{"id":1983,"date":"2009-02-19T22:51:31","date_gmt":"2009-02-20T03:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=1983"},"modified":"2009-02-19T22:53:25","modified_gmt":"2009-02-20T03:53:25","slug":"laclau-on-sexual-d-and-hegemony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2009\/02\/19\/laclau-on-sexual-d-and-hegemony\/","title":{"rendered":"laclau on sexual d and hegemony"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laclau, Ernesto. \u201cIdentity and Hegemony: The Role of Universality in the Constitution of Political Logics.\u201d Contingency, Hegemony, Universality<\/span>. JB, EL and SZ. New York: Verso, 2000.\u00a0 44-89.<\/p>\n

It is precisely because I fully appreciate the potentialities of the notion of ‘parodic performances’ for a theory of hegemony, that I find some of Butler’s questions rather perplexing. She asks: “If sexual difference is “real” in the Lacanian sense, does that mean that it has no place in hegemonic struggles?’ I would argue that exactly BECAUSE sexual difference is real and not symbolic<\/strong>, because it is not necessarily linked to any aprioristic pattern of symbolic positions<\/strong>, that the way is open to the kind of historicist variation that Butler asserts \u2014 and that a hegemonic game becomes possible<\/strong>. The same goes for some of Butler’s other questions: ‘Does a logic that invariably results in aporias produce a kind of stasis that is inimical to the project of hegemony?’\u00a0 If there were no aporia, there would be no possibility of hegemony<\/strong>, for a necessary logic<\/strong> inimical to hegemonic variations would impose itself, entirely unchallenged. We have here the same mutually subverting relationship between necessity and impossibility to which we have been referring from the beginning (note 39, 88).<\/p>\n

If the representation was total \u2014 if the representative moment was entirely transparent to what it represents \u2014 the ‘concept’ would have an unchallenged primacy over the ‘name’ (in Saussurean terms: the signified would entirely subordinate to itself the order of the signifier).\u00a0 But in that case there would be no hegemony, for its very requisite, which is the production of tendentially empty signifiers, would not obtain. In order to have hegemony we need the sectorial aims of a group to operate as the name for a universality transcending them<\/strong> \u2014 this is the synecdoche constitutive of the hegemonic link. But if the name (the signifier) is so attached to the concept (signified) that no displacement in the relation between the two is possible, we cannot have any hegemonic rearticulation.\u00a0 The idea of a totally emancipated and transparent society, from which all tropological movement between its constitutive parts would have been elmininated, involves the end of all hegemonic relation (and also, as we will see later, of all democratic politics).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laclau, Ernesto. \u201cIdentity and Hegemony: The Role of Universality in the Constitution of Political Logics.\u201d Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. JB, EL and SZ. New York: Verso, 2000.\u00a0 44-89. It is precisely because I fully appreciate the potentialities of the notion of ‘parodic performances’ for a theory of hegemony, that I find some of Butler’s questions rather … Continue reading “laclau on sexual d and hegemony”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,66,82,94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butler","category-hegemony","category-performativity","category-sexual-difference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1983"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1991,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983\/revisions\/1991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}