The Politics of Common Sense: Articulation Theory and Critical Communication Studies

Abstract

This essay centers on the concept of articulation, beginning from the work of its major contemporary theorists—Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Stuart Hall. Articulation theory conceptualizes the specific communication act as internally generative, but also situates it within an external context that is itself understood as communicatively constituted. It develops a conception of power that is not limited to the disjunction or consensus (convergence) between different constituted interests, but is directed toward the more fundamental level of the constitution of common sense. The interplay of poetic expression and rhetorical linkage in articulation provides the groundwork for a communication theory of society whose critical stance consists of its theoretical elaboration of the issues raised by the new social movements.