountries, it has been on the basis of this model. And I haveseen this model also operating very much in the plurality ofpopulist movements in Latin America, like in Peru, perronismin Argetnina in the forties and so on.

So, if hegemony is putting together a number of differentpolitical elements which are not necessarily connectedtogether, but are put together through an articulation. At thelevel of philosophy, you've been interested, recently, totheorize this through the concept of undecidability. Whatcould you say to us quickly about the concept ofundecidability in philosophy and how it might relate to thetheory of hegemony?

Laclau: Well, in fact, the concept of undecidability has beendeveloped from a variety of occurrences with the generalspectrum of what has been called post-structuralism. But let'ssuppose we take the deconstructionist alternative. What


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deconstruction is doing is to show that many structures, manycategories which present themselves as closed categoriesare, in fact, penetrated by internal aporias, so that the actualconfiguration that they show is, in fact, concealing manydifferent alternatives which are repressed. Now, once youbring this to light, you are also showing a plurality of strategic

development which become thinkable. So, what I would saydeconstruction is doing, is to enlarge the area ofundecidability in social relations, which require politicalintervention, but at the same time, this requires a theory ofthe decision; how to take a decision within an undecidableterrain. And that is what the theory of hegemony attempts todo. For example, Gramsci, we were speaking about before,Gramsci advanced a great deal, I think, in terms of showingsocial elements as having only contingent articulation. In thissense, he was enlarging the field of structure andundecidability, and conceived hegemony as the moment ofthe decision. But he was limited by a classical ontology bywhich this dimension of undecidability could be extended onlyso far. But in contemporary society with the phenomenon ofglobalization, with the phenomenon of combined and unevendevelopment, with the phenomenon of social fragmentation,we need definitely a much radical conception of undecidabilitythan what was present at the time Gramsci. And I thinkdeconstruction and post-structuralism are pushing in thatdirection.

From Conflicting Publics, Simon Fraser University, 1998.

Documents

Mouffe & Laclau - Hegemony and Socialism