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Emancipation(s)
In Emancipation(s) , Ernesto Laclau addresses a central how have the changes of the last decade, together with the transformation in contemporary thought, altered the classical notion of “emancipation” as formulated since the Enlightenment? Our visions of the future and our expectations of emancipation, have been deeply affected by the changes of recent the end of the Cold War, the explosion of new ethnic and national identities, the social fragmentation under late capitalism, and the collapse of universal certainties in philosophy and social and historical thought. Laclau here begins to explore precisely how our visions of emancipation have been recast under these new conditions.
Laclau examines the internal contradictions of the notion of “emancipation” as it emerged from the mainstream of modernity, as well as the relation between universalism and particularism which is inherent in it. He explores the making of political identities and the status of central notions in political theory such as “representation” and “power,” focusing particularly on the work of Derrida and Rorty. Emancipation(s) is a significant contribution to the reshaping of radical political thought.
Laclau examines the internal contradictions of the notion of “emancipation” as it emerged from the mainstream of modernity, as well as the relation between universalism and particularism which is inherent in it. He explores the making of political identities and the status of central notions in political theory such as “representation” and “power,” focusing particularly on the work of Derrida and Rorty. Emancipation(s) is a significant contribution to the reshaping of radical political thought.
140 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
About the author
Ernesto Laclau
46 books149 followersErnesto Laclau was an Argentine political theorist often described as post-Marxist. He was a professor at the University of Essex where he holds a chair in Political Theory and was for many years director of the doctoral Programme in Ideology and Discourse Analysis. He has lectured extensively in many universities in North America, South America, Western Europe, Australia, and South Africa.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 5, 2017
Isn't everything politics, when you get abstract enough?
Especially if you are abstract about people.
Laclau's subject matter is freedom. He posits a Hegemony as the model for true democracy. He posits a world where leadership is done by "weak" minorities that must bow down to other minorities. He posits a world where cooperation is preferable to coercion but only because coercion will lead to conflict which is too uncertain to be embraced.
In doing so Laclau is able to justify this freedom through the absent universal. The empty place of this signification allows it to be anything and everything to anyone and everyone. In this sense, Laclau describes the network of abstraction that ties disparate groups together into coherency. He is describing neo-liberalism, but in a philosophic way. Financial and legal ties ARE the real-world abstractions that are used to justify the status quo.
Society is about justification. What we are, who we are, and the limits of our doings all revolve around the kinds of justification-isms which groups may find acceptable (or not). While Laclau doesn't go into the historicity of how these justifications were brought about, he is able to anticipate the Political Correctness that comes about as a necessary modality of Hegemonic freedom. He also does not anticipate that such an abstraction could engender so much injustice as to give cause to its downfall.
Laclau is able in this very short and terse book to wander into and back, the depths of philosophy. It's an impressive feat. One that lands him into the ideal community, making him a staunch Hegelian. In essence, Laclau is a 90's kind of philosopher, who anticipates the current Hegel craze which marks the end of modernity as people come to exceed the logic of modern super-structure, and its way of justifying coherency.
Especially if you are abstract about people.
Laclau's subject matter is freedom. He posits a Hegemony as the model for true democracy. He posits a world where leadership is done by "weak" minorities that must bow down to other minorities. He posits a world where cooperation is preferable to coercion but only because coercion will lead to conflict which is too uncertain to be embraced.
In doing so Laclau is able to justify this freedom through the absent universal. The empty place of this signification allows it to be anything and everything to anyone and everyone. In this sense, Laclau describes the network of abstraction that ties disparate groups together into coherency. He is describing neo-liberalism, but in a philosophic way. Financial and legal ties ARE the real-world abstractions that are used to justify the status quo.
Society is about justification. What we are, who we are, and the limits of our doings all revolve around the kinds of justification-isms which groups may find acceptable (or not). While Laclau doesn't go into the historicity of how these justifications were brought about, he is able to anticipate the Political Correctness that comes about as a necessary modality of Hegemonic freedom. He also does not anticipate that such an abstraction could engender so much injustice as to give cause to its downfall.
Laclau is able in this very short and terse book to wander into and back, the depths of philosophy. It's an impressive feat. One that lands him into the ideal community, making him a staunch Hegelian. In essence, Laclau is a 90's kind of philosopher, who anticipates the current Hegel craze which marks the end of modernity as people come to exceed the logic of modern super-structure, and its way of justifying coherency.
Want to Read
November 8, 2007Apparently this book is supposed to be somewhat easier to understand than Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.
February 8, 2026
A fascinating, at times intimidating collection of essays, exploring the possibility of a political view between universalism and particularism. Especially intimidating is the essay titled, "Why do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics?", which took me a real headache to rougly understand. Here's what I got from it:
According to (classical) Saussurean structuralism, meanings are created through a differential logic -- signifiers have meaning exactly because they stand in relation to other signifiers that delimit what the first one signifies. Hence, each signification implicitly contains the totality of langauge. But with the necessity of system, comes a necessity of a limit (there's no meaning without its demarcation from nonsense). This limit can not be established through differential logic, for then what is outside would be part of the system too (since the system is exactly the set of differentiations). And yet, the system needs a grounding, an exclusion that splits the system from that which is not the system. If that can't be a positive characterisation (since, then it would be part of differential logics), it has to be characterized by virtue of pure negativity. But what can represent that which is exactly outside of the system in which signifiers can signify? Laclau says, the logic of equivalence that unites the signifiers in opposition to that which is not a signifier -- just like gold is initially just another metal, a particular, but comes to occupy a universal function of representing value, so does the empty signifier strip itself of its particular meaning and comes to represent the system as such.
Why does this matter to politics? Because if society is a struggle for different particular struggles of particular groups, then unity only occurs when there's a sort of ideological hegemony, when one group -- either through institutional centralization, reference to pre-existing symbols, the occupation of a position of high concentration of social antagonisms ... - manages to occupy the universalizing function of the struggle of the society as such. One example he gives is that of Perónism, which became the empty signifier of Argentinian fight for a better future -- once Perón came to power, he nonetheless enacted concrete political actions that showed just how threatened and precarious the hegemonical position of Perónism really is, resulting in a bloody process of opposition and a following military dictatorship.
All in all, an absolutely brilliant and unparalleled (to my modest knowledge) political analysis.
According to (classical) Saussurean structuralism, meanings are created through a differential logic -- signifiers have meaning exactly because they stand in relation to other signifiers that delimit what the first one signifies. Hence, each signification implicitly contains the totality of langauge. But with the necessity of system, comes a necessity of a limit (there's no meaning without its demarcation from nonsense). This limit can not be established through differential logic, for then what is outside would be part of the system too (since the system is exactly the set of differentiations). And yet, the system needs a grounding, an exclusion that splits the system from that which is not the system. If that can't be a positive characterisation (since, then it would be part of differential logics), it has to be characterized by virtue of pure negativity. But what can represent that which is exactly outside of the system in which signifiers can signify? Laclau says, the logic of equivalence that unites the signifiers in opposition to that which is not a signifier -- just like gold is initially just another metal, a particular, but comes to occupy a universal function of representing value, so does the empty signifier strip itself of its particular meaning and comes to represent the system as such.
Each signifier constitutes a sign by attaching itself to a particular signified, inscribing itself as a difference within the signifying process. But if what we are trying to signify is not a difference but, on the contrary, a radical exclusion, no production of one more difference can do the trick. As, however, all the means of representation are differential in nature, it is only if the differential nature of the signifying units is subverted ... it is only if the signifiers empty themselves of their attachment to particular signifieds … that such a signification is possible.
Why does this matter to politics? Because if society is a struggle for different particular struggles of particular groups, then unity only occurs when there's a sort of ideological hegemony, when one group -- either through institutional centralization, reference to pre-existing symbols, the occupation of a position of high concentration of social antagonisms ... - manages to occupy the universalizing function of the struggle of the society as such. One example he gives is that of Perónism, which became the empty signifier of Argentinian fight for a better future -- once Perón came to power, he nonetheless enacted concrete political actions that showed just how threatened and precarious the hegemonical position of Perónism really is, resulting in a bloody process of opposition and a following military dictatorship.
All in all, an absolutely brilliant and unparalleled (to my modest knowledge) political analysis.
May 13, 2026
I had put down the book and re-started it several times. The first essay starts off really well, it has really good pacing, considering Laclau is both clear, unobtrusive but also rather boring. But then the second essay takes absolute ages to finish, not because it's too hard, but really because it's too mundane. The explanatory style in it is just excruciatingly boring; and you know this is the case because he re-iterates more or less the same points (throughout the collection but) in the very next essay.
"Why Do Empty Signifiers Matter" is absolutely astonishing. It's in other collections, it's excellent. The rest of the content is also very good, and just about sums up Laclau's ontology and social critique paradigm. Perhaps the only one that is so disjointed it almost reads like he used deliberately obtuse language to pass an inside joke sort of academic requirement is "The Time Is Out of Joint" on Derrida's "Specters of Marx". The matter is itself illuminating but the language has way too much of that French funk-for-the-sake-of-funk. Verso absolutely make up for it with "Power and Representation" though, another supreme work.
In summation, if I had to choose between "Post-Marxism" and this one, I'd honestly have a hard time. They share most of the essays but with "Emancipations" being shorter I feel it works better as a reference book.
And to anyone who's wondering about getting into Laclau, the important thing is he exerts much more effort to _deduce_ political corollaries _from_ what can only be described as condensed and hyper-structuralist Lacanian theory, rather than make the theory _fit_ a priori political preferences like Zizek does past the first stage of his oeuvre. In other words, Laclau is being much more honest. This hyper-structuralist framework is very Millerian in spirit, and I take the name straight from Milner; you can see "Logic of the Signifier" in nearly every function and operation (cf. "Cahiers pour l'analyse"). And I very much like that, I think it's the most practical and parsimonious application of Lacanian theory (I want to say beyond the clinic, but Miller does fist and foremost have a clinical practice informed by this style of paradigm).
Laclau does on instance let some of his hypocrisy slip, like when he advocates for trans-national unions like the EU as a way to "protect" against nationalist closed identities - presupposing them as a threat to radical demoracy, - but following the theoretical machinery, there really is no justification for this. Nationalist identities can instead be much more pronounced "protectors" of radical democracy than something like the EU, in theory - but also as we have already seen in practical observation. I concur that the threat to inviolent shifts of hegemony are closed identities, but I disagree those are a priori nationalist. Any identity runs the risk of turning into a closed fetish of itself. I suppose that leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, as somewhat of a Leftist, whatever that may be. But as I wrote before, he does it much less frequently than Zizek with his dispassionate call for passionate Communism.
"Why Do Empty Signifiers Matter" is absolutely astonishing. It's in other collections, it's excellent. The rest of the content is also very good, and just about sums up Laclau's ontology and social critique paradigm. Perhaps the only one that is so disjointed it almost reads like he used deliberately obtuse language to pass an inside joke sort of academic requirement is "The Time Is Out of Joint" on Derrida's "Specters of Marx". The matter is itself illuminating but the language has way too much of that French funk-for-the-sake-of-funk. Verso absolutely make up for it with "Power and Representation" though, another supreme work.
In summation, if I had to choose between "Post-Marxism" and this one, I'd honestly have a hard time. They share most of the essays but with "Emancipations" being shorter I feel it works better as a reference book.
And to anyone who's wondering about getting into Laclau, the important thing is he exerts much more effort to _deduce_ political corollaries _from_ what can only be described as condensed and hyper-structuralist Lacanian theory, rather than make the theory _fit_ a priori political preferences like Zizek does past the first stage of his oeuvre. In other words, Laclau is being much more honest. This hyper-structuralist framework is very Millerian in spirit, and I take the name straight from Milner; you can see "Logic of the Signifier" in nearly every function and operation (cf. "Cahiers pour l'analyse"). And I very much like that, I think it's the most practical and parsimonious application of Lacanian theory (I want to say beyond the clinic, but Miller does fist and foremost have a clinical practice informed by this style of paradigm).
Laclau does on instance let some of his hypocrisy slip, like when he advocates for trans-national unions like the EU as a way to "protect" against nationalist closed identities - presupposing them as a threat to radical demoracy, - but following the theoretical machinery, there really is no justification for this. Nationalist identities can instead be much more pronounced "protectors" of radical democracy than something like the EU, in theory - but also as we have already seen in practical observation. I concur that the threat to inviolent shifts of hegemony are closed identities, but I disagree those are a priori nationalist. Any identity runs the risk of turning into a closed fetish of itself. I suppose that leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, as somewhat of a Leftist, whatever that may be. But as I wrote before, he does it much less frequently than Zizek with his dispassionate call for passionate Communism.
February 24, 2026
I am not objective here because I'm a fan, but also because it's the most comprehensible and accessible of Laclau's books I've read so far.
May 24, 2025
nice try
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews