Bøker av Ernesto Laclau

In this hugely influential book, Laclau and Mouffe examine the workings of hegemony and contemporary social struggles, and their significance for democratic theory. With the emergence of new social and political identities, and the frequent attacks on Left theory for its essentialist underpinnings, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy remains as relevant as ever, positing a much-needed antidote against ';Third Way' attempts to overcome the antagonism between Left and Right.

Three renowned contemporary theorists discuss their different perspectives for politics and thought.

The essays collected in this volume develop the theoretical perspective initiated in Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist Strategy in three main directions. First, by exploring the specificity of social antagonisms and answering the question ';What is an antagonistic relation?', an issue which has become increasingly crucial in our globalized world, where the proliferation of conflicts and points of rupture is eroding their links to the social subjects postulated by classical social analysis. This leads the author to a second line of questioning: what is the ontological terrain that allows us to conceive the nature of social relations in our heterogeneous world, a task that he addresses with theoretical instruments coming from analytical philosophy and from the phenomenological and structuralist traditions. Finally, central to the argument of the book is the basic role attributed to rhetorical movements metaphor, metonymy, catachresis in shaping the ';non-foundational' grounds of society.

Presents an argument as to how the changes of the late twentieth century have altered Enlightenment notions of "emancipation."

This volume takes the form of a debate between Jacques Derrida, the leading exponent of deconstruction, and Richard Rorty, the pragmatist philosopher and literary theorist, in which the two schools of thought are brought into critical confrontation with one another.

A philosophical and political exploration initiated in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. This work focuses on the construction of popular identities and how 'the people' emerges as a collective actor. It offers a critical reading of the literature on populism, demonstrating its dependency on the theorists of 'mass psychology'.

Analysis of the role of ideology in political movements.

New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time continues the innovative exploration of major issues concerning democracy and socialism which was staked out in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Examining the meanings of social struggle in the context of late capitalism, Laclau situates the re-making of political identities within a framework of democratic revolution. The critical method is one which describes major structural changes in the contemporary world-system at the same time as it theorizes a coherent and radical interpretative form. This marriage of politics and theory allows the book to embrace topics ranging from the relationship between Marxism and psychoanalysis to the historical significance of May 1968 and forms of political struggle in the third world. In a final section of illuminating interviews the author expounds his most recent thought on politics and philosophy.