Böcker av Ernesto Laclau

Three renowned contemporary theorists discuss their different perspectives for politics and thought.

The essays collected in this volume develop the theoretical perspective initiated in Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist Strategy in three main directions. First, by exploring the specificity of social antagonisms and answering the question ';What is an antagonistic relation?', an issue which has become increasingly crucial in our globalized world, where the proliferation of conflicts and points of rupture is eroding their links to the social subjects postulated by classical social analysis. This leads the author to a second line of questioning: what is the ontological terrain that allows us to conceive the nature of social relations in our heterogeneous world, a task that he addresses with theoretical instruments coming from analytical philosophy and from the phenomenological and structuralist traditions. Finally, central to the argument of the book is the basic role attributed to rhetorical movements metaphor, metonymy, catachresis in shaping the ';non-foundational' grounds of society.

Presents an argument as to how the changes of the late twentieth century have altered Enlightenment notions of "emancipation."

A philosophical and political exploration initiated in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. This work focuses on the construction of popular identities and how 'the people' emerges as a collective actor. It offers a critical reading of the literature on populism, demonstrating its dependency on the theorists of 'mass psychology'.

Analysis of the role of ideology in political movements.