Operationalizing heterogeneity in poststructuralist discourse theory: the heterogeneous logics of international trade politics

ABSTRACT

Ever since an intense theoretical debate over a decade ago, the concept of heterogeneity has had a well-established place within poststructuralist Discourse Theory. It captures the interactions between the heart of the space of representation and its margins, between excluded excess and manifest presence; and conceptualizes particularities, differential remainders, and discursive exteriority. The analytical implications of heterogeneity remain underexploited, however. This contribution makes the case that one way to operationalize the notion of heterogeneity in empirical research is by tracing its strategic effects. Since heterogeneity constitutes ‘the primary terrain within which homogeneizing logics operate’, heterogeneous dynamics like the ‘incorporation of new demands’ and ‘the exclusion of others who were previously present’ affect and shape the availability and feasibility of political strategies. This contribution first provides an extensive definition of heterogeneity drawing on the original debate that gave the concept prominence. An approach that captures and explains the strategic effects of heterogeneity is then developed through the integration of heterogeneity into the logics framework. Finally, this approach is illustrated through an exploration of the politics of international trade.

KEYWORDS:

• Laclau
• discourse theory
• discourse
• post-Marxism
• political economy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This article constitutes an intervention into the literature on Discourse Theory. As far as possible, I explain all the discourse-theoretical concepts and reasonings that I draw on, but for more comprehensive and in-depth introductions, see Jørgensen and Phillips (2002) and Jacobs (2018).

2 In Laclau’s later work, the term ‘space of representation’ in fact seems to have replaced ‘order of discourse’ altogether, while still designating the same idea (Laclau, 2005a).

3 Foucault (2013, pp. 134–136) classifies this phenomenon under the ‘law of rarity’.

4 The main difference between this discourse-theoretical interpretation of the term ‘strategy’ and more mainstream accounts such as common in International Relations or Management Studies, is that PDT’s account of political strategy focuses on articulation, rather than on the conscious and intentional defence of vested interests (Herschinger 2012, p. 76). The articulation of a particular term in a particular sense can have politico-strategic effects, and can as such be analysed as a political strategy, regardless of whether or not the articulating subject is conscious of this strategic dimension. PDT’s ontology of the political primacy and radical negativity frames every articulation as a witting or unwitting attempt to structure the social world, and therefore, as a political strategy, no matter whether it was intended as such by its subjects or not. PDT thus understands strategies as arrangements of discursive elements that do not exist outside the structure in which they manifests themselves (Nonhoff, 2019, p. 78), rather than as cunning plans that originate in the mind of policy or business entrepreneurs.

5 Additionally, differentiating political and heterogeneous logics as describing respectively exclusion through othering and contestation and exclusion through omission and marginalization helps to streamline the logics approach as an analytical framework. While recent empirical analyses captured omissions and marginalizations through political logics (Clarke, 2012; Remling, 2018), Glynos and Howarth (2007, pp. 135, 139) originally described the displacement of certain patterns of articulations beyond the horizon of representation via social logics.

6 An alternative conceptualization would be to maintain political logics as the single, overarching category, and to have it subsume an antagonistic and a heterogeneous dimension. Political logics capturing the former dimension would describe active contestation internal to the space of representation, political logics playing out in the latter dimension would deal with dynamics of exclusion and meaninglessness/meaningfulness at the edge of the space of representation. Some works that differentiate explicitly contestatory political logics and political logics that focus more on marginalization, implicitness, and tacit exclusion seem to move in this direction (e.g. Remling, 2018) However, I opted to have heterogeneous logics as a full-fledged category in order to emphasize the importance of its conceptual contribution.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds.

Notes on contributors

Thomas Jacobs

Thomas Jacobs is a researcher at the Centre for EU Studies, Ghent University. His main interests include EU trade policy, international political economy, and political communication. Most of Thomas' work focuses on meaning-making, signification, and strategy in political praxis, departing the discourse-theoretical tradition of Laclau and Mouffe.