Laclau and Mouffe and the ontology of radical negativity

Abstract

In this article, I introduce and argue in favour of Laclau and Mouffe's ontological dimension in their post-structuralist discourse theory. Their ontological thinking is contrasted to Luhmann's claim of remaining within epistemology to show how the notion of radical negativity brings Laclau and Mouffe beyond an ‘old European metaphysics of substance’. Ontological negativity is then contrasted to Foucault's ‘modest positivism’. The problem with such a positivism is not that it overlooks ‘deeper’ layers, but rather the absence of the dimension of negativity is needed in order to grasp a discursive logic of articulation. Having established the necessity of including an ontological dimension of negativity, however, I question the claim that negativity equals antagonism and that the political may therefore be granted a primary ontological status. This claim is ‘one step too far', and the theory must be rethought accordingly. I point out some of the theoretical implications of a ‘de-ontologization’ of antagonism and the political, and show that they can take place within the general framework of Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory.

Keywords:

• Foucault
• Laclau
• Luhmann
• Mouffe
• negativity
• ontology
• the political

Notes on contributor

Allan Dreyer Hansen is Associate Professor at the Institute for Society and Globalization at Roskilde University, Denmark. He has published widely on the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, including ‘Dangerous Dogs, Constructivism and Normativity: The Implications of Radical Constructivism’, Distinktion 2010.

Notes

1. One should notice the difference to systems theory which claims that society is improbable, not that it is impossible.

2. This impossibility of overlapping of the ontic and the ontological is what Heidegger referred to as the very ‘ontological difference’ (Laclau 2004, 288–9)

3. Regarding Oksala's analysis, she is correct when she argues, first, that Foucault indeed held ontological positions, and that his position did change, or was developed by the move from archaeology to genealogy, from ‘radical nominalism’ to an (historical) ‘ontology of the present’. However, she does not really seem to pose the strict ontological question of how reality must be if our theoretical claims are to be possible. As she underestimates the extent to which Foucault was serious about his positivism (which she dismisses as irony (Oksala 2010, 455)), she does not pose the question of the positivity of the elements which enters into Foucault's genealogical analytics. What is added in his genealogical analytics is the idea that the discursive rules are not in themselves sufficient to carry out the articulatory task of linking a set of elements (which in the genealogy consists not only of statements, but more generally of practices) which do not have any deeper necessary connection to each other. For this power is needed, and Foucault's genealogical studies direct our attention to the fact that a moment of power is involved in a contingent linking (cf. also Laclau 1993). The crucial question that needs to be asked is if it is possible for ‘positive’ statements (or ‘events') to be linked in historical, specific constellations.

4. I return briefly to the way the notion of the political can be maintained without elevating it to a general ontological level.

5. In New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (Laclau 1990, 33 f.) Laclau summarizes the theory's social ontology in four points. All social objects are contingent, historical, the result of power relations, and, lastly, political. It is only the last point I want to question.

6. Obviously, I am not the first to point out that dislocation and heterogeneity should be viewed as ontologically prior to antagonism. Apart from several places in Laclau's own writings, e.g. Stavrakakis (1998, 184), Norval (2000, 223), Stäheli (2004, 234 f.), Dyrberg (2004, 247), and Biglieri and Perelló (2012) have all made this point. What I want to add is the consequence for ontological status granted the political.

7. I am not going further into the integration of Lacanian psychoanalysis in the otherwise post-structuralist or deconstructive discourse theory. It should be noted, though, that the theory of the subject (beyond subject positions) as ‘the distance between the decision and the undecidable structure’ (Laclau 1990, 41–5; 1996, 54 f.) is a very impressive achievement solving a set of theoretical problems one inevitably faces when remaining at the level of (positive) subject positions.

8. Dislocation is often used in two different ways in discourse theory. On the one hand, it designates a sense of (organic) crisis, an experience of the impossibility of going on in a given situation. On the other, there is the more general meaning, which is how I am using it: due to the impossibility of final closure of discourses, every identity, all elements of a given discourse, are constitutively dislocated, unable to achieve a final location in a structural arrangement.