Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary

“Methodology,” “family resemblances” and the study of
power
Given the plurality of possible interpretations of gender, and the always shifting
character of gender structures, theories that are based on the presumption of a
natural unity among women, or a trans-historical and cross-cultural structure of
women’s oppression, are problematic. However, this is not to say that we cannot
conceptualize the continuities and linkages between different instances of women’s
oppression. The challenge for feminist theory is to develop analyses of women’s
oppression that capture institutionalized patterns of repetition without losing sight
of contextually specific complexities. Following Laclau’s appropriation of
Wittgenstein, we could say that social and political theory ought to trace patterns
of repetition and institutionalization, but only in the form of non-essentialist “family
resemblances” (Laclau 1990a:21–2, 29, 208–9, 214; Wittgenstein 1958: paras. 66,
69, 185–90; Staten 1984:13–14, 82). Here the limits of theory must be
acknowledged. Strictly speaking, “methodology” is impossible, for the empirical
and the transcendental always contaminate one another (Foucault 1970:318–22;
Feyerabend 1993). At best, theory can make us more sensitive to the probability
that hegemonic social forces will prevail to a greater or lesser degree in future

---

P OW E R A N D H E G E M O N Y
160
contexts, but it can never fully predict those configurations. As we study different
types of institutions and different discursive constructions of identities, we should
expect to find a complicated network of similarities and differences between and
among them.
As we saw in Chapter 1, it is impossible to offer universal definitions of the
relations between gender and the accumulation of surplus value, or between race
and labor market segmentation. It is equally impossible to use a category such as
gender to isolate a group of individuals and then offer universal statements about
their condition without paying close attention to contextual specificity. The ways
in which biological sex and gender structural positionings are overdetermined by
other structures may mean that some women are positioned as oppressors and/or
exploiters of other women (Alarcón 1990). We cannot, for example, construct a
universal account that would explain the ways in which all women and girls are
being affected by the globalization of industrial production. We could offer some
generalizations, but we would also have to pay close attention to class, national,
racial, ethnic, religious and other differences. We also have to anticipate the
possibility that different women live their sex and gender structural positionings
through antagonistic subject positions. Racially-constructed subject positions, for
example, often give rise to intra-gender antagonisms. Where intra-gender
antagonisms exist, feminist solidarity can only be constructed by working through
these tensions; it cannot be assumed that such a solidarity is always already
meaningful.
Some features may be present across most of the sexist, racist, capitalist and
homophobic structures that we study, but those features should not be treated as if
they were essences. Other characteristics may emerge in only a few cases, but they
should not be dismissed as irrelevant accidents or anomalies. We can trace the
birth, extension and decline of specific apparatuses, but we will never find
teleological and predictable patterns according to which history is supposed to
unfold. From non-teleological, genealogical historical research (Foucault 1977)
and “family resemblances” comparative research, we can suggest probable outcomes,
but we cannot produce a perfectly accurate map of future social structures. As
soon as we discover a “rule” that seems to govern the operation of a given institution
in one context, we will find that that rule has to be more or less reformulated as
we apply it to a different context. It is nevertheless crucially important that radical
democratic theory traces systematic and yet incomplete patterns of repetitions,
normalizations, and institutionalizations, for effective counter-hegemonic strategies
must always take the prevailing configuration of power relations into account.
It should also be recognized that Laclau adds a political supplement to
Wittgenstein’s theory. Having displaced essence with “family resemblances,”
Wittgenstein contends that the boundaries that shape meaning are built up over
time as the members of the social group who share the language game in question
engage in imperfectly repetitive usages. Laclau would add that the arbitrariness of
the boundaries of meaning implies that the boundaries that do appear to operate
as hard and fast rules—rules that seem to be absolutely necessary—only have that

---

P OW E R A N D H E G E M O N Y
161
appearance thanks to the concealed effects of power relations. If it appears that
only one form of “femininity,” “masculinity,” “marriage” or “the family” is “natural,”
then what we are dealing with is concealed power. For this reason, apparently
“neutral” terms can at times become the object of tremendous controversy. For
example, conservatives from many countries criticized the United Nations’
documents relating to the 1995 International Conference On Women in Beijing
because these texts used the term “gender” rather than “male” and “female.” It
was alleged that “gender” signaled the promotion of homosexuality—since
lesbianism, male homosexuality and transsexuality are understood by some
conservatives as third, fourth and fifth genders—and the rejection of biologically-
determined sex roles (Flanders 1997:7). Again, sexist, homophobic and other
authoritarian forces are heavily invested in the maintenance of certain boundaries
of meaning; they will always resist any analysis that challenges their attempts to
govern the meaning of key terms. The very tools that we use to study power
configurations may at times become the objects of political struggle.
Critics of post-structuralist feminist theory have often argued that the claim
that “woman” and “women” are nothing but strategic fictions ultimately
undermines political solidarity. The response to such a charge is best stated in an
almost self-contradictory manner. As Spivak argues, we inevitably speak in fictitious
universalizing terms whenever we think strategically. The simple repudiation of
all universalizing formulations in the name of theoretical correctness is not only a
self-defeating gesture, but is often motivated by an unacknowledged claim to
intellectual superiority. Spivak contends instead that we should engage in the
impossible and yet tactically crucial attempt to master universalizing rhetoric where
it may serve our purposes, and remain all the while vigilant about its totalizing
effects. Universal claims, for all their fictitious character, can have tremendous
pragmatic value as provisional starting points for activism; the task for radical
democratic activists is to examine the ways in which they conceal antagonisms
and foreclose alternative practices (1988a, 1988b; Spivak and Grosz 1990:11–12;
Spivak et al 1990:117–18).
Haraway points out that the female biological category is itself highly contested
in scientific discourse, and that the mere fact that some persons share the common
experience of being categorized as “female” does not automatically give rise to
solidarity between them. Where some type of “gender consciousness” does become
meaningful and effective, it does so in response to political contingencies. “Gender,
race or class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical
experience of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and
capitalism” (Haraway 1991:155).
Although post-structuralist feminist theory shares many constructivist
assumptions with Kuhn’s paradigm theory, it also suggests that there can only be a
partial resolution to the process of discursive contestation in any given historical
moment. Wherever sex and gender have become the sites of intense social
contestation, many different gendering interpretative frameworks will compete
with one another in their bid to hegemonize the social. Feminist interpretations

---

P OW E R A N D H E G E M O N Y
162
of gender solidarity must struggle against the interest-driven “experts” who are
deeply invested in the perpetuation of disciplinary constructions of the “woman”
identity. Medical, psychoanalytic and aesthetic experts “do the work of limiting
and regulating what it means to be a woman in line with the exigencies of their
own discursive fields and legitimating truths” (Martin 1988:14). Regulatory
discourses with tremendous authority are able not only to set the agenda on gender
issues; they also establish the rules that shape the boundaries of acceptable discourse
and set out in advance a table of the subjects who qualify for recognition as
legitimate social agents. This is but one of the many double binds that feminism
confronts: where feminists work to unify women, they must ensure that they are
not doing so according to the terms established by the patriarchal “experts” and
thereby unintentionally promoting reactionary gender frameworks and exclusions.
Where the patriarchal “experts” build misogynist, racist and heterosexist elements
into their apparently “natural” definition of “woman,” feminists must strive to
ensure that their models of gender solidarity do not perpetuate these exclusions.
The risk is that where the boundaries of the very categories that define the limits
of feminist solidarity are rigidly determined in advance, some interests, issues and
minority women subjects may be excluded. Butler contends that it is only a feminist
movement that keeps the boundaries of feminist solidarity open to renegotiation
that can avoid such exclusionary practices (Butler 1990a:15). Martin concludes
that “the question for those of us engaged in the development of new forms of
discourse is how to enter struggles over the meaning(s) of woman in ways that do
not repress pluralities, without losing sight of the political necessity for fiction
and unity” (Martin 1988:14).
The fully constructivist conception of identity adopted by Butler and Laclau
and Mouffe is therefore not incompatible with political strategizing. In some
situations, their approach can be indispensable for theorizing radical democratic
political practices. A rigorous application of constructivist theory would not
contradict the discourses that call for feminist action against sexist forces; it would
only contradict those arguments that take women’s unity as always already given.