Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary

particular “bourgeois ideologists” “have raised themselves to the level of

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comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole” (1969:117).
With these remarks, Marx and Engels note an extraordinary exception to their
principle of objective class interests; some of the “ideologists” of the Communist
movement will come from the bourgeoisie. Against his own highly deterministic
schema, then, Marx recognizes that the development of the proletariat’s identity
as a revolutionary class always requires some type of political intervention.
Commenting on The Eighteenth Brumaire, Balibar concludes, “the revolutionary
polarization does not directly develop from the existence of classes, but rather
from a more complex process (Althusser would call it overdetermined) whose raw
material is composed of mass movements, practices and ideologies” (1994:144).
We could argue, in this respect, that Laclau has not rejected Marx’s discourse
altogether, but has freed the supplementary logic that was already at work in Marx’s
own texts—namely the constitutive role of political intervention—from the
essentialism that prevails therein.
Subject positions, “habitus,” antagonism and practice
If the process of identification with a subject position tends to orient the social
agent in question by providing an interpretative framework, we should note that
this framework never takes the form of rules that command total obedience. We
can only state that subject positions tend to incite certain practices. Creative
reinterpretations of the subject position’s interpretative horizon within specific
contexts, rather than perfectly predictable conformity, are the norm. Borrowing
freely from Bourdieu, we could say that relatively stable and enduring forms of
identification with a subject position construct an orientation towards practice
that is not unlike a “habitus.” Bourdieu defines “habitus” as a durable disposition
towards a set of goals; the “habitus” tends to incite regularized practices, but without
ever producing perfect obedience to rules. Further, the social agent who is caught
up in this process of identification with a specific subject position may or may not
be conscious of that process, and may or may not develop a fully conscious grasp
of the goals that correspond to that subject position (Bourdieu 1977:72).
Unlike Bourdieu’s “habitus,” subject positions may or may not be durable; their
relative fixity depends upon the contingencies of political struggle. It should also
be noted that where Bourdieu’s conception of the relation between the “habitus”
and the social structure is defined in deterministic terms, such that the possibility
of subversive iteration is foreclosed, his theory becomes problematic (Jenkins
1992:79–82; Butler 1997a:134–63). My position is closer in this respect to that of
Fish. In his commentary on the parol evidence rule, Fish contends that although
every institution fails to constitute a closed totality governed by an absolutely
functionalist logic,
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it can nevertheless exercise a significant structuring effect on
the social. Although the rule that extrinsic evidence may not be introduced to
contradict the explicit terms of a legally binding contract is not actually upheld in
practice, it nevertheless works in concert with a whole set of background moral
assumptions and thereby sets the rhetorical agenda for acceptable legal

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argumentation (Fish 1994:151–6). In a Wittgensteinian sense, then, rules are always
imperfect, but they often work “well enough” for our pragmatic purposes. The
question then becomes who gets to decide what passes the “well enough” test, and
the answer ultimately shifts our attention towards hegemonic power relations.
The analogy between a subject position and a “habitus” is, however, suggestive
in many other respects. Like a subject position, a “habitus” does not fully determine
practices, for it merely disposes the subject to perform certain acts. The subject’s
actual performance of those acts will be influenced by the structural limits of the
social field in question (Jenkins 1992:78). Instead of considering identification
with a subject position as a process that guarantees a perfectly predictable
conformity, then, we should think in terms of its incitement of what Bourdieu
calls “regulated improvisations” (Bourdieu 1977:8, 11, 15, 21). And, against
rational choice theory, we should recall that the social agent’s negotiation between
her orientation towards practice and the structural limits that she faces is never a
fully conscious process. Not only does she necessarily have an incomplete
awareness of the way in which she has become caught up in an array of subject
positions, her identifications are both driven and interrupted by the unconscious
in unpredictable ways.
This distinction between structural positions and subject positions is important
for it is social agents with a common identity—and not merely individuals who
share common structural positions—who engage in political action. Think of white
women and women of color working together; cross-class unities within
communities of color; or transnational solidarities between the North and South.
These solidarities become possible insofar as the individuals in question get caught
up—consciously and unconsciously—in a shared subject position or a shared
worldview. It is only on the level of theoretical abstraction that it is legitimate to
group individuals together on the basis of common structural positions rather
than subject positions. The first question for political strategy, then, is this: how
can more democratic forms of solidarity be organically promoted so that more and
more people will live their structural positions in increasingly democratic,
egalitarian and radical pluralist ways, such that they are incited to take up critical
perspectives and subversive practices?
Once again, we have to caution against a voluntarist interpretation of Laclau
and Mouffe’s theory. They do not hold that although individuals are more or less
“thrown” into structural positions that are not of their choosing, they are free to
select their interpretative subject positions from an infinite à la carte menu of
possibilities. Laclau and Mouffe situate the networks of subject positions with
respect to hegemonic power relations. Hegemonic discourses construct “horizons
of intelligibility” that “delineate what is possible, what can be said and done, what
positions may legitimately be taken, what actions may be engaged in, and so forth”
(Norval 1996:4). Often what counts as an “available,” “intelligible,” or “compelling”
subject position is shaped by the power relations that structure a given political
terrain. As Norval argues with respect to apartheid discourse, “imaginary horizons,
far from being merely superstructural phenomena, served to delimit the sphere of

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the thinkable, setting the boundaries within which all social practices, including
capitalist production, had to find their place” (1996:27). The study of the cultural
intervention by the intellectuals who are associated with a specific social
movement, for example, should be based on a precise map of the prevailing horizons
(Norval 1996:52).
The task of promoting more democratic forms of solidarity, then, has to begin
with an analysis of the prevailing networks of power relations and political horizons.
In social formations that enter into a crisis moment, the processes of subject
formation can become much more fluid and vulnerable to political interventions.
This does not mean, however, that all identities are equally possible in a given
historical moment. In a logical sense, there is an infinite number of ways in which
an individual could interpret a single structural position. In an historical sense,
however, some interpretations will have more credibility than others thanks to
the ways in which they draw upon already normalized common-sense ideologies
and traditions of domination and resistance, and thanks to their embodiment
within authoritative institutions. The discursive interventions that are central to
the formation of identity are not, therefore, random phenomena. They must operate
within the field of political forces that prevail in a particular historical conjuncture.
Those forces may be highly unstable—as is the case during an organic crisis
(Gramsci 1971:275–6)—or they may be highly stabilized.
Even in the latter case, however, there is always some opportunity for the
reconstruction of identity through political intervention. While a given hegemonic
configuration may construct extensive mechanisms that promote its reproduction,
such as the assimilation of potential rebels and the incitement of false resistances,
no formation ever obtains the status of a perfectly closed totality in which all
differences are always already neutralized. The possibilities for the failure of total
closure are endless. Perhaps taboos, censorship, and abjection end up promoting
the forbidden; perhaps the regime’s legitimation discourse incites the formation
of a cadre who is dangerously committed to the regime’s principles and who
therefore begins to press the regime to fulfill its own promises; perhaps the iteration
of standard practices in changing contexts introduces new and subversive values;
perhaps an oppressed minority gains symbolic and material strength from political
sources that are located outside the context in question; or perhaps the incitement
of conformity always depended on the demonization of certain social enemies,
and that process begins to crumble when the demonizations in question are
interrupted by a series of displacements. Faced with these developments, the
imaginary corresponding to a hegemonic discourse might shift in unpredictable
ways, or it might enter into a full-scale crisis as it fails to “fulfill its function of
interpellating subjects into stable, ‘normalized’ forms of identification” (Norval
1996:27). As the effects of contingent—albeit conditioned—struggles, the
formation of subject positions is therefore somewhat indeterminate: through
historical analysis, one can suggest a probable outcome, but no reliable prediction