Quasi-transcendentalism, representation and criticism in Ernesto Laclau's theory

Abstract

The link between Laclau's work and the development of these "new social movements" is not indirect. From the beginning, the work of the Argentine author explicitly rethinks the conditions in which these new actors emerge, and more specifically, to underline the novelty and specificity of "these new forms of resistance and struggle." A good part of Laclau's efforts to elaborate a political ontology based on the contributions of Marxism, structuralist linguistics, rhetoric, poststructuralism and psychoanalysis are devoted to rethinking these new forms of political subjectivity in all their radicality. However, it is precisely in this intention to articulate a theoretical enterprise with a political motivation (rethinking the left) where the tensions of the post-Marxist project arise. This article attempts to account for this tension by focusing on the problems that derive from the quasi- transcendentalism of Laclau's theory.