… once we take seriously the need to pass through the subjects’ self-interpretations on the way to an adequate explanation of social phenomena, the issue of language and discourse is put centre stage
(Glynos, Howarth, 2007: 98)
Anti-essentialist ontology, anti-foundationalist epistemology
- There is no pre-given, self-determining essence that is capable of determining and ultimately fixing all other identities within a stable and totalizing structure.
There have been many attempts in the history of Western thought to explain the course of history, the structure of society, and the identities of subjects and objects by reference to an underlying essence which is given in a full presence and plenitude and not implicated in any historical processes of structuration. God, Reason, Humanity, Nature, and the Iron Laws of Capitalism are some of the celebrated candidates for this transcendental determining centre 13.
The longing for such a centre reflects our desire to master the anxiety that accompanies a certain mode of being implicated in contingent processes of structuration 13.