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Tensions and Confluences Between the Works of Jacques Rancière and Ernesto Laclau (ENGLISH)

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Reis 162

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University of Santiago de Compostela

This paper explores the similarities and differences that exist between the political approaches of Jacques Rancière and Ernesto Laclau, respectively. In particular, the areas analysed include their postulation of an antagonistic or conflictive figure at the centre of their political reflections, their understanding of the political as constitutive of social objectivity, and their conception of a political subject constituted through a co-implication between the particular and the universal. Throughout the theoretical itinerary proposed, special attention is paid to those aspects where there are discrepancies between their approaches. It is argued that by considering them together a solution may be provided to some of the problems identified in each of their approaches.

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Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, April - June 2018, pp. 111-128

Pedro M. Rey-Araujo: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela – IDEGA | pedrom.rey@rai.usc.es

Tensions and Conuences Between the Works

of Jacques Rancière and Ernesto Laclau

Tensiones y conﬂuencias en las obras de Jacques Rancière

y Ernesto Laclau

Pedro M. Rey-Araujo

doi:10.5477/cis/reis.162.111

Key words

Antagonism

• Disagreement

• Hegemony

• Laclau

• Neoliberalism

• Rancière

Abstract

This paper explores the similarities and differences that exist between the

political approaches of Jacques Rancière and Ernesto Laclau, respectively.

In particular, the areas analysed include their postulation of an antagonistic

or conictive gure at the centre of their political reections, their

understanding of the political as constitutive of social objectivity, and their

conception of a political subject constituted through a co-implication

between the particular and the universal. Throughout the theoretical

itinerary proposed, special attention is paid to those aspects where there

are discrepancies between their approaches. It is argued that by

considering them together a solution may be provided to some of the

problems identied in each of their approaches.

Palabras clave

Antagonismo

• Desacuerdo

• Hegemonía

• Laclau

• Neoliberalismo

• Rancière

Resumen

El presente artículo explora las similitudes y discrepancias existentes en

las reexiones políticas de Jacques Rancière y Ernesto Laclau. En

particular, su postulación de una gura antagónica o conictiva en el seno

de sus reexiones políticas, su entendimiento de lo político como

constitutivo de la objetividad social, y su concepción del sujeto político

constituido mediante una coimplicación entre el particular y el universal,

serán objeto de análisis. A través del itinerario teórico propuesto, se

prestará especial atención a aquellos puntos en que sus respectivos

enfoques entren en discordancia. La consideración conjunta de sus

puntos de vista, se argumenta, permite resolver ciertas problemáticas

identicadas en cada uno.

Citation

Rey-Araujo, Pedro M. (2018). “Tensions and Conuences Between the Works of Jacques Rancière

and Ernesto Laclau”. Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 162: 111-128. (http://

dx.doi.org/10.5477/cis/reis.162.111)

Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, April - June 2018, pp. 111-128

112 Tensions and Conuences Between the Works of Jacques Rancière and Ernesto Laclau

IntroductIon1

This paper presents a critical analysis of the

political ontologies of Jacques Rancière and

Ernesto Laclau, respectively. Both of their

theoretical trajectories, originally drawn from

the Marxist tradition, have been marked by

the desire to integrate postmodern critiques

of great totalizing narratives, the possibility of

a full emancipation and the alleged transpa-

rency of social structures within the tradition

of emancipatory politics. They both proble-

matize the coordinates of the latter while ne-

ver ultimately renouncing to it. On the one

hand, both the emancipation pursued and

the subject in charge of carrying it out will

always be partial, contingent and transitory

for them. On the other hand, the criticism of

transparent, structuring Universals does not

lead them to laudably advocate the free play

of differences, but to conceive them as terra-

ins of perennial dispute and dissent.

The hypothesis posed here is that, due

to the numerous points of convergence bet-

ween their respective theoretical frameworks,

it would be appropriate for them to be con-

sidered jointly. Both consider the political to

be constitutive of social objectivity, instead

of being a mere appendix or stronghold of it;

both postulate the existence of an inherently

conictive gure within the social that pre-

vents its full consolidation; and nally, both

inexorably link the possible emergence of

a subject of emancipatory politics to a sin-

gular co-implication between the Universal

1 I would like to acknowledge my profound intellectual

debt with Hector Kollias, without whom this text would

be inconceivable. I would also like to thank Ramón Máiz,

as well as two anonymous reviewers, for their comments

upon previous versions that have greatly improved the

quality of the text. All errors are my sole responsibility.

This work has beneted from the funding coming from

the Consolidation and Structuring of Competitive Re-

search Units Grants Project of the Galicia University Sys-

tem, Xunta de Galicia as Competitive Reference Groups

(ED431C 2017/44), and also from the Training for Univer-

sity Teaching Staff Plan of the Ministry of Education, Cul-

ture and Sports (FPU-2015-01682).

and the particular. Based on the divergen-

ces identied between the two authors, it

will be argued that the theoretical framework

proposed by Rancière is uniquely placed to

recognise the moments of interruption in the

ordinary course of a given social order, while

Laclau’s work is more valuable for examining

those times of disruption, and how they be-

come sedimented and institutionalised.

The paper is organised as follows. The

second section considers the always proble-

matic and imperfect implementation of every

social order, in connection with the dialectic

conguration and subversion of the regula-

tory frameworks of meaning and constitution

of objectivity. The third section examines the

nature of the respective conicting concepts

that both postulate as being interwoven

within the social, as well as their relationship

with the historical becoming. Finally, the fourth

section evaluates their respective attempts

at locating the subject of emancipatory poli-

tics within the tension between the Universal

and the particular, highlighting the different

theoretical implications in each case in rela-

tion to social movements, political represen-

tation, and populist phenomena. The fth

section serves as a conclusion.

the polItIcal as a questIonIng

of “common sense”

The reproduction of the social order linked to

the neoliberal conguration of the capitalist

mode of production has been dependent, to

a large extent, on some marked class inter-

ests underlying a worldview that has become

widespread throughout the social body. This

is manifested, for example, in the general ac-

ceptance of the ethical value granted to ac-

tions based on self-interest, and of their so-

cial harmonisation through the impersonal

mechanisms of the market. It is not only the

effective conguration of the relations of pro-

duction that solidies the capitalist regime of

domination, but also a certain worldview be-

Pedro M. Rey-Araujo 113

Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, April - June 2018, pp. 111-128

coming naturalised. It is precisely when a

social group appropiates society's “common

sense” for themselves, ascribing the repre-

sentation of the whole to itself and imple-

menting the defence of its particular inter-

ests, that some demands become socially

intelligible rather than others.

According to the orthodox interpretations

of Classical Marxism, domains such as politics

and economy have an external relationship to

each other, so that “the truth of politics is no

longer located above politics as its essence

or idea. It is located beneath or behind it, in

what it conceals and exists only to conceal”

(Rancière, 1999: 82). The approaches that as-

sume this ontological difference between both

planes are unable to explain certain recent so-

cial developments, and to promote a coherent

project of political emancipation. Both Ran-

cière and Laclau have tried to overcome this

problem by means of conceptualising the so-

cial as being constituted, rather than as being

constitutive. In the words of Benjamín Arditi,

“contrary to the founding totalities of the es-

sentialist model, unity cannot be constitutive,

but constituted as a result of an effort to give

structure to the phenomenical diversity of the

world, giving it a specic form or unity” (Arditi,

1991: 112). Every social order is a contingent

and transitory articulation of heterogeneous

elements, whose precarious nature is revea-

led in exceptional moments. This revelation

constitutes the very nature of the political.

Throughout their work, Laclau and Mouffe

differentiate between the social, constituted

by “the realm of sedimented practices, that

is, practices that conceal the originary acts of

their ultimately contingent political institution

and which are taken for granted, as if they

were self-grounded” (Mouffe, 2005: 17), and

the political, conceived as the moments of

subversion and questioning of a given order,

where its ultimately contingent character is

revealed. Every social order is the result of

a process of articulation of these practices,

sedimented as an ever-precarious conglo-

merate within which internal relationships are

constituted. However, every social closure

will always be inconclusive and unnished,

turning the political into an incessant nego-

tiation of its own boundaries: “The political

implies a discursive hegemonic operation on

the social terrain to give rise to the existence

of that failed object that is society” (Retamo-

zo, 2009: 80). This constant reactivation and

re-inscription in which politics consists in is

intimately linked to the discursive construc-

tion of an antagonism, that is, to the subjec-

tivation of an objective relationship of subor-

dination between two social identities into a

relationship of oppression. The particularities

of this process will be discussed in depth in

the following section.

Rancière assimilates the social order to

what he calls the police2. Similary, Rancière:

The police is thus rst an order of bodies that de-

nes the allocation of ways of doing, ways of being,

and ways of saying, and sees that those bodies are

assigned by name to a particular place and task; it

is an order of the visible and the sayable that sees

that a particular activity is visible and another is not,

that this speech is understood as discourse and

another as noise (Rancière, 1999: 29).

It is in this conceptualisation of the com-

mon, which distributes places and roles to

different parts of society, where a delimitation

of the common that necessarily excludes

some from being part of it implicitly resides.

This excessive remainder, excluded from the

“count” of the members of society, is the pla-

ce where the logic of politics will operate3.

2 Rancière means by police all hierarchical (re-)divisions

of society, which not only traces asymmetric relations

among its components, but affects their own constitution

as parts of it. For its part, politics, in the scheme propo-

sed by Rancière, refers to the moments of questioning

and interruption of that organisation.

3 The police, as a visibility regime, counts the groups

that constitute society based on supposedly objective

criteria, while politics shows the arbitrariness of the lat-

ter by showing that not all were “taken into account” by

Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, April - June 2018, pp. 111-128

114 Tensions and Conuences Between the Works of Jacques Rancière and Ernesto Laclau

Politics will emerge precisely wherever those

excluded from the original count directly con-

front the hierarchical logic of the police. They

will do so through practices that give shape to

a presupposition of radical equality between

all beings qua talking beings, thus subver-

ting the hierarchical partition of the police. In

this sense, politics refers to an interruption of

the logic of domination through questioning

the contingency and arbitrariness implicit in

any distribution of social roles. According to

Rancière, every political dispute will have as

its object the (re-)denition of the hegemonic

understanding of the common.

There are two ways of counting the parts of the

community. The rst only counts empirical parts—

actual groups dened by differences in birth, by

different functions, locations, and interests that

constitute the social body. The second counts ‘in

addition’ a part of the no-part. We will call the rst

police and the second politics’ (Rancière, 2001).

In spite of the different terminology used,

both Rancière and Laclau understand the

dynamics of social change to be grounded

upon a perennial and headless dialectics of

sedimentation and rearticulation of social di-

visions. Politics is an endless task because

the full reconciliation of society with itself is

deemed to be ontologically impossible. Both

strongly reject the current “post-political” re-

duction of politics to the mere technical and

bureaucratic administration of social affairs.

However, while the difference between “poli-

tics” and “the political” for Laclau and Mouffe

is based on Martin Heidegger’s “ontological

difference” (Mouffe, 2005: 9), this is not a va-

lid axis for understanding this difference in

Rancière4. As noted by Paul Bowman (2007),

the relevant feature in order to apprehend

the police.

4 Although Laclau does not generally differentiate bet-

ween “politics” and “the political”, this distinction is

clearly indicated by Mouffe (2005).

this difference is that politics is “rare”, while

what is “common” is the police. What is in-

herent to politics is precisely its inadequacy

to any other logic. By linking politics to the

sporadic interruptions of a social order, Ran-

cière operates with perhaps too restrictive a

conception of politics, which is unable to ap-

prehend the gradual reconguration of every

social order. The approach taken by Laclau,

on the contrary, is on the other extreme. The

highly formalistic nature of his conception

of the political, associated with the inherent

contingency of every factual articulation of

meaning, turns the political into a ubiquitous

presence, constantly haunting but always

difcult to discern in any particular situation.

The political ontology shared by Rancière

and Laclau, despite their internal differences,

allows them to conceptualise the political

dispute as being in charge of revealing the

ultimately contingent and arbitrary origin of

those social relations which, having been

“naturalised”, constitute the very framework

within which the freedom preached by our

liberal and post-political democracies is sta-

ged. Although it is undeniably valuable that

various subordinate groups have been able

to make their formal exclusion from public

structures visible, certain issues that were

once central to political debate have gra-

dually disappeared. This paper shares the

doubts expressed by Žižek (2000: 98) in this

regard:

Postmodern politics denitely has the great merit

that it “repoliticizes” a series of domains pre-

viously considered “apolitical” or “private”; the

fact remains, however, that it does not in fact “re-

politicize” capitalism, because the very notion and

form of the “political” within which it operates is

grounded in the “depoliticization” of the economy.

The politicization of the domains related

to race, gender or sexual identity, which had

previously been excluded from the public de-

bate and whose importance is beyond dispu-

Pedro M. Rey-Araujo 115

Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, April - June 2018, pp. 111-128

te, has occurred in parallel to the oblivion of

certain struggles that had previously ruled

the political agenda. The capitalist relations

of domination have been “naturalised” and

their basic premises integrated into contem-

porary “common sense”. For example, the

obligation to sell one’s own time to earn a li-

ving is no longer understood as a relation of

domination, but as a fair exchange between

free agents; national sovereignty is no longer

a basic axis of collective identities under the

protection of nation-states, but can be freely

sacriced to the impersonal demands of the

“markets”; while the provision of public

goods to broad layers of the population is

now subject to the achievement of “budge-

tary stability” by the State. Of course, all this

sounds “normal”.

Therefore, the “naturalisation” of the

capitalist relations of social domination,

through the transmutation of the epistemo-

logical categories proper to capitalism into

a generalised “common sense”, constitutes

the main obstacle that every emancipatory

political project has to overcome. In this sen-

se, both Rancière and Laclau conceive the

political struggle as a dispute about such

shared meanings and assumptions that allow

a group of heterogeneous individuals to be

united into a unied community.

Following Gramsci, Laclau uses the term

hegemony to refer to this process of common

articulation of meaning. Laclau and Mouffe

(2001) rely on the hypothesis that “society

does not exist”, that is, no social formation

is a sutured whole: “There is no single un-

derlying principle xing— and hence consti-

tuting—the whole eld of differences” (2001:

111). The inconmensurability of the social

requires the intervention of articulatory prac-

tices so that a partial xation of social mea-

ning can be provisionally established, thus

ensuring that a minimum order is imposed

on the free play of differences. Subsequently,

Laclau (1990, 1996) made an additional pro-

posal: the notion of “empty signiers”. Since

all identity is relational, “the very possibility

of signication is the system, and the very

possibility of the system is the possibility of

its limits” (Laclau, 1996: 37). Therefore, it is

strictly necessary that one element of the

chain of signication stands up to represent

the totality, symbolising both its limits and

that which is outside those limits. The hege-

monic struggle therefore consists precisely in

the struggle to determine which particularity

will be elevasted to the status of the Univer-

sal: “All positive content of the Universal is

the contingent result of hegemonic struggle

– in itself, the Universal is absolutely empty”

(Laclau, 2000: 79).

In a similar way to the hegemonic closure

of the Universal proposed by Laclau, which

will determine the conditions of intelligibility

of any particular demand, Rancière uses the

concept of “distribution of the sensible”, inti-

mately linked to that of the “police”, to refer to:

The system of self-evident facts of sense percep-

tion that simultaneously discloses the existence of

something in common and the delimitations that

dene the respective parts and positions within it.

A distribution of the sensible therefore establishes

at one and the same time something common that

is shared and exclusive parts (Rancière and Rockhill,

2004: 7).

Therefore, the line that separates those

who are visible from those who are not, those

whose words will be understood as speech

from those whose words are merely heard as

noise, will be the perennial object of political

struggle, turning politics into an eminently

aesthetic activity, that is, “an intervention

upon the visible and the sayable” (Rancière,

2001). It is a conguration of perception and

meaning, words and images, which determi-

nes the parts of the community while dening

and allocating what is common. When those

who are not supposed to speak re-appro-

priate the words that were rstly taken from

them, in order to challenge the articulation of

meaning that prevents them from participa-

Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, April - June 2018, pp. 111-128

116 Tensions and Conuences Between the Works of Jacques Rancière and Ernesto Laclau

ting in the common, they show the social

order in its radical contingency.

When Rancière speaks about challenging

a certain distribution of the sensible, just as

when Laclau describes the hegemonic strug-

gle between particulars to embody the Uni-

versal, they are ultimately referring to that

incessant dynamics of sedimentation and

reactivation that, as has been argued here,

constitutes the very idiosyncrasy of the po-

litical. What is at stake in this movement are

precisely the conditions of intelligibility of a

particular demand in a certain articulation of

“common sense”.

contradIctIon and temporalIty

Beyond the deterministic versions of Mar-

xism popularised by the Second Internatio-

nal, two opposing logics can be found in

Marx regarding the possibilities of radical

social transformation (Callinicos, 2007: 90).

On the one hand, in texts such as the “Pre-

face” to A Contribution to the Critique of the

Political Economy, it is postulated that histo-

rical development emanates from the contra-

diction, internal to the capitalist mode of pro-

duction, between the productive forces and

the relations of production. On the other

hand, the Communist Manifesto stipulates

that “the history of all hitherto existing socie-

ty is the history of class struggles”. Both

Rancière and Laclau, by refusing to postula-

te a homogenous and linear temporality ba-

sed on a mechanical vision of History, open

the door to contingency, decision and pro-

cesses of subjectivation in the processes of

construction of social alternatives.

For Laclau, the reactivation of the social,

and therefore, an alteration of its basic coordi-

nates, is coupled with the constitution of a so-

cial antagonism. Although initially understood

as “the experience of the limit of all objectiv-

ity”, an inuential critique by Žižek (1990)5

called for a distinction between antagonism

as a limit of the social, and antagonism as

a relation between two subjective positions;

that is, in Lacanian terms, a distinction be-

tween antagonism as real and the social real-

ity of antagonism (Žižek, 1990: 253)6.

For this reason, Laclau (1990) will distin-

guish between antagonism and dislocation.

Dislocations are thus an effect of the diffe-

rential constitution of every system: “Every

identity is dislocated insofar as it depends

on an outside which both denies that identity

and provides its condition of possibility at the

same time” (Laclau, 1990: 39). Dislocations

reveal the inherent openness of every social

structure, showing its contingency and its

limitations, through events that cannot be

domesticated by the existing structure (Tor-

ng, 1999: 149). Antagonisms would then be

possible discursive responses to the disloca-

tions of the social order, attempts to domes-

ticate them, that is, to provide a provisional

closure to the social structure.

Regarding the constitutive role that La-

clau confers on the political, numerous critics

have denounced the exiguous role that pro-

cesses of material reproduction seem to play

in his theoretical edice (e.g. Geras, 1987;

Rustin, 1988; Veltmeyer, 2000), and therefore

its alleged incapacity to counteract the spe-

cicities of the capitalist mode of production.

I believe that such criticisms are not entirely

correct. Regarding the ontological consti-

tution of the economy as an autonomous

sphere, Laclau is clear: (1990: 24): “What is

not possible is to begin by accepting this se-

parate identity as an unconditional assump-

tion and then go on to explain its interaction

5 “All identity is already-always divided, marked by an

internal impossibility, such that the negativity of the

‘Other’ is simply the externalization of my own self-ne-

gativity” (Žižek, 1990: 252).

6 Whereas the latter belongs to the register of the sym-

bolic, the former is what constantly and internally sub-

verts it.

Pedro M. Rey-Araujo 117

Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, April - June 2018, pp. 111-128

and articulation with other identities on that

basis”. The sphere of economy is constituted

on the same ontological plane as the rest.

Laclau certainly recognises “the centrality of

economic processes in capitalist societies”,

because “material reproduction of society

has more repercussions for social processes

than do other instances. [However], this does

not mean that capitalist reproduction can be

reduced to a single, self-dening mecha-

nism” (Laclau, 2005: 237).

Against the social stability of previous

historical formations, capitalism is charac-

terised by an accelerated tempo of social

transformation, an “uncontrolled dislocatory

rhythm” (Laclau, 1990: 39) that inexorably

shatters those social orders anchored around

tradition. This implies a greater awareness of

historicity, while at the same time conferring

a more important role on contingent sub-

jects that emerge from these dislocations.

Although nothing obliges these subjects to

have an emancipatory character, a potential

new hegemonic intervention that reconsti-

tutes the contours of the social will always

be present, given that “the more points of

dislocation a structure has, the greater the

expansion of the eld of politics will be” (La-

clau, 1990: 50).

The reactivation of the social therefore

presupposes a discursive intervention con-

ducive to constructing an antagonism ba-

sed on a dislocation, by means of a division

effected on the social in two poles with no

common substratum between them. “Anta-

gonisms presuppose a total exteriority be-

tween the antagonised force and the antago-

nist: otherwise there would be something in

the social structure capable of explaining the

antagonism, thus reducing it to an objective

relation” (Laclau, 1997: 130). However, how

can each pole of an antagonistic relation re-

cognise the other if there is a radical exterio-

rity between them? Certainly, the remaining

signiers in the social eld that is fragmented

as a result of the dislocation could constitute

this eld of shared experience. In this sense,

the antagonism would be a limiting case, to

which the processes of antagonisation would

only approach asymptotically (Thomassen,

2005). In my opinion, this problem of exte-

riority is explicitly solved by Rancière through

his concept of disagreement.

For Rancière, politics takes place whe-

never the hierarchical logic of the police is

interrupted by “those who have no part”

in the count of the latter, by denouncing a

“grievance” on the basis of which its presup-

position of radical equality must be veried.

Contrary to those political philosophers such

as Habermas, who postulate an immanent

telos of mutual understanding as the basis

of a rational community, Rancière insists that

the possession of language is, in itself, a

symbolic division (2004a: 5). In this sense, a

disagreement refers to a linguistic situation in

which one party simultaneously understands

and does not understand what the other is

saying: “An extreme form of disagreement is

where X cannot see the common object Y is

presenting because X cannot comprehend

that the sounds uttered by Y form words and

chains of words similar to X’s own” (Ranciè-

re, 1999: xii).

The ever-conicting encounter between

these two logics, that of the police and that of

equality, takes place through the staging of a

conict which gives rise to the appearance of

a new common world, since “those who have

no part” re-appropriate the words they are

not supposed to know, in order to denounce

that those very words had been previously

taken away from them. Rancière’s parado-

xical conceptualisation makes it possible to

glimpse a potential solution to the problem

that I previously identied as being inherent

to Laclau’s understanding of antagonism: the

difculty of establishing a common world, gi-

ven the radical exteriority of both poles in an

antagonistic relationship. In a disagreement,

a common ground emerges, a new world

within another, for although “politics imple-

ments a logic entirely heterogenous to that

of the police, it is always bound up with the

Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, April - June 2018, pp. 111-128

118 Tensions and Conuences Between the Works of Jacques Rancière and Ernesto Laclau

latter. The reason for this is simple: politics

has no objects or issues of its own” (Ranciè-

re, 1999: 31).

Various similarities can be identied in

their respective conceptualisations of anta-

gonism and disagreement. On the one hand,

both understand conict and dissensus as

consubstantial to politics tout court, instead

of making it dependent on a primitive arché

of the community. On the other hand, in

opposition to the more restrictive interpre-

tations of Classical Marxism, the parties in-

volved in the conict cannot be traced back

to a specic domain of the social, and the

promised emancipation will always be par-

tial and contingent. However, there are also

numerous differences between both approa-

ches. Rancière, for instance, does not need

to have recourse to a “constitutive exterior”

in order to show the transitory and contin-

gent character of any social order, so that

the latter will not be threatened until those

excluded from/by it put forward an argument

that aims at verifying its pressuposition of ra-

dical equality. For Laclau, however, the mere

presence of a constitutive exterior prevents

all the differences internal to the system from

consolidating themselves. In sum, for Laclau,

there is politics as a result of a lack in the

social structure, an ultimate incompletion,

whereas for Rancière politics appears linked

to its opposite, that is, to an irreducible ex-

cess that inevitably lurks any social account.

Their respective theoretical frameworks

seriously call into question the defeat of ca-

pitalism out of the inexorable exhacerbation

of its internal contradictions. However, it is

crucial to note that the rejection of teleologi-

cal narratives does not require a rejection, but

rather a “historicisation” of the basic premises

of the emancipatory tradition. In this sense,

Rancière claims that his “discussion of politics

was aimed at breaking the alleged solidarity

between emancipatory politics and any kind

of one-way direction of History or any kind

of ‘grand narrative’” (Rancière, 2005: 19). Si-

milarly, Laclau afrms that his theory aims to

combat “the widespread feeling that the ex-

haustion of the great narratives of modernity...

are leading to a generalised retreat from the

political” (Laclau, 1996: 84).

The rejection of a linear conception of his-

tory does not lead them to acritically accept

the free play of differences and particularities

as a corollary to the rejection of the constitutive

categories of modernity. For Laclau it is neces-

sary “instead of inverting the contents of mo-

dernity, to deconstruct the terrain that makes

the alternative modernity/postmodernity pos-

sible” (Laclau, 1996: 87). Instead of equating

the “end of modernity” with the rejection of is

particular objectives and motivations, it is ne-

cessary to understand it as the disappearance

of a horizon, that is, “that which establishes,

at one and the same time, the limits and the

terrain of constitution of any possible object”

(Laclau, 1990: 64). Modernity has to be unders-

tood as a horizon of meaning congured by a

series of Universals that emerge as modes of

representation of fullness as such, which enter

a process of discredit as an increasing number

of dislocations cannot be integrated into the

symbolic space constituted by them. A grea-

ter awareness of the separation between the

unattainable fullness and the particularities in

which it is embodied opens up the possibility of

a hegemonic struggle to redene the normative

framework that regulates our societies. Con-

trary to certain postmodern narratives, the role

played by universals cannot be eradicated, due

to its structural need for the social production

of meaning (see Laclau, 1990: 60-84; Laclau,

1996: 47-66).

Far removed from the Derridean tradition,

Rancière tries to dissolve this dichotomy

by constructing “a paradigm of ‘historicity’

equally opposed to the symmetrical one-way

narratives of progress or decadence” (Ran-

cière, 2005: 15). Rancière proposes to divide

the historical course into three major meta-

schemes which he calls “regimes of the arts”.

These general frameworks of articulation of

meaning allow Rancière to move away from

those grand narratives of the “end” which

Pedro M. Rey-Araujo 119

Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, April - June 2018, pp. 111-128

work to transform the eclipse of politics into

some nal realization of a great historical

necessity (Rancière, 2004a). The various

attempts to provide a sense of linearity to

historical processes will be but attempts to

come to terms with the contradiction inhe-

rent to the aesthetic regime7.

Regarding the possibility of conceiving

alternatives to the current capitalist regime

of domination, their respective conceptions

regarding historicism pose a series of com-

plications that need to be addressed. It has

already been noted how the deconstruction

of the categories of Classical Marxism al-

lowed Laclau to provide a better explanation

to recently emerged social movements and

to solve certain impasses was submitted in

the past century, as well as offering a better

interpretation of various social movements.

However, the weaker emphasis placed upon

the internal dynamics of the capitalist mode

of production parallels a general tendency

to depoliticize the economy among recent

social theorists. In this sense, I believe that

some doubts were aptly raised by Žižek as

to whether the logic of hegemony “is really a

non-historical universal, or simply the formal

structure of the specic ideologico-political

constellation of Western late capitalism”

(Žižek, 2000: 107). The answer offered by

Laclau (2000: 200) consists in questioning

the “ahistorical transcendentalism/radical

historicism” distinction, arguing that only

in contemporary societies do we witness

a generalisation of the logic of hegemony.

Since Hegemony and Socialist Strategy,

no particular demand or struggle has been

granted ontological primacy in order to un-

derstand the becoming of the (incomplete)

7 Reasons of space prevent us from delving deeper into

the characterization of the "regime of the arts". Sufce

it to say that, either in the domain of politics of in that

of aesthetics, the aesthetic regime is fundamentally mar-

ked by a presupposition of radical equality that debases

all old hierarchies, and for that very reason, removes the

possibility of any immanet criteria to build new ones.

social structure. However, when reading

statements such as “class struggle is just

one species of identity politics, and one that

is becoming less and less important in the

world in which we live” one wonders wheth-

er there is not a category, that of class, that

overdetermines, in Althusserian terms (1965),

the conditions of appearance of all the others8.

Examining how certain social movements,

such as the ecological or the feminist ones,

have been gradually integrated into capitalist

mechanisms without altering in the least its

inner logic (despite holding the potential to

question the system in its entirety), demands

this question to be taken seriously.

The potential collusion, or at least ineffec-

tiveness, of Rancière’s approach to the inter-

ruption of the neoliberal social order should

be articulated along different lines. It has al-

ready been indicated how politics occurs as

an immanent subversion of the order of the

police, inextricably linked to a radical presup-

position of equality by those excluded from

its account. However, despite Rancière’s

obstinacy to historicise the categories that

have dominated political discourses since

the advent of Modernity, (e.g. man, science,

marxism), Rancière could succumb to what

Bruno Bosteels (2009: 163) calls a “restricted

nominalism”: whereas in practically all cases,

“the universal exists only in the singular”,

Rancière defends a deeply axiomatic deni-

tion in relation to politics. As Gabriel Rockhill

(2009: 203) ironically put it, [for Rancière]

“every denition of politics is contingent if

and when it is not identical with Rancière’s

denition”. Rancière’s insistence that the

emergence of politics is necessarily linked to

a presupposition of equality constitutes an

ahistorical core in his reection on politics,

from the slave struggles in Ancient Greece up

to the sans-papiers in contemporary France

8 Althusser borrows the term of overdetermination from

psychoanalysis, to refer to the mechanisms of conden-

sation and displacement of social struggles in the socio-

symbolic space.

Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, April - June 2018, pp. 111-128

120 Tensions and Conuences Between the Works of Jacques Rancière and Ernesto Laclau

Rancière links his refusal to historicize poli-

tics to his historical analysis of art: in both

cases, although through different routes, the

purpose is to show that “art and politics are

contingent notions” (Rancière and Rockhill,

2004: 47)9. In relation to politics, his strategy

is to show that politics is not linked to any

specic historical project by using the trans-

historical category of equality: “His concept

of equality functions… as a marker of sa-

meness in a history of differences […] tying

together divergent struggles into a single

thematic thread” (May, 2008: 68). Rancière

defends his use of the category of equality on

the basis that “it is not a founding ontological

principle [...] but the condition required for

being able to think politics. However, equality

is not political in itself” (Rancière, 2004b: 48).

In my opinion, the conceptualisation of

politics proposed by Rancière poses at least

three great risks in terms of thinking through

our contemporary political condition. First-

ly, it runs the risk of falling into what Badiou

(2007: 21) has termed a “speculative leftism”:

that is, the presumption that the dynamics

of the social can be reduced to a logic of

externality between the stability of the po-

lice and the disruptive irruptions of politics10.

This would imply a "purication" of the so-

cial contradiction completely at odds with

the intertwinement of opposed logics that is

defended here. Regarding that accusation it

sufces to recall that the police is not a ho-

mogenous entity, that "there is a worse and a

better police" (Rancière, 1999: 31) and, sim-

ilarly, that the properness of politcs is pre-

cisely its being improper.

9 “In both cases, it is a matter of setting a singularized

universal against an undetermined universal, and con-

trasting one form of historicizing (in terms of contingent

regimes organizing a eld of possibilities) with another

form of historicizing (in terms of teleology)” (Rancière,

2004b: 48).

10 “We call speculative leftism ‘any thought of being

which bases itself upon the theme of an absolute com-

mencement’” (Badiou, 2007: 21).

Secondly, Rancière's understanding of

the police is perhaps too narrow in order

to examine changes in the latter that might

prompt properly political responses. If po-

litics “exists when the natural order of do-

mination is interrupted by those who have

no part” (Rancière, 1999: 31), there is no

way to analyse what happens between the-

se disruptive moments, nor what structural

conditions might favour their emergence.

From this restricted conception of politics,

it follows that “the failure of radical politics

seems to be built into radical polities’ very

denition” (Hewlett, 2007: 106). Restricting

political action to a supernumerary element

of society implies that, had those who have

no part managed to be satisfactorily recog-

nised, the emergence of another excluded

group would have immediately relegated the

previous ones to the grey swamp of the po-

lice. Laclau’s conception here is more use-

ful, since the dominant hegemonic bloc, due

to the indelible negativity of the constitutive

exterior, must continually be involved in the

very production of order. This political task

would be ever-present, opening the door

more clearly to the proliferation of emanci-

patory struggles (Muñoz, 2006: 142).

Finally, Rancière’s insistence on linking

politics to democratic and emancipatory

struggles leads him to lagerly ignore other

alternatives. Laclau denounces that if in po-

litics, according to Rancière, “what is put into

question is not the ontic content of what is

being counted but the ontological principle

of countability as such, the discursive forms

that this putting into question will adopt will

be largely indeterminate” (Laclau, 2005: 246).

For example, Rancière aptly links the emer-

gence of movements such as the National

Front to the prevalence of the post-political

mode of administration, but denying them

political status hinders fully grasping their

true meaning. In relation to fascism, for

example, it is necessary to disentangle the

popular longings underlying its program from

the specic articualtion that distorts them

Pedro M. Rey-Araujo 121

Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, April - June 2018, pp. 111-128

and displaces them. Thus, an emancipatory

project will be only one possible result out

of a set of potentially emancipatory popular

demands (see Žižek, 2008).

emancIpatIon: Between the

unIversal and the partIcular

The previous sections have tried to put into

question several central nodes of the eman-

cipatory project of Classical Marxism, such

as the alleged simplicity of the contradiction

within the social, its teleological conception

linked to a homogeneous temporality, and

the opposition between the economic basis

and the political-ideological superstructure.

All in all, both Rancière and Laclau consider

it essential to conceive a subject of emanci-

patory politics who, despite not being idisso-

lubly attached to any specic part of the so-

cial, can carry out a global project of social

transformation.

According to Laclau, the emancipatory

discourses of modernity have been based

upon two incompatible hypotheses. On the

one hand, it is presumed the objectivity and

full representability of the social and, on the

other, a radical chasm is assumed between

the identity of the emancipated subject and

that of its opressor (Laclau, 1996: 5). After

the secularisation of the Christian logic of the

“incarnation” of the universal in the particular,

“the incommensurability between the univer-

sal to be incarnated and the incarnating body

has to be eliminated. We have to postulate

a body which is, in and of itself, the univer-

sal” (Laclau, 1996: 23). Consequently, the

universality granted to such agents (e.g. the

working class, European civilisation) provided

the ground for an attack on these notions on

the grounds of they being Eurocentric, tota-

litarian or imperialistic, as the case may be.

The awareness of this link, together with the

emergence of new struggles and identities

whose diversity had been ignored by clas-

sical emancipatory discourses, promoted a

widespread proliferation of particular stru-

ggles without shared reference to a common

horizon, which would have been necessary to

make them properly intelligible.

Laclau vehemently argues that the lack

of symbolic integration of these identitarian

struggles by reference to a common eman-

cipatory horizon makes them incapable of

questioning the capitalist system as a whole

and therefore, the global framework of domi-

nation. On the one hand, strictly individualis-

tic struggles leave intact the set of rules and

principles that govern the system of social

relations as a whole, the ultimate ground for

the existing uneven power relations. On the

other hand, regarding any differential identity

that is constituted by reference to an antago-

nistic "other", the assertion of one's differen-

tial specicity necessarily implies asserting

the identity of the opressing groups, “sanc-

tioning the existing status quo in the relation

between groups” (Laclau, 1996 : 48-9). The-

refore, the reference to a universal that trans-

cends the strictly particularistic struggles is a

conditio sine qua non for any struggle which,

appart from improving its inclusion in the glo-

bal system, aims at challenging as well the

underlying frame causing its domination in

the rst instance.

Failing to make reference to a horizon of

unversality framing the proliferation of such

particularistic struggles prevents them from

being effective in challeging the regime of

domination they are intended to counter. The

solution proposed by Laclau and Rancière

consists in postulating a relation between the

universal and the particular that permits to

conceive a subject of emancipatory politics

capable of articulating a common project ,

while simultaneously escaping from reprodu-

cing existing relations of domination and fa-

lling into the terrors of self-same identity.

The core of this theoretical movement

consists in conceiving a relation of co-impli-

cation between the universal and the parti-

cular that parts ways with the Christian logic

Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, April - June 2018, pp. 111-128

122 Tensions and Conuences Between the Works of Jacques Rancière and Ernesto Laclau

of “incarnation” of the former in the latter, on

the one hand, and with the transparent iden-

tity between them characteristic of certain

discourses of Modernity, on the other. The

universal must be conceived as a terrain of

struggle between different social logics. In

order to satisfactorily challenge the power

relations shaping the social, it is not enough

to simply modify the place occupied by each

particularity, because in this way the hegemo-

nic closure of the social, which renders the

particularities intelligible among themselves,

would have remained intact (Landau, 2006).

Following Laclau, this closure is effected by

a universal, but one devoid of content of its

own, “an empty place unifying a set of equi-

valential demands” (Laclau, 1996: 56). The

universal must be empty because “the only

possible universality is the one constructed

through an equivalential chain” (Laclau, 2000:

304). That which unies a heterogeneous set

of differences cannot be a positive thing (if it

were, it would simply be another difference),

but something that emerges from the unifying

effects exerted by an external threat. Therefo-

re, the universal refers to the absent fullness

of society, a lack that all identities share and

which provides a dimension of commonality

to them (Laclau, 1996: 56). However, in order

to be expressed, the universal must be embo-

died in something radically incommensurable

with respect to it, since the only means of re-

presentation available are the existing particu-

larities. Therefore, while the relation between

the universal and the particularity embodying

it will be necessary, its ontic content will be

contingent and precarious, itself a result of the

hegemonic struggle.

Identifying which particularity occupies

the empty place of the universal is crucial for

determining the conditions of intelligibility of

the remaining ones. In terms of hegemony,

the political struggle is the dispute between

particularities to determine which one will oc-

cupy the empty place of the universal, thus

providing a provisional closure to the whole

eld of differences, transitorily xing mea-

ning and society's common sense. When

a growing number of unsatised demands

cannot be assimilated by the dominant he-

gemonic articulation, the universals that

provide a closure to the eld of meanings

will enter into a process of gradual discredit,

revealing more clearly the contingent nature

of the relationship between the universal and

the particularity that hegemonises it. This

disaffection with the existing universals will

prompt a struggle among the various parti-

cularities to embody the "absent fullness of

society", the "order" society is lacking and

whose ontic content remains undetermined.

For his part, Rancière also postulates a

shot-circuit between the universal and the

particular as a central political gure. Howe-

ver, the battle to determine the content of

the universal will not take place as a result

of social disorder but, contrary to what La-

clau postulates, it will be precisely that which

prompts disorder by interrupting the “normal”

course of social affairs, producing a process

of disidentication from the places “natura-

lly” ascribed to each part. The universal thus

becomes a disputed, politically subjectivi-

sed terrain through the operation of what he

terms the syllogism of emancipation: “The

syllogism is simple: the major premise con-

tains what the law has to say; the minor, what

is said or done elsewhere, any word or deed

which contradicts the fundamental legal/po-

litical afrmation of equality” (Rancière, 1995:

45). A space for political struggle and subjec-

tivation emerges between the written text's

formal inscription of equality and its imper-

fect application in the real world. As opposed

to the meta-political tradition, which would

dismiss the abstract inscription of equality

on the grounds of it masking a hidden reali-

ty, Rancière afrms its relevance insofar as it

allows marginalised subjects to stage scenes

of dissensus, that is, “a division inserted into

‘common sense’, the putting of two worlds in

one and the same world, […] the world where

those rights are valid and the world where

they are not” (Rancière, 2004b: 304). These

Pedro M. Rey-Araujo 123

Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, April - June 2018, pp. 111-128

formal predicates are political to the extent

that they open a disputed terrain where a su-

pernumerary element, those excluded from

the police’s count, can inscribe their exis-

tence into common sense by showing the

contingency of a social order that excludes

them at the same time that formally recog-

nizes them.

The centrality granted by Rancière and

Laclau to this co-implication between the

universal and the particular in their respec-

tive reections on the processes of political

subjectivation, is consistent with an unders-

tanding of the political as constitutive of

social objectivity, marked by a fundamental

antagonism or dissensus. By emphasising

a self-grounding act of decision, they avoid

assigning political subjects to a specic and

predetermined part of the social; and, at the

same time, by placing the political dispute

within the normative framework that regula-

tes social interactions, they avoid the above-

indicated dangers relative to particularistic

struggles that refuse to make reference to a

universal frame.

In the sixth of his Ten Theses, Rancière

(2001) indicates that “political subjects are

not social groups but rather forms of inscrip-

tion of ‘the (ac)count of the unaccounted-

for’”. Rancière reserves the name demos

for this paradoxical subject11. By staging a

dissensus that brings together two worlds in

one, it is the community itself wich is called

into question, by showing that the mere sum

of its parts will never be exhaustive of the

totality of its members. Therefore, for Ran-

cière the demos as a political subject will

always reside in the interstices of two hete-

rogeneous logics. It is the part of “those who

have no part” and, for that same reason, it

identies its name with the name of the com-

munity itself. In relation to this identication

11 “The one who is ‘unaccounted-for’, the one who has

no speech to be heard, is the one of the demos” (Ran-

cière, 2001).

of a part with the whole, Rancière will speak

of “a singular universal, a polemical univer-

sal” (Rancière, 1999: 39), which emerges in

the dispute. This identication has a “norma-

tive” character (May, 2008: 112) insofar as

it puts into practice the value of equality, to

which the entire community is understood to

be committed (at least nominally), but which

it will inevitably fail to implement to its full

extent. A political subject will be the name

through which there is a subjectivation pro-

cess of those “not accounted-for”, that is,

the name that encompasses the difference

between “the order of the inegalitarian dis-

tribution of social bodies in a partition of the

perceptible and the order of the equal capa-

city of speaking beings in general” (Rancière,

1999: 42).

The conception of the political subject by

Laclau became closer to that of Rancière as

his theory evolved (Laclau, 2005: 244-9). In

his early works the subject was associated

with the “decision” that “sutures” an incom-

plete, dislocated structure, related to the

distance between the universal, articulated

through empty signiers, and the particular

that hegemonises its content. Later on, si-

milarly to Rancière, he emphasised “the part

that functions as a whole” (ibid.: 2005: 244):

“the popular subject would be constitutively

would be constitutively split, as the populist

construction of a ‘people’ entails the presen-

tation of the plebs as the whole of the popu-

lus” (ibid.: 81). Similarly to Rancière, the cons-

titution of a people is an eminently political

task and not a datum of the social structure

(ibid.: 224).

However, important differences be-

tween their respective approaches need to be

highlighted. First, both strongly opposed the

expressive immanentism advocated by Ne-

gri and Hardt in Empire (2002), which takes

for granted the unity and homogeneity of the

multitude as a presuposition of their concep-

tion of politics. While Laclau (2001) argues

that any unity of the multitude must neces-

sarily be the result of articulatory practices,

Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, April - June 2018, pp. 111-128

124 Tensions and Conuences Between the Works of Jacques Rancière and Ernesto Laclau

exterior to the whole to be articulated, Ran-

cière (2010) opposed the conception defen-

ded by Negri and Hardt by alleging that all

political manifestation involves a frontal op-

position of one “people” to another. Howe-

ver, despite their shared rejection of the im-

manentist conception, their appreciation of

political representation is radically different.

Whereas Laclau afrms that “equivalential

logic leads to singularity, and singularity to

identication of the unity of the group with

the name of the leader” (Laclau, 2005: 100),

so that representation not only cannot be

eliminated, but is itself constitutive of what

is represented (Laclau, 1996: 97), Rancière

considers the phrase “representative demo-

cracy” to be a mere oxymoron, because it

creates a gap between representative and

represented that contradict the very egali-

tarian spirit that informs democratic logic.

Certainly, an excessive weight of the gure

of a leader carries the risk of perverting the

potentially emancipatory content present at

the moment of constitution of the political

subject. However, while Laclauian schemes

allow the design of a plan of action capable

of making profound changes in regulatory

frameworks of common existence, there is

a certain risk that the approach proclaimed

by Rancière may end up being reduced to

a utopian and voluntarist project ultimately

lacking true political effectiveness.

Secondly, despite the fact that both con-

tinually underscore the constitutive character

of the political, a certain ambiguity underlies

the work of Laclau. If “some degree of cri-

sis in the old structure is a necessary pre-

condition of populism” (Laclau, 2005: 177),

the capacity of the political to inuence the

constitution of a social order will necessarily

be limited. As Arditi (2010: 494) rightly poin-

ted out, “if the political does indeed have a

structuring role, then it must also be capable

of triggering the de-institutionalisation of the

existing order instead of relying on a previous

crisis to generate its subversive and recons-

tructive effects.” Rancière’s conception of the

processes of political subjectivation makes it

possible to overcome this ambiguity, since

the mere appearance of the demos through

the staging of dissensus is enough to stimu-

late a process of reconguration of the dis-

tribution of the sensible. Similarly, Rancière’s

notion of demos, by referring to the irruption

of the unrepresentable within the space of re-

presentation, makes it possible to break the

equivalence between politics and populism

referred to by Laclau (2005: 67). While the

dichotomised social eld, the equivalence-

prone aggregation of heterogeneous de-

mands, and their collapse into a singularity,

can characterise political interventions of a

very different nature, a dialogue with Ranciè-

re would restrict the application of the term to

those situations where the “non accounted-

for” can be included (Barros, 2006).

Thirdly, there is a certain asymmetry in

Laclau’s conception between the condition

of the ignorant masses which, in a moment

of crisis of the social institutions, require an

indeterminate order, and the avant-garde

position of the leader, capable of discerning

which particular content better meets the

blind demands of the crowd. The best way to

counteract this tension may be to remember

the “lesson” Rancière himself taught Althus-

ser, whose reading of Marx’s texts took for

granted an essential disparity between mas-

ses and leader in relation to their ability to

make the social intelligible (see Rancière,

2011). Again, by jointly considering the works

of Rancière and Laclau, numerous points of

conuence between them become apparent,

while at the same time providing a possible

route to correct their possible excesses.

conclusIon

The relevance of the issues discussed in this

paper seems to be accentuated by the pro-

found systemic crisis associated with the

gradual decomposition of the institutional

equilibria constitutive of capitalism in its neo-

Pedro M. Rey-Araujo 125

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liberal form. The conguration of the social

order, the conditions of intelligibility of a con-

crete political demand, the nature of social

conict, and the emergence and consolida-

tion of political identities in times of crisis

become particularly relevant in the current

state of affairs.

From the theoretical itinerary proposed

here the following conclusions can be drawn.

Firstly, the constitution of a social order and

its subversion must be situated on the same

ontological level. The impossibility for any

social order to close completely on itself

and, by extension, to reproduce itself con-

tinuously without alterations, re-situates the

political dispute as a contest for modulating

the conditions of visibility and intelligibility

of all social facts. In other words, the strictly

political dimension does not reside in the

existing disputes between already constitu-

ted subjects, but precisely in the processes

that allow their own constitution as such. Se-

condly, the rejection of certain great totalising

narratives must not lead to a total rejection

of the Universals that structure them, but to

their conception as places of perennial dis-

pute. Any strictly private struggle that does

not seek to affect the regime of meaning that

frames it will be incapable of combating the

ultimate foundations of its social situation.

Thirdly, regarding the current situation,

the analyses offered by both authors involve

recognising that the primordial political stru-

ggle is not that between existing identities,

but a dispute to generate new frameworks of

meaning in which new processes of subjec-

tivation may emerge. It is argued, then, that

the privilege granted by Rancière to the mo-

ments of subversion of a certain order is es-

pecially useful to conceive how certain types

of consensus, built around the “naturalness”

of certain events, can be shattered, and it

has to be located within the formal coordi-

nates of hegemonic politics as conceived in

the work of Laclau, which is uniquely useful

for designing a plan of action able to over-

come the erected barriers of past processes

of institutional sedimentation. Ultimately, it is

the act of considering them together which,

in my opinion, proves more fruitful in order to

provide a theoretical and political proposal

that is commensurate with ongoing social

transformations.

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RECEPTION: September 05, 2016

REVIEW: July 26, 2017

ACCEPTANCE: September 25, 2017

Reis. Rev.Esp.Investig.Sociol. ISSN-L: 0210-5233. Nº 162, Abril - Junio 2018, pp. 111-128

Pedro M. Rey-Araujo: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela – IDEGA | pedrom.rey@rai.usc.es

Tensiones y conuencias en las obras de

Jacques Rancière y Ernesto Laclau

Tensions and Conﬂuences between the Works