Hegemony in its ontic-ontological interconnection in the political theory of Ernesto Laclau

Abstract

This article analyzes how the ontological and ontic planes are interconnected in Laclau’s political discourse theory. It is concluded that, on the ontological level, hegemony constitutes a political-discursive form of relative, precarious, contingent and partial universalization and articulation of particularities in empty signifiers that act as nodal points. On the phenomenological-political level, Laclau shows the displacement and discursive contamination between the particular and the universal in the hegemonic operation which transforms political identities and builds a communitarian order and a new commonality. On the ethical-political level, the conceptualization of hegemony is articulated as the discursive construction of a socialist strategy and a radical democracy. This political project fights against essentialisms and forms of exploitation and social oppression of subordinate groups, and in favor of a horizon of liberation that recognizes conflicts and differences as constitutive and desirable. The formal theory of populism presents some ontic-ontological inconsistencies in this scheme. However, its symbolic overdetermination dissolves the disjunctions between logic and historical-political analysis and between form and content. This reveals the mutual interconnection between the ontic and the ontological, and the central relevance of the Gramscian notion of hegemony for the political and critical analysis of contemporary historical phenomena and processes.

Recebido: 10/02/2015
Aceito: 23/08/2017