Indeed it is possible to trace in constructionist argumentation a certain moment when`something external to social construction makes its presence felt. It is the moment in which a problem or a crisis dislocates our social constructions. … This conceptualisation of the moment of the meaningless event, of the accident or the disaster that destroys a well-ordered social world and dislocates our certainties,
representing a crisis in which we experience the limits of our meaning structures, is something we cannot neglect. 67
It is only in Laclaus argumentation that this moment of negativity acquires central importance. What Laclau shows is that the level of the
objective, social reality itself as a sedimentation of meaning, exists in an irreducible dialectic with the moment(s) of its own dislocation. Social reality is eccentric to itself because it is always threatened by a radical exteriority which dislocates it.
Furthermore, this moment of dislocation is exactly what causes the articulation of new social constructions that attempt to suture the lack created by dislocation.
Since dislocation denotes the failure and subversion of a system of representation (be it imaginary or symbolic) by not being representable, since dislocation creates a lack in the place of a discursive order, dislocation can be conceived as an encounter with the real in the Lacanian sense of the word.
The lack, however, created by dislocation produces the need (rather the desire in our Lacanian vocabulary) for its filling. Hence the dual character of dislocations: If on the one hand, they threaten identities, on the other, they are the foundation on which new identities are constituted (Laclau, 1990 New Reflections:39). 67-68
The real is exactly what destroys, what dislocates this fantasmatic reality, what shows that this reality is lacking. 68
If reality constitutes the symbolically constructed and fantasmatically supported part of objectivity, the real also belongs to the objective level, it is what exceeds the domesticated portion of the objective. It is exactly what accounts for the failure of all symbolic representations of objective reality: the object which accounts for the failure of every neutral-objective representation (Ž Plague of Fantasies 1997:214). 68
The real is not
an ultimate referent of external reality but the limit which hinders the neutral
representation of external (symbolic) reality (Ž Plague 1997:214).
It is thus revealed in the failure of symbolisation itself. It is the radical externality which does not permit the
internalisation of the socially constructed reality, it is exactly what keeps identification from resulting in full identity.
Nonetheless, the real cannot be conceived independently of signification: it is revealed in the inherent failure/blockage of all signification, it is
exactly what reveals all symbolic truth to be not-all, it can only be thought as the internal limit of the symbolic order. The real cannot be symbolised per se but is shown in the failure of every attempt to symbolise it (Ž Plague:217). It is an internally shown exteriority surfacing at the intersection of symbolisation with whatever exceeds its grasp. 68