Emanzipation und Differenz

by Ernesto Laclau

Wie veränderten sich unsere Emanzipationsvorstellungen seit dem Ende des Kalten Krieges, der Explosion neuer ethnischer und nationaler Identitäten, der sozialen Fragmentierung im Spätkapitalismus und dem Zusammenbruch der Sicherheiten in Philosophie und Humanwissenschaften? Laclau untersucht die internen Widersprüche des Emanzipationsbegriffs, im besonderen die ihm inhärente Spannung zwischen Universalismus und Partikularismus. Darüber hinaus entwickelt er – in ständigem Dialog mit Derrida, Rorty, de Man und Lacan – poststrukturalistische Neuformulierungen politischer Grundbegriffe wie Repräsentation, Macht, Gemeinschaft, Identität und Subjekt.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Sociology, Theory

223 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Ernesto 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.

Reviews

[Alex Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[David]

Apparently this book is supposed to be somewhat easier to understand than Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.

[Alex Carlman · Rating 2 out of 5]

nice try