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Hegemonic struggles and the role of contemporary 'organic intellectuals': A different perspective for the analysis of discourses
Abstract
The 'populist moment' and the growing number of non-liberal discourses indicate that we are in the presence of a counter-hegemonic phase against the established liberal order involving several sites of ideological production. However, the analysis of these counter-revolutions still focuses on agency, looking mainly at political parties or leaders. This article tries to reverse this picture suggesting to look first at discourses as such to understand the contestation of the dominant worldview. Thus, it proposes a methodological platform for studying (counter-)hegemonic discourses that abandons agent-centrism. To achieve this goal, it introduces the notion of 'organic intellectuals of a discourse-coalition', linking two concepts developed respectively by Antonio Gramsci and Maarten Hajer. This formula allows focusing on all actors articulating and propagating the same demands and discourse, regardless of their affiliation. Using this approach, a discourse-coalition may include parties or politicians as well as journalists or influencers as long as they exert an intellectual function, that is, they are able to mould common sense. By developing this formula, the article is aimed at researchers that use Poststructuralist Discourse Theory in the study of hegemonic discourses as it provides a sound justification for the selection of a valid and representative discourse-coalition.
This article consolidates the emerging discursive-performative paradigm in populist studies by presenting the idea of populism as an aesthetic transgression, bridging the gap between discursive and sociocultural-performative strands. The article is broadly inspired by Jacques Rancière’s notion of aesthetics as the ‘partage du sensible’ and critically employs it to understand how populism transgresses the rules establishing what can appear in politics. The article claims that populism is aesthetically transgressive in two ways: (1) by making visible subalternised subjects through the discursive articulation of the ‘people’ and (2) by naming the ‘elite’ in a way that makes visible underlying modes of domination. The article argues that this framework allows for a more fruitful understanding of the relationship between populism and topics such as crisis and institutionalism. Moreover, the article employs this framework to differentiate between emancipatory and reactionary forms of populism, connecting emancipatory populism to queer aesthetic practices and explaining how it reinvigorates liberal democracy. Conversely, reactionary populism mobilises what Hannah Arendt called the ‘mob’ and ends up reinforcing modes of domination.
This article proposes Maarten Hajer’s concept of discourse coalition for analyzing anti-gender politics and its interlinkages with other forms of opposition to sexual and gender equality. The perspective conceptualizes how actors with disparate ideological, philosophical, and religious views can communicate and produce meaningful interventions, if they share certain storylines. This primarily conceptual contribution is illustrated with a study of how “traditional values” are promoted by the Russian state. Two storylines, stressing the needs to protect “traditional values” from outside interference, and children from harmful sexual information, enable discursive affinities and interconnections across differences, domestically, internationally, and transnationally.
The current literature on populism considers the causal factors surrounding the emergence of populism to be materialist and often ignores the role of elites in the precipitation of populist movements. Consequently, populism is often conceptualised as an epiphenomenon. However, it is the scope of this article that the construction of events or processes as ‘beyond’ public control contributes to popular resentment necessary for the emergence of populism. In comparison to this construction (encapsulated best in Margaret Thatcher’s proclamation, ‘there is no alternative’), democratic politics involves an appeal to the constituency most often associated with populism, ‘the common people’ and ‘common sense’. This article, therefore, will proceed along the following lines: first, I establish the theoretical model for analysis with reference to Margaret Canovan’s paper ‘Trust the People!’; following this, sections ‘ Depoliticisation as “Pragmatic Politics”’ and ‘Common sense as “Redemptive Politics”’ look at different permutations of the two sides of this theoretical model, respectively Depoliticisation, and an appeal to ‘common sense’, before turning back in the section ‘Applying and illustrating the framework’ to Canovan’s theoretical framework to understand how the interaction between these two permutations can contribute to a populist reaction. The final section presents an illustrative example of this clash – immigration in the United Kingdom.
This article argues that Ernesto Laclau’s notion of demand is problematic. By converting a demand into the basic unit of analysis, Laclau inadvertently distances himself from the post-foundational approach that defined his discourse theory. Therefore, for it to be coherent with a discursive approach to social reality, the idea of demand should be decomposed and reevaluated from a psychoanalytic perspective. The article defends the view that Jacques Lacan’s dismissal of demands as a symbolic articulation that conceals desire leads to a fruitful rectification of Laclau’s theory on the construction of collective identities. It shows that the main category present in identificatory processes is desire, not demand. The article concludes that a study focused on desire could analyze a broader set of empirical cases and also provide the basis for a normative and ethical analysis. Moreover, it allows for a reading of Laclau’s references to the psychoanalytic concept of sublimation as a democratic answer to the fantasmatic metonymy of desire.
The political landscape in Europe is currently going through a phase of rapid change. New actors and movements that claim to represent 'the will of the people' are attracting considerable public attention, with dramatic consequences for election outcomes. This volume explores the new political order with a particular focus on discursive constructions of 'the people' and the category of populism across the spectrum. It shows how a unitary representation of 'the people' is a central element in a vast range of very diverse political discourses today, acting to anchor identities and project antagonisms in a multitude of settings. The chapters in this book explore commonality and contrast in representations of ‘the people’ in both radical and mainstream political movements, looking in depth at recent political discourses in the European sphere. The authors draw on approaches ranging from Essex-style discourse theory over critical discourse studies, corpus analysis and linguistic pragmatics, to investigate how historically situated categories such as the people and populism become fixed through local linguistic, textual and narrative practices as well as through wider ideological and discursive patterns.
As of January 2023, this e-book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.
Despite the explosion of populism research, there is a shortage of comprehensive analyses of the ideational varieties of populist parties and of the different roles they play in contemporary party systems. In order to overcome such limitations, I provide a state-of-the-art review of the literature on the classification of populist parties and make three innovative contributions to populism research. First, by adopting a truly pan-European perspective to cover, in addition to EU member countries, contexts that are generally overlooked, including but not limited to Liechtenstein, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine, this review article provides an empirical application of the ideational approach to populism to 66 contemporary parties. Second, it highlights the major shortcomings of common approaches to the study of populist parties in contemporary party systems, which almost invariably treat them as ‘challengers’ or ‘outsiders’. Finally, it pushes the agenda further by providing a classification and empirical overview of the three interactive patterns characterizing the 66 populist parties under analysis: non-integration, negative integration and positive integration.
Post-Structuralist Discourse Theory analyzes political ideas and action from a Marxist direction. However, while classic Marxian sociology is rooted in economic processes that “structure” society and ideas, Post-Structuralist Discourse Theory emphasizes the absence of any determinative principle. Thus, it radicalizes an ongoing shift in Marxism away from economic essentialism towards indeterminacy, contingency, and openness. The ideological superstructure becomes ever more important at the expense of the economic base; class struggle and relations of production lose analytical and strategic purchase in favor of a complex and integral form of politics; there are no deeper, natural foundations determining how society is organized and structured. Post-Structuralist Discourse Theorists argue that this orientation leads to a more satisfactory analysis of political practice than is possible through positivist research. Assessing this claim requires a survey of the hermetic terminology in which Post-Structuralist Discourse Theorists express their ideas—the discourse, as it were, of Discourse Theorists—exploring their use of sociology, structuralist linguistics, psychoanalysis, and the political theory of populism.
The work of Antonio Gramsci is important to the theoretical underpinnings of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). However, many scholars’ engagement with Gramsci’s work within CDA remains surprisingly thin. This article seeks to highlight the detriment to CDA of having only a surface engagement with Gramsci. It critically assesses how Gramscian concepts such as hegemony and ‘common sense’ are currently employed within CDA, and provides more detailed discussion on the import of these concepts for CDA. The article also argues that introducing the Gramscian concepts of the war of position and spontaneous and normative grammars enable the further realisation of CDA's ambition to be an emancipatory tool in political and social science. In so doing, the article contributes to work on CDA as a method in political studies, particularly concerning the role of discourse in reproducing and maintaining asymmetrical power relations between classes and social groups, and potential challenges to this.
In the late 1980s, I studied developments in environmental politics, a field that I had, until then, not examined in any detail. Given my background studying social movements and political institutions, I was intrigued by the ‘career’ of the environmental movement. In twenty years, it had transformed from a counter-cultural movement, practising the symbolic politics of street demonstrations, lifestyle choices, and alternative consumption (expressed in an elaborate and very visible urban circuit encompassing bookshops, wholemeal food stores, dress codes, communal households, and so on) to a more mainstream political force, seeking representation and influence through ‘green’ parties and professional lobbying (see Hajer, 1995). Upon reflection, it seemed obvious that much more was going on in environmental politics than fighting ‘environmental degradation’. The differences in style, both in terms of ways of life and of conducting politics, signalled that environmental politics was in fact a field of profound ‘cultural politics’. Environmental politics appeared to be a stage at which society reflected on its record: values were at risk, moral commitments were contested and the very form of conducting politics was questioned (Hajer, 1996).
This article revisits the discussion about what a think-tank is, what it does and how it does what it does. The article argues that the definition of what constitutes a think-tank should focus on the functions that it fulfils and not so much on the organizational form, as is the case with dominant perspectives. The article offers a revised think-tank definition and, as a second step, discusses a Gramsci-inspired critical approach to understanding the function of think-tanks and, third, adopts Marten Hajer’s discourse coalition concept to explain how think-tanks became effective as state-external agents of change.
The hegemonic narrative linking coal to national sovereignty and energy security promoted by state and private actors, translates into policies promoting coal expansionism. The study is based on the proposition that the counter-discourse offered by non-state actors, mainly environmental civil society organization, represents a potential challenge against such narrative. The dialectical discursive dynamics around energy transition are explored within India’s print media by employing the method of Discourse Network Analysis to trace the dominant storylines and discourse coalitions. The findings reveal two opposed storylines, one pro-coal the other anti-coal, underpinning the two ideologically cohesive discourse coalitions dominated by state and non-state actors, respectively. It uncovers the ideological fault lines between the two sets of actors, with the possibilities for synthesis and policy co-learning. The paper concludes by deriving implications regarding post pandemic challenges and possibilities emerging for both the sets of actors.
This contribution lays out the basics of hegemony analysis, a form of discourse analysis that builds on Ernesto Laclau’s theory of discourse and hegemony. I propose to conceive of hegemony as a function of discourse. Hence, hegemony analysis primarily wants to understand the workings of this function, and not—as many other discourse analytical approaches—the concrete substantial developments within a given discourse. I first introduce the main tools of hegemony analysis: a specific notion of discourse, a typology of discursive linkages, the concept of hegemony, the nexus of subjectivation and discourse coalition building and finally an ideal type of hegemonic strategy. I then proceed to demonstrate how these tools are used in an exemplary analysis of the German discourse on social market economy in the 1940s and 1950s.
Looking at the Bernie Sanders campaign from the perspective of a Gramscian theory of hegemony, the author demonstrates that the astonishing appeal of the Sanders campaign is both an outcome of neoliberalism's hegemonic crisis and a case in point of how to intervene effectively into its contradictions and to shift people's common senses to the left. Sanders' economic populism∗ has nothing to do with a romanticized notion of a homogenous people, but is based on a multifaceted ^historic bloc∗ of different subaltern classes and groups. How can his focus on class (in the broadest sense of the 99%) be connected to the intersectionality of different forms of oppression? How can the different components of the Sanderist movement∗ stay together when Hillary Clinton gets the nomination?
During the last decade there has been mounting interest in various kinds of discourse theory and discourse analysis within what we can broadly define as the social sciences. This is evidenced by the growing number of publications, workshops, conference panels, university courses, and dissertations that draw on the intellectual resources of discourse theory. Some countries and subdisciplines have been more susceptible than others to the influence of the new theories of discourse. In some places, discourse theory has almost become the dominant paradigm, while in other places it has remained marginal. However, very few areas of research have been able to withstand the impact of its new ideas.
Within the varied literature that has addressed the relationship between European integration, on the one hand, and the character and development of parties and party systems, on the other, three related concerns have been prominent. In the first place, and often reflecting the earliest tradition of research in this area, scholars have sought to trace the origins and development of transnational — and specifically trans-European — party federations, seeing in these nascent organizations the potential for the emergence of genuine political parties at the European level. The pioneering work in this regard was carried out by Pridham (1975) and Pridham and Pridham (1981) in the period surrounding the introduction of direct elections to the European Parliament, and was subsequently further developed by scholars such as Bardi (e.g., 1994) and Hix (e.g., 1995). Second, reflecting a more recent phase of research, scholars have been concerned to analyze the shape and dynamic of the parties and the party systems as they function within the European Parliament. This remains a key and quite dominant strand of contemporary research, with the focus being constantly expanded and reconstituted on the basis of new data derived from roll-call analysis, patterns of alignment, and the shifting memberships of federations and parliamentary fractions. The literature here is also enormous, with pioneering work being carried out by Bardi (1989) and Attinà (1990), and with the more sophisticated recent work being well represented in the collection of papers edited by Marks and Steenbergen (2004).
Antonio Gramsci and his concept of hegemony have permeated social and political theory, cultural studies, education studies, literary criticism, international relations, and post-colonial theory. The centrality of language and linguistics to Gramsci’s thought, however, has been wholly neglected. In Gramsci’s Politics of Language, Peter Ives argues that a university education in linguistics and a preoccupation with Italian language politics were integral to the theorist’s thought. Ives explores how the combination of Marxism and linguistics produced a unique and intellectually powerful approach to social and political analysis. To explicate Gramsci’s writings on language, Ives compares them with other Marxist approaches to language, including those of the Bakhtin Circle, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt School, including Jürgen Habermas. From these comparisons, Ives elucidates the implications of Gramsci’s writings, which, he argues, retained the explanatory power of the semiotic and dialogic insights of Bakhtin and the critical perspective of the Frankfurt School, while at the same time foreshadowing the key problems with both approaches that post-structuralist critiques would later reveal. Gramsci’s Politics of Language fills a crucial gap in scholarship, linking Gramsci’s writings to current debates in social theory and providing a framework for a thoroughly historical-materialist approach to language.
This article engages with popular narratives of community and cohesion, explored through a series of focus groups in Bradford and Birmingham. This article argues that the participants interviewed used discourses propagated by government to make sense of these narratives in their neighbourhoods and communities. The use of these discourses constructs what Gramsci calls a ‘common sense’ position, which legitimises a specific and targeted notion of cohesion. However, participants can contaminate these discourses, which can lead to subtle changes or explicit challenges to dominant discourses on community and cohesion in the United Kingdom.
This book proposes a novel approach to practising social and political analysis based on the role of logics. The authors articulate a distinctive perspective on social science explanation that avoids the problems of scientism and subjectivism by steering a careful course between lawlike explanations and thick descriptions. Drawing upon hermeneutics, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, and post-analytical philosophy, this new approach offers a particular set of logics - social, political and fantasmatic - with which to construct critical explanations of practices and regimes. While the first part of the book critically engages with lawlike, interpretivist and causal approaches to critical explanation, the second part elaborates an alternative grammar of concepts informed by an ontological stance rooted in poststructuralist theory. In developing this approach, a number of empirical cases are included to illustrate its basic concepts and logics, ranging from the apartheid regime in South Africa to recent changes in higher education. The book will be a valuable tool for scholars and researchers in a variety of related fields of study in the social sciences, especially the disciplines of political science and political theory, international relations, social theory, cultural studies, anthropology and philosophy.
The idea that we all share common-sense values, and that specific proposals self-evidently 'make sense' according to these precepts, is a powerful legitimation strategy. The assumption that everyone is obviously going to agree with what is being proposed is in fact itself a means of securing that agreement. In the mean time a ferocious battle is waged over what actually constitutes popular common sense. Well-endowed supporters of neoliberalism are able to put substantial resources into shaping public opinion; and the left need to counter these activities by working with the grain of the good sense that exists alongside and within popular common sense - for example a widespread sense of what is just and unjust, of the rich being too powerful, of the need to look after the vulnerable. But articulating these ideas to a political project also requires work - and recognition that this work is central to political activity. When Labour politicians frame their proposals within neoliberal terms and rhetoric - for example when they talk about being tough on people living on benefits - they are actually undermining their own position.
Examines the nature of the global neoliberal settlement, including the social, cultural and political battles that have attended its emergence and maintenance - and those that might help bring about its demise. Drawing on Gramscian concepts such as conjuncture and hegemony, it argues that the economic underpinnings of the current settlement are unravelling, but the broader political and social consensus is still largely in place. Therefore it seeks to challenges mainstream political debate, which largely avoids confronting the systemic failures that underpin the financial crash.
The concept of hegemony has regained attention from various theoretical perspectives in International Relations. This article argues that IR-poststructuralism can offer an independent perspective on the production of hegemonies in international politics. Based on IR-poststructuralism and poststructuralist discourse theory, it develops a conceptual framework and an associated methodological approach for the analysis of international hegemonies in concrete discourses. Thereby, the article conceptualises international hegemonies as the creation of a specific type of collective identity while arguing that for hegemonies to emerge, both the creation of an antagonistic Other and a vision of the opposed Self are necessary. The workings of the conceptual framework are illustrated with a comparative reconstruction of United Nations discourses on international terrorism and drug prohibition from 1961 to 2011.
in order to understand human activity it is necessary to know the culture, the social and historical situation, in which the activity takes place / in art and philosophy, the current age is described as a postmodern age / psychology is a project of modernity, coming into use as a term during the Age of Enlightenment and founded as a science in the late nineteenth century / if these two premises are correct—that is, of psychology as a modern project and the current age as postmodern—the science of psychology may be out of touch with the current age / then the two terms 'psychology' and 'postmodernity' are incompatible, and a postmodern psychology is a contradiction terms / [this chapter will] attempt to substantiate this postulate
some main themes of a postmodern culture will be described / the entrenchment of psychological science in modernity will be outlined, and some developments in professional practice and research will be presented as in line with a postmodern discourse / some scenarios for psychology in a postmodern world are outlined, and the relations of psychology to religion and to consumer culture are pointed out (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
As Europe enters a significant phase of re-integration of East and West, it faces an increasing problem with the rise of far-right political parties. Cas Mudde offers the first comprehensive and truly pan-European study of populist radical right parties in Europe. He focuses on the parties themselves, discussing them both as dependent and independent variables. Based upon a wealth of primary and secondary literature, this book offers critical and original insights into three major aspects of European populist radical right parties: concepts and classifications; themes and issues; and explanations for electoral failures and successes. It concludes with a discussion of the impact of radical right parties on European democracies, and vice versa, and offers suggestions for future research.
Whether or not nationalism is an ideology is a question that can be illuminated by a study of its conceptual structure. Core and adjacent concepts of nationalism are examined within the context of liberal, conservative and fascist ideologies, contexts that respectively encourage particular ideational paths within nationalist argument, while discouraging others. Employing a morphological analysis of ideological configurations, it is argued that various nationalisms may appear as distinct thin-centred ideologies, but are more readily understood as embellishments of, and sustainers of, the features of their host ideologies.
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