Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary

particular product because it synecdochically symbolizes the entire “system of
objects” (1986:234–5). Further, in the fake intimacy that characterizes much of
popular discourse, the distance between political leaders and the led appears to
have shrunk to zero such that “everything is in principle sayable, visible [and]
intelligible” (1986:229). Ideology brings about the closure that structures discourse
and desire itself, but it simultaneously makes that closure imperceptible (1986:235).
Similarly, Barthes contends that “myth” constructs a “universal order” that de-
politicizes contingent and historical discourse such that they appear to be legitimate,
eternal, normal and natural (1973:143, 155). And Marx himself analyzed the
various ways in which bourgeois ideology naturalizes commodity fetishism and
structurally excludes revolutionary discourse from the realm of coherent thought.
For Marx, liberal democratic discourse suppresses its bourgeois particularity in
order to offer itself as an apparently class-neutral framework in which all demands
for human rights could be resolved (Marx 1977; Barrett 1991:14–15; Mepham
1979:152).

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Working in this tradition, Laclau contends that the emerging hegemonic
discourse must aim to position itself not just as one alternative among many, but
as the only possible framework for the resolution of the crisis. A political discourse
that aims to become hegemonic initially offers itself as a “myth.” Its individual
concrete demands must be transformed such that they symbolize much more than
its particular content (Norval 1996:9). A narrowly-defined single issue campaign,
for example, could offer itself as the defining framework within which every
legitimate demand ought to be expressed. In this sense, the emerging hegemonic
discourse in its mythical form operates as a “surface of inscription” or a “space of
representation.” By operating in this manner, it promises to explain, to compensate
for, and to suture over, the dislocation in the social structure. And yet, at the same
time, there is nothing in the dislocation itself that guarantees that any specific
discourse could take on this mythical function (Laclau 1990a:61). With these
developments, each demand in the emerging hegemonic discourse is constructed
so that it appears to be organically linked to a chain of other demands; ultimately,
each position evokes an entire series of positions (Laclau 1977:102–3). The
hegemonic bloc or Hall’s synecdochical “symbolic majority” “now emerges not
with isolated demands, nor as an organized alternative within the system, but as a
political alternative to the system itself (Laclau 1977:116). A truly hegemonic
discourse will suppress its literal content—its specific demands, its specific origins
as a single issue movement—in favor of its metaphorical dimension—its self-
representation as the principle of order itself. In this later stage, a hegemonic
discourse becomes an imaginary, for it claims to embody the whole “principle of
reconstruction of the entire ideological domain” (Laclau 1977:103).
We could, then, propose the following political cycle. First, we have the
development of an organic crisis and the weakening of the traditional hegemonic
discourse. Alternative discourses compete to offer myths to account for the crisis,
and horizons that organize identifications with their respective versions of popular
subject positions. One discourse begins to prevail over the others, thanks not only
to its linkages with residual, enduring and emerging institutions, but also to its
form. Where other alternatives tend to retain a “single issue” focus, the concrete
demands contained in the hegemonic discourse are “metaphorized.” It offers itself
as an interpretation of the crisis, and then as a “surface of inscription,” that is, as
a powerful explanatory and legitimizing framework for a wider and wider set of
political demands (Norval 1996:96). Ultimately, it begins to signify not just a
single literal political position, but an entire new social order (Laclau 1990a:64).
As the emerging hegemonic discourse begins to construct a normalized horizon of
intelligibility, it begins to reconstruct the prevailing networks of subject positions,
for its own table of authorized subject positions will be at least somewhat unique.
The cycle of the hegemonic regime’s reproduction is set into motion as the newly
transformed subject positions tend to incite practices along the lines of “regulated
improvisations.” At the same time, consciousness of the fact that the emerging
hegemonic discourse obtains its coherence and unity only because of its
negativity—its antagonistic relation with its enemy figures—increasingly recedes.

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This is, of course, an ideal version of this process; once again, the complex and
contradictory character of identification will ensure the proliferation of
unpredictable and dysfunctional incitements.
During the first days of a new hegemonic order, identifications with the newly
transformed subject positions may be somewhat unstable, as their novelty remains
readily apparent. Over time, however, these identifications may become
increasingly routinized. Routinization of course introduces a whole new set of
challenges for the hegemonic formation within its own power centers such as
unpredictable careerism, alienation, unintended acts of subversion as rules are
applied in new contexts, the exhaustion of popular demonizations, and so on. In
the more effective moments of a hegemonic formation, however, identifications
with the subject positions that have been reshaped under the influence of the new
horizon of intelligibility will be experienced as a recovery of a “nature” that has
been there all along (Norval 1996:13). Awareness of the paradox at the center of
this experience, namely that “nature” has to be constantly produced through
intensive intervention, will tend to be foreclosed. In some cases, identifications
will become so normalized and so heavily supported by an almost seamless web of
institutional props that the whole process of identification will disappear from
view altogether. In some moments, “nature” will be experienced not so much as
something that has to be “recovered” but as something that has always reigned
supreme through time. At other moments, even as normalization has reached this
intensity, alienation will reassert itself, necessitating an endless and mobile set of
tactics on the part of hegemonic forces to manage the social.
The ability of one hegemonic strategy to prevail over the others in these
conditions is primarily based on its linkages with institutions that retain some
degree of authority throughout the organic crisis, its embodiment in emerging
institutions that quickly obtain authority, and its iterations of already normalized
traditions. As McClintock argues, the deployment of archaic signifiers can
paradoxically play a key role in this process insofar as they effectively symbolize
what is new in the emerging hegemonic formation, while simultaneously creating
the sense that that formation is nothing more than a return to an imaginary golden
age (1995:376). The formal characteristics of a political discourse are of course
also important. As Laclau, following Gramsci, points out, a discourse can only
become hegemonic if its “system of narration” operates as a surface of inscription
for a wide variety of demands. However, as we have already seen in Chapter 2,
Laclau’s almost exclusive emphasis on the formal aspect of hegemony in his later
work is such that the Gramscian principle of historical contextualization is
suppressed. Like Žižek, Laclau sometimes gives the impression that a hegemonic
discourse becomes compelling simply because of its abstract formal operation,
namely its provision of an orderly space for the inscription of political demands.
Laclau and Zac, for example, cite a passage in Mann’s Lotte in Weimar in which
the citizens of the city shift their support from the Napoleonic occupying force to
the Prussians. The Prussians were initially regarded as “barbarians,” but as their
victory over the French became more certain, they were hailed as noble “liberators.”

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Mann’s narrator explains that the Weimar residents identified with the Prussians
because “‘we human beings are by nature submissive. We need to live in harmony
with outward events and situations’” (1994:16). Laclau and Zac remark that the
Weimar citizens were not being merely opportunistic; they were searching for a
political force that could secure order in their community. They emphasize the
formal aspects of the Prussian discourse in their commentary.
The possibility of identification with a certain political order depended
not only on its political virtues or attractiveness abstractly considered,
but on its ability to guarantee the continuity of the community. But this
continuity, precisely because it did not coincide with any of the political
forms that would make it possible at particular moments in time—
precisely because it would have no content of its own—would be nothing
other than the name of an absent plenitude that could not be exhausted
by any of the concrete forms that would attempt to realize it.
(1994:16)
Laclau does qualify his emphasis on the formal characteristics of an effective
hegemonic discourse. Laclau and Zac state, for example, that the “filling function”
of a hegemonic discourse as it offers compensation for ruptures in the social “requires
an empty place,” that is, a subject that is the subject of the lack, who is, therefore,
condemned to the endless search for compensation through identification. This
“empty place,” the subject, “is, to some extent, indifferent to the content of the
filling, though this filling function has to be incarnated in some concrete contents,
whatever those contents might be” (1994:15). Indifference to content, then, is
only partial, never total. Further, Laclau does recognize that there must be some
organic link between an effective hegemonic discourse and the traces of traditional
identities among “the people” (1990a:66). Laclau nevertheless claims that elements
such as “[the] ‘collective will,’ ‘organic ideology,’ ‘hegemonic group’ and so forth
become empty forms that can be filled by any imaginable political and social
content” (1996f:81).
In my approach, by contrast, I am attempting to give greater emphasis to
Gramscian contextualization without losing the psychoanalytic insights in Laclau’s
recent work. Again, where one discourse prevails over the others and begins to
assert itself effectively as hegemonic, its achievement is due not only to its abstract
form, but also to its linkages with residual, enduring and emerging institutions.
The moment in which virtually every institution would crumble to the ground,
every traditional discourse would collapse and every individual would fall into a
total identity crisis is infinitely postponed. The social is always “partially structured
and partially unstructured” (Laclau 1996h:46). Some traditions and institutions
retain authority even as others disintegrate. The emerging hegemonic discourse
must quickly gain strategic advantage by developing its appropriations from residual
traditions, and by becoming embodied not only in the emerging institutions, but
in the institutions that retain authority throughout the organic crisis as well.

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Hegemonic articulations also tend to work more effectively to the extent that
previous traditions and institutions have been weakened, such that key political
practices and values become more vulnerable to reinterpretation. Traditions that
have remained more or less intact will resist redefinition more effectively. As Laclau
himself admits, popular traditions cannot be manipulated in a voluntaristic manner,
for they are “a residue of a unique and irreducible historical experience” (Laclau
1977:167).
My position, then, is closer to that of Butler’s post-structuralist theory of
performativity than to Laclau’s formalism. Although Butler often constructs her
argument as an explicit critique of voluntarism, her remarks remain suggestive for
the construction of a non-formalistic approach to hegemony.
If a performative succeeds (and I will suggest that “success” is always
and only provisional), then it is not because an intention successfully
governs the action of speech, but only because that action echoes prior
actions, and accumulates the force of authority through the repetition or