Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary

by Anna Marie Smith

Laclau and The Radical Democratic Imaginary is the first full-length overview of the important work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Anna Marie Smith clearly shows how Laclau and Mouffe's work has brought Gramscian, poststructuralist and psychoanalytic perspectives to revitalize traditional political theory. With clarity and insight, she shows how they have constructed a highly effective theory of identity formation and power relations that carefully draws from the criticism of political theory from postmodern anti-foundationalist political theory.

Genres: Politics

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Yassir Morsi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Marie Smith’s Laclau and Mouffe felt like someone further giving language to a political intuition I’ve carried for years; namely, our identities, especially as marginalised ones, are not stable, natural things, but sites of constant struggle, misrecognition, and negotiation.

The book explains hegemony; and argues how “the people” is not a fact, but a construction, one always haunted by who it excludes to speak.

There’s a lesson here for Muslim political life: inclusion won’t save us. The point is not to finally be accepted as “the people.” The point is to interrupt, destabilise, and keep the place of power empty so no one speaks in our name without contest.

If I have one hesitation, the book outlines the logic of articulation

that is the political process by which meanings, identities, and demands are linked together to form a temporary, unstable unity, a "hegemonic formation".

but the author's dont grieve what gets lost in the process, the disarticulated, the misnamed, the silenced, the traditional. Where does scripture go? What does it mean to constantly contest, is there ever a resting place

Still, it gave more vocabulary to name the space I often occupy: on the limits of visibility, never quite belonging, but always watching how a “we” gets made, and having to always resist that