Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary

do with that tradition” (1996g:33).
In the cases in which racial minorities do embrace what Gilroy calls “ethnic
absolutism” (1993), their projects can become antithetical to radical democratic
pluralist values. Thomas notes, for example, that the apparently progressive
conception of black “authenticity” is often used to disavow or to demonize lesbians
and gays of color (1997). Attention should also be paid to the contexts in which
“ethnic absolutism” thrives. It could be the case that such a phenomenon takes
hold more effectively wherever the space for more democratic forms of expression
are closed off by corporate, political and educational institutions. Norval suggests,
for example, that dogmatic forms of resistance may become more compelling in
conditions of severe economic deprivation and political, educational and cultural
exclusions (1996:304). In an important intervention, Lubiano notes the parallels
between the patriarchal and homophobic positions embraced by hegemonic
factions within the black nationalist movement on the one hand and the moral
authoritarianism of the prominent American new right/new racist/neo-
conservative movements on the other. She contends that “even as [black
nationalism] functions as resistance to the state…it reinscribes the state in particular

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places within its own narratives of resistance. That reinscription most often occurs
within black nationalist narratives of the black family” (Lubiano 1997:236).
Laclau does not adequately acknowledge, however, the radical democratic
pluralist potential that is expressed in the vast majority of anti-racist and radical
multicultural struggles. These struggles affirm Baldwin’s principle: disempowered
minorities ought to win recognition without being asked to pay the price of
assimilation in return (Baldwin 1985:375). Far from isolating themselves from
the dominant community, these struggles often attempt to subject dominant groups
and hegemonic authoritarian values to the democratic critique that can be found
in the discourses of the disempowered. Minority rights claims do sometimes take
the form of a demand for separation, but they can also be phrased as radical
communitarian demands for the authorization of an anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-
homophobic and anti-capitalist definition of “our common tradition” or “our shared
values” (Williams 1995:82). Again, as Levine notes with respect to multicultural
curricula, the aim is to value difference so that the operation of power—
discrimination, exploitation and erasure—can be brought to light. A radical
multiculturalism, for example, would not only celebrate democratic differences; it
would also shed light on the power relations that structure cultural expression by
studying, for example, trends in employment and the distribution of wealth, media
ownership, affirmative action in universities, public arts grants and so on. Instead
of thinking culture according to a simplistic pluralist logic, it would explore the
complexities of transnational cultural appropriations, hybrid cultural articulations
and intra-cultural antagonisms.
4
Against the weight of Laclau’s examples, I would argue that in contemporary
American politics, the most dangerous forces of particularist politics actually favor
dominant groups. The American wealthy are pursuing an increasingly segregationist
agenda that is fundamentally eroding the concept of collective responsibility.
Income taxes and capital gains taxes for the rich are cut, necessitating not only
massive cuts in federal government programs, but also increases in the regional
and local government taxes that are less fair for the lower-middle-class, workers
and the poor. The geographical mobility of the poor is reduced through public
transportation cuts while their already minuscule opportunity for socio-economic
mobility is all but eliminated through education cuts. School zoning boundaries
isolate the middle class from the rest of the population; school voucher programs
and tax-free savings accounts transfer public funds from public school investment
to subsidies for wealthy children’s private education; and local government tax
schemes cut the wealthy suburban communities off from the inner city. Urban
planning and policing techniques systematically protect the wealthy by cordoning
off urban unrest and targeted forms of criminality (Davis 1991, 1992). Not-in-
my-backyard-style lobbying by middle-class suburban communities has led to the
concentration of environmental hazards in areas populated by the poor. The
Republican Congress approved an experimental plan that sets up government
subsidies for individuals who want to opt out of private group health insurance to
obtain their own personal coverage. More and more corporations are eliminating

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the pension plans that used to cover their entire work force and replacing them
with generous tax-subsidized plans for the highest-paid managers. For the American
wealthy, neo-conservative individualism and privatization are not enough; they
are now demanding segregationist forms of individualism and privatization.
Because race and class are so thoroughly intertwined in the United States
(Takaki 1993; Omi and Winant 1994), much of these developments have an
especially negative impact on the black and Latino communities, and on many
Asian American communities as well. And yet, even as economic globalization
and restructuration lock these peoples into perpetual poverty, and the backlashes
against immigration, affirmative action, crime, teenage pregnancy, welfare,
education spending and governmental excess are blatantly used to harness racist
sentiment, dissimulation tactics are deployed such that the charge of racism
becomes rebuttable. Bush puts Thomas on the Supreme Court, the media dwells
on the O.J.Simpson case, the Republicans flirt with Colin Powell, Clinton launches
a “national conversation” on race, and the Promise Keepers positions itself as a
leader in the movement for multiracial harmony.
5
While Laclau’s critique of particularist politics is sound—and entirely
compatible with Mouffe’s democratic theory—his emphasis on inappropriate
strategic choices by ethnic and racial minorities is problematic. It is not clear,
however, that Mouffe would agree with Laclau as he develops another aspect of
his argument.
I cannot assert a differential identity without distinguishing it from a
context, and, in the process of making the distinction, 1 am asserting the
context at the same time. And the opposite is true: I cannot destroy a
context without destroying at the same time the identity of the particular
subject who carries out the destruction. It is a very well known historical
fact that an oppositionist force whose identity is constructed within a
certain system of power is ambiguous vis-à-vis that system, because the
latter is what prevents the constitution of the identity and it is, at the
same time, its condition of existence. And any victory against the system
also destabilizes the identity of the victorious force.
(Laclau 1996g:27)
It is once again rather difficult to assess this passage, for Laclau does not direct us
towards the historical sources that he has in mind. In theoretical terms, Laclau—
with reference once again to a hypothetical “ethnic minority”—argues that
demands for “access to education, to employment, to consumer goods and so
on…cannot be made in terms of difference, but [in terms] of some universal
principles that the ethnic minority shares with the rest of the community”
(1996g:28).
From Laclau’s perspective, the danger is that progressive movements might
stop short at aiming only to invert power relations, such that they neglect the
importance of transforming the entire social structure. Assuming that a democratic

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struggle’s opposition to a specific type of domination is integral to its identity,
Laclau asserts that that struggle is always tempted to stop short at the mere inversion
of the relation of domination, such that the logic of domination is largely preserved.
If the oppressed is defined by its difference from the oppressor, such a
difference is an essential component of the identity of the oppressed. But
in that case, the latter cannot assert its identity without asserting that of
the oppressor as well.
(Laclau 1996g:29)
We could note, in passing, that Žižek similarly contends that “each position is
only its negative relation to the other” and that “man is a reflexive determination
of woman’s impossibility of achieving an identity with herself (which is why woman
is a symptom of man)” (Žižek 1990:253).
6
Referring to Norval’s research on apartheid and to the dimensions of South
Africa’s post-apartheid society, Laclau comments,
If we simply invert the relation of oppression, the other (the former
oppressor) is maintained as what is now oppressed and repressed, but this
inversion of the contents leaves the form of oppression unchanged.
(1996g:31)
Although Laclau originally wrote these passages in 1991, and published them in
1995 and 1996, he does not actually examine South Africa’s contemporary history
to investigate whether or not this simple inversion took place. Based on the
information that we have available about the transition process, the new South
African Constitution, the policies of the African National Congress (ANC), and
the bi-partisan pattern of cooperation with Bishop Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, we would estimate that the ANC itself never really needed Laclau’s
warning. Ash comments,
Of course, history knows many examples of people who fought heroically
against one dictatorship, only themselves to erect another one. But the
fight against apartheid inside South Africa also nourished a feisty
attachment to democracy, and the ANC movement is itself a rainbow
coalition.
(1997:10–11)
Norval estimates that the ANC government has been particularly impressive in
its deployment of affirmative action and equal opportunity programs, and in its
interpretation of non-racist discourse such that the latter has become consistent
with these programs. She notes, however, that the ANC’s record with respect to
the colored population and the labor movement is less than perfect (1996:294–
6). There are social agents in South Africa who actually do continue to threaten

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to perpetuate the “closed, organic identities” that were central to apartheid
discourse, namely the far right, the new National Party and Buthelezi’s Inkatha
(1996:302). This complex map of social agents does not, however, correspond to
Laclau’s model of a formerly oppressed agent who merely inverts the prevailing
power relations. Even the racist Inkatha cannot be held up as an example in this
regard, for with its historical record of cooperation with the apartheid regime and
its embrace of free market principles, its positions within the prevailing
configurations of power relations are multiple and complex in nature.
Laclau’s emphasis on the danger of an oppressed group embracing a strategy
of simple inversion also seems to be at odds with Mouffe’s approach, for Mouffe
consistently affirms the complex character of the social, and the plural,
overlapping and even contradictory character of the social spheres and
institutions in which antagonisms develop. Even in those conditions in which
two chains of equivalence (racist/anti-racist; capitalist/anti-capitalist; etc.) stand
antagonistically opposed to one another in what appears to be a total struggle at
one site in the social, the ethical “universe” in which each element in those
chains orients itself will always extend beyond the site of the antagonism. A
student group, for example, might throw itself into a bitter struggle against a
university administration, but, even in the most antagonistic circumstances, its
discourse will be influenced by sources outside that site, such as the students’
links with other struggles and their previous residential communities. Even in a
total war situation, such as the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, the terms
of the struggle always go far beyond the oppressor/oppressed dyad. Anti-apartheid
organizations, for example, drew extensively upon traditions of anti-imperialist
struggles throughout Africa and the developing world, the democratic struggles
of racial minorities in Europe and the United States, and the socialist tradition.
It is precisely this richness of overdetermination that infinitely postpones the
moment in which an oppositional struggle would inhabit such an impoverished
ethical universe that it would aim simply to “invert” the prevailing power
relations without altering their content. Norval contends that the non-racist
aspect of the discourse that was embraced by the majority of anti-apartheid
activists was in fact strengthened by its opposition to the apartheid regime, for
the régime placed before their eyes the utterly brutal consequences of an
identitary political logic (1996:304).
Laclau’s overall emphasis remains firmly centered on a critique of Western
Eurocentrism and on an investigation of the conditions necessary for opening
communitarian universalistic principles to democratic contestation (1996g:34–
5). He recognizes that the “struggles of new social actors show that the concrete
practices of our society restrict the universalism of our political ideals to limited
sectors of the population” (1996g:34). It could be argued, however, that his
assessment of the political context of these struggles is insufficient. Again, the
weight of his examples tend to suggest that the dangers of particularistic discourse
reside, for the most part, among racial and ethnic minorities. I have argued, by
contrast, that in contemporary American politics, it is mainly the wealthy—an

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overwhelmingly white Anglo population—that is embracing the new
segregationism. Further, Laclau comments that “the decline of the integrationist
abilities of the Western states makes political conformism a rather unlikely
outcome” (1996g:34).
While it is certainly true that we are currently witnessing a dramatic shrinkage
in the welfare state and massive cuts in public programs, the situation with respect
to political conformism may be much more complicated than Laclau’s diagnosis
would suggest. First, we should note that the current transformations in the state
structures are uneven in nature. As Fraser, citing Skocpol, notes, the state is not a
singular entity; it is instead a “complex and polyvalent nexus of compromise
formations in which are sedimented the outcomes of past struggles as well as the
conditions for present and future ones” (1989:157). In the United States, huge
cuts are being made in education, welfare and health programs, but massive
expansions in policing, high technology domestic surveillance, border patrols,
immigration monitoring, penitentiary systems, and the tracking of welfare recipients
are taking place. We are witnessing an acceleration in the differentiation of social
control technologies as bio-power strategies are deployed with more and more
productive finesse in the disciplining of the middle-class and professional strata,
while the brute tactics of banishment and capital punishment—tactics that
Foucault believed had been more or less replaced in the early modern era (Foucault
1979)—are routinely used against the dangerously unassimilable elements of the
“underclass.” Norval argues that the apartheid regime was supported by a dual
strategy: the organization of consent among the “insiders” and the deployment of
brute force against the “outsiders” (1996:4). It is perhaps the case that this aspect
of apartheid logic, namely its “combined and uneven development”—its
articulation of multiple modes of power relations in complex overdetermined
formations—is exemplary with respect to the emerging structure of American
society rather than exceptional. The political center and the right have virtually
declared a war on what they call the “underclass,” the disproportionately non-
white impoverished peoples of the inner cities. (We could note here that poor of
the rural areas and indigenous peoples on remote reservations have all but
disappeared from public discourse altogether.) These peoples are not only blamed
for their own impoverishment; they are increasingly constructed as sub-humans
who, because of their anti-social cultural traditions and biological tendencies
towards addiction, excessive sexuality, criminality and inferior intelligence, simply
cannot be helped through education and skill training. Popular texts such as The