The subject-structure link and its uses in Ernesto Laclau's political theory

Historical phases, displacements and ruptures

Abstract

This paper investigates the links between the subject and the structure in the course of Ernesto Laclau´s political theory, integrating its theoretical, onto-epistemological and axiological-normative aspects. Through the systematization of his main written works during the period 1977-2014, it examines his contributions to the Agent-Structure debate and it proposes a complex periodization of his work. Through a pragmatic articulation of concepts of (post)structuralism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, phenomenology, Marxism and pos-analytical philosophy, starting from his onto-epistemological break with the essentialism of the 1980s, Laclau built an innovative discursive theory of subject, overcoming both subjectivism and objectivism, and converging with a socialist and radically democratic strategy. On populist reason provides new tools that highlighted the agent´s ability to articulate (partially) the social. However, this work marked a break in his work, which left aside the retroductive analysis of the most recent historical transformations in social structure and identities and its links with the crescent fragmentation and proliferation of social fights. At the same time, it relegated the centrality of the category of articulation to amalgamate the plurality of social struggles in actual complex capitalism, to prioritize the (trend) construction of antagonism and the logic of conceptual simplification and reduction of social space. From the axiological plane, the formal theory of populism abandoned the socialist initiative and the development of critical ethical contents, inherent to post-Gramscian theory of hegemony. It is concludes that ―beyond these inconsistencies― Laclau´s post-foundational theory of subject made innovative, relevant and valuable contributions to transcend the false subject-structure disjunction, to make more complex the political and social analysis, and to strengthen the hegemonic struggle, from an anti-essentialist perspective.